60 The Winning of the West 



rum, manned them with hardy voyageurs, trained 

 all their lives in the use of pole and paddle, and 

 started off up or down the Mississippi, 25 the Ohio, 

 or the Wabash, perhaps making a long carry or 

 portage over into the Great Lakes. It took him 

 weeks, often months, to get to the first trading- 

 point, usually some large winter encampment of In- 

 dians. He might visit several of these, or stay the 

 whole winter through at one, buying the furs. 26 

 Many of the French coureurs des bois, whose duty 

 it was to traverse the wilderness, and who were 

 expert trappers, took up their abode with the In- 

 dians, taught them how to catch the sable, fisher, 

 otter, and beaver, and lived among them as mem- 

 bers of the tribe, marrying copper-colored squaws, 

 and rearing dusky children. When the trader had 

 exchanged his goods for the peltries of these red 

 and white skin-hunters, he returned to his home, 

 having been absent perhaps a year or eighteen 

 months. It was a hard life; many a trader perished 

 in the wilderness by cold or starvation, by an upset 

 where the icy current ran down the rapids like a 

 mill-race, by the attack of a hostile tribe, or even 

 in a drunken brawl with the friendly Indians, when 

 voyageur, half-breed, and Indian alike had been 

 frenzied by draughts of fiery liquor. 27 



26 Do., p. 519. Letter of Joseph St. Marin. 

 w Do., p. 89. 



27 Journal of Jean Baptiste Perrault, in 1783; in "Indian 

 Tribes," by Henry R. Schoolcraft, Part III., Philadelphia, 

 1855. See also Billon, 484, for an interesting account of the 

 adventures of Gratiot, who afterward, under American rule, 



