Out Where the West Begins

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: COUREURS DES BOIS For many years before any permanent settlers came to what is now North Dakota, the country along the Red River of the North, westward towards Devils Lake and Turtle Mountains, and down to the Missouri, was well known to the fur trader, and the countiy was scoured by voyagenrs and...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: COUREURS DES BOIS For many years before any permanent settlers came to what is now North Dakota, the country along the Red River of the North, westward towards Devils Lake and Turtle Mountains, and down to the Missouri, was well known to the fur trader, and the countiy was scoured by voyagenrs and employees of various fur companies. Those French adventurers who settled on the St. Lawrence, soon found out that in the rich peltries of the interior they had sources of wealth that might almost rival the mines of Mexico and Pern. The Indians, as yet unacquainted with the artificial value given to some description of furs in civilized life, brought quantities of the most precious kinds, and bartered them away for European trinkets and cheap commodities. Immense profit was thus made by the early trader, and the traffic pursued with avidity. As the more valuable furs became scarce in the neighborhood of the settlements, the Indians of the vicinity were stimulated to take a wider range in their hunting expeditions. They were often accompanied on these expeditions by some of the traders, or their employers, who shared in the toil and perils of the chase, and at the same time made themselves acquainted with thebest hunting grounds and with the more remote tribes, with whom they came in contact. Through this trade there sprung up a new and anomalous class of meu, called Coureurs des Bois, a French word for rangers of the woods. These men would set out from Montreal with canoes well stocked with goods and with arms and ammunition, and make their way up the many and wandering rivers, creating new wants and habitudes among the Indians, which they could supply. Sometimes they sojourned for months among the Indians, assimilating their tastes and habits with the happy facility of...