importance as
a key to the Northwestern trade, Wisconsin seems to have been a rich
field of traffic itself.

With such extensive operations as the foregoing in the region reached by
Wisconsin rivers, it is obvious that the government could not keep the
_coureurs de bois_ from the woods. Even governors like Frontenac
connived at the traffic and shared its profits. In 1681 the government
decided to issue annual licenses,[102] and messengers were dispatched to
announce amnesty to the _coureurs de bois_ about Green Bay and the south
shore of Lake Superior.[103]

We may now offer some conclusions upon the connection of the fur trade
with French explorations:

1. The explorations were generally induced and almost always rendered
profitable by the fur trade. In addition to what has been presented on
this point, note the following:

In 1669, Patoulet writes to Colbert concerning La Salle's voyage to
explore a passage to Japan: "The enterprise is difficult and dangerous,
but the good thing about it is that the King will be at no expense for
this pretended discovery."[104]

The king's instructions to Governor De la Barre in 1682 say that,
"Several inhabitants of Canada, excited by the hope of the profit to be
realized from the trade with the Indians for furs, have undertaken at
various periods discoveries in the countries of the Nadoussioux, the
river Mississipy, and other parts of America."[105]

2. The early traders were regarded as quasi-supernatural beings by the
Indians.[106] They alone could supply the coveted iron implements, the
trinkets that tickled the savage's fancy, the "fire-water," and the guns
that gave such increased power over game and the enemy. In the course of
a few years the Wisconsin savages passed from the use of the implements
of the stone age to the use of such an important product of the iron age
as firearms. They passed also from the economic stage in which their
hunting was for food and clothing simply, to that stage in which their
hunting was made systematic and stimulated by the European demand for
furs. The trade tended to perpetuate the hunter stage by making it
profitable, and it tended to reduce the Indian to economic
dependence[107] upon the Europeans, for while he learned to use the
white man's gun he did not learn to make it or even to mend it. In this
transition stage from their primitive condition the influence of the
trader over the Indians was all-powerful. The pre-eminence of the