IIG RURAL MICHIGAN 



the farmer had to watch his fields to save the seeding. 

 Coon, mink, otter and nuiskrats were hunted and 

 trapped for their fur. Opossums, turkey buzzards 

 and eagles were occasionally seen, but no crows had 

 arrived." Fox squirrels, he tells us, came later from 

 the South to join their many relations already 

 domiciled in the State. In the northern peninsula 

 there is considerable temporary testimony to the in- 

 adequate game supply in the pioneer period, so that 

 the Indian population, as David Thompson relates, 

 was sparse through the poverty of the means of sub- 

 sistence and, according to the Elder Henry, was on 

 occasion forced to cannibalize to save a remnant of 

 the family or tribe. 



From all this array of animal life, the first settlers 

 of Michigan derived an income from the catch and 

 sale of furs, and the trade remains surprisingly 

 large after all these years of destructive forays by 

 their human foes on the denizens of the woods. Miss 

 Johnson quotes from the trader, Burnett's ledger 

 of 1796-1797, as follows: "Sold 99 packs composed 

 of 5 bears, 5 pound beaver, 10 fishers, 58 cats, 74 doe, 

 78 foxes, 108 wolves, 117 otters, 183 minks, 557 

 bucks, 1,231 deer, 1,340 muskrats, and 5,587 rac- 

 coons."^ C. A. Weissert of Barry County notes 

 among the furs dealt in, the marten, beaver, mink, 

 muskrat, otter, raccoon and fisher.- At points of 

 vantage throughout the two peninsulas arose the posts 



^ Johnson: ":\richigan Fur Trade," Lansing, Mich. Hist. 

 Commission. 1919, 97. 



■' "Mich. Pioneer & Hist. Soc. Collections," XXXVIII, 659. 



