1891-92. ] EARLY TRADERS. 265 
1775-6 from twenty to thirty Indians daily arrived at Henry’s station on 
the Churchill loaded with the finest quality of furs, and in the following 
June, he purchased 12,000 beaver skins in three days. 
Major Robert Rogers, the celebrated partisan, was one of the first 
English colonists to explore the country around the great lakes, and 
while in command at Mackinac he appears to have dabbled in the entic- 
ing fur-trade. As early as 1765, he published a small book entitled “A 
concise account of North America,” 
Stating his qualifications as an authority on the subject in the preface, 
he said: “This River (the St. Lawrence) I have traced and am pretty 
well acquainted with the country adjacent to it as far up as Lake 
Superior, and with the country from the Green Bay to the Mississippi, 
and from thence down to the mouth of the Mississippi at the Gulf of 
Mexico, I have also travelled the country adjacent to the Ohio and its 
principal branches and that between the Ohio and Lakes Erie and 
Michigan and the countries of the southern Indians.” 
Jonathan Carver, a New Englander, wrote an interesting narrative of 
his travels in the West during the year 1766-8. Furnished by Major 
Rogers with a letter of credit on some English and Canadian traders 
who were going to the Mississippi he left Mackinac on the 3rd of 
September, 1766, and reached La Baye on the 18th. The fort at that 
place as well as the one at St. Joseph’s had been abandoned since 
Pontiac’s war and was fast falling to ruin. He stayed there two days 
but arrived at the Winnebago town on the 25th. Eight days paddling 
brought him to the carrying-place, leading to the Wisconsin from 
whence he gained the Mississippi by easy stages. At Lake Pepin, he 
noticed the ruins of St. Pierre’s deserted station. He ascended the 
Mississippi to the mouth of the St. Pierre and went up the latter river 
about two hundred miles. French traders from Louisiana had been 
among the Indians in this quarter telling them that their French father 
would soon awake and he was shown belts of wampum conveying this 
message that they had delivered. After returning to Prairie du Chien for 
supplies, he again went up the Mississippi to the Chippewa which he 
ascended as far as he could go. He then carried his canoe into a stream 
flowing into Lake Superior which he named Goddard’s River in honor of 
a well-known Montreal merchant, James Stanley Goddard, who had 
rendered him some assistance in the course of his journey. 
He next visited the Grand Portage where he learned that those who 
went on the northwest trade were obliged to convey their canoes and 
baggage overland about nine miles to a chain of small lakes, and relates 
