The posts were for use as the headquarters of
the _coureurs-de-bois_, and usually sheltered a small garrison of
soldiers during the winter months; they likewise served as places
of defense in the event of attack and of rendezvous when a trading
expedition to Montreal was being organized. It was not the policy of
the French authorities, nor was it the plan of the _coureurs-de-bois_,
that any considerable amount of trading should take place at these
western stockades. They were only the outposts intended to keep the
trade running in its proper channels. In a word, it was the aim of
the French to bring the trade to the colony, not to send the colony
overland to the savages. That is the way Father Carheil phrased it,
and he was quite right.[1]
[Footnote 1: Carheil to Champigny (August 30, 1702), in R.G. Thwaites,
_Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents_, lxv., 219.]
Every spring, accordingly, if the great trade routes to Montreal were
reasonably free from the danger of an overwhelming Iroquois attack,
the _coureurs-de-bois_ rounded up the western Indians with their
stocks of furs from the winter's hunt. Then, proceeding to the grand
rendezvous at Michilimackinac or Green Bay, the canoes were joined
into one great flotilla, and the whole array set off down the lakes
or by way of the Ottawa to Montreal. This annual fur flotilla often
numbered hundreds of canoes, the _coureurs-de-bois_ acting as pilots,
assisting the Indians to ward off attacks, and adding their European
intelligence to the red man's native cunning.
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