The whites wrought a serious change in the life and manners of the Indians. They introduced firearms among the savages, and induced them to become hunters, and to wander far and wide for fur bearing animals, the pelts of which were exchanged for European cloths, glass beads, iron kettles, hatchets, spears, and guns and powder. Thus the Indian soon lost the old arts of making their own clothing from skins, kettles from clay, weapons from stone and copper, and wampum (beads used both for ornament and money) from clam shells. It did not take them long to discover that their labor was more productive when they hunted, and purchased what they wanted from the white traders, than when they made their own rude implements and utensils and raised crops. But the result was bad, for thereby they ceased to be self-sustaining; their very existence became dependent on the fur traders, who introduced among them many vices, not least of which was a love for the intoxicating liquors in which the traders dealt. The Indian, at best, was never a lovable creature. He was dirty, improvident, brutal; he was, as compared with a European, mentally and morally but an undeveloped man. He is to-day, as we find him upon the reservations, pretty much the same as when found by the French over two and a half centuries ago, except that to his original vices he has added some of the worst vices of the white man. The story of the Indian is practically the story of the fur trade, and that is the story of Wisconsin before it became a Territory. THE DISCOVERY OF WISCONSIN In the year 1608, the daring French explorer, Samuel de Champlain, founded a settlement on the steep cliff of Quebec, and thus laid the foundations for the great colony of New France. This colony, in the course of a century and a half, grew to embrace all of what we now call Canada and the entire basin of the Mississippi River. [Illustration: CHAMPLAIN]