The impact of the white man’s civilization was bound to profoundly change the life and geography of the Indians, and, particularly in the early French period, this change was extremely rapid. Three groups were actively working to institute changes in the Indian pattern of life. These were the fur trader, whose goods revolutionized the material culture of the natives, the Jesuit missionaries who hoped to convert the tribes to Christianity, and the French government itself, which attempted at various times to relocate the tribes, form confederacies, and even to “civilize” them. The fur trader was the only one of the three groups who really succeeded in materially changing the Indian’s way of life, although his success was unintentional. So completely did the materials of the white man replace those of the Indian that within a few short generations almost no one knew how to make stone tools and weapons, pottery vessels, bows and arrows, and many other aboriginal products which were abandoned as rapidly as superior goods of the whites were made available. The change in tools and weapons naturally changed the Indians’ pattern of life in many ways, but the entire economy of the tribes was affected greatly by the fur trade. The Indian’s need for the white man’s goods was great and he became more and more dependent upon the trader. As the tempo of fur trading increased, the Indian began devoting almost all of his time to hunting and trapping until, in a sense, he became an employee in a great “fur-trade factory” with the goods he received from the trader representing his wages. Much of the Indian’s old life of freedom gradually disappeared, since failure to obtain guns or powder and bullets meant starvation for the Indian and his family. [Illustration: JESUIT MISSIONARY.] [Illustration: uncaptioned] Perhaps the worst effect of the contact between the Europeans and the Indians was the introduction of brandy, always an effective persuader in bargaining, and the introduction of European diseases, particularly venereal disease and smallpox, the latter in some instances wiping out entire tribes. The tendency for tribes to congregate around fur-trade areas at the behest of the traders also had a detrimental effect upon the Indians. In the Fox River valley and around Green Bay this overpopulation resulted in famine and the voluntary exodus of some tribes before 1700, among them the Miami and some of the Kickapoo and Mascouten. It should be noted that the adoption of new materials and living habits was not entirely one-sided. The white man learned how to use the Indian’s birch-bark canoe, many of his foods, tobacco, moccasins, snow shoes, and often buckskin clothing.