f Green
bay and the Missouri. In 1811 he bought a half interest in the Mackinaw
Company, a rival of the Northwest Company and the one that had especial
power in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and this new organization he called
the Southwest Company. But the war of 1812 came; Astoria, the Pacific
post, fell into the hands of the Northwest Company, while the Southwest
Company's trade was ruined.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 193: On this company see Mackenzie, Voyages; Bancroft,
Northwest Coast, I., 378-616, and citations; _Hunt's Merch. Mag._, III.,
185; Irving, Astoria; Ross, The Fur Hunters of the Far West; Harmon,
Journal; Report on the Canadian Archives, 1881, p. 61 et seq. This
fur-trading life still goes on in the more remote regions of British
America. See Robinson, Great Fur Land, ch. xv.]

[Footnote 194: Wis. Hist. Colls., XI., 123-5.]

[Footnote 195: Mackenzie, Voyages, xxxix. Harmon, Journal, 36. In the
fall of 1784, Haldimand granted permission to the Northwest Company to
build a small vessel at Detroit, to be employed next year on Lake
Superior. Calendar of Canadian Archives, 1888, p. 72.]

[Footnote 196: Besides the authorities cited above, see "Anderson's
Narrative," in Wis. Hist. Colls., IX., 137-206.]

[Footnote 197: An estimate of the cost of an expedition in 1717 is given
in Margry, VI., 506. At that time the wages of a good voyageur for a
year amounted to about $50. Provisions for the two months' trip from
Montreal to Mackinaw cost about $1.00 per month per man. Indian corn for
a year cost $16; lard, $10; _eau de vie_, $1.30; tobacco, 25 cents. It
cost, therefore, less than $80 to support a voyageur for one year's trip
into the woods. Gov. Ninian Edwards, writing at the time of the American
Fur Company (_post_, p. 57), says: "The whole expense of transporting
eight thousand weight of goods from Montreal to the Mississippi,
wintering with the Indians, and returning with a load of furs and
peltries in the succeeding season, including the cost of provisions and
portages and the hire of five engages for the whole time does not exceed
five hundred and twenty-five dollars, much of which is usually paid to
those engages when in the Indian country, in goods at an exorbitant
price." American State Papers, VI., 65.]

[Footnote 198: This distinction goes back at least to 1681 (N.Y. Col.
Docs., IX., 152). Often the engagement was for five years, and the
voyageur might be transferred from one master to another, at the