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In French. 2pp., recto and verso of a single small folio sheet. Signed by La Forest, Tonty, Eustache Faureau (as witness), and Antoine Adhémar de Saint-Martin (royal notary). With an English translation. The Illinois Country, essentially the Upper Mississippi watershed, was first explored in 1673 from Green Bay to the Arkansas River by the Canadian expedition of Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, who claimed the region for France. A decade later, with De La Salle having successfully descended the Mississippi River, the region became of great importance as a potential hub for the French North American fur trade. Henry de Tonty (1650-1704) and François Dauphin de La Forest (c.1649-1714) came to Canada in the 1670s in the company of La Salle and had accompanied him on his first expedition down the Mississippi, and afterwards Tonty re-ascended the Illinois and helped to establish Fort St. Louis (i.e. Starved Rock in present day Illinois). In charge of the fort, Tonty and La Forest explored the region, founding outposts, advancing relations with local tribes. When Tonty left in search of La Salle, who had gone missing on his second expedition, "La Forest took over command at Fort Saint-Louis and managed everything himself, making the fur-trading contracts and purchasing goods. To comply with the governor s orders, he had in addition to raise parties of Illinois to harry the English fur-traders and the Iroquois" (Dictionary of Canadian Biography). In 1689 Tonty and La Forest secured the exclusive privileges of trading in the Illinois Country, receiving the concession of Fort St. Louis from King Louis. By the summer of 1693, the date of this contract, the two traders had just returned from the Ottawa country with fur-laden canoes, and were settling accounts and preparing for their next expedition. In this agreement, made on 11 September 1693, La Forest represented his colleague Sieur Haco in hiring George Parent as a voyageur for a three-year term. Parent was to go to the Illinois Country to assist Haco, who was already there. He was to paddle a canoe to the Illinois Country laden with merchandise, and upon his return he was to paddle a canoe loaded with furs. He was to be fed and clothed at the expense of Haco, and be paid 300 livres per year in good marketable beaver at the Price of the Bureau. By specifying payment in "Castor au Prix du Bureau" Parent was guaranteed that his salary was tied to the current price of beaver set by the Bureau du Castor at Quebec. Parent was allowed to take sixty livres worth of merchandise to trade on his own behalf. The contract was signed by La Forest, Tonty (as witness), [Eustache] Faureau (as witness), and Antoine Adhémar de Saint-Martin (royal notary). The agreement was composed and written by Antoine Adhémar de Saint-Martin (1639- 1714), a prolific Montreal notary used by most of the outfitters and fur traders. The Tonty and La Forest concession in Illinois Country was short-lived. In 1696 the king closed all the posts in the west except for Saint-Louis, but on condition that no fur-trading be carried on there. Tonty left for Mobile, and La Forest remained in Illinois Country, eventually receiving from the governor of Louisiana the command of Detroit. Nothing is known of either the voyageurs Sieur Haco or George Parent. The present document is from the famed collection of Lawrence M. Lande (1906-1998), detailed as item 291 in his fifth bibliography of his collection, The Creditability of Land and the Development of Paper Money (Montreal: 1987). Lande began collecting manuscript material relating John Law, the Compagnie des Indes and the fur trade North America's first economy as early as the 1960s, principally working with dealers Izzy Ehrlich and Alfred Van Peteghem, purchasing material from the collections of Thomas Phillips, Philip Sang, and historian Archibald Lery MacDonald, the assemblage of which Van Peteghem termed an "unparalleled feat." All of the printed material and many of the. Seller Inventory # 368916
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