The Fur Animals of Louisiana 25 



coupled with their energy, the agents of the Hudson's Bay 

 Company kept the French from making any great headway 

 in this field. 



In 1700, a former trader with the "Company of the 

 Hundred Associates," named LeSeur, left Biloxi with two 

 boats manned by nineteen men for the country of the Sioux, 

 where, he claimed, these savages "dressed themselves en- 

 tirely in beaver skins which were soon discarded and re- 

 placed by fresh ones, simply because of a lack of market." 



Whether or not this was an exaggeration uttered for 

 purposes of promotion of his scheme we do no know, but 

 the trader did buy 3,600 beaver pelts and many other skins 

 of fur animals, although trading in beaver skins was con- 

 trary to the grant he had been given. LeSeur justified this 

 purchase on the ground that the Indians had pillaged his 

 canoes and he had taken the beaver pelts in compensation 

 for his losses. The officials of New France (as upper 

 Canada was called) in protesting LeSeur's entry into what 

 they considered their domain, claimed that this robbery 

 had been preconceived in order to have an excuse to seize 

 the skins. 6 



During the first year of the existence of the little French 

 settlement on the Gulf of Mexico, quite a traffic in pelts of 

 fur animals was established with traders coming from the 

 upper part of the Mississippi Valley, and most of this trade 

 was of an illicit sort because all crown grants stipulated 

 beaver skins belonged to the French companies of Canada. 

 Stimulated by the attitude of New France toward the new 

 Louisiana colony, buffalo hides and beaver skins were 

 caught and then found their way down the Mississippi to 

 the new market in prodigious quantity. Iberville had vi- 

 sions of the trade growing to about 45,000 pounds of skins 

 annually. 



"The fur of the otter, polecat, the pitois, wood-rat, 

 ermine, and marten are what is called la menue pelleterie, 

 or lesser peltry," we are told by Charlevoix. 7 



•Margry, vol. iv, p. 357. 



'Charlevoix, Voyage to North America, vol. 1, p. 208. 



