in opposition to the Astor Fur Company, but in accordance to the policy of this rich firm, they were soon bought out and engaged in its service.
When John Jacob Astor entered into arrangements with the British Fur Companies for the monopoly of the Ojibway trade within the United States territory, a new era may be said to have occurred in the fur trade. The old French Canadian traders so congenial to the Indians, who had remained in the country after the closing of the French supremacy, had all nearly died away, and disappeared from the stage of active life, and a new class of men, of far different temperaments, whose chief object was to amass fortunes, now made their appearance among the Ojibways. They were of the Anglo-Saxon race, and hailed from the land of the progressive and money-making "Yankee." To some degree the Indian ceased to find that true kindness, sympathy, charity, and respect for his sacred beliefs and rites, which he had always experienced from his French traders.
The Ojibways were more deserving of respect in those days, while living in their natural state, and under the full force of their primitive moral beliefs, than they are at the present day, after being degenerated by a close contact with an unprincipled frontier white population. The American fur traders, many of whom were descended from respectable New England families, did not consider their dignity lessened by forming marital alliances with the tribe, and the Ojibway women were of so much service to their husbands, they so easily assimilated themselves to their modes of life, and their affections were so strong, and their conduct so beyond reproach, that these alliances, generally first formed by the traders for present convenience, became cemented by the strongest ties of mutual affection. They kindly cherished their Indian wives, and for their sakes, as well as for the sake of children whom they begat, these
