Original:  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.
Revised:  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.
Edit intent: meaning-changed