character of the
English occupation of the Northwest.[194] It was formed in 1783 and
fully organized in 1787, with the design of contesting the field with
the Hudson Bay Company. Goods were brought from England to Montreal, the
headquarters of the company, and thence from the four emporiums,
Detroit, Mackinaw, Sault Ste. Marie, and Grand Portage, they were
scattered through the great Northwest, even to the Pacific ocean.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century ships[195] began to take part
in this commerce; a portion of the goods was sent from Montreal in
boats to Kingston, thence in vessels to Niagara, thence overland to Lake
Erie, to be reshipped in vessels to Mackinaw and to Sault Ste. Marie,
where another transfer was made to a Lake Superior vessel. These ships
were of about ninety-five tons burden and made four or five trips a
season. But in the year 1800 the primitive mode of trade was not
materially changed. From the traffic along the main artery of commerce
between Grand Portage and Montreal may be learned the kind of trade that
flowed along such branches as that between the island of Mackinaw and
the Wisconsin posts. The visitor at La Chine rapids, near Montreal,
might have seen a squadron of Northwestern trading canoes leaving for
the Grand Portage, at the west of Lake Superior.[196]

The boatmen, or "engages," having spent their season's gains in
carousal, packed their blanket capotes and were ready for the wilderness
again. They made a picturesque crew in their gaudy turbans, or hats
adorned with plumes and tinsel, their brilliant handkerchiefs tied
sailor-fashion about swarthy necks, their calico shirts, and their
flaming worsted belts, which served to hold the knife and the tobacco
pouch. Rough trousers, leggings, and cowhide shoes or gaily-worked
moccasins completed the costume. The trading birch canoe measured forty
feet in length, with a depth of three and a width of five. It floated
four tons of freight, and yet could be carried by four men over
difficult portages. Its crew of eight men was engaged at a salary[197]
of from five to eight hundred livres, about $100 to $160 per annum,
each, with a yearly outfit of coarse clothing and a daily food allowance
of a quart of hulled corn, or peas, seasoned with two ounces of tallow.

The experienced voyageurs who spent the winters in the woods were called
_hivernans_, or winterers, or sometimes _hommes du nord_; while the
inexperienced, those who simply ma