Green Bay was an early center of a precontact Indian trading network that stretched throughout the western Great Lakes. In the mid-seventeenth century, large numbers of Indian households were drawn to Green Bay from the Ohio River valley to trade with recently arrived French traders. Many Ohio Indians, especially the Miami, sent households to Green Bay to secure access to the manufactured trade goods available from the French. Movement was often voluntary, and not all Indians were driven west to seek refuge from the Iroquois. A brisk beaver trade led to an oversupply of furs in French warehouses, and Versailles reacted by closing the western trade. Without access to European goods, Indians returned to the Ohio River valley, where they began trading with the English and rapidly assumed control of the fur trade. For more than twenty years, the French trade remained closed, and the numerous Frenchmen who remained took up residence in Indian households, often marrying Indian women “in the manner of the country.” The fur trade ban encouraged Indian resettlement in the Ohio River valley, where Indians had access to highly desirable furs in the Black Swamp, The ban on the western trade refocused the fur trade to a region little explored by the French and controlled by Indians.
