From New York City and Van der Donck's account of East Coast wildlife.............today let us re-live French trapper Nicolas Perrot's accounting of the Great Lakes Region circa 1665.....a time when the beaver trade again mushroomed into big business after a long dry spell due to intra- Indian tribe fighting and hostilities.....................Remember, there had been a French presence in in the Great Lakes for a good 100 years by the late 1600's and the Indian tribes throughout the Eastern interior of North America had been seduced with the rifles, pots and pans, knives and other European goods that could be had by trading beaver pelts...................The old association with nature was being fractured as Europeans brought a market economy to what had once been subsistance hunting only by the Indigenous tribes................Beaver, Bison, Mink, Otter, Lynx and other animals were now being hunted for what could be obtained for them rather than just for food and clothing requirements.................The long slippery downward slope of wildlife extirpation was underway.

Nicolas Perrot--Canadian French woodsman's life among the Great Lakes Indians(latter half of 17th Century)

 THE year 1665 is marked by the re-establishment of the
profitable fur trade of New France with the Northwest,
which (as we have seen in the introduction to Radisson's
Journal) had been almost destroyed by the raids of
the hostile Iroquois.

The king in that summer sent his
famous Carignan regiment, 1400 strong, to subdue the hostile
bands and protect the pathways of commerce. Therefore a
great flotilla from the Upper Country appeared upon the St.
Lawrence, bringing hundreds of tribesmen to exchange their
furs for the iron implements and weapons of the French, and
for the much-prized blankets and silver ornaments offered
by the white traders.

After the great fair at Montreal had
been held, and promises had been made that the Iroquois
should be subdued, the great fleet of canoes prepared to re-
turn to the Upper Country, and with them went such adven-
turous Frenchmen as the love of gain or the lure of the unknown
tempted to endure the hardships of wilderness life. IAmong
these rangers of the woods was Nicolas Perrot, who began a
life among the Indians that was destined to continue for
thirty-five years and make him one of the most influential
and best-informed men of his time on Indian habits and
historv

    Perrot had but just attained his majority when he set
forth on his eventful voyage. The date of his arrival in
New France is not known, but at the time of his departure
he had acquired the Algonquian language and was versed in
the art of winning the red men's good-will. The Jesuit Re-
lation for 1665 speaks of a ""Frenchman who went up the
year before.""

 The Islinois, Miamis, Outagamis, Maskoutechs,
and Kikabous that they had been at Montreal, whence they
had brought much merchandise; they besought those tribes
to visit them and bring them beavers. Those tribes were
too far away to profit by this at first; only the Outagamis
came to establish themselves for the winter at a place thirty
leagues from the bay.

l in order to share in the benefit of the
goods which they could obtain from the Pouteouatemis.
Their hope that some Frenchmen would come from Chagoua-
mikon induced them to accumulate as many beavers as pos-
sible. The Pouteouatemis took the southern part of the bay,
the Sakis the northern; the Puans, as they could not fish,
had gone into the woods to live on deer and bears.

  These peoples held several councils, to deliberate whether
they should go down to Montreal; they hesitated at first,
because they had so few beavers. As the savages give every-
thing to their mouths, they preferred to devote themselves
to hunting such wild beasts as could furnish subsistence for
their families, rather than seek beavers, of which there were
not enough; they preferred the needs of life to those of the
state.