Wisconsin Historical Collections, Volume XIX (1910)

              A Wisconsin Fur-Trader's Journal^ 1804-05
By Francois Victor Malhiot
Letter to the Readers
Gentlemen^^—It would be too venturesome a task for me to undertake to write a full and formal journal; my education is too inadequate. "^ "^ * It is true that, in the earlier years of my childhood, I could read, but no sooner had I reached the
20 Addressed to the partners of the North West Fur Company. This organization was one of the most important in, the history of the North American fur-trade. It was the successor to the French trade of the Northwest, which began to revive in 1766 at the close of Pontiac's conspiracy. In 1769 the first British trader penetrated to points beyond Lake Superior, going as far as Fort Bourbon, and returning the next year with a rich harvest of furs. For the next ten years this trade continued with increasing vigor, and was extended by the efforts of Peter Pond to the Athabasca region. In 1780 the Indians conspired against the traders, several posts were attacked, and many traders' lives might have been lost, had it not been for an epidemic of smallpox that raged for two years among the natives. Meanwhile, unrestrained competition had wrought great evils, the Indians were debauched, and the traders, being without legal re¬ straints, grew lawless. Several times, interests were pooled for a brief period. Finally, in the winter of 1783-84, a sixteen-share com¬ pany was formed for five years at Montreal, of which the Frobisher brothers and Simon McTavish were agents; the other, or wintering, partners dwelt at their posts in the far Northwest. The general rendezvous was at the Grand Portage, on Lake Superior. In 1787 the partnership  was  renewed for nine  years,  with twenty  shares,
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