But the tone was one of satisfaction. The buying and shipping of peltry was at that date a most lucrative business, furs bearing a high price in all the markets of the world, and this region bade fair to be one of the large sources of supply. The Indians profited by selling them, and this, too, was the magnet that was beginning to draw the hardy Carolina hunters westward, despite the hazards. At no other industry elsewhere could commensurate sums of money be earned without outlay beyond a rifle and ammunition and a hunter's cheap lodgement and fare. The Indians early developed a dependence on the supplies of civilization,--guns, ammunition, knives, tools, paints, to say nothing of fire-water, quickly demonstrating their superiority to primitive inventions, and this traffic soon took on most prosperous proportions. Thus, although the Cherokees resented the presence of the white man upon their hunting-ground in the capacity of competitor, and still more of colonist, they were very tolerant of his entrance into their towns and peaceful residence there as buyer and shipper--one of the earliest expressions of middleman in the West--of the spoils of the chase, the trophies of the Indian's skill in woodcraft. Although the British government, through treaties with the Cherokees, sought a monopoly of this traffic as a means of controlling them by furnishing or withholding their necessities as their conduct toward the English colonists on the frontier might render judicious, many of the earlier of these traders were French--indeed one of the name of Charleville was engaged in such commerce on the present site of the city of Nashville as early as the year 1714, his base of supplies being in Louisiana, altogether independent of the English, as he was then one of the traders of Antoine Crozat, under the extensive charter of that enterprising speculator.