EXPLORING WISCONSIN'S WATERWAYS: THE PEOPLE AND THE WATERWAYS  109

techniques to the incoming Western Europeans. This knowledge allowed the
newcomers to penetrate and eventually completely transform the natural
landscape, using it in very different and far more destructive ways than
had
the Indians whom they dispossessed. In no small measure, the knowledge
which Indian people shared ultimately prepared the way for their own dis-
placement and decline.


             III. THE ERA OF FRENCH EXPLORATIONS
  In Wisconsin, French explorers were the first Europeans to fall heir to
the
accumulated knowledge of the Indian people. The reasons for their coming
lie in the history of Western Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. A rising
group of nation states, a renaissance in intellectual life, a growing interest
in
trade and commerce, vast growth in navigational technology, and national
ambitions for empire all contributed to the age of global exploration. Chron-
ologically, the French stood midway between the initial Portuguese-Spanish
thrust in the Americas and the later eminence of England as a colonizing
nation.
  The French began to learn firsthand about the natural wealth and the pos-
sibilities for economic expansion into North America early in the 16th cen-
tury through their fishermen's exploitation of the Newfoundland banks and
from Jacques Cartier's early voyages and abortive settlement at Montreal
in
1541. Penetration into the upper Great Lakes stemmed directly from the
efforts of Samuel de Champlain to make the 1608 French settlement at Mon-
treal on the St. Lawrence successful with the fur trade as its economic main-
stay. Working through the Indian people whom he quite correctly saw as
indispensable to success, he developed plans both for continued exploration
of the continent in hopes of finding a northwest passage, and for a trade
in
furs, especially beaver, which could be marketed in Europe. He cultivated
friendly relations by giving the Indians presents and sending Frenchmen to
live with them to learn their languages, lifestyles, survival skills, knowledge
of
streams and rivers, and potential as fur suppliers.
  Indian groups had long-established patterns of friendship and animosity
with other Indian groups, and the French fell heir to these. The ethno-politi-
cal reality of Huron-Iroquois animosities shaped the direction of French
ex-
ploration very early in the 17th century, sending the French into the upper
Great Lakes long before they ventured to use Lakes Ontario and Erie as a
way into the maze of continental waterways. The Hurons were the first major
allies of the French. They served as middlemen in the fur trade, procuring
furs from various other Indian tribes and transporting them from deep in
the
interior of the mid-continent eastward to Montreal. The Iroquois, whose
territorial stronghold lay in present-day upper New York State and who were
long-standing enemies of the Huron, became enemies of the French. The
Huron stronghold in the eastern Lake Huron-Georgian Bay region was the
center of a rather elaborate, long-established system of trade. With the
com-
ing of the French, trade in furs and European-made goods such as tools and
implements, kettles, firearms, ammunition, and liquor became a part of that
system.