The Indian trade has a place in the early history of the New England colonies. The Plymouth settlers "found divers corn fields and little running brooks, a place ... fit for situation,"[23] and settled down cuckoo-like in Indian clearings. Mr. Weeden has shown that the Indian trade furnished a currency (wampum) to New England, and that it afforded the beginnings of her commerce. In September of their first year the Plymouth men sent out a shallop to trade with the Indians, and when a ship arrived from England in 1621 they speedily loaded her with a return cargo of beaver and lumber.[24] By frequent legislation the colonies regulated and fostered the trade.[25] Bradford reports that in a single year twenty hhd. of furs were shipped from Plymouth, and that between 1631 and 1636 their shipments amounted to 12,150 _li_. beaver and 1156 _li_. otter.[26] Morton in his 'New English Canaan' alleges that a servant of his was "thought to have a thousand pounds in ready gold gotten by the beaver when he died."[27] In the pursuit of this trade men passed continually farther into the wilderness, and their trading posts "generally became the pioneers of new settlements."[28] For example, the posts of Oldham, a Puritan trader, led the way for the settlements on the Connecticut river,[29] and in their early days these towns were partly sustained by the Indian trade.[30] Not only did the New England traders expel the Dutch from this valley; they contended with them on the Hudson.[31] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 23: Bradford, Plymouth Plantation.] [Footnote 24: Bradford, 104.] [Footnote 25: _E.g._, Plymouth Records, I., 50, 54, 62, 119; II., 10; Massachusetts Colonial Records, I., 55, 81, 96, 100, 322; II., 86, 138; III., 424; V., 180; Hazard, Historical Collections, II., 19 (the Commissioners of the United Colonies propose giving the monopoly of the fur trade to a corporation). On public truck-houses, _vide post_, p. 58.] [Footnote 26: Bradford, 108, gives the proceeds of the sale of these furs.] [Footnote 27: Force, Collections, Vol. I., No. 5, p. 53.] [Footnote 28: Weeden, I., 132, 160-1.] [Footnote 29: Winthrop, History of New England, I., 111, 131.] [Footnote 30: Connecticut Colonial Records, 1637, pp. 11, 18.] [Footnote 31: Weeden, I., 126.] INDIAN TRADE IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES.