Effects of fur trade on indigenous people     Status of women Marriage as a trading strategy It was a common practice on the part of the Indian women to offer marriage and sometimes just sex in exchange for fur traders not trading with their rivals. Radisson describes visiting one Ojibwe village in the spring of 1660 where during the welcoming ceremony: "The women throw themselves backwards on the ground, thinking to give us tokens of friendship and wellcome [welcome]". Radisson was initially confused by this gesture, but as the women started to engage in more overtly sexual behavior, he realized what was being offered. Radisson was informed by the village elders that he could have sex with any unmarried women in the village provided that he did not trade with the Dakota, who were the enemies of the Ojibwe at the time.     Chipewyan The Chipewyan began trading fur in exchange for metal tools and instruments with the Hudson's Bay Company in 1717, which caused a drastic change in their lifestyle, going from a people engage in daily subsidence activities to a people engaging in far-reaching trade as the Chipewyan become the middlemen between the Hudson's Bay Company and the other Indians living further inland. The Chipewyan guarded their right to trade with the Hudson's Bay Company with considerable jealousy and prevented peoples living further inland like the Tłı̨chǫ and Yellowknives from crossing their territory to trade directly with the Hudson's Bay Company for the entire 18th century. For the Chipewyan, who were still living in the Stone Age, metal implements were greatly valued as it took hours to heat up a stone pot , but only minutes to heat up a metal pot, while an animal could be skinned far more efficiently and quickly with a metal knife than with a stone knife. For many Chipewyan bands, involvement with the fur trade eroded their self-sufficiency as they killed animals for the fur trade, not food, which forced them into dependency on other bands for food, thus leading to a cycle where many Chipewyan bands came to depend trading furs for European goods, which were traded for food , and which caused them to make very long trips across the subarctic to Hudson's Bay and back. To make these trips, the Chipewyan traveled though barren terrain that was so devoid of life that starvation was a real threat, during which the women had to carry all of the supplies. Samuel Hearne of the Hudson's Bay Company who was sent inland in 1768 to establish contact with the "Far Indians" as the company called them, wrote about the Chipewyan: Hearne's chief guide Matonabbee told him that women had to carry everything with them on their long trips across the sub-arctic because "...when all the men are heavy laden, they can neither hunt nor travel any considerable distance". Perry cautioned that when Hearne traveled though the sub-arctic in 1768–1772, the Chipewyan had been trading with the Hudson's Bay Company directly since 1717 , and indirectly via the Cree for at least the last 90 years, so the life-styles he observed among the Chipewyan had been altered by the fur trade , and in no way can be considered a pre-contact life style. But Perry argued that the arduous nature of these trips across the sub-arctic together with the burden of carrying everything suggests that the Chipewyan women did not voluntarily submit to this regime, which would suggest that even in the pre-contact period that Chipewyan women had a low status. Creeks Native American—specifically the Creek's—beliefs revolved around respecting the environment. The Creek believed they had a unique relationship with the animals they hunted. The Creek had several rules surrounding how a hunt could occur, particularly prohibiting needless killing of deer. There were specific taboos against taking the skins of unhealthy deer. But the lucrative deerskin trade prompted hunters to act past the point of restraint they had operated under before. The hunting economy collapsed due to the scarcity of deer as they were over-hunted and lost their lands to white settlers. Due to the decline of deer populations, and the governmental pressure to switch to the colonists' way of life, animal husbandry replaced deer hunting both as an income and in the diet.%DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% Rum was first introduced in the early 1700s as a trading item, and quickly became an inelastic good. While Native Americans were for the most part acted conservatively in trading deals, they consumed a surplus of alcohol. Traders used rum to help form partnerships. Rum had a significant effect on the social behavior of Native Americans. Under the influence of rum, the younger generation did not obey the elders of the tribe, and became involved with more skirmishes with other tribes and white settlers. Rum also disrupted the amount of time the younger generation of males spent on labor. Alcohol was one of the goods provided on credit, and led to a debt trap for many Native Americans. Native Americans did not know how to distill alcohol, and thus were driven to trade for it.%DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% Native Americans had become dependent on manufactured goods such as guns and domesticated animals, and lost much of their traditional practices. With the new cattle herds roaming the hunting lands, and a greater emphasis on farming due to the invention of the Cotton Gin, Native Americans struggled to maintain their place in the economy. An inequality gap had appeared in the tribes, as some hunters were more successful than others. Still, the creditors treated an individual's debt as debt of the whole tribe, and used several strategies to keep the Native Americans in debt. Traders would rig the weighing system that determined the value of the deerskins in their favor, cut measurement tools to devalue the deerskin, and would tamper with the manufactured goods to decrease their worth, such as watering down the alcohol they traded. To satisfy the need for deerskins, many males of the tribes abandoned their traditional seasonal roles and became full-time traders. When the deerskin trade collapsed, Native Americans found themselves dependent on manufactured goods, and could not return to the old ways due to lost knowledge. Gwich'in When fur traders first contacted the Gwich'in in 1810 when they founded Fort Good Hope on the Mackenzie river , accounts describe a more or less egalitarian society, but the impact of the fur trade lowered the status of Gwich'in women. Accounts by the fur traders in the 1860s describe Gwich'in women as essentially slaves, carrying the baggage on their long journeys across the sub-arctic. One fur trader wrote about the Gwich'in women that they were "little better than slaves" while another fur trader wrote about the "brutal treatment" that Gwich'in women suffered at the hands of their men. Gwich'in band leaders who became rich by First Nations standards by engaging in the fur trade tended to have several wives, and indeed tended to monopolize the women in their bands. This caused serious social tensions, as Gwich'in young men found it impossible to have a mate, as their leaders took all of the women for themselves. Ojibwe The Ojibwe believed if the plants and animals were not thanked for "giving" themselves to them, then the plants and animals would be less "giving" the next year, and the same principle applied to their relations with other peoples such as the fur traders. The Ojibwe, like other First Nations, always believed that animals willingly allowed themselves to be killed , and that if a hunter failed to give thanks to the animal world, then the animals would be less "giving" the next time around. As the fur traders were predominately male and heterosexual while there were few white women beyond the frontier, the Indians were well aware of the sexual attraction felt by the fur traders towards their women, who were seen as having a special power over white men. From the Ojibwe viewpoint, if one of their women gave herself to a fur trader, it created the reciprocal obligation for the fur trader to give back. Fur-trading companies encouraged their employees to take Indian wives, not only to built long-term relationships that were good for business, but also because an employee with a wife would have to buy more supplies from his employer, with the money for the purchases usually subtracted from his wages. White decried the tendency of many historians to see these women as simply "passive" objects that were bartered for by fur traders and Indian tribal elders, writing that these women had to "exert influence and be active communicators of information" to be effective as the wife of a fur trader, and that many of the women who married fur traders "embraced" these marriages to achieve "useful purposes for themselves and for the communities that they lived in". White argues that the traditional "imperial adventure" historiography where the fur trade was the work of a few courageous white men who ventured into the wildness was flawed as it ignored the contributions of the Indians. The American anthropologist Ruth Landes in her 1937 book Ojibwe Women described Ojibwe society in the 1930s as based on "male supremacy", and she assumed this was how Ojibwe society had always been, a conclusion that has been widely followed. Landes did note that the women she interviewed told her stories about Ojibwe women who in centuries past inspired by their dream visions had played prominent roles as warriors, hunters, healers, traders and leaders. %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% In 1978, the American anthropologist Eleanor Leacock who  writing from a Marxist perspective in her article "Women's Status In Egalitarian Society  " challenges Landes by arguing that Ojibwe society had in fact been egalitarian, but the fur trade had changed the dynamics of Ojibwe society from a simple barter economy to one where men could become powerful by having access to European goods, and this had led to the marginalization of Ojibwe women. More recently, the American anthropologist Carol Devens in her 1992 book Countering Colonization: Native American Women and the Great Lakes Missions 1630–1900 followed Leacock by arguing that exposure to the patriarchal values of ancien regime France together with the ability to collect "surplus goods" made possible by the fur trade had turned the egalitarian Ojibwe society into unequal society where women did not count for much. White wrote that an examination of the contemporary sources would suggest the fur trade had in fact empowered and strengthened the role of Ojibwe women who played a very important role in the fur trade, and it was the decline of the fur trade which had led to the decline of status of Ojibwe women. As men from the old fur trade in the northeast made the trek west in the early nineteenth century, they sought to recreate the economic system from which they had profited in the Northeast . Some men went alone  but others relied on companies like the Hudson Bay Company and the Missouri Fur Company. Marriage and kinship with native women would play an important role in the western fur trade. White traders who moved west needed to establish themselves in the kinship networks of the tribes, and they often did this by marrying a prominent Indian woman. This practice was called a "country" marriage and allowed the trader to network with the adult male members of the woman's band, who were necessary allies for trade. The children of these unions, who were known as Métis, were an integral part of the fur trade system. The Métis label defined these children as a marginal people with a fluid identity. Early on in the fur trade, Métis were not defined by their racial category , but rather by the way of life they chose. These children were generally the offspring of white men and Native mothers and were often raised to follow the mother's lifestyle. The father could influence the enculturation process and prevent the child from being classified as Métis in the early years of the western fur trade. Fur families often included displaced native women who lived near forts and formed networks among themselves. These networks helped to create kinship between tribes which benefitted the traders. Catholics tried their best to validate these unions through marriages. But missionaries and priests often had trouble categorizing the women, especially when establishing tribal identity. Métis were among the first groups of fur traders who came from the Northeast . These men were mostly of a mixed race identity, largely Iroquois, as well as other tribes from the Ohio country . Rather than one tribal identity, many of these Métis had multiple Indian heritages. Lewis and Clark, who opened up the market on the fur trade in the Upper Missouri  , brought with them many Métis to serve as engagés. These same Métis would become involved in the early western fur trade. Many of them settled on the Missouri River and married into the tribes there before setting up their trade networks. The first generation of Métis born in the West grew up out of the old fur trade and provided a bridge to the new western empire. These Métis possessed both native and European skills, spoke multiple languages, and had the important kinship networks required for trade. In addition, many spoke the Michif Métis dialect. In an effort to distinguish themselves from natives, many Métis strongly associated with Roman Catholic beliefs and avoided participating in native ceremonies. By the 1820s, the fur trade had expanded into the Rocky Mountains where American and British interests begin to compete for control of the lucrative trade. The Métis would play a key role in this competition. The early Métis congregated around trading posts where they were employed as packers, laborers, or boatmen. Through their efforts they helped to create a new order centered on the trading posts. Other Métis traveled with the trapping brigades in a loose business arrangement where authority was taken lightly and independence was encouraged. By the 1830s  Canadians and Americans were venturing into the West to secure a new fur supply. Companies like the NWC and the HBC provided employment opportunities for Métis. By the end of the 19th century, many companies considered the Métis to be Indian in their identity. As a result, many Métis left the companies in order to pursue freelance work. After 1815  the demand for bison robes began to rise gradually, although the beaver still remained the primary trade item. The 1840s saw a rise in the bison trade as the beaver trade begin to decline. Many Métis adapted to this new economic opportunity. This change of trade item made it harder for Métis to operate within companies like the HBC, but this made them welcome allies of the Americans who wanted to push the British to the Canada– US border. Although the Métis would initially operate on both sides of the border, by the 1850s they were forced to pick an identity and settle either north or south of the border. The period of the 1850s was thus one of migration for the Métis, many of whom drifted and established new communities or settled within existing Canadian, American or Indian communities. The Métis would establish a whole economic system around the bison trade. Whole Métis families were involved in the production of robes, which was the driving force of the winter hunt. In addition, they sold pemmican at the posts. Unlike Indians, the Métis were dependent on the fur trade system and subject to the market. The international prices of bison robes were directly influential on the well-being of Métis communities. By contrast, the local Indians had a more diverse resource base and were less dependent on Americans and Europeans at this time. By the 1850s  the fur trade had expanded across the Great Plains, and the bison robe trade began to decline. The Métis had a role in the depopulation of the bison. Like the Indians, the Métis had a preference for cows, which meant that the bison had trouble maintaining their herds. In addition, flood, drought, early frost, and the environmental impact of settlement posed further threats to the herds. Traders, trappers, and hunters all depended on the bison to sustain their way of life. The Métis tried to maintain their lifestyle through a variety of means. For instance, they often used two wheel carts made from local materials, which meant that they were more mobile than Indians and thus were not dependent on following seasonal hunting patterns. Many former Métis bison hunters tried to get land claims during the treaty negotiations in 1879–1880. They were reduced to squatting on Indian land during this time and collecting bison bones for $15–20 a ton in order to purchase supplies for the winter. The reservation system did not ensure that the Métis were protected and accepted as Indians. To further complicate matters, Métis had a questionable status as citizens and were often deemed incompetent to give court testimonies and denied the right to vote. The end of the bison robe trade was the end of the fur trade for many Métis. This meant that they had to reestablish their identity and adapt to a new economic world. Northern Athabaskan peoples The fur trade seems to have weakened the status of Indian women in the Canadian sub-arctic in what is now the North West Territories, the Yukon, and the northern parts of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The harsh terrain imposed a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle on the people living there as to stay in one place for long would quickly exhaust the food supply. The Indians living in the sub-arctic had only small dogs incapable of carrying heavy loads with one fur trader in 1867 calling Gwich'in dogs "miserable creatures no smaller than foxes" while another noted "dogs were scare and burdens were supported by people's backs". The absence of navigable rivers made riparian transport impossible, so everything had to be carried on the backs of the women. There was a belief among the Northern Athabaskan peoples that weapons could be only handled by men, and that for a weapon to be used by a woman would cause it to lose its effectiveness; as relations between the various bands were hostile, during travel, men were always armed while the women carried all of the baggage. All of the Indian men living in the sub-arctic had an acute horror of menstrual blood, seen as an unclean substance that no men could ever touch, and as a symbol of a threatening femininity. The American anthropologist Richard J. Perry suggests that under the impact of the fur trade that certain misogynistic tendencies that were already long established among the Northern Athabaskan peoples became significantly worse. Owing to the harsh terrain of the subarctic and the limited food supplies, the First Nations peoples living there had long practiced infanticide to limit their band sizes, as a large population would starve. One fur trader in the 19th century noted that within the Gwich'in, newly born girls were far more likely to be victims of infanticide than boys, owing to the low status of women, adding that female infanticide was practiced to such an extent there was a shortage of women in their society. Perry argues that the crucial difference between the Northern Athabaskan peoples living in the sub-arctic vs. those living further south like the Cree and Ojibwe was the existence of waterways that canoes could traverse in the case of the latter. In the 18th century, Cree and Ojibwe men could and did travel hundreds of miles to HBC posts on Hudson's Bay via canoe to sell fur and bring back European goods, and in the interim, their women were in largely in charge of their communities. At York Factory in the 18th century, the factors reported that flotillas of up to 200 canoes would arrive at a time bearing Indian men coming to barter their fur for HBC's goods. Normally, the trip to York Factory was made by the Cree and Ojibwe men while their womenfolk stayed behind in their villages. Until 1774, the Hudson's Bay Company was content to operate its posts on the shores of Hudson's Bay, and only competition from the rival North West Company based in Montreal forced the Hudson's Bay Company to assert its claim to Rupert's Land. By contrast, the absence of waterways flowing into Hudson's Bay (the major river in the subarctic, the Mackenzie, flows into the Arctic Ocean) forced the Northern Athabaskan peoples to travel by foot with the women as baggage carriers. In this way, the fur trade empowered Cree and Ojibwe women while reducing the Northern Athabaskan women down to a slave-like existence. English colonies By the end of the 18th century the four major British fur trading outposts were Fort Niagara in modern New York, Fort Detroit and Fort Michilimackinac in modern Michigan, and Grand Portage in modern Minnesota, all located in the Great Lakes region. The American Revolution and the resulting resolution of national borders forced the British to re-locate their trading centers northward. The newly formed United States began its own attempts to capitalize on the fur trade, initially with some success. By the 1830s the fur trade had begun a steep decline, and fur was never again the lucrative enterprise it had once been. Pacific coast On the Pacific coast of North America, the fur trade mainly pursued seal and sea otter. In northern areas, this trade was established first by the Russian-American Company, with later participation by Spanish/Mexican, British, and U.S. hunters/traders. Non-Russians extended fur-hunting areas south as far as the Baja California Peninsula. Southeastern United States Background Starting in the mid-16th century, Europeans traded weapons and household goods in exchange for furs with Native Americans in southeast America. The trade originally tried to mimic the fur trade in the north, with large quantities of wildcats, bears, beavers, and other fur bearing animals being traded. The trade in fur coat animals decreased in the early 18th century, curtailed by the rising popularity of trade in deerskins. The deerskin trade went onto dominate the relationships between the Native Americans of the southeast and the European settlers there. Deerskin was a highly valued commodity due to the deer shortage in Europe, and the British leather industry needed deerskins to produce goods. The bulk of deerskins were exported to Great Britain during the peak of the deerskin trade. Post-European contact in the 16th and 17th centuries Spanish exploratory parties in the 1500s had violent encounters with the powerful chiefdoms, which led to the decentralization of the indigenous people in the southeast. Almost a century passed between the original Spanish exploration and the next wave of European immigration, which allowed the survivors of the European diseases to organize into new tribes. Most Spanish trade was limited with Indians on the coast until expeditions inland in the beginning of the 17th century. By 1639, substantial trade between the Spanish in Florida and the Native Americans for deerskins developed, with more interior tribes incorporated into the system by 1647. Many tribes throughout the southeast began to send trading parties to meet with the Spanish in Florida, or used other tribes as middlemen to obtain manufactured goods. The Apalachees used the Apalachiola people to collect deerskins, and in return the Apalachees would give them silver, guns, or horses. As the English and French colonizers ventured into the southeast, the deerskin trade experienced a boom going into the 18th century. Many of the English colonists who settled in the Carolinas in the late 1600s came from Virginia, where trading patterns of European goods in exchange for beaver furs already had started. The white-tailed deer herds that roamed south of Virginia were a more profitable resource. The French and the English struggled for control over Southern Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley, and needed alliances with the Indians there to maintain dominance. The European colonizers used the trade of deerskins for manufactured goods to secure trade relationships, and therefore power. Beginning of the 18th century At the beginning of the 18th century, more organized violence than in previous decades occurred between the Native Americans involved in the deerskin trade and white settlers, most famously the Yamasee War. This uprising of Indians against fur traders almost wiped out the European colonists in the southeast. The British promoted competition between tribes, and sold guns to both Creeks and Cherokees. This competition sprang out of the slave demand in the southeast – tribes would raid each other and sell prisoners into the slave trade of the colonizers. France tried to outlaw these raids because their allies, the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Yazoos, bore the brunt of the slave trade. Guns and other modern weapons were essential trading items for the Native Americans to protect themselves from slave raids; motivation which drove the intensity of the deerskin trade. The need for Indian slaves decreased as African slaves began to be imported in larger quantities, and the focus returned to deerskins. The drive for Indian slaves also was diminished after the Yamasee War to avoid future uprisings. The Yamasees had collected extensive debt in the first decade of the 1700s due to buying manufactured goods on credit from traders, and then not being able to produce enough deerskins to pay the debt later in the year. Indians who were not able to pay their debt were often enslaved. The practice of enslavement extended to the wives and children of the Yamasees in debt as well. This process frustrated the Yamasees and other tribes, who lodged complaints against the deceitful credit-loaning scheme traders had enforced, along with methods of cheating or trade. The Yamasees were a coastal tribe in the area that is now known as South Carolina, and most of the white-tailed deer herds had moved inland for the better environment. The Yamasees rose up against the English in South Carolina, and soon other tribes joined them, creating combatants from almost every nation in the South. The British were able to defeat the Indian coalition with help from the Cherokees, cementing a pre-existing trade partnership. After the uprisings, the Native Americans returned to making alliances with the European powers, using political savvy to get the best deals by playing the three nations off each other. The Creeks were particularly good at manipulation – they had begun trading with South Carolina in the last years of the 17th century and became a trusted deerskin provider. The Creeks were already a wealthy tribe due to their control over the most valuable hunting lands, especially when compared to the impoverished Cherokees. Due to allying with the British during the Yamasee War, the Cherokees lacked Indian trading partners and could not break with Britain to negotiate with France or Spain. Mississippi River valley From their bases in the Great Lakes area, the French steadily pushed their way down the Mississippi River valley to the Gulf of Mexico from 1682 onward. Initially, French relations with the Natchez Indians were friendly and in 1716 the French were allowed to establish Fort Rosalie (modern Natchez, Mississippi) on the Natchez territory. In 1729, following several cases of French land fraud, the Natchez burned down Fort Rosalie and killed about 200 French settlers. In response, the French together with their allies, the Choctaw, waged a near-genocidal campaign against the Natchez as French and Choctaw set out to eliminate the Natchez as a people with the French often burning alive all of the Natchez they captured. Following the French victory over the Natchez in 1731 which resulted in the destruction of the Natchez people, the French were able to begin fur trading down the Arkansas river and greatly expanded the Arkansas Post to take advantage of the fur trade. Mid-18th century Deerskin trade was at its most profitable in the mid-18th century. The Creeks rose up as the largest deerskin supplier, and the increase in supply only intensified European demand for deerskins. Native Americans continued to negotiate the most lucrative trade deals by forcing England, France, and Spain to compete for their supply of deerskins. In the 1750s and 1760s, the Seven Years' War disrupted France's ability to provide manufactures goods to its allies, the Choctaws and Chickasaw. The French and Indian War further disrupted trade, as the British blockaded French goods. The Cherokees allied themselves with France, who were driven out from the southeast in accordance with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The British were now the dominant trading power in the southeast. While both the Cherokee and the Creek were the main trading partners of the British, their relationships with the British were different. The Creeks adapted to the new economic trade system, and managed to hold onto their old social structures. Originally Cherokee land was divided into five districts but the number soon grew to thirteen districts with 200 hunters assigned per district due to deerskin demand. Charleston and Savannah were the main trading ports for the export of deerskins. Deerskins became the most popular export, and monetarily supported the colonies with the revenue produced by taxes on deerskins. Charleston's trade was regulated by the Indian Trade Commission, composed of traders who monopolized the market and profited off the sale of deerskins. From the beginning of the 18th century to mid-century, the deerskin exports of Charleston more than doubled in exports. Charleston received tobacco and sugar from the West Indies and rum from the North in exchange for deerskins. In return for deerskins, Great Britain sent woolens, guns, ammunition, iron tools, clothing, and other manufactured goods that were traded to the Native Americans. Post-Revolutionary War The Revolutionary War disrupted the deerskin trade, as the import of British manufactured goods with cut off. The deerskin trade had already begun to decline due to over-hunting of deer. The lack of trade caused the Native Americans to run out of items, such as guns, on which they depended. Some Indians, such as the Creeks, tried to reestablish trade with the Spanish in Florida, where some loyalists were hiding as well. When the war ended with the British retreating, many tribes who had fought on their side were now left unprotected and now had to make peace and new trading deals with the new country. Many Native Americans were subject to violence from the new Americans who sought to settle their territory. The new American government negotiated treaties that recognized prewar borders, such as those with the Choctaw and Chickasaw, and allowed open trade. In the two decades following the Revolutionary War, the United States' government established new treaties with the Native Americans the provided hunting grounds and terms of trade. But the value of deerskins dropped as domesticated cattle took over the market, and many tribes soon found themselves in debt. The Creeks began to sell their land to the government to try and pay their debts, and infighting among the Indians made it easy for white settlers to encroach upon their lands. The government also sought to encourage Native Americans to give up their old ways of subsistence hunting, and turn to farming and domesticated cattle for trade. Social and cultural impact The fur trade and its actors has played a certain role in films and popular culture. It was the topic of various books and films, from James Fenimore Cooper via Irving Pichels Hudson's Bay of 1941, the popular Canadian musical My Fur Lady (music by Galt MacDermot) of 1957, till Nicolas Vaniers documentaries. In contrast to "the huddy buddy narration of Canada as Hudson's country", propagated either in popular culture as well in elitist circles as the Beaver Club, founded 1785 in Montreal the often male-centered scholarly description of the fur business does not fully describe the history. Chantal Nadeau, a communication scientist in Montreal's Concordia University refers to the "country wives" and "country marriages" between Indian women and European trappers and the Filles du Roy of the 18th century. Nadeau says that women have been described as a sort of commodity, "skin for skin", and they were essential to the sustainable prolongation of the fur trade. Nadeau describes fur as an essential, "the fabric" of Canadian symbolism and nationhood. She notes the controversies around the Canadian seal hunt, with Brigitte Bardot as a leading figure. Bardot, a famous actress, had been a model in the 1971 "Legend" campaign of the US mink label Blackglama, for which she posed nude in fur coats. Her involvement in anti-fur campaigns shortly afterward was in response to a request by the noted author Marguerite Yourcenar, who asked Bardot to use her celebrity status to help the anti-sealing movement. Bardot had successes as an anti-fur activist and changed from sex symbol to the grown-up mama of "white seal babies". Nadeau related this to her later involvement in French right-wing politics. The anti-fur movement in Canada was intertwined with the nation's exploration of history during and after the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, until the roll back of the anti-fur movement in the late 1990s. Finally, the PETA celebrity campaign: "I'd rather go naked than wear fur", turned around the "skin for skin" motto and symbology against fur and the fur trade. Modern day Modern fur trapping and trading in North America is part of a wider $ 15 billion global fur industry where wild animal pelts make up only 15 percent of total fur output. %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% In 2008, the global recession hit the fur industry and trappers especially hard with greatly depressed fur prices thanks to a drop in the sale of expensive fur coats and hats. Such a drop in fur prices reflects trends of previous economic downturns. In 2013, the North American Fur Industry Communications group (NAFIC)  was established as a cooperative public educational program for the fur industry in Canada and the USA. NAFIC disseminates information via the Internet under the brand name "Truth About Fur" . Members of NAFIC are: the auction houses American Legend Cooperative in Seattle, North American Fur Auctions in Toronto, and Fur Harvesters AuctionFur Harvesters Auction Inc. in North Bay, Ontario; the American Mink Council, representing US mink producers; the mink farmers' associations Canada Mink Breeders AssociationCanada Mink Breeders Association . and Fur Commission USA;Fur Commission USA. the trade associations Fur Council of CanadaFur Council of Canada. and Fur Information Council of America;Fur Information Council of America. the Fur Institute of Canada, leader of the country's trap research and testing program; Fur wRaps The Hill, the political and legislative arm of the North American fur industry; and the International Fur Federation,International Fur Federation. based in London, UK .
Effects of fur trade on indigenous people Lifestyle changes Native American beliefs revolved around respecting the environment. Indians believed they had a unique relationship with the animals they hunted, and many tribes had rules surrounding how a hunt could occur, particularly prohibiting needless killing of deer. There were specific taboos against taking the skins of unhealthy deer. But the lucrative deerskin trade prompted hunters to act past the point of restraint they had operated under before. The hunting economy collapsed because of the scarcity of deer as they were over-hunted and lost their lands to white settlers. As the deer populations declined and the government pressured tribes to switch to the colonists' way of life, animal husbandry replaced deer hunting both as an income and in the diet. Rum was first introduced in the early 16th century as a trading item and quickly became an inelastic good. While Native Americans for the most part acted conservatively in trading deals, they consumed a surplus of alcohol. Traders used rum to help form partnerships. Rum had a significant effect on the social behavior of Native Americans. Under the influence of rum, the younger generation did not obey the elders of the tribe and became involved with more skirmishes with other tribes and white settlers. Rum also disrupted the amount of time the younger generation of males spent on labor. Alcohol was one of the goods provided on credit, and led to a debt trap for many Native Americans. Native Americans did not know how to distill alcohol and thus were driven to trade for it. Native Americans had become dependent on manufactured goods such as guns and domesticated animals, and lost much of their traditional practices. With the new cattle herds roaming the hunting lands, and a greater emphasis on farming due to the invention of the cotton gin, Native Americans struggled to maintain their place in the economy. An inequality gap had appeared in the tribes, as some hunters were more successful than others. Still, the creditors treated an individual's debt as debt of the whole tribe and used several strategies to keep the Native Americans in debt. Traders would rig the weighing system that determined the value of the deerskins in their favor, cut measurement tools to devalue the deerskin, and would tamper with the manufactured goods to decrease their worth, such as watering down the alcohol they traded. To satisfy the need for deerskins, many males of the tribes abandoned their traditional seasonal roles and became full-time traders. When the deerskin trade collapsed, Native Americans found themselves dependent on manufactured goods, and could not return to the old ways because of lost knowledge. Status of women Marriage as a trading strategy It was a common practice on the part of the Indian women to offer marriage and sometimes just sex in exchange for fur traders not trading with their rivals. Radisson describes visiting one Ojibwe village in the spring of 1660 where during the welcoming ceremony: "The women throw themselves backwards on the ground, thinking to give us tokens of friendship and wellcome [welcome]". Radisson was initially confused by this gesture, but as the women started to engage in more overtly sexual behavior, he realized what was being offered. Radisson was informed by the village elders that he could have sex with any unmarried women in the village provided that he did not trade with the Dakota, who were the enemies of the Ojibwe at the time. Northern Athabaskan peoples The fur trade seems to have weakened the status of Indian women in the Canadian sub-arctic in what is now the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, and the northern parts of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The harsh terrain imposed a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle on the people living there as to stay in one place for long would quickly exhaust the food supply. The Indians living in the sub-arctic had only small dogs incapable of carrying heavy loads with one fur trader in 1867 calling Gwich'in dogs "miserable creatures no smaller than foxes" while another noted "dogs were scare and burdens were supported by people's backs". The absence of navigable rivers made riparian transport impossible, so everything had to be carried on the backs of the women. There was a belief among the Northern Athabaskan peoples that weapons could be only handled by men, and that for a weapon to be used by a woman would cause it to lose its effectiveness; as relations between the various bands were hostile, during travel, men were always armed while the women carried all of the baggage. All of the Indian men living in the sub-arctic had an acute horror of menstrual blood, seen as an unclean substance that no men could ever touch and as a symbol of a threatening femininity. American anthropologist Richard J. Perry suggests that under the impact of the fur trade that certain misogynistic tendencies that were already long established among the Northern Athabaskan peoples became significantly worse. Owing to the harsh terrain of the subarctic and the limited food supplies, the First Nations peoples living there had long practiced infanticide to limit their band sizes, as a large population would starve. One fur trader in the 19th century noted that within the Gwich'in, newly born girls were far more likely to be victims of infanticide than boys, owing to the low status of women, adding that female infanticide was practiced to such an extent there was a shortage of women in their society. Perry argues that the crucial difference between the Northern Athabaskan peoples living in the sub-arctic compared to those living further south like the Cree and Ojibwe was the existence of waterways that canoes could traverse. In the 18th century, Cree and Ojibwe men could and did travel hundreds of miles to HBC posts on Hudson's Bay via canoe to sell fur and bring back European goods, and in the interim, their women were in largely in charge of their communities. At York Factory in the 18th century, the factors reported that flotillas of up to 200 canoes would arrive at a time bearing Indian men coming to barter their fur for HBC's goods. Normally, the trip to York Factory was made by the Cree and Ojibwe men while their womenfolk stayed behind in their villages. Until 1774, the Hudson's Bay Company was content to operate its posts on the shores of Hudson's Bay, and only competition from the rival North West Company based in Montreal forced the Hudson's Bay Company to assert its claim to Rupert's Land. By contrast, the absence of waterways flowing into Hudson's Bay (the major river in the subarctic, the Mackenzie, flows into the Arctic Ocean) forced the Northern Athabaskan peoples to travel by foot with the women as baggage carriers. In this way, the fur trade empowered Cree and Ojibwe women while reducing the Northern Athabaskan women down to a slave-like existence. Chipewyan The Chipewyan began trading fur in exchange for metal tools and instruments with the Hudson's Bay Company in 1717, which caused a drastic change in their lifestyle, going from a people engage in daily subsistence activities to a people engaging in far-reaching trade as the Chipewyan become the middlemen between the Hudson's Bay Company and the other Indians living further inland. The Chipewyan guarded their right to trade with the Hudson's Bay Company with considerable jealousy and prevented peoples living further inland like the Tłı̨chǫ and Yellowknives from crossing their territory to trade directly with the Hudson's Bay Company for the entire 18th century. For the Chipewyan, who were still living in the Stone Age, metal implements were greatly valued as it took hours to heat up a stone pot but only minutes to heat up a metal pot, while an animal could be skinned far more efficiently and quickly with a metal knife than with a stone knife. For many Chipewyan bands, involvement with the fur trade eroded their self-sufficiency as they killed animals for the fur trade, not food, which forced them into dependency on other bands for food, thus leading to a cycle where many Chipewyan bands came to depend trading furs for European goods, which were traded for food and which caused them to make very long trips across the subarctic to Hudson's Bay and back. To make these trips, the Chipewyan traveled though barren terrain that was so devoid of life that starvation was a real threat, during which the women had to carry all of the supplies. Samuel Hearne of the Hudson's Bay Company who was sent inland in 1768 to establish contact with the "Far Indians" as the company called them, writes about the Chipewyan: Hearne's chief guide Matonabbee told him that women had to carry everything with them on their long trips across the sub-arctic because "...when all the men are heavy laden, they can neither hunt nor travel any considerable distance". Perry cautioned that when Hearne traveled though the sub-arctic in 1768–1772, the Chipewyan had been trading with the Hudson's Bay Company directly since 1717 and indirectly via the Cree for at least the last 90 years, so the lifestyles he observed among the Chipewyan had been altered by the fur trade and cannot be considered a pre-contact life style. But Perry argued that the arduous nature of these trips across the sub-arctic together with the burden of carrying everything suggests that the Chipewyan women did not voluntarily submit to this regime, which would suggest that even in the pre-contact period that Chipewyan women had a low status. %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% Gwich'in When fur traders first contacted the Gwich'in in 1810 when they founded Fort Good Hope on the Mackenzie River , accounts describe a more or less egalitarian society, but the impact of the fur trade lowered the status of Gwich'in women. Accounts by the fur traders in the 1860s describe Gwich'in women as essentially slaves, carrying the baggage on their long journeys across the sub-arctic. One fur trader wrote about the Gwich'in women that they were "little better than slaves" while another fur trader wrote about the "brutal treatment" that Gwich'in women suffered at the hands of their men. Gwich'in band leaders who became rich by First Nations standards by engaging in the fur trade tended to have several wives, and indeed tended to monopolize the women in their bands. This caused serious social tensions, as Gwich'in young men found it impossible to have a mate, as their leaders took all of the women for themselves. Ojibwe The Ojibwe believed if the plants and animals were not thanked for "giving" themselves to them, then the plants and animals would be less "giving" the next year, and the same principle applied to their relations with other peoples such as the fur traders. The Ojibwe, like other First Nations, believed that animals willingly allowed themselves to be killed and that if a hunter failed to give thanks to the animal world, then the animals would be less "giving" the next time around. As the fur traders were predominately male and heterosexual while there were few white women beyond the frontier, the Indians were well aware of the sexual attraction felt by the fur traders towards their women, who were seen as having a special power over white men. From the Ojibwe viewpoint, if one of their women gave herself to a fur trader, it created the reciprocal obligation for the fur trader to give back. Fur-trading companies encouraged their employees to take Indian wives, not only to built long-term relationships that were good for business, but also because an employee with a wife would have to buy more supplies from his employer, with the money for the purchases usually subtracted from his wages. White decries the tendency of many historians to see these women as simply "passive" objects that were bartered for by fur traders and Indian tribal elders, writing that these women had to "exert influence and be active communicators of information" to be effective as the wife of a fur trader, and that many of the women who married fur traders "embraced" these marriages to achieve "useful purposes for themselves and for the communities that they lived in". White argues that the traditional "imperial adventure" historiography where the fur trade was the work of a few courageous white men who ventured into the wildness was flawed as it ignored the contributions of the Indians. The American anthropologist Ruth Landes in her 1937 book Ojibwe Women describes Ojibwe society in the 1930s as based on "male supremacy", and she assumes this was how Ojibwe society had always been, a conclusion that has been widely followed. Landes notes that the women she interviewed told her stories about Ojibwe women who in centuries past inspired by their dream visions had played prominent roles as warriors, hunters, healers, traders and leaders. %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% In 1978, the American anthropologist Eleanor Leacock who , writing from a Marxist perspective in her article "Women's Status In Egalitarian Society , " challenges Landes by arguing that Ojibwe society had in fact been egalitarian, but the fur trade had changed the dynamics of Ojibwe society from a simple barter economy to one where men could become powerful by having access to European goods, and this had led to the marginalization of Ojibwe women. More recently, American anthropologist Carol Devens in her 1992 book Countering Colonization: Native American Women and the Great Lakes Missions 1630–1900 follows Leacock by arguing that exposure to the patriarchal values of ancien regime France together with the ability to collect "surplus goods" made possible by the fur trade had turned the egalitarian Ojibwe society into unequal society where women did not count for much. White writes that an examination of the contemporary sources would suggest the fur trade had in fact empowered and strengthened the role of Ojibwe women who played a very important role in the fur trade, and it was the decline of the fur trade which had led to the decline of status of Ojibwe women. As men from the old fur trade in the northeast made the trek west in the early 19th century, they sought to recreate the economic system from which they had profited in the northeast . Some men went alone , but others relied on companies like the Hudson Bay Company and the Missouri Fur Company. Marriage and kinship with native women played an important role in the western fur trade. White traders who moved west needed to establish themselves in the kinship networks of the tribes, and they often did this by marrying a prominent Indian woman. This practice was called a "country" marriage and allowed the trader to network with the adult male members of the woman's band, who were necessary allies for trade. The children of these unions, who were known as Métis, were an integral part of the fur trade system. The Métis label defined these children as a marginal people with a fluid identity. Early on in the fur trade, Métis were not defined by their racial category but rather by the way of life they chose. These children were generally the offspring of white men and native mothers and were often raised to follow the mother's lifestyle. The father could influence the enculturation process and prevent the child from being classified as Métis in the early years of the western fur trade. Fur families often included displaced native women who lived near forts and formed networks among themselves. These networks helped to create kinship between tribes which benefitted the traders. Catholics tried their best to validate these unions through marriages. But missionaries and priests often had trouble categorizing the women, especially when establishing tribal identity. Métis were among the first groups of fur traders who came from the northeast . These men were mostly of a mixed race identity, largely Iroquois, as well as other tribes from the Ohio Country . Rather than one tribal identity, many of these Métis had multiple Indian heritages. Lewis and Clark, who opened up the market on the fur trade in the Upper Missouri River , brought with them many Métis to serve as engagés. These same Métis would become involved in the early western fur trade. Many of them settled on the Missouri River and married into the tribes there before setting up their trade networks. The first generation of Métis born in the West grew up out of the old fur trade and provided a bridge to the new western empire. These Métis possessed both native and European skills, spoke multiple languages, and had the important kinship networks required for trade. In addition, many spoke the Michif Métis dialect. In an effort to distinguish themselves from natives, many Métis strongly associated with Roman Catholic beliefs and avoided participating in native ceremonies. By the 1820s, the fur trade had expanded into the Rocky Mountains where American and British interests begin to compete for control of the lucrative trade. The Métis would play a key role in this competition. The early Métis congregated around trading posts where they were employed as packers, laborers, or boatmen. Through their efforts they helped to create a new order centered on the trading posts. Other Métis traveled with the trapping brigades in a loose business arrangement where authority was taken lightly and independence was encouraged. By the 1830s , Canadians and Americans were venturing into the West to secure a new fur supply. Companies like the NWC and the HBC provided employment opportunities for Métis. By the end of the 19th century, many companies considered the Métis to be Indian in their identity. As a result, many Métis left the companies in order to pursue freelance work. After 1815 , the demand for bison robes began to rise gradually, although the beaver still remained the primary trade item. The 1840s saw a rise in the bison trade as the beaver trade begin to decline. Many Métis adapted to this new economic opportunity. This change of trade item made it harder for Métis to operate within companies like the HBC, but this made them welcome allies of the Americans who wanted to push the British to the Canada– U.S. border. Although the Métis would initially operate on both sides of the border, by the 1850s they were forced to pick an identity and settle either north or south of the border. The period of the 1850s was thus one of migration for the Métis, many of whom drifted and established new communities or settled within existing Canadian, American or Indian communities. The Métis established a whole economic system around the bison trade. Whole Métis families were involved in the production of robes, which was the driving force of the winter hunt. In addition, they sold pemmican at the posts. Unlike Indians, the Métis were dependent on the fur trade system and subject to the market. The international prices of bison robes were directly influential on the well-being of Métis communities. By contrast, the local Indians had a more diverse resource base and were less dependent on Americans and Europeans at this time. By the 1850s , the fur trade had expanded across the Great Plains, and the bison robe trade began to decline. The Métis had a role in the depopulation of the bison. Like the Indians, the Métis had a preference for cows, which meant that the bison had trouble maintaining their herds. In addition, flood, drought, early frost, and the environmental impact of settlement posed further threats to the herds. Traders, trappers, and hunters all depended on the bison to sustain their way of life. The Métis tried to maintain their lifestyle through a variety of means. For instance, they often used two wheel carts made from local materials, which meant that they were more mobile than Indians and thus were not dependent on following seasonal hunting patterns. Many former Métis bison hunters tried to get land claims during the treaty negotiations in 1879–1880. They were reduced to squatting on Indian land during this time and collecting bison bones for $15–20 per ton in order to purchase supplies for the winter. The reservation system did not ensure that the Métis were protected and accepted as Indians. To further complicate matters, Métis had a questionable status as citizens and were often deemed incompetent to give court testimonies and denied the right to vote. The end of the bison robe trade was the end of the fur trade for many Métis. This meant that they had to reestablish their identity and adapt to a new economic world. English colonies By the end of the 18th century the four major British fur trading outposts were Fort Niagara in modern New York, Fort Detroit and Fort Michilimackinac in modern Michigan, and Grand Portage in modern Minnesota, all located in the Great Lakes region. The American Revolution and the resulting resolution of national borders forced the British to re-locate their trading centers northward. The newly formed United States began its own attempts to capitalize on the fur trade, initially with some success. By the 1830s the fur trade had begun a steep decline, and fur was never again the lucrative enterprise it had once been. Pacific coast On the Pacific coast, the fur trade mainly pursued seal and sea otter. In northern areas, this trade was established first by the Russian-American Company, with later participation by Spanish/Mexican, British, and U.S. hunters/traders. Non-Russians extended fur-hunting areas south as far as the Baja California Peninsula. Southeastern United States Background Starting in the mid-16th century, Europeans traded weapons and household goods in exchange for furs with Native Americans in southeast America. The trade originally tried to mimic the fur trade in the north, with large quantities of wildcats, bears, beavers, and other fur bearing animals being traded. The trade in fur coat animals decreased in the early 18th century, curtailed by the rising popularity of trade in deer skins. The deer skin trade went onto dominate the relationships between the Native Americans of the southeast and the European settlers there. Deer skin was a highly valued commodity because of the deer shortage in Europe, and the British leather industry needed deer skins to produce goods. The bulk of deer skins were exported to Great Britain during the peak of the deer skin trade. Post-European contact in the 16th and 17th centuries Spanish exploratory parties in the 16th century had violent encounters with the powerful chiefdoms, which led to the decentralization of the indigenous people in the southeast. Almost a century passed between the original Spanish exploration and the next wave of European immigration, which allowed the survivors of the European diseases to organize into new tribes. Most Spanish trade was limited with Indians on the coast until expeditions inland in the beginning of the 17th century. By 1639, substantial trade between the Spanish in Florida and the Native Americans for deer skins developed, with more interior tribes incorporated into the system by 1647. Many tribes throughout the southeast began to send trading parties to meet with the Spanish in Florida, or used other tribes as middlemen to obtain manufactured goods. The Apalachees used the Apalachiola people to collect deer skins, and in return the Apalachees would give them silver, guns, or horses. As the English and French colonizers ventured into the southeast, the deerskin trade experienced a boom going into the 18th century. Many of the English colonists who settled in the Carolinas in the late 17th century came from Virginia, where trading patterns of European goods in exchange for beaver furs already had started. The white-tailed deer herds that roamed south of Virginia were a more profitable resource. The French and the English struggled for control over southern Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley, and needed alliances with the Indians there to maintain dominance. The European colonizers used the trade of deer skins for manufactured goods to secure trade relationships, and therefore power. Yamasee War At the beginning of the 18th century, more organized violence than in previous decades occurred between the Native Americans involved in the deer skin trade and white settlers, most famously the Yamasee War. This uprising of Indians against fur traders almost wiped out the European colonists in the southeast. The British promoted competition between tribes and sold guns to both Creeks and Cherokees. This competition sprang out of the slave demand in the southeast – tribes would raid each other and sell prisoners into the slave trade of the colonizers. France tried to outlaw these raids because their allies, the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Yazoos, bore the brunt of the slave trade. Guns and other modern weapons were essential trading items for the Native Americans to protect themselves from slave raids; motivation which drove the intensity of the deer skin trade. The need for Indian slaves decreased as African slaves began to be imported in larger quantities, and the focus returned to deer skins. The drive for Indian slaves also was diminished after the Yamasee War to avoid future uprisings. The Yamasees had collected extensive debt in the first decade of the 1700s because they bought manufactured goods on credit from traders and then were not able to produce enough deer skins to pay the debt later in the year. Indians who were not able to pay their debt were often enslaved. The practice of enslavement extended to the wives and children of the Yamasees in debt as well. This process frustrated the Yamasees and other tribes, who lodged complaints against the deceitful credit-loaning scheme traders had enforced, along with methods of cheating or trade. The Yamasees were a coastal tribe in the area that is now known as South Carolina, and most of the white-tailed deer herds had moved inland for the better environment. The Yamasees rose up against the English in South Carolina, and soon other tribes joined them, creating combatants from almost every nation in the South. The British were able to defeat the Indian coalition with help from the Cherokees, cementing a pre-existing trade partnership. After the uprisings, the Native Americans returned to making alliances with the European powers, using political savvy to get the best deals by playing the three nations off each other. The Creeks were particularly good at manipulation – they had begun trading with South Carolina in the last years of the 17th century and became a trusted deerskin provider. The Creeks were already a wealthy tribe due to their control over the most valuable hunting lands, especially when compared to the impoverished Cherokees. Due to allying with the British during the Yamasee War, the Cherokees lacked Indian trading partners and could not break with Britain to negotiate with France or Spain. Mississippi River valley From their bases in the Great Lakes area, the French steadily pushed their way down the Mississippi River valley to the Gulf of Mexico from 1682 onward. Initially, French relations with the Natchez Indians were friendly, and in 1716 the French established Fort Rosalie (modern Natchez, Mississippi) within the Natchez territory. In 1729, following several cases of French land fraud, the Natchez burned down Fort Rosalie and killed about 200 French settlers. In response, the French together with their allies, the Choctaw, waged a near-genocidal campaign against the Natchez as French and Choctaw set out to eliminate the Natchez as a people with the French often burning alive all of the Natchez they captured. Following the French victory over the Natchez in 1731, which resulted in the destruction of the Natchez people, the French were able to begin fur trading down the Arkansas River and greatly expanded the Arkansas Post to take advantage of the fur trade. Mid-18th century Deer skin trade was at its most profitable in the mid-18th century. The Creeks rose up as the largest deer skin supplier, and the increase in supply only intensified European demand for deer skins. Native Americans continued to negotiate the most lucrative trade deals by forcing England, France, and Spain to compete for their supply of deer skins. In the 1750s and 1760s, the Seven Years' War disrupted France's ability to provide manufactures goods to its allies, the Choctaws and Chickasaw. The French and Indian War further disrupted trade, as the British blockaded French goods. The Cherokees allied themselves with France, who were driven out from the southeast in accordance with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The British became the dominant trading power in the southeast. While both the Cherokee and the Creek were the main trading partners of the British, their relationships with the British were different. The Creeks adapted to the new economic trade system and managed to hold onto their old social structures. Originally Cherokee land was divided into five districts, but the number soon grew to thirteen districts with 200 hunters assigned per district because of the deer skin demand. Charleston and Savannah were the main trading ports for the export of deer skins. Deer skins became the most popular export and monetarily supported the colonies with the revenue produced by taxes on deer skins. Charleston's trade was regulated by the Indian Trade Commission, composed of traders who monopolized the market and profited off the sale of deer skins. From the beginning of the 18th century to mid-century, the deer skin exports of Charleston more than doubled. Charleston received tobacco and sugar from the West Indies and rum from the north in exchange for deer skins. In return, Great Britain sent woolens, guns, ammunition, iron tools, clothing, and other manufactured goods that were traded to the Native Americans. Post-Revolutionary War The Revolutionary War disrupted the deer skin trade, as the import of British manufactured goods with cut off. The deer skin trade had already begun to decline because of over-hunting of deer. The lack of trade caused the Native Americans to run out of items, such as guns, on which they depended. Some Indians, such as the Creeks, tried to reestablish trade with the Spanish in Florida, where some loyalists were hiding as well. When the war ended with the British retreating, many tribes who had fought on their side were left unprotected and had to make peace and new trading deals with the new country. Many Native Americans were subject to violence from the new Americans who sought to settle their territory. The new American government negotiated treaties that recognized prewar borders, such as those with the Choctaw and Chickasaw, and allowed open trade. In the two decades following the Revolutionary War, the United States' government established new treaties with the Native Americans the provided hunting grounds and terms of trade. But the value of deer skins dropped as domesticated cattle took over the market, and many tribes soon found themselves in debt. The Creeks began to sell their land to the government to try and pay their debts, and infighting among the Indians made it easy for white settlers to encroach upon their lands. The government also sought to encourage Native Americans to give up their old ways of subsistence hunting, and turn to farming and domesticated cattle for trade. Social and cultural impact The fur trade and its actors has played a certain role in films and popular culture. It was the topic of various books and films, from James Fenimore Cooper via Irving Pichels Hudson's Bay of 1941, the popular Canadian musical My Fur Lady of 1957, till Nicolas Vaniers documentaries. In contrast to "the huddy buddy narration of Canada as Hudson's country", propagated either in popular culture as well in elitist circles as the Beaver Club, founded 1785 in Montreal the often male-centered scholarly description of the fur business does not fully describe the history. Chantal Nadeau, a communication scientist in Montreal's Concordia University, refers to the "country wives" and "country marriages" between Indian women and European trappers and the Filles du Roy of the 18th century. Nadeau says that women have been described as a sort of commodity, "skin for skin", and they were essential to the sustainable prolongation of the fur trade. Nadeau describes fur as an essential, "the fabric" of Canadian symbolism and nationhood. She notes the controversies around the Canadian seal hunt, with Brigitte Bardot as a leading figure. Bardot, a famous actress, had been a model in the 1971 "Legend" campaign of the U.S. mink label Blackglama, for which she posed nude in fur coats. Her involvement in anti-fur campaigns shortly afterward was in response to a request by the noted author Marguerite Yourcenar, who asked Bardot to use her celebrity status to help the anti-sealing movement. Bardot had successes as an anti-fur activist and changed from sex symbol to the grown-up mama of "white seal babies". Nadeau related this to her later involvement in French right-wing politics. The anti-fur movement in Canada was intertwined with the nation's exploration of history during and after the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, until the roll back of the anti-fur movement in the late 1990s. PETA celebrity campaign: "I'd rather go naked than wear fur", turned around the "skin for skin" motto and symbology against fur and the fur trade. Modern day Modern fur trapping and trading in North America is part of a wider $ 15 billion global fur industry where wild animal pelts make up only 15 percent of total fur output. %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% In 2008, the global recession hit the fur industry and trappers especially hard with greatly depressed fur prices thanks to a drop in the sale of expensive fur coats and hats. Such a drop in fur prices reflects trends of previous economic downturns. In 2013, the North American Fur Industry Communications (NAFIC) group was established as a cooperative public educational program for the fur industry in Canada and the U.S. NAFIC disseminates information via the Internet under the brand name "Truth About Fur" .
A
Lifestyle changes Native American beliefs revolved around respecting the environment. Indians believed they had a unique relationship with the animals they hunted, and many tribes had rules surrounding how a hunt could occur, particularly prohibiting needless killing of deer. There were specific taboos against taking the skins of unhealthy deer. But the lucrative deerskin trade prompted hunters to act past the point of restraint they had operated under before. The hunting economy collapsed because of the scarcity of deer as they were over-hunted and lost their lands to white settlers. As the deer populations declined and the government pressured tribes to switch to the colonists' way of life, animal husbandry replaced deer hunting both as an income and in the diet.
A
Rum was first introduced in the early 16th century as a trading item and quickly became an inelastic good. While Native Americans for the most part acted conservatively in trading deals, they consumed a surplus of alcohol. Traders used rum to help form partnerships. Rum had a significant effect on the social behavior of Native Americans. Under the influence of rum, the younger generation did not obey the elders of the tribe and became involved with more skirmishes with other tribes and white settlers. Rum also disrupted the amount of time the younger generation of males spent on labor. Alcohol was one of the goods provided on credit, and led to a debt trap for many Native Americans. Native Americans did not know how to distill alcohol and thus were driven to trade for it.
A
Native Americans had become dependent on manufactured goods such as guns and domesticated animals, and lost much of their traditional practices. With the new cattle herds roaming the hunting lands, and a greater emphasis on farming due to the invention of the cotton gin, Native Americans struggled to maintain their place in the economy. An inequality gap had appeared in the tribes, as some hunters were more successful than others.
A
Still, the creditors treated an individual's debt as debt of the whole tribe and used several strategies to keep the Native Americans in debt. Traders would rig the weighing system that determined the value of the deerskins in their favor, cut measurement tools to devalue the deerskin, and would tamper with the manufactured goods to decrease their worth, such as watering down the alcohol they traded. To satisfy the need for deerskins, many males of the tribes abandoned their traditional seasonal roles and became full-time traders. When the deerskin trade collapsed, Native Americans found themselves dependent on manufactured goods, and could not return to the old ways because of lost knowledge.
A
Northern Athabaskan peoples The fur trade seems to have weakened the status of Indian women in the Canadian sub-arctic in what is now the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, and the northern parts of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The harsh terrain imposed a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle on the people living there as to stay in one place for long would quickly exhaust the food supply. The Indians living in the sub-arctic had only small dogs incapable of carrying heavy loads with one fur trader in 1867 calling Gwich'in dogs "miserable creatures no smaller than foxes" while another noted "dogs were scare and burdens were supported by people's backs". The absence of navigable rivers made riparian transport impossible, so everything had to be carried on the backs of the women.
A
There was a belief among the Northern Athabaskan peoples that weapons could be only handled by men, and that for a weapon to be used by a woman would cause it to lose its effectiveness; as relations between the various bands were hostile, during travel, men were always armed while the women carried all of the baggage. All of the Indian men living in the sub-arctic had an acute horror of menstrual blood, seen as an unclean substance that no men could ever touch and as a symbol of a threatening femininity.
A
American anthropologist Richard J. Perry suggests that under the impact of the fur trade that certain misogynistic tendencies that were already long established among the Northern Athabaskan peoples became significantly worse. Owing to the harsh terrain of the subarctic and the limited food supplies, the First Nations peoples living there had long practiced infanticide to limit their band sizes, as a large population would starve. One fur trader in the 19th century noted that within the Gwich'in, newly born girls were far more likely to be victims of infanticide than boys, owing to the low status of women, adding that female infanticide was practiced to such an extent there was a shortage of women in their society.
A
Perry argues that the crucial difference between the Northern Athabaskan peoples living in the sub-arctic compared to those living further south like the Cree and Ojibwe was the existence of waterways that canoes could traverse. In the 18th century, Cree and Ojibwe men could and did travel hundreds of miles to HBC posts on Hudson's Bay via canoe to sell fur and bring back European goods, and in the interim, their women were in largely in charge of their communities. At York Factory in the 18th century, the factors reported that flotillas of up to 200 canoes would arrive at a time bearing Indian men coming to barter their fur for HBC's goods. Normally, the trip to York Factory was made by the Cree and Ojibwe men while their womenfolk stayed behind in their villages. Until 1774, the Hudson's Bay Company was content to operate its posts on the shores of Hudson's Bay, and only competition from the rival North West Company based in Montreal forced the Hudson's Bay Company to assert its claim to Rupert's Land. By contrast, the absence of waterways flowing into Hudson's Bay (the major river in the subarctic, the Mackenzie, flows into the Arctic Ocean) forced the Northern Athabaskan peoples to travel by foot with the women as baggage carriers. In this way, the fur trade empowered Cree and Ojibwe women while reducing the Northern Athabaskan women down to a slave-like existence.
R
subsidence
subsistence
D
,
D
,
R
wrote
writes
D
,
R
life-styles
lifestyles
R
, and in no way can
and cannot
D
Creeks Native American—specifically the Creek's—beliefs revolved around respecting the environment. The Creek believed they had a unique relationship with the animals they hunted. The Creek had several rules surrounding how a hunt could occur, particularly prohibiting needless killing of deer.
D
There were specific taboos against taking the skins of unhealthy deer. But the lucrative deerskin trade prompted hunters to act past the point of restraint they had operated under before. The hunting economy collapsed due to the scarcity of deer as they were over-hunted and lost their lands to white settlers. Due to the decline of deer populations, and the governmental pressure to switch to the colonists' way of life, animal husbandry replaced deer hunting both as an income and in the diet.
D
Rum was first introduced in the early 1700s as a trading item, and quickly became an inelastic good. While Native Americans were for the most part acted conservatively in trading deals, they consumed a surplus of alcohol. Traders used rum to help form partnerships.
D
Rum had a significant effect on the social behavior of Native Americans. Under the influence of rum, the younger generation did not obey the elders of the tribe, and became involved with more skirmishes with other tribes and white settlers. Rum also disrupted the amount of time the younger generation of males spent on labor. Alcohol was one of the goods provided on credit, and led to a debt trap for many Native Americans. Native Americans did not know how to distill alcohol, and thus were driven to trade for it.
D
Native Americans had become dependent on manufactured goods such as guns and domesticated animals, and lost much of their traditional practices. With the new cattle herds roaming the hunting lands, and a greater emphasis on farming due to the invention of the Cotton Gin, Native Americans struggled to maintain their place in the economy. An inequality gap had appeared in the tribes, as some hunters were more successful than others.
D
Still, the creditors treated an individual's debt as debt of the whole tribe, and used several strategies to keep the Native Americans in debt. Traders would rig the weighing system that determined the value of the deerskins in their favor, cut measurement tools to devalue the deerskin, and would tamper with the manufactured goods to decrease their worth, such as watering down the alcohol they traded. To satisfy the need for deerskins, many males of the tribes abandoned their traditional seasonal roles and became full-time traders. When the deerskin trade collapsed, Native Americans found themselves dependent on manufactured goods, and could not return to the old ways due to lost knowledge.
R
river
River
D
always
D
,
R
decried
decries
R
described
describes
R
assumed
assumes
R
did note
notes
A
,
A
,
D
the
R
followed
follows
R
wrote
writes
R
nineteenth
19th
R
Northeast
northeast
A
,
R
would play
played
D
,
R
Native
native
R
Northeast
northeast
R
country
Country
A
River
A
,
A
,
R
US
U.S.
R
would establish
established
A
,
R
$15–20 a ton in order to purchase supplies for the winter. The reservation system did not ensure that the Métis were protected and accepted as Indians. To further complicate matters, Métis had a questionable status as citizens and were often deemed incompetent to give court testimonies and denied the right to vote. The end of the bison robe trade was the end of the fur trade for many Métis. This meant that they had to reestablish their identity and adapt to a new economic world. Northern Athabaskan peoples The fur trade seems to have weakened the status of Indian women in the Canadian sub-arctic in what is now the North West Territories, the Yukon, and the northern parts of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The harsh terrain imposed a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle on the people living there as to stay in one place for long would quickly exhaust the food supply. The Indians living in the sub-arctic had only small dogs incapable of carrying heavy loads with one fur trader in 1867 calling Gwich'in dogs "miserable creatures no smaller than foxes" while another noted "dogs were scare and burdens were supported by people's backs". The absence of navigable rivers made riparian transport impossible, so everything had to be carried on the backs of the women. There was a belief among the Northern Athabaskan peoples that weapons could be only handled by men, and that for a weapon to be used by a woman would cause it to lose its effectiveness; as relations between the various bands were hostile, during travel, men were always armed while the women carried all of the baggage. All of the Indian men living in the sub-arctic had an acute horror of menstrual blood, seen as an unclean substance that no men could ever touch, and as a symbol of a threatening femininity. The American anthropologist Richard J. Perry suggests that under the impact of the fur trade that certain misogynistic tendencies that were already long established among the Northern Athabaskan peoples became significantly worse. Owing to the harsh terrain of the subarctic and the limited food supplies, the First Nations peoples living there had long practiced infanticide to limit their band sizes, as a large population would starve. One fur trader in the 19th century noted that within the Gwich'in, newly born girls were far more likely to be victims of infanticide than boys, owing to the low status of women, adding that female infanticide was practiced to such an extent there was a shortage of women in their society. Perry argues that the crucial difference between the Northern Athabaskan peoples living in the sub-arctic vs. those living further south like the Cree and Ojibwe was the existence of waterways that canoes could traverse in the case of the latter. In the 18th century, Cree and Ojibwe men could and did travel hundreds of miles to HBC posts on Hudson's Bay via canoe to sell fur and bring back European goods, and in the interim, their women were in largely in charge of their communities. At York Factory in the 18th century, the factors reported that flotillas of up to 200 canoes would arrive at a time bearing Indian men coming to barter their fur for HBC's goods. Normally, the trip to York Factory was made by the Cree and Ojibwe men while their womenfolk stayed behind in their villages. Until 1774, the Hudson's Bay Company was content to operate its posts on the shores of Hudson's Bay, and only competition from the rival North West Company based in Montreal forced the Hudson's Bay Company to assert its claim to Rupert's Land. By contrast, the absence of waterways flowing into Hudson's Bay (the major river in the subarctic, the Mackenzie, flows into the Arctic Ocean) forced the Northern Athabaskan peoples to travel by foot with the women as baggage carriers. In this way, the fur trade empowered Cree and Ojibwe women while reducing the Northern Athabaskan women down to a slave-like existence. English colonies By the end of the 18th century the four major British fur trading outposts were Fort Niagara in modern New York, Fort Detroit and Fort Michilimackinac in modern Michigan, and Grand Portage in modern Minnesota, all located in the Great Lakes region. The American Revolution and the resulting resolution of national borders forced the British to re-locate their trading centers northward. The newly formed United States began its own attempts to capitalize on the fur trade, initially with some success. By the 1830s the fur trade had begun a steep decline, and fur was never again the lucrative enterprise it had once been. Pacific coast On the Pacific coast of North America, the fur trade mainly pursued seal and sea otter. In northern areas, this trade was established first by the Russian-American Company, with later participation by Spanish/Mexican, British, and U.S. hunters/traders. Non-Russians extended fur-hunting areas south as far as the Baja California Peninsula. Southeastern United States Background Starting in the mid-16th century, Europeans traded weapons and household goods in exchange for furs with Native Americans in southeast America. The trade originally tried to mimic the fur trade in the north, with large quantities of wildcats, bears, beavers, and other fur bearing animals being traded. The trade in fur coat animals decreased in the early 18th century, curtailed by the rising popularity of trade in deerskins. The deerskin trade went onto dominate the relationships between the Native Americans of the southeast and the European settlers there. Deerskin was a highly valued commodity due to the deer shortage in Europe, and the British leather industry needed deerskins to produce goods. The bulk of deerskins were exported to Great Britain during the peak of the deerskin trade. Post-European contact in the 16th and 17th centuries Spanish exploratory parties in the 1500s had violent encounters with the powerful chiefdoms, which led to the decentralization of the indigenous people in the southeast. Almost a century passed between the original Spanish exploration and the next wave of European immigration, which allowed the survivors of the European diseases to organize into new tribes. Most Spanish trade was limited with Indians on the coast until expeditions inland in the beginning of the 17th century. By 1639, substantial trade between the Spanish in Florida and the Native Americans for deerskins developed, with more interior tribes incorporated into the system by 1647. Many tribes throughout the southeast began to send trading parties to meet with the Spanish in Florida, or used other tribes as middlemen to obtain manufactured goods. The Apalachees used the Apalachiola people to collect deerskins, and in return the Apalachees would give them silver, guns, or horses. As the English and French colonizers ventured into the southeast, the deerskin trade experienced a boom going into the 18th century. Many of the English colonists who settled in the Carolinas in the late 1600s came from Virginia, where trading patterns of European goods in exchange for beaver furs already had started. The white-tailed deer herds that roamed south of Virginia were a more profitable resource. The French and the English struggled for control over Southern Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley, and needed alliances with the Indians there to maintain dominance. The European colonizers used the trade of deerskins for manufactured goods to secure trade relationships, and therefore power. Beginning of the 18th century At the beginning of the 18th century, more organized violence than in previous decades occurred between the Native Americans involved in the deerskin trade and white settlers, most famously the Yamasee War. This uprising of Indians against fur traders almost wiped out the European colonists in the southeast. The British promoted competition between tribes, and sold guns to both Creeks and Cherokees. This competition sprang out of the slave demand in the southeast – tribes would raid each other and sell prisoners into the slave trade of the colonizers. France tried to outlaw these raids because their allies, the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Yazoos, bore the brunt of the slave trade. Guns and other modern weapons were essential trading items for the Native Americans to protect themselves from slave raids; motivation which drove the intensity of the deerskin trade. The need for Indian slaves decreased as African slaves began to be imported in larger quantities, and the focus returned to deerskins. The drive for Indian slaves also was diminished after the Yamasee War to avoid future uprisings. The Yamasees had collected extensive debt in the first decade of the 1700s due to buying manufactured goods on credit from traders, and then not being able to produce enough deerskins to pay the debt later in the year. Indians who were not able to pay their debt were often enslaved. The practice of enslavement extended to the wives and children of the Yamasees in debt as well. This process frustrated the Yamasees and other tribes, who lodged complaints against the deceitful credit-loaning scheme traders had enforced, along with methods of cheating or trade. The Yamasees were a coastal tribe in the area that is now known as South Carolina, and most of the white-tailed deer herds had moved inland for the better environment. The Yamasees rose up against the English in South Carolina, and soon other tribes joined them, creating combatants from almost every nation in the South. The British were able to defeat the Indian coalition with help from the Cherokees, cementing a pre-existing trade partnership. After the uprisings, the Native Americans returned to making alliances with the European powers, using political savvy to get the best deals by playing the three nations off each other. The Creeks were particularly good at manipulation – they had begun trading with South Carolina in the last years of the 17th century and became a trusted deerskin provider. The Creeks were already a wealthy tribe due to their control over the most valuable hunting lands, especially when compared to the impoverished Cherokees. Due to allying with the British during the Yamasee War, the Cherokees lacked Indian trading partners and could not break with Britain to negotiate with France or Spain. Mississippi River valley From their bases in the Great Lakes area, the French steadily pushed their way down the Mississippi River valley to the Gulf of Mexico from 1682 onward. Initially, French relations with the Natchez Indians were friendly and in 1716 the French were allowed to establish Fort Rosalie (modern Natchez, Mississippi) on the Natchez territory. In 1729, following several cases of French land fraud, the Natchez burned down Fort Rosalie and killed about 200 French settlers. In response, the French together with their allies, the Choctaw, waged a near-genocidal campaign against the Natchez as French and Choctaw set out to eliminate the Natchez as a people with the French often burning alive all of the Natchez they captured. Following the French victory over the Natchez in 1731 which resulted in the destruction of the Natchez people, the French were able to begin fur trading down the Arkansas river and greatly expanded the Arkansas Post to take advantage of the fur trade. Mid-18th century Deerskin trade was at its most profitable in the mid-18th century. The Creeks rose up as the largest deerskin supplier, and the increase in supply only intensified European demand for deerskins. Native Americans continued to negotiate the most lucrative trade deals by forcing England, France, and Spain to compete for their supply of deerskins. In the 1750s and 1760s, the Seven Years' War disrupted France's ability to provide manufactures goods to its allies, the Choctaws and Chickasaw. The French and Indian War further disrupted trade, as the British blockaded French goods. The Cherokees allied themselves with France, who were driven out from the southeast in accordance with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The British were now the dominant trading power in the southeast. While both the Cherokee and the Creek were the main trading partners of the British, their relationships with the British were different. The Creeks adapted to the new economic trade system, and managed to hold onto their old social structures. Originally Cherokee land was divided into five districts but the number soon grew to thirteen districts with 200 hunters assigned per district due to deerskin demand. Charleston and Savannah were the main trading ports for the export of deerskins. Deerskins became the most popular export, and monetarily supported the colonies with the revenue produced by taxes on deerskins. Charleston's trade was regulated by the Indian Trade Commission, composed of traders who monopolized the market and profited off the sale of deerskins. From the beginning of the 18th century to mid-century, the deerskin exports of Charleston more than doubled in exports. Charleston received tobacco and sugar from the West Indies and rum from the North in exchange for deerskins. In return for deerskins, Great Britain sent woolens, guns, ammunition, iron tools, clothing, and other manufactured goods that were traded to the Native Americans. Post-Revolutionary War The Revolutionary War disrupted the deerskin trade, as the import of British manufactured goods with cut off. The deerskin trade had already begun to decline due to over-hunting of deer. The lack of trade caused the Native Americans to run out of items, such as guns, on which they depended. Some Indians, such as the Creeks, tried to reestablish trade with the Spanish in Florida, where some loyalists were hiding as well. When the war ended with the British retreating, many tribes who had fought on their side were now left unprotected and now had to make peace and new trading deals with the new country. Many Native Americans were subject to violence from the new Americans who sought to settle their territory. The new American government negotiated treaties that recognized prewar borders, such as those with the Choctaw and Chickasaw, and allowed open trade. In the two decades following the Revolutionary War, the United States' government established new treaties with the Native Americans the provided hunting grounds and terms of trade. But the value of deerskins dropped as domesticated cattle took over the market, and many tribes soon found themselves in debt. The Creeks began to sell their land to the government to try and pay their debts, and infighting among the Indians made it easy for white settlers to encroach upon their lands. The government also sought to encourage Native Americans to give up their old ways of subsistence hunting, and turn to farming and domesticated cattle for trade. Social and cultural impact The fur trade and its actors has played a certain role in films and popular culture. It was the topic of various books and films, from James Fenimore Cooper via Irving Pichels Hudson's Bay of 1941, the popular Canadian musical My Fur Lady (music by Galt MacDermot) of 1957, till Nicolas Vaniers documentaries. In contrast to "the huddy buddy narration of Canada as Hudson's country", propagated either in popular culture as well in elitist circles as the Beaver Club, founded 1785 in Montreal the often male-centered scholarly description of the fur business does not fully describe the history. Chantal Nadeau, a communication scientist in Montreal's Concordia University refers to the "country wives" and "country marriages" between Indian women and European trappers and the Filles du Roy of the 18th century. Nadeau says that women have been described as a sort of commodity, "skin for skin", and they were essential to the sustainable prolongation of the fur trade. Nadeau describes fur as an essential, "the fabric" of Canadian symbolism and nationhood. She notes the controversies around the Canadian seal hunt, with Brigitte Bardot as a leading figure. Bardot, a famous actress, had been a model in the 1971 "Legend" campaign of the US mink label Blackglama, for which she posed nude in fur coats. Her involvement in anti-fur campaigns shortly afterward was in response to a request by the noted author Marguerite Yourcenar, who asked Bardot to use her celebrity status to help the anti-sealing movement. Bardot had successes as an anti-fur activist and changed from sex symbol to the grown-up mama of "white seal babies". Nadeau related this to her later involvement in French right-wing politics. The anti-fur movement in Canada was intertwined with the nation's exploration of history during and after the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, until the roll back of the anti-fur movement in the late 1990s. Finally, the PETA celebrity campaign: "I'd rather go naked than wear fur", turned around the "skin for skin" motto and symbology against fur and the fur trade. Modern day Modern fur trapping and trading in North America is part of a wider $
$15–20 per ton in order to purchase supplies for the winter. The reservation system did not ensure that the Métis were protected and accepted as Indians. To further complicate matters, Métis had a questionable status as citizens and were often deemed incompetent to give court testimonies and denied the right to vote. The end of the bison robe trade was the end of the fur trade for many Métis. This meant that they had to reestablish their identity and adapt to a new economic world. English colonies By the end of the 18th century the four major British fur trading outposts were Fort Niagara in modern New York, Fort Detroit and Fort Michilimackinac in modern Michigan, and Grand Portage in modern Minnesota, all located in the Great Lakes region. The American Revolution and the resulting resolution of national borders forced the British to re-locate their trading centers northward. The newly formed United States began its own attempts to capitalize on the fur trade, initially with some success. By the 1830s the fur trade had begun a steep decline, and fur was never again the lucrative enterprise it had once been. Pacific coast On the Pacific coast, the fur trade mainly pursued seal and sea otter. In northern areas, this trade was established first by the Russian-American Company, with later participation by Spanish/Mexican, British, and U.S. hunters/traders. Non-Russians extended fur-hunting areas south as far as the Baja California Peninsula. Southeastern United States Background Starting in the mid-16th century, Europeans traded weapons and household goods in exchange for furs with Native Americans in southeast America. The trade originally tried to mimic the fur trade in the north, with large quantities of wildcats, bears, beavers, and other fur bearing animals being traded. The trade in fur coat animals decreased in the early 18th century, curtailed by the rising popularity of trade in deer skins. The deer skin trade went onto dominate the relationships between the Native Americans of the southeast and the European settlers there. Deer skin was a highly valued commodity because of the deer shortage in Europe, and the British leather industry needed deer skins to produce goods. The bulk of deer skins were exported to Great Britain during the peak of the deer skin trade. Post-European contact in the 16th and 17th centuries Spanish exploratory parties in the 16th century had violent encounters with the powerful chiefdoms, which led to the decentralization of the indigenous people in the southeast. Almost a century passed between the original Spanish exploration and the next wave of European immigration, which allowed the survivors of the European diseases to organize into new tribes. Most Spanish trade was limited with Indians on the coast until expeditions inland in the beginning of the 17th century. By 1639, substantial trade between the Spanish in Florida and the Native Americans for deer skins developed, with more interior tribes incorporated into the system by 1647. Many tribes throughout the southeast began to send trading parties to meet with the Spanish in Florida, or used other tribes as middlemen to obtain manufactured goods. The Apalachees used the Apalachiola people to collect deer skins, and in return the Apalachees would give them silver, guns, or horses. As the English and French colonizers ventured into the southeast, the deerskin trade experienced a boom going into the 18th century. Many of the English colonists who settled in the Carolinas in the late 17th century came from Virginia, where trading patterns of European goods in exchange for beaver furs already had started. The white-tailed deer herds that roamed south of Virginia were a more profitable resource. The French and the English struggled for control over southern Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley, and needed alliances with the Indians there to maintain dominance. The European colonizers used the trade of deer skins for manufactured goods to secure trade relationships, and therefore power. Yamasee War At the beginning of the 18th century, more organized violence than in previous decades occurred between the Native Americans involved in the deer skin trade and white settlers, most famously the Yamasee War. This uprising of Indians against fur traders almost wiped out the European colonists in the southeast. The British promoted competition between tribes and sold guns to both Creeks and Cherokees. This competition sprang out of the slave demand in the southeast – tribes would raid each other and sell prisoners into the slave trade of the colonizers. France tried to outlaw these raids because their allies, the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Yazoos, bore the brunt of the slave trade. Guns and other modern weapons were essential trading items for the Native Americans to protect themselves from slave raids; motivation which drove the intensity of the deer skin trade. The need for Indian slaves decreased as African slaves began to be imported in larger quantities, and the focus returned to deer skins. The drive for Indian slaves also was diminished after the Yamasee War to avoid future uprisings. The Yamasees had collected extensive debt in the first decade of the 1700s because they bought manufactured goods on credit from traders and then were not able to produce enough deer skins to pay the debt later in the year. Indians who were not able to pay their debt were often enslaved. The practice of enslavement extended to the wives and children of the Yamasees in debt as well. This process frustrated the Yamasees and other tribes, who lodged complaints against the deceitful credit-loaning scheme traders had enforced, along with methods of cheating or trade. The Yamasees were a coastal tribe in the area that is now known as South Carolina, and most of the white-tailed deer herds had moved inland for the better environment. The Yamasees rose up against the English in South Carolina, and soon other tribes joined them, creating combatants from almost every nation in the South. The British were able to defeat the Indian coalition with help from the Cherokees, cementing a pre-existing trade partnership. After the uprisings, the Native Americans returned to making alliances with the European powers, using political savvy to get the best deals by playing the three nations off each other. The Creeks were particularly good at manipulation – they had begun trading with South Carolina in the last years of the 17th century and became a trusted deerskin provider. The Creeks were already a wealthy tribe due to their control over the most valuable hunting lands, especially when compared to the impoverished Cherokees. Due to allying with the British during the Yamasee War, the Cherokees lacked Indian trading partners and could not break with Britain to negotiate with France or Spain. Mississippi River valley From their bases in the Great Lakes area, the French steadily pushed their way down the Mississippi River valley to the Gulf of Mexico from 1682 onward. Initially, French relations with the Natchez Indians were friendly, and in 1716 the French established Fort Rosalie (modern Natchez, Mississippi) within the Natchez territory. In 1729, following several cases of French land fraud, the Natchez burned down Fort Rosalie and killed about 200 French settlers. In response, the French together with their allies, the Choctaw, waged a near-genocidal campaign against the Natchez as French and Choctaw set out to eliminate the Natchez as a people with the French often burning alive all of the Natchez they captured. Following the French victory over the Natchez in 1731, which resulted in the destruction of the Natchez people, the French were able to begin fur trading down the Arkansas River and greatly expanded the Arkansas Post to take advantage of the fur trade. Mid-18th century Deer skin trade was at its most profitable in the mid-18th century. The Creeks rose up as the largest deer skin supplier, and the increase in supply only intensified European demand for deer skins. Native Americans continued to negotiate the most lucrative trade deals by forcing England, France, and Spain to compete for their supply of deer skins. In the 1750s and 1760s, the Seven Years' War disrupted France's ability to provide manufactures goods to its allies, the Choctaws and Chickasaw. The French and Indian War further disrupted trade, as the British blockaded French goods. The Cherokees allied themselves with France, who were driven out from the southeast in accordance with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The British became the dominant trading power in the southeast. While both the Cherokee and the Creek were the main trading partners of the British, their relationships with the British were different. The Creeks adapted to the new economic trade system and managed to hold onto their old social structures. Originally Cherokee land was divided into five districts, but the number soon grew to thirteen districts with 200 hunters assigned per district because of the deer skin demand. Charleston and Savannah were the main trading ports for the export of deer skins. Deer skins became the most popular export and monetarily supported the colonies with the revenue produced by taxes on deer skins. Charleston's trade was regulated by the Indian Trade Commission, composed of traders who monopolized the market and profited off the sale of deer skins. From the beginning of the 18th century to mid-century, the deer skin exports of Charleston more than doubled. Charleston received tobacco and sugar from the West Indies and rum from the north in exchange for deer skins. In return, Great Britain sent woolens, guns, ammunition, iron tools, clothing, and other manufactured goods that were traded to the Native Americans. Post-Revolutionary War The Revolutionary War disrupted the deer skin trade, as the import of British manufactured goods with cut off. The deer skin trade had already begun to decline because of over-hunting of deer. The lack of trade caused the Native Americans to run out of items, such as guns, on which they depended. Some Indians, such as the Creeks, tried to reestablish trade with the Spanish in Florida, where some loyalists were hiding as well. When the war ended with the British retreating, many tribes who had fought on their side were left unprotected and had to make peace and new trading deals with the new country. Many Native Americans were subject to violence from the new Americans who sought to settle their territory. The new American government negotiated treaties that recognized prewar borders, such as those with the Choctaw and Chickasaw, and allowed open trade. In the two decades following the Revolutionary War, the United States' government established new treaties with the Native Americans the provided hunting grounds and terms of trade. But the value of deer skins dropped as domesticated cattle took over the market, and many tribes soon found themselves in debt. The Creeks began to sell their land to the government to try and pay their debts, and infighting among the Indians made it easy for white settlers to encroach upon their lands. The government also sought to encourage Native Americans to give up their old ways of subsistence hunting, and turn to farming and domesticated cattle for trade. Social and cultural impact The fur trade and its actors has played a certain role in films and popular culture. It was the topic of various books and films, from James Fenimore Cooper via Irving Pichels Hudson's Bay of 1941, the popular Canadian musical My Fur Lady of 1957, till Nicolas Vaniers documentaries. In contrast to "the huddy buddy narration of Canada as Hudson's country", propagated either in popular culture as well in elitist circles as the Beaver Club, founded 1785 in Montreal the often male-centered scholarly description of the fur business does not fully describe the history. Chantal Nadeau, a communication scientist in Montreal's Concordia University, refers to the "country wives" and "country marriages" between Indian women and European trappers and the Filles du Roy of the 18th century. Nadeau says that women have been described as a sort of commodity, "skin for skin", and they were essential to the sustainable prolongation of the fur trade. Nadeau describes fur as an essential, "the fabric" of Canadian symbolism and nationhood. She notes the controversies around the Canadian seal hunt, with Brigitte Bardot as a leading figure. Bardot, a famous actress, had been a model in the 1971 "Legend" campaign of the U.S. mink label Blackglama, for which she posed nude in fur coats. Her involvement in anti-fur campaigns shortly afterward was in response to a request by the noted author Marguerite Yourcenar, who asked Bardot to use her celebrity status to help the anti-sealing movement. Bardot had successes as an anti-fur activist and changed from sex symbol to the grown-up mama of "white seal babies". Nadeau related this to her later involvement in French right-wing politics. The anti-fur movement in Canada was intertwined with the nation's exploration of history during and after the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, until the roll back of the anti-fur movement in the late 1990s. PETA celebrity campaign: "I'd rather go naked than wear fur", turned around the "skin for skin" motto and symbology against fur and the fur trade. Modern day Modern fur trapping and trading in North America is part of a wider $
D
group
A
group
R
USA.
U.S.
D
.
D
Members of NAFIC are: the auction houses American Legend Cooperative in Seattle, North American Fur Auctions in Toronto, and Fur Harvesters AuctionFur Harvesters Auction Inc. in North Bay, Ontario; the American Mink Council, representing US mink producers; the mink farmers' associations Canada Mink Breeders AssociationCanada Mink Breeders Association . and Fur Commission USA;Fur Commission USA. the trade associations Fur Council of CanadaFur Council of Canada. and Fur Information Council of America;Fur Information Council of America. the Fur Institute of Canada, leader of the country's trap research and testing program; Fur wRaps The Hill, the political and legislative arm of the North American fur industry; and the International Fur Federation,International Fur Federation. based in London, UK