In their methods of trading the coureurs-de-bois were unlike anything that the world had ever known before.  The Hanseatic merchants of earlier fur-trading days in Northern Europe had established their forts or factories at Novgorod, at Bergen, and elsewhere, great entrepots stored with merchandise for the neighboring territories.  The traders lived within, and the natives came to the posts to barter their furs or other raw materials.  The merchants of the East India Company had established their posts in the Orient and traded with the natives on the same basis.  But the Norman voyageurs of the New World did things quite differently.  They established fortified posts throughout the regions west of the Lakes, it is true, but they did not make them storehouses, nor did they bring to them any considerable stock of merchandise.  The posts were for use as the headquarters of the coureurs-de-bois, and usually sheltered a small garrison of soldiers during the winter months; they likewise served as places of defense in the event of attack and of rendezvous when a trading expedition to Montreal was being organized.  It was not the policy of the French authorities, nor was it the plan of the coureurs-de-bois, that any considerable amount of trading should take place at these western stockades.  They were only the outposts intended to keep the trade running in its proper channels.  In a word, it was the aim of the French to bring the trade to the colony, not to send the colony overland to the savages.  That is the way Father Carheil phrased it, and he was quite right.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Carheil to Champigny (August 30, 1702), in R.G.  Thwaites, Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, lxv., 219.]

Every spring, accordingly, if the great trade routes to Montreal were reasonably free from the danger of an overwhelming Iroquois attack, the coureurs-de-bois rounded up the western Indians with their stocks of furs from the winter’s hunt.  Then, proceeding to the grand rendezvous at Michilimackinac or Green Bay, the canoes were joined into one great flotilla, and the whole array set off down the lakes or by way of the Ottawa to Montreal.  This annual fur flotilla often numbered hundreds of canoes, the coureurs-de-bois acting as pilots, assisting the Indians to ward off attacks, and adding their European intelligence to the red man’s native cunning.[1] About midsummer, having covered the thousand miles of water, the canoes drew within hail of the settlement of Montreal.  Above the Lachine Rapids the population came forth to meet it with a noisy welcome.  Enterprising cabaretiers, in defiance of the royal decrees, had usually set up their booths along the shores for the sale of brandy, and there was some brisk trading as well as a considerable display of aboriginal boisterousness even before the canoes reached Montreal.

[Footnote 1:  The flotilla of 1693 consisted of more than 400 canoes, with about 200 coureurs-de-bois, 1200 Indians, and furs to the value of over 800,000 livres.]