6 The Fur Traders. 



lives and of whom they took every unfair advan- 

 tage, until the French Government issued an order pro- 

 hibiting all persons from trading in the interior vfithout 

 a license in vi^riting from the Giovernor-Gteneral under 

 penalty of death. The facts stated have simply been meur 

 tioned to show how large and important a part the fur 

 traders had in the development of the Northwest. They 

 were for many years, lawless as some of them were, the 

 only civilized beings in the country in which they operated ; 

 and but for the French voyageurs, and the English and 

 Scotch adventurers and explorers working under the 

 authority of the Hudson's Bay and the Northwest Com- 

 panies, New Caledonia or British Columbia might never 

 have been discovered, and Canada might still be shut out 

 from access to the Pacific Ocean. It was the erection of 

 fur trading posts by the French that aroused the jealousy 

 of England and was the primary cause of the French and 

 Indian War, which resulted in the overthrow of the French 

 dominion in Canada. The Treaty of Paris, signed May 2, 

 1762, left England undisputed sovereign of North America, 

 except to the west and southwest of the Mississippi and on 

 the Pacific coast, and "marked the passing of the great 

 French merchants who for generations had lived the lives 

 of commercial patriarchs at their trading posts, in easy fa- 

 miliarity with their retainers and the train of Indians and 

 canoe men of all nations always hanging about their estab- 

 lishments and eating and drinking at their expense." It 

 also put a stop to the feuds and contests arising from the 

 infringements of territorial limits, and the acts of violence 

 and bloodshed that up to that time had been of frequent 

 occurrence between the factors of the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany and the agents of the French merchants in Canada. 

 There was a period of depression after the Treaty of 

 Paris. The Hudson's Bay Company when it found itself in 

 control of the situation decided to trade only wtih the 

 Indians direct as the surest way to prevent the extermina- 

 tion of the fur-bearing animals; and the Scotch merchants 

 of Montreal, the natural successors to the French traders 

 in the upper lake country, being uncertain as to territorial 

 rights were for a time inactive. When they did begin 

 operations they were at first ignorant of the country 

 and distrustful of the natives ; and the couriers-des-bois and 



