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gewgaws, beads and cheap merchandise with the Indian 
for the valuable skins of beaver and otter. 
The cavalier, explorer and adventurer traveled over 
their trackless wastes of water, enduring hardship and 
fatigue, living upon the bounties of nature, pushing his 
way to what he hoped would be a discovery of a path to 
the Indies, fortune and fame. Each of these in his own 
way has left testimony of the bountiful way in which 
nature has stocked these waters with desirable food, and 
the belief of all concurred that there was an unfailing 
supply for man for all time, to be had for the tak- 
ing. 
The habits of the tribes bordering these lakes whose 
main reliance for food was upon the fishes that inhabited 
them, had caused them to resort to certain favorable 
localities upon the lakes at the proper season of the year 
to take fish for present wants and for future use. In time 
these points became their chief dwelling places for the 
greater portion of the year, and with the advent of the 
fur trader they became the principal places of barter. 
Such localities as the Straits of Mackinaw, Sault Ste. 
Marie, Green Bay, Chequamegon, Detroit and Chicago 
became thus early known, and the history of these places 
as told by the early traveler shows that nature seemed to 
have lavished her bounties upon aboriginal man in the 
stocking of her waters with the most edible of fishes to 
provide for his wants. 
Let us call a few of the earlier voyagers to give their 
testimony upon the abundance of fish in these wa- 
ters. 
Hennepin says in his Travels in 1675: “There is a very 
abundant fishery of several kinds of fish at the mouth of 
the Niagara River, among which is the whitefish, admir- 
ably good, with which you might supply one of the best 
cities of Europe. 
“At Mackinaw the Griffin lay in the harbor amid one 
hundred and twenty canoes going and coming from 
