1680-82.] IROQUOIS POLICY. 75 



love of gain. It was a war of conquest and of 

 trade. All the five tribes of the league had be- 

 come dependent on the English and Dutch of 

 Albany for guns, powder, lead, brandy, and many 

 other things that they had learned to regard as 

 necessities. Beaver skins alone could buy them, 

 but to the Iroquois the supply of beaver skins was 

 limited. The regions of the west and north-west, the 

 upper Mississippi with its tributaries, and, above 

 all, the forests of the upper lakes, were occupied by 

 tribes in the interest of the French, whose mission- 

 aries and explorers had been the first to visit them, 

 and whose traders controlled their immense annual 

 product of furs. La Salle, by his newly built fort 

 of St. Louis, engrossed the trade of the Illinois 

 and Miami tribes ; while the Hurons and Ottawas, 

 gathered about the old mission of Michillimackinac, 

 acted as factors for the Sioux, the Winnebagoes, 

 and many other remote hordes. Every summer 

 they brought down their accumulated beaver skins 

 to the fair at Montreal ; while French bush-rangers 

 roving through the wilderness, with or without 

 licenses, collected many more. 1 



It was the purpose of the Iroquois to master all 

 this traffic, conquer the tribes who had possession 

 of it, and divert the entire supply of furs to them- 

 selves, and through themselves to the English and 

 Dutch. That English and Dutch traders urged 

 them on is affirmed by the French, and is very 

 likely. The accomplishment of the scheme would 



1 Duchesneau, Memoir on Western Indians in N. Y. Colonial Docs., IX. 

 160. 



