298, 319.]

[Footnote 38: _Ibid._ IX., 57. The same proposal was made in 1681 by Du
Chesneau, _ibid._ IX., 165.]

[Footnote 39: Parkman's works; N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 165; Shea's
Charlevoix, IV., 16: "The English, indeed, as already remarked, from
that time shared with the French in the fur trade; and this was the
chief motive of their fomenting war between us and the Iroquois,
inasmuch as they could get no good furs, which come from the northern
districts, except by means of these Indians, who could scarcely effect a
reconciliation with us without precluding them from this precious
mine."]

[Footnote 40: Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, I., 50.]

INDIAN TRADE IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES.

The Indian trade of the Virginians was not limited to the Ohio country.
As in the case of Massachusetts Bay, the trade had been provided for
before the colony left England,[41] and in times of need it had
preserved the infant settlement. Bacon's rebellion was in part due to
the opposition to the governor's trading relations with the savages.
After a time the nearer Indians were exploited, and as early as the
close of the seventeenth century Virginia traders sought the Indians
west of the Alleghanies.[42] The Cherokees lived among the mountains,
"where the present states of Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and the
Carolinas join one another."[43] To the west, on the Mississippi, were
the Chickasaws, south of whom lived the Choctaws, while to the south of
the Cherokees were the Creeks. The Catawbas had their villages on the
border of North and South Carolina, about the headwaters of the Santee
river. Shawnese Indians had formerly lived on the Cumberland river, and
French traders had been among them, as well as along the
Mississippi;[44] but by the time of the English traders, Tennessee and
Kentucky were for the most part uninhabited. The Virginia traders
reached the Catawbas, and for a time the Cherokees, by a trading route
through the southwest of the colony to the Santee. By 1712 this trade
was a well-established one,[45] and caravans of one hundred pack-horses
passed along the trail.[46]

The Carolinas had early been interested in the fur trade. In 1663 the
Lords Proprietors proposed to pay the governor's salary from the
proceeds of the traffic. Charleston traders were the rivals of the
Virginians in the southwest. They passed even to the Choctaws and
Chickasaws, crossing the rivers by portable boats of skin, and sometimes
taki