English and Scottish merchants, now settled in Montreal, took
over control of the fur trade and allied themselves with the
remaining French traders. They imported goods from London for
the Indian trade: flintlock guns, gunflints, awls, trade axes,
knives, metal kettles, glass beads, liquor, etc. They gave
credit to the traders (bourgeois), a mixture of French, English,
and Scots, who were stationed at various trading posts in the
interior and who collected the furs from Indians and French
Métis. The most-traded furs included beaver, bear, black fox,
deer, marten, and otter. French voyageurs continued to transport
the goods and the furs in their bark canoes. A number of small
and large companies competed for the trade in the Great Lakes
region. The North West Company, organized in 1779, worked mostly
west of Grand Portage on Lake Superior. The short-lived General
Company of Lake Superior and the South, followed by the
Michilimackinac Company with headquarters at Mackinac, included
northern Illinois, the Missis