Americans called liberty. When they passed under our rule, it was soon
found that it was impossible to make them understand such an institution
as trial by jury; they throve best under the form of government to which
they had been immemorially accustomed--a commandant to give them orders,
with a few troops to back him up.[24] They often sought to escape from
these orders, but rarely to defy them; their lawlessness was like the
lawlessness of children and savages; any disobedience was always to a
particular ordinance, not to the system.

The trader having obtained his permit, built his boats,--whether light,
roomy bateaux made of boards, or birch-bark canoes, or pirogues, which
were simply hollowed out logs. He loaded them with paint, powder,
bullets, blankets, beads, and rum, manned them with hardy voyageurs,
trained all their lives in the use of pole and paddle, and started off
up or down the Mississippi,[25] the Ohio, or the Wabash, perhaps making
a long carry or portage over into the Great Lakes. It took him weeks,
often months, to get to the first trading-point, usually some large
winter encampment of Indians. He might visit several of these, or stay
the whole winter through at one, buying the furs.[26] Many of the French
coureurs des bois, whose duty it was to traverse the wilderness, and who
were expert trappers, took up their abode with the Indians, taught them
how to catch the sable, fisher, otter, and beaver, and lived among them
as members of the tribe, marrying copper-colored squaws, and rearing
dusky children. When the trader had exchanged his goods for the peltries
of these red and white skin-hunters, he returned to his home, having
been absent perhaps a year or eighteen months. It was a hard life; many
a trader perished in the wilderness by cold or starvation, by an upset
where the icy current ran down the rapids like a mill-race, by the
attack of a hostile tribe, or even in a drunken brawl with the friendly
Indians, when voyageur, half-breed, and Indian alike had been frenzied