By the end of the sixteenth century, hundreds of French traders sailed to Tadoussac, at the mouth of the Saguenay River in Quebec, to bargain for pelts. Fur was an ideal product for the European traders, it was easily packaged and transported, and highly profitable. The Native peoples on the other hand, already skilled traders, wanted the European metal goods. By coming back year after year to the same locality, the French were able to establish good relationships with the local Amerindians.
             Initially, the First Nations did not perceive the fur trade as posing any danger to their independence. By the early seventeenth century, however, the Algonquians on the Atlantic coast had lost much of their self-sufficiency and become reliant on the Europeans. The fur trade transformed the coastal groups from hunters and fishers into trappers. This change in their traditional activities affected their winter diet. They no longer accumulated their usual summer food stores
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