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 1658, before the devastation of the 
