Page 208 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961

204 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS.

freely the whole of their hard-earned and scanty wages in a
few weeks of their stay among their friends, and again returned
in the fall to pass through the same routine of toil, hardship,
and privation. Intermarriages frequently took place between
them and the native women. These marriages mere encour-
aged by the traders, as it not only increased the influence of
the traders and their engagees over the Indians, but was the
means of securing their trade, bound the men more closely to
the country, and insured their continuance in the fur trade,
with which they had then become familiar. The half-bloods
were the descendants of the early voyageurs, and in character
and manners closely resembled their sires.
The commerce of the country was carried on through the
medium of a few sail vessel8 plying between this place and t,he
ports on Lake Erie. These vessels were generally of from
twenty-five to seventy tons burthen. Occasionally, perhaps
once or twice in the season of navigation, a steamer from
Buffalo would look in upon us; but these were far different in
structure and capacity from the splendid "floating palaces"
which have visited our waters in later years. All kinds of
provisions and supplies were brought here from Ohio and
Michigan, and the inhabitants were solely dependent upon
those states for everything like provisions, except a limited
quantity of grain and vegetables raised by the miserable
farmers of the country.
The buildings and improvements in the country were then
few, and circumscribed within a narrow compass, and in a
great degree partook of the unpretending and simple character
of their occupants. Some constructed of rough or unhewn
logs, covered with cedar bark, here and there a sprinkling of
lodges or wigwams, formed by long poles stuck in the ground
in a circular form, and brought together and united at the top
by a cord, thus forming an enclosure perhaps twelve or fifteen
feet in diameter at the base, and covered with large mats
composed of a kind of reed or grass, called by the Indians
"Puckaway." The mode of ingress and egress was by raising