f beaver
and lumber. The records of the various New England colonies show how
steadily exploration was carried into the wilderness by this trade. What
is true for New England is, as would be expected, even plainer for the
rest of the colonies. All along the coast from Maine to Georgia the
Indian trade opened up the river courses. Steadily the trader passed
westward, utilizing the older lines of French trade. The Ohio, the Great
Lakes, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Platte, the lines of
western advance, were ascended by traders. They found the passes in the
Rocky Mountains and guided Lewis and Clark,[13:1] Fremont, and Bidwell.
The explanation of the rapidity of this advance is connected with the
effects of the trader on the Indian. The trading post left the unarmed
tribes at the mercy of those that had purchased fire-arms--a truth which
the Iroquois Indians wrote in blood, and so the remote and unvisited
tribes gave eager welcome to the trader. "The savages," wrote La Salle,
"take better care of us French than of their own children; from us only
can they get guns and goods." This accounts for the trader's power and
the rapidity of his advance. Thus the disintegrating forces of
civilization entered the wilderness. Every river valley and Indian trail
became a fissure in Indian society, and so that society became
honeycombed. Long before the pioneer farmer appeared on the scene,
primitive Indian life had passed away. The farmers met Indians armed
with guns. The trading frontier, while steadily undermining Indian power
by making the tribes ultimately dependent on the whites, yet, through
its sale of guns, gave to the Indian increased power of resistance to
the farming frontier. French colonization was dominated by its trading
frontier; English colonization by its farming frontier. There was an
antagonism between the two frontiers as between the two nations. Said
Duquesne to the Iroquois, "Are you ignorant of the difference between
the king of England and the king of France? Go see the forts that our
king has established and you will see that you can still hunt under
their very walls. They have been placed for your advantage in places
which you frequent. The English, on the contrary, are no sooner in
possession of a place than the game is driven away. The forest falls
before them as they advance, and the soil is laid bare so that you can
scarce find the wherewithal to erect a shelter for the night."

And yet, in spit