the English authorities legislated in 1720; and the _coureurs de bois_ smuggled their furs to the same place.[37] As early as 1666 Talon proposed that the king of France should purchase New York, "whereby he would have two entrances to Canada and by which he would give to the French all the peltries of the north, of which the English share the profit by the communication which they have with the Iroquois by Manhattan and Orange."[38] It is a characteristic of the fur trade that it continually recedes from the original center, and so it happened that the English traders before long attempted to work their way into the Illinois country.[39] The wars between the French and English and Iroquois must be read in the light of this fact. At the outbreak of the last French and Indian war, however, it was rather Pennsylvania and Virginia traders who visited the Ohio Valley. It is said that some three hundred of them came over the mountains yearly, following the Susquehanna and the Juniata and the headwaters of the Potomac to the tributaries of the Ohio, and visiting with their pack-horses the Indian villages along the valley. The center of the English trade was Pickawillani on the Great Miami. In 1749 Celoron de Bienville, who had been sent out to vindicate French authority in the valley, reported that each village along the Ohio and its branches "has one or more English traders, and each of these has hired men to carry his furs."[40] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 32: New York Colonial Documents, I., 181, 389, Sec.7.] [Footnote 33: _Ibid._ 182; Collection de manuscrits relatifs a la Nouvelle-France, I., 254; Radisson, 93.] [Footnote 34: Parkman, Jesuits in North America; Radisson; Margry, Decouvertes et Etablissemens, etc., IV., 586-598; Tailhan, Nicholas Perrot.] [Footnote 35: Morgan, League of the Iroquois.] [Footnote 36: N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 408-9; V., 687, 726; Histoire et Commerce des Colonies Angloises, 154.] [Footnote 37: N.Y. Col. Docs., III., 471, 474; IX., 298, 319.] [Footnote 38: _Ibid._ IX., 57. The same proposal was made in 1681 by Du Chesneau, _ibid._ IX., 165.] [Footnote 39: Parkman's works; N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 165; Shea's Charlevoix, IV., 16: "The English, indeed, as already remarked, from that time shared with the French in the fur trade; and this was the chief motive of their fomenting war between us and the Iroquois, inasmuch as they could get no good furs, which come from the northern districts, except by means of these Indians, who could scarcely effect a reconciliation with us without precluding them from this precious mine."] [Footnote 40: Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, I., 50.] INDIAN TRADE IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES.