In the District of Michillimackinac: On Lake Michigan PACKS The Grand River 100 St. Josephs 300 Checago 100 Milwaki 120 La Bay or Green Bay, including the upper ports of the Mississippi, the South Side of Lake Superior 300 The Illinois Country 600 ------------------------------------------------------------- Say 3220 packs of Furrs estimated at £20 each £60,400 ------------------------------------------------------------- Total of the two Districts £101,200 This estimate was sent to the colonial office to show that if the lake posts were ceded to America, at least half if not seven-tenths of the Indian trade would be lost. The Americans were not ignorant of this great opportunity for trade. When the lake posts were evacuated by the British in 1796, they began to take a hand in the competition. The United States government sent out agents, and John Jacob Astor found a field for his business enterprise. In 1809 he organized the American Fur Company, and two years later he bought out the Mackinaw Company and the Northwest Company south of the boundary line. His plan to unite the Pacific and the Great Lakes failed for the time being, and the War of 1812 interfered with his schemes; but his organization of the lake trade did its work in turning the stream of profits southward of the border and Americanizing Lake Superior. The settlements built up by the fur trade were unique and amazing when we consider their isolation in the midst of the wilderness. With Mackinac under French rule we are somewhat familiar, having visited it with La Salle and Saint Lusson. At Fort William, at the western end of Lake Superior, the British merchants built an establishment that reminds one of the feudal castles of the Old World. In 1805 the Canadian companies awoke to the fact that the old Grand Portage, the former gateway of the North, was on territory claimed by the American government. They promptly demolished their old fort there, and built Fort William, forty-five miles north of the portage. There they established a village surrounded by a high palisade, within which stood a big central building, a counting-house, a doctor’s residence, stores for merchandise and depots for furs, workshops for mechanics,--carpenters, coopers, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, and canoe builders,--boarding-houses for traders, a powder-house and guard-house, and not the least necessary of the many buildings, a jail. Outside the palisade was a long wharf, a ship-building yard, a cemetery, and a considerable line of log houses and Indian wigwams.