was between $1500 and $2000, and for the
dependent posts between $100 and $500. There were probably not over 2000
Indian hunters in the State, and the total Indian population did not
much exceed 10,000. Comparing this number with the early estimates for
the same tribes, we find that, if the former are trustworthy, by 1820
the Indian tribes that remained in Wisconsin had increased their
numbers. But the material is too unsatisfactory to afford any valuable
conclusion.

After the sale of their lands and the receipt of money annuities, a
change came over the Indian trade. The monopoly held by Astor was broken
into, and as competition increased, the sales of whiskey were larger,
and for money, which the savage could now pay. When the Indians went to
Montreal in the days of the French, they confessed that they could not
return with supplies because they wasted their furs upon brandy. The
same process now went on at their doors. The traders were not dependent
upon the Indian's success in hunting alone; they had his annuities to
count on, and so did not exert their previous influence in favor of
steady hunting. Moreover, the game was now exploited to a considerable
degree, so that Wisconsin was no longer the hunter's paradise that it
had been in the days of Dablon and La Salle. The long-settled economic
life of the Indian being revolutionized, his business honesty declined,
and credits were more frequently lost. The annuities fell into the
traders' hands for debts and whiskey. "There is no less than near
$420,000 of claims against the Winnebagoes," writes a Green Bay trader
at Prairie du Chien, in 1838, "so that if they are all just, the
dividend will be but very small for each claimant, as there is only
$150,000 to pay that."[242]

By this time the influence of the fur trader had so developed mining in
the region of Dubuque, Iowa, Galena, Ill., and southwestern Wisconsin,
as to cause an influx of American miners, and here began a new element
of progress for Wisconsin. The knowledge of these mines was possessed by
the early French explorers, and as the use of firearms spread they were
worked more and more by Indians, under the stimulus of the trader. In
1810 Nicholas Boilvin, United States Indian agent at Prairie du Chien,
reported that the Indians about the lead mines had mostly abandoned the
chase and turned their attention to the manufacture of lead, which they
sold to fur traders. In 1825 there were at least 100 white min