188 ROMANCE OF THE BEAVER 



beaver skins. Even murder was pardoned with 

 such payment. In one case a whole Huron village 

 was called to account for murder and was compelled 

 to pay the injured tribe " as many as sixty presents 

 the least of which must be of the value of a new 

 beaver robe." 



Everything was valued by the standard of 

 beaver skins. The profits resulting from the 

 monopoly of the trade must have been enormous. 

 One of the Jesuits in writing to a brother priest in 

 1638 says, *' Our plates although of wood cost more 

 than yours for they are valued at one beaver robe, 

 which is a hundred francs." Yet the Indians 

 thought themselves well paid for the skins they 

 brought as will be seen by their saying, "The 

 beaver does everything perfectly well, it makes 

 kettles, hatchets, swords, knives, bread ; and in 

 short makes everything. The English (probably 

 meaning the white people) have no sense ; they 

 give us twenty knives like this for one beaver skin." 

 And the Indian (in 1657) was willing to pay one 

 winter beaver skin for two pots of wine. As far 

 back as 1647, the Tadousac trade, which was chiefly 

 beaver skins, amounted to 40,000 livres profit, and 

 in all to about 250,000 livres, and two years earlier 

 20,000 pounds of skins were carried away in two 

 vessels. Internal warfare both between the various 

 tribes of Indians and between them and the whites 

 had a marked effect on the number of skins taken 

 each year. In 1653, before the devastation of the 



