But it is not necessary to depend upon indirect evidence. The earliest travellers testify to the existence of a wide inter-tribal commerce. The historians of De Soto's expedition mention Indian merchants who sold salt to the inland tribes. "In 1565 and for some years previous bison skins were brought by the Indians down the Potomac, and thence carried along-shore in canoes to the French about the Gulf of St. Lawrence. During two years six thousand skins were thus obtained."[14] An Algonquin brought to Champlain at Quebec a piece of copper a foot long, which he said came from a tributary of the Great Lakes.[15] Champlain also reports that among the Canadian Indians village councils were held to determine what number of men might go to trade with other tribes in the summer.[16] Morton in 1632 describes similar inter-tribal trade in New England, and adds that certain utensils are "but in certain parts of the country made, where the severall trades are appropriated to the inhabitants of those parts onely."[17] Marquette relates that the Illinois bought firearms of the Indians who traded directly with the French, and that they went to the south and west to carry off slaves, which they sold at a high price to other nations.[18] It was on the foundation, therefore, of an extensive inter-tribal trade that the white man built up the forest commerce.[19] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 8: Smithsonian Report, 1872.] [Footnote 9: Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 1889, VII., 59. See also Thruston, Antiquities of Tennessee, 79 ff.] [Footnote 10: Mallery, in Bureau of Ethnology, I., 324; Clark, Indian Sign Language.] [Footnote 11: Shea, Discovery of the Mississippi, 34. Catilinite pipes were widely used, even along the Atlantic slope, Thruston, 80-81.] [Footnote 12: Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, I., ch. ii.] [Footnote 13: Minnesota Historical Collections, V., 267.] [Footnote 14: Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, 230, citing Menendez.] [Footnote 15: Neill, in Narrative and Critical History of America, IV., 164.] [Footnote 16: Champlain's Voyages (Prince Society), III., 183.] [Footnote 17: Morton, New English Canaan (Prince Society), 159.] [Footnote 18: Shea, Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley, 32.] [Footnote 19: For additional evidence see Radisson, Voyages (Prince Society), 91, 173; Massachusetts Historical Collections, I., 151; Smithsonian Contributions, XVI., 30; Jesuit Relations, 1671, 41; Thruston, Antiquities, etc., 79-82; Carr, Mounds of the Mississippi Valley, 25, 27; and _post_ pp. 26-7, 36.] EARLY TRADE ALONG THE ATLANTIC COAST.