History of the French Trade Axe

The French Trade Axe - The beginning

"... In 1524, Verrazano, in behalf of King Francis I of France skirted the entire coast from Florida to Maine and distributed ( at least a sample of the white man's line of goods designed to lift the savage out of the Stone Age. A few years later Jacques Cartier brought more French goods and gained his first knowledge of things American. When in 1534 he sailed into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, he was already acquainted with the Canadian shores. He came again in 1535 and spent the winter in the vicinity of present day Quebec. His gifts of "hachotz" to the Micmacs and Saguenays are a matter of record. The poorly recorded activities of French fishermen on the banks of Newfoundland throughout the remainder of the sixteenth century developed in the minds of French merchants the idea that a definite fur trade in America could be remunerative.

First meeting of Cartier and the Amerindians. Painting by Théodore Gudin (1802-1880)
(Nos Racines) © Musée de Versailles

A number of adventurers were attracted to the business, and the close of the century found the first officially recognized American trading post established at Tadoussac, at the mouth of the Saguenay River. During the first years of the seventeenth century, Captain Samuel Champlain and Sieur de Monts entered earnestly upon trade and colonization at Tadoussac and elsewhere in the St. Lawrence and Bay of Fundy (Acadia) regions. Their enterprises were conducted under the auspices of Henry IV of France. Champlain's Voyages contains a number of accounts of the joyous acceptance of he iron axe by the Indian.1 By 1608 Captain John Smith found that the axe of the French had already come overland from Canada to the' Upper reaches of the Chesapeake Bay. The Tockwoghes, the tribe in possession of le axes, testified that they had obtained the implements from the Isquesahanocks. Smith visited this tribe also and was informed ' them that their iron tools and weapons came from the quanahucke and the Massawomekes, of the Iroquois, who were direct touch with the French traders on "the river of Cannida."  At the Battle of Lake Champlain in 1609, it was disclosed to French that the local Mohawks were armed with iron axes, yet the traders had not come up the Hudson River with trade goods prior to that year. It seems probable that the early iron armament of the Mohawks came from the same French sources on the St. Lawrence which, indirectly, supplied the Indians of Virginia and Maryland, as observed by Captain John Smith.

Champlain returned to France in 1629 and stayed there until 1633. During that period he drew the last of his maps of New France. By that time the founding father of New France knew of the existence of Lake Ontario, of Lake Huron – which he called the Freshwater Sea – and of Lake Superior, which he had learned about from the interpreter Étienne Brûlé. (Samuel de Champlain, National Archives of Canada.) (Reproduced from Nos Racines)

 During the middle decades of the seventeenth century, the Hurons, despite their enmity for the Iroquois on the St. Lawrence, came regularly to the French traders in the Iroquois zone for axes and other trade goods. When bands of the Hurons and Ottawas were driven westward after 1663, they went to Green Bay on Lake Michigan, thence via the Fox and Wisconsin rivers across the Mississippi. With them went the iron axe into the land of the Sioux. These Western Indians had not yet obtained iron tools. They entreated the strangers to share with them their iron. "When they got a few trifles they lifted eyes to the sky and blessed it for guiding to their country these people who brought iron." At about this same time representatives of the Ottawa carried the goods of the French traders to the Crees north of Lake Superior. The Crees willingly gave up all of their beaver robes for iron axes and made handsome gifts as inducements to the Indian middlemen to return with trade goods each year . In this first system of direct trade and distribution through middlemen, the iron axe of the Frenchmen was spread through the region of the Great Lakes along the St. Lawrence, in the present day New England states and New York, south to the Chesapeake Bay, even west to the Mississippi all prior to the advent of permanent British trade in the North. The early regime of the French traders was not free from strife with the Indians after Champlain's clash with the Iroquois on Lake Champlain in 1609, nor were conflicts with rival nations avoided. The Iroquois attacked the French repeatedly, and in 1628 a fleet of British war vessels invaded the New France. For three years thereafter an English garrison occupied Quebec. However, this war between England and France was brought to a close in 1632, and by terms of the peace New France and Acadia were restored to the French temporarily. The struggle against the Iroquois continued as long as the French were on the continent.

The French axe took root in the North and became traditional. At this time, the English were establishing their tobacco colonies in tidewater Virginia and Maryland. Military procedures were very necessary in wresting the lands from the Indians, and, of course, English axes figured in the warfare and in clearing the farms. However, agriculture was a principal objective of the Englishmen, and no such flood of trade axes came to the tidewater frontier as was seen on the St. Lawrence. The same can be said about much of the New England frontier that the English created in the seventeenth century, although the fur trade did enter here and for a time there was demand for French axes along the Connecticut and in the Massachusetts back country.How specific the Englishmen were in selecting their trade axe is revealed in the early records of the Hudson's Bay Company:

Committee meeting 8th February 1671/2. That Mr. Millington bee desired to take care for providing one thousand biscay hatchets, one half of three pounds and one half of two pounds a piece, to bee sure that they bee such as are for trade with indians and not such as are for the inhabitants of Canada.

And on the occasion of a meeting November 27, 1673 :

That Mr. Raddison attended Mr. Millington forthwith with a pattern of biscay hatchets to be provided for this country, such as are usually sent from thence for France to serve the Indians in and about Canada, and that Mr. Millington bee desired to give order for two thousand hatchets to be brought from Biscay by the first opportunity.

That these Hudson's Bay Company axes moved quickly into the West is shown by the testimony of French traders at Green Bay, who in 1683 talked with Indians from the "Assiniboie (sic) River ," already in possession of some of the Biscay hatchets traded at Fort Nelson.  It is worthy of note that these early Biscay hatchet were much heavier than are the latter trade axes that came with the American trade.  And so, the French trade axe quickly replaced the stone tomahawk that the Indians used.  The trade axe or "hachette" in French and the pipe-tomahawk are the 2 primary types of trade axes traded with the natives in New-France." ²

Most commonly traded was the "hachette" or "hache" .  During the 16th and 17th century, these axes would arrive in New-France having many different shapes and sizes.

This is an illustration from Historia Canadensis reproduced by the Jesuit Father Du Creux (Paris, 1664).  Take note of the shape of the axes.

Cask of Trade Axes (1686)

Casks of various sizes held the Belle's cargo. When archaeologists opened the one shown here, they found iron axe heads. (The French expedition was lead by one of the 17th century's boldest explorers, saturnine René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. Backed by Louis XIV, he set out with four ships, and some 300 crewmen and colonists, aiming to sail to the mouth of the Mississippi and proceed from there. But he missed the Mississippi by some 400 miles, landing on the Gulf Coast, not far from what is now Corpus Christi, Texas.)

Here is a great article on trade axes by John Macfie taken from a local Parry Sound Newspaper.

Here above are French iron axes that were found in the underwater search conducted at Double Rapids on the French River out of Lake Nipissing in 1961 and are dated late 1600's to mid 1700's. The finds now in the Royal Ontario Museum.  (Underwater finds in the French River, Doris K.Megill, Ontario Department of lands and forests, Ottawa, August, 1964)

I emailed Mr. Macfie, author of the article and a participant in the underwater search conducted at Double Rapids in 1961 and asked him a few questions.  Here is the transcript of that email (April, 2004)

Q (K.Gladysz): In the article "Underwater finds in the French River, Doris K.Megill, Ontario Department of lands and forests, Ottawa, August, 1964", it is said that you had found many kettles, axes, knives and the likes. Were the axes or knives equipped with any of the original handles?


A (J.Macfie): The axes of course had no handles (any place there was a tree big enough to be chopped down would be amply provided for the raw material from which the Natives could make their own. Only one axe with the stub of a handle was found, out of over 100, and the blade was well worn, indicating it was a working axe belonging to the canoeists who lost it. The knives were equipped with handles, which were well preserves. I have the two halves of one handle, and darned if I know if they are wood or bone. Most likely wood that was preserved by their proximity to the iron in their blades. I don't have one of the blades, but I remember that Walter Kenyon said makers' marks were visible on some when they were derusted at the ROM.