Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/316

296 among the adventurers and settlers. A monopoly of it had been given successively to different individuals, who utterly failed to secure its privileges. Then a joint company of adventurers sought to control it by a partnership in expenses and profits. But they were openly defied by single persons, whose common plunderings interested them so strongly that they had substantially the influence of a banded fellowship acting without a charter. In the spring or early summer the Indians, from the far-off scenes where they had been patiently gathering the coveted peltry, would congregate in clamorous hordes near Montreal with their laden canoes, to barter their cargoes. Scenes of blood, of riot, and of drunkenness ensued, and the once quiet wilderness heard every sound of a Babel of tongues vociferous in passion and imprecations. This bartering of the coverings of animals for the lives of men, skin for skin, was beyond measure demoralizing. Soon the most dauntless of the French would stroll off, alone or in couples, to distant beaver dams and forest treasuries, or rival traders would waylay an incoming party and anticipate the regular market. The brandy traffic, too, flourished with a vigor that defied police, military, and spiritual threats and prohibitions.

It might be debated whether such sway as France once had here should in its predominance be assigned to the priests or the traders. Repeatedly and emphatically was it affirmed by the principal promoters of the first colonizing of New England, that the chief and paramount end of their coming hither was religion. By their own interpretation of the scope of their meaning, we understand them to have included in this avowal the enjoyment of their own religion and the conversion to it of the heathen tribes. But practically viewed, the relative place of interest which the religious prompting proved to have, in comparison with mundane schemes of thrift, trade, and commerce, will depend upon the severity or the leniency of the judgment