In all sections where captives in war or kidnapped Indians were purchased from the natives, such buying was closely connected with the fur trade. The general fickleness and instability of the Indian’s character, which caused the tribes to change their allegiance so readily from one white race to the other, made easy the acquisition of slaves along with other commodities. The routes along which the fur trade was carried on facilitated both the acquisition of Indians and their transportation to the markets. And the fact that furs and the agricultural products of the south were not commodities that competed with English wares eliminated opposition to the traffic in Indians.[589] Throughout the region of the Mississippi Valley and the Great Lakes the “coureurs de bois” collected furs and purchased slaves,[590] both of which they sold to Carolina traders at the mouth of the Mississippi River, and in some cases they went to the Carolinas directly to effect their sales.[591] Throughout the Carolinas, the Mississippi and Illinois country and the west, the fur and Indian trade was heavy. By 1720 the Carolina fur trade had reached very large dimensions, and the trade in Indians had developed proportionally, so that at “set times of the year” a flourishing business in “dressed deer skins, furs and young Indian slaves” was carried on by the traders.[592] In the Carolinas the custom of purchasing their prisoners from the friendly Indians, the holding of these captives in the colony as slaves, or, possibly, their subsequent sale to the West India islands, existed almost from the beginning of the colony.[593] But the proprietors, anxious to cultivate the friendship of the Indians, forbade, in the temporary laws sent out to Governor Sayle in 1671, that any Indian on any pretext whatever be made a slave, or without his own consent be carried out of the country.[594] Yet the traffic in Indians continued. The adventurous nature of the settlers,[595] combined with the need for laborers which could be partially supplied by the use of Indians at home or by the negroes for whom they could be readily exchanged in the islands, and coupled with the attraction of good prices which the Indians brought when sold for cash, induced both planters and government officials to enter largely into the trade.