[Loan of 314 Livres 2 Sols 8 Deniers to be Repaid in Good Beaver at the Price and Weight of the Bureau.]

£7,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A wonderful relic of the seventeenth-century fur trade . This contract is signed by a clutch of notable men of the era: Henri de Tonty (fur trader and “Commander for the King in the country of Louisiana”), François Dauphin de La Forest (fur trader), Charles Juchereau de Saint-Denys (receiver of beaver for the Compagnie de la Colonie and financier), G. Pruneau (witness), J. Quesneville (witness), and Antoine Adhémar de Saint-Martin (royal notary). Henri de Tonty (1650-1704) and François Dauphin de La Forest (c1649-1714) came to Canada in the 1678 in the company of René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle. Tonty served as La Salle’s lieutenant and La Forest one of his clerks (and soon to become captain and commander at Cataracoui, or Fort Frontenac). Tonty, a former French marine, had his right hand blown off by a grenade, and wore a prosthetic hook covered by a glove, earning him the nickname bras de fer , or Iron Hand. When La Salle died in 1687, Tonty and La Forest combined their efforts and began to work together in the fur trade. In 1689, they secured the concession of Fort Saint Louis in the Illinois country, but the enterprise proved to be very expensive: in exchange for the exclusive privileges of trading in the territory, the authorities demanded a significant participation of manpower in the war against the Iroquois, which was a heavy financial burden for partners to absorb. Accordingly, they looked for additional opportunities. The summer of 1693 was a very busy time for Ton

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