120 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



preacher, " Make more 'such discourses ! Stop everybody from 

 taking high interest — except me. Then I can monopolize the 

 whole business." As his recompense for risks and outlays in 

 western discovery, La Salle asked nothing bat the exclusive right 

 to sell the skins of buffaloes. 



Royal monopolies of fur-trading, lavished in Paris on court 

 favorites or on corporations as the Hundred Associates, crippled 

 that traffic near the coast. But they drove the bulk of that busi- 

 ness into the heart of the continent, where it fell into the hands 

 of traders so distant, shrewd aod self-sufficing that it could not 

 be crippled. Over a region vaster than any European kingdom, 

 the bush-rangers carried on the fur-trade af{er their own pleasure, 

 and laughed at royal restrictions on their dealings. 



In 168 L Hennepin, at Mackinaw, met with forty-two Canadians 

 who had come thither to trade in furs, defiant of the orders of 

 their viceroy. These foresters were not without a sort of con- 

 science, for they all begged the Jesuit to give thsm the cord of St. 

 Francis, which was believed to make their salvation sure if they 

 died wearing it as a girdle, and they all gained their request. 

 Hennepin was then journeying eastward from Green B ly, where 

 he had been entertained by the same class oE contraband traCficlcers. 

 There similar adventurers — La Salle informs us — had a perma- 

 nent post in 1677, and that bay had even been visitsl by a brace 

 of voyagers more than twenty years before, in 1654 Before La- 

 Salle began his explorations in 1679, his employes were familiar 

 with far western tribes. One of them, Accault, had sp3nt two 

 winters and a summer in Wisconsin. Before 1630, Dulath, with 

 a score of followers, was trading as far inland as the city which 

 now bears his name. He proclaimed that he feared no authority 

 and would force the government to grant him amnesty. (M. 2, 251.) 

 The sloop which La Salle in 1679 had dispatched to Niagara 

 before he started from Green Bay for Illinois, according to his 

 conviction was scuttled by her crew, who plundered her and 

 struck into the northwestern wilderness, meaning to join hands 

 with Duluth. (M. 2, 327.) Years afterward La Salle heard of a 

 French captive on the upper Mississippi whom be identified as his 

 pilot, and learned that hand-grenades, which could only have come 



