THE COMMERCE OF THE FOREST We have seen in previous chapters why Wisconsin, with her intermingling rivers, was considered the key to the French position in the interior of North America; why it was that fur traders early sought this State, and erected log forts along its rivers and lakes to protect their commerce with the people of the forest. It remains to be told what were the conditions of this widespreading and important forest trade. The French introduced to our Indians iron pots and kettles, which were vastly stronger than their crude utensils of clay; iron fishhooks, hatchets, spears, and guns, which were not only more durable, but far more effective than their old weapons of stone and copper and bone; cloths and blankets of many colors, from which attractive clothing was more easily made than from the skins of beasts; and glass beads and silver trinkets, for the decoration of their clothing and bodies, which cost far less labor to obtain than did ornaments made from clam shells. To secure these French goods, the Indians had but to hunt and bring the skins to the white men. The Indian who could secure a gun found it easier to get skins than before, and he also had a weapon which made him more powerful against his enemies. It was not long before the Indian forgot how to make utensils and weapons for himself, and became very dependent on the white trader. This is why the fur trade was at the bottom of every event in the forest, and for full two hundred years was of supreme importance to all the people who lived in the Wisconsin woods. All trade in New France was in the control of a monopoly, which charged heavy fees for licenses, severely punished all the unlicensed traders who could be detected, and fixed its own prices for everything. French traders were obliged, therefore, to charge the Indians more for their goods than the English charged for theirs; and it was a continual and often bloody struggle to keep the Indians of the Northwest from having any trade with the English colonists from the Atlantic coast, who had with great labor crossed the Alleghany Mountains and were now swarming into the Ohio River valley. It was impossible to prevent the English trade altogether, but the policy was in the main successful, although it cost the French a deal of anxiety, and sometimes great expense in military operations. During the greater part of the French régime in Wisconsin, the bulk of the goods for the Indians came up by the Ottawa River route, because the warlike Iroquois of New York favored the English, and for a long time kept Frenchmen from entering the lower lakes of Ontario and Erie. Finally, however, after the fort at Detroit was built (1701), the lower lakes came to be used.