Richard Smith who became wealthy on the Indian trade was a man of this stripe. He and Roger Williams, along with John Wilcox, “a sturring, driving, somewhat unscrupulous fellow,” began trading in the Narragansett country as early as 1637. Each of them built trucking houses on the much-traveled Pequot and Narragansett Trail at the site of present-day Wickford. As trading practices sharpened over the years, neither Smith nor Wilcox hesitated to meet the increasing demands of the natives for liquor and powder. Williams was revolted. In 1651, when he was about to go to England, he sold his house and trading interests to Smith for 50 pounds sterling. That left Smith without any competition for this lucrative fur trade, as he had bought out Wilcox some years earlier. Men like Smith and Wilcox furnished tinder for many flaming atrocities in Rhode Island. But their murderous trade was “the most profitable employment in these parts of America ... by which many persons of mean degree advanced to considerable estates.” Rhode Island was truly one of the most fertile of all beaver grounds--while it lasted. That was until 1660. By then the beaver was all but exhausted, while, with the help of the white man’s goods, the Indian trapper was well on the way to destroying himself too. It had been the same of course on every fur frontier in America. In Rhode Island the fateful process of the aborigine’s extinction was just exaggerated in dreadful degree. As native drinking increased, atrocities mounted and bloody retaliation followed. Yet, in spite of this terrible situation, the English themselves came to recognize wine and spirits as the chief staple of the Indian trade, while futilely putting new laws on their books intended to limit the natives’ consumption! For their part the Hollanders never had any compunction about distributing hot waters or firearms among the savage neighbors of the New Englanders, who after all seemed bent on taking over all of New Netherland. Protected by ships, of which the Rhode Islanders had none, the Hollanders drove a continuing trade at their long-established posts in Narragansett Bay, especially at Dutchmen’s Island which they had fortified. As late as 1647 the natives were transporting their pelts in canoes to Dutchmen’s Island, where it was said they could lay in a supply of strong waters sufficient to keep an Indian village in an uproar for a week and acquire all the guns and powder they wanted. And the Dutch continued to trade in the bay for some years after that, until the beaver of Rhode Island was almost exhausted.