to Virginia, 157 (Hakluyt Soc. VI.); Parkman,
Pioneers, 230.]

NEW ENGLAND INDIAN TRADE.

The Indian trade has a place in the early history of the New England
colonies. The Plymouth settlers "found divers corn fields and little
running brooks, a place ... fit for situation,"[23] and settled down
cuckoo-like in Indian clearings. Mr. Weeden has shown that the Indian
trade furnished a currency (wampum) to New England, and that it afforded
the beginnings of her commerce. In September of their first year the
Plymouth men sent out a shallop to trade with the Indians, and when a
ship arrived from England in 1621 they speedily loaded her with a
return cargo of beaver and lumber.[24] By frequent legislation the
colonies regulated and fostered the trade.[25] Bradford reports that in
a single year twenty hhd. of furs were shipped from Plymouth, and that
between 1631 and 1636 their shipments amounted to 12,150 _li_. beaver
and 1156 _li_. otter.[26] Morton in his 'New English Canaan' alleges
that a servant of his was "thought to have a thousand pounds in ready
gold gotten by the beaver when he died."[27] In the pursuit of this
trade men passed continually farther into the wilderness, and their
trading posts "generally became the pioneers of new settlements."[28]
For example, the posts of Oldham, a Puritan trader, led the way for the
settlements on the Connecticut river,[29] and in their early days these
towns were partly sustained by the Indian trade.[30]

Not only did the New England traders expel the Dutch from this valley;
they contended with them on the Hudson.[31]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 23: Bradford, Plymouth Plantation.]

[Footnote 24: Bradford, 104.]

[Footnote 25: _E.g._, Plymouth Records, I., 50, 54, 62, 119; II., 10;
Massachusetts Colonial Records, I., 55, 81, 96, 100, 322; II., 86, 138;
III., 424; V., 180; Hazard, Historical Collections, II., 19 (the
Commissioners of the United Colonies propose giving the monopoly of the
fur trade to a corporation). On public truck-houses, _vide post_, p.
58.]

[Footnote 26: Bradford, 108, gives the proceeds of the sale of these
furs.]

[Footnote 27: Force, Collections, Vol. I., No. 5, p. 53.]

[Footnote 28: Weeden, I., 132, 160-1.]

[Footnote 29: Winthrop, History of New England, I., 111, 131.]

[Footnote 30: Connecticut Colonial Records, 1637, pp. 11, 18.]

[Footnote 31: Weeden, I., 126.]

INDIAN TRADE IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES.

Morton, in the work alre