the wilderness on the
upper lakes and explored the Mississippi," is misleading. It is not true
that "not a cape was turned, nor a mission founded, nor a river entered,
nor a settlement begun, but a Jesuit led the way." In fact the Jesuits
followed the traders;[94] their missions were on the sites of trading
posts, and they themselves often traded.[95]

When St. Lusson, with the _coureur de bois_, Nicholas Perrot, took
official possession of the Northwest for France at the Sault Ste. Marie
in 1671, the cost of the expedition was defrayed by trade in beaver.[96]
Joliet, who, accompanied by Marquette, descended the Mississippi by the
Fox and Wisconsin route in 1673, was an experienced fur trader. While Du
Lhut, chief of the _coureurs de bois_, was trading on Lake Superior, La
Salle,[97] the greatest of these merchants, was preparing his
far-reaching scheme for colonizing the Indians in the Illinois region
under the direction of the French, so that they might act as a check on
the inroads of the Iroquois, and aid in his plan of securing an exit for
the furs of the Northwest, particularly buffalo hides, by way of the
Mississippi and the Gulf. La Salle's "Griffen," the earliest ship to
sail the Great Lakes, was built for this trade, and received her only
cargo at Green Bay. Accault, one of La Salle's traders, with Hennepin,
met Du Lhut on the upper Mississippi, which he had reached by way of the
Bois Brule and St. Croix, in 1680. Du Lhut's trade awakened the jealousy
of La Salle, who writes in 1682: "If they go by way of the Ouisconsing,
where for the present the chase of the buffalo is carried on and where I
have commenced an establishment, they will ruin the trade on which alone
I rely, on account of the great number of buffalo which are taken there
every year, almost beyond belief."[98] Speaking of the Jesuits at Green
Bay, he declares that they "have in truth the key to the beaver country,
where a brother blacksmith that they have and two companions convert
more iron into beaver than the fathers convert savages into
Christians."[99] Perrot says that the beaver north of the mouth of the
Wisconsin were better than those of the Illinois country, and the chase
was carried on in this region for a longer period;[100] and we know from
Dablon that the Wisconsin savages were not compelled to separate by
families during the hunting season, as was common among other tribes,
because the game here was so abundant.[101] Aside from its