2. The early traders were regarded as quasi-supernatural beings by the Indians.[106] They alone could supply the coveted iron implements, the trinkets that tickled the savage's fancy, the "fire-water," and the guns that gave such increased power over game and the enemy. In the course of a few years the Wisconsin savages passed from the use of the implements of the stone age to the use of such an important product of the iron age as firearms. They passed also from the economic stage in which their hunting was for food and clothing simply, to that stage in which their hunting was made systematic and stimulated by the European demand for furs. The trade tended to perpetuate the hunter stage by making it profitable, and it tended to reduce the Indian to economic dependence[107] upon the Europeans, for while he learned to use the white man's gun he did not learn to make it or even to mend it. In this transition stage from their primitive condition the influence of the trader over the Indians was all-powerful. The pre-eminence of the individual Indian who owned a gun made all the warriors of the tribe eager to possess like power. The tribe thus armed placed their enemies at such a disadvantage that they too must have like weapons or lose their homes.[108] No wonder that La Salle was able to say: "The savages take better care of us French than of their own children. From us only can they get guns and goods."[109] This was the power that France used to support her in the struggle with England for the Northwest. 3. The trader used his influence to promote peace between the Northwestern Indians.[110] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 79: Histoire du Canada, 193-4 (edition of 1866).] [Footnote 80: Dablon, Jesuit Relations, 1671.] [Footnote 81: See Parkman, Pioneers, 429 ff. (1890).] [Footnote 82: Margry, I., 50. The date rests on inference; see Bibliography of Nicolet in Wis. Hist. Colls., XI., and cf. Hebberd, Wisconsin under French Dominion, 14.] [Footnote 83: N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 160.] [Footnote 84: Margry, VI., 3; Coll. de Mamiscrits, I., 255, where the date is wrongly given as 1676. The italics are ours.] [Footnote 85: Radisson, Voyages (Prince Soc. Pubs.); Margry, I., 53-55, 83; Jes. Rels., 1660; Wis. Hist. Colls., X., XI; Narrative and Critical Hist. Amer., IV., 168-173.] [Footnote 86: Cf. Radisson, 173-5, and Jes. Rels., 1660, pp. 12, 30; 1663, pp. 17 ff.] [Footnote 87: Pottawattomies in the region of Green Bay.] [Footnote 88: Wis. Hist. Colls., XI., 67-8.] [Footnote 89: _Ibid._ XI., 90.] [Footnote 90: Radisson, 200, 217, 219.] [Footnote 91: Suite, in Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts and Letters, V., 141; N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 153, 140,152; Margry, VI., 3; Parkman, Old Regime, 310-315.] [Footnote 92: Cf. Jes. Rels., 1670, p. 92.] [Footnote 93: History of United States, II., 138 (1884).] [Footnote 94: Harrisse, Notes sur la Nouvelle France, 174-181.]