تجارة الفراء في النظام
"بيفر بويرد تسلق الجبال"
في هنري ناش سميث، يستكشف هنري ناش سميث الصورة الأسطورية لرجال الجبال الذين قادوا شرقا إلى الاعتقاد بأنهم كانوا يتجولون في الصحراء الغربية الذين يسعون إلى المغامرة و إنتريك. على الرغم من أن هذا كان المفهوم الشعبي، لم يكن الأمر كذلك. وكان هؤلاء الرجال رجال أعمال متقلبين للغاية، وهم بحاجة إلى إطار اقتصادي، مهما كان فضفاضا وعابرا، لدعم احتلالهم. وفرت الشركة والشركات التي نتجت عنها الدعم المالي والاستقرار الذي يحتاجه رجال الجبال لتجاوز القارة بحثا عن المغامرة والربح.
كان هناك أساسا منطقين للتجارة: تجارة روكي ماونتن فور و ميسوري العليا. وكان للمنطقتين ظروف مختلفة، وبالتالي أساليب مختلفة جدا لتشغيل الأعمال. واعتمدت تجارة ميسوري العليا على القبائل الهندية لجلب جلود الجاموس إلى المراكز التجارية. هناك، تم شراء الجلباب وإرسالها إلى سانت لويس عبر النهر.
وكان نظام الصخور الجبلية محاصرة مختلفة تماما. في الروكيز، كان سمور الفراء في الاختيار. كان محاصرين بشكل رئيسي من قبل رجال الجبال الأوروبيين الأمريكيين الذين يسافرون في مجموعات الشركات. وقد تم بيعها في اجتماع سنوي حيث يسافر المشترون برا إلى الموقع المحدد ثم يسحبون الفراء عبر قطار البغل وسيارة إلى المدينة ليتم بيعها. وقد سمح هذا النظام للرجال الجبلية بالبقاء في البرية على مدار السنة، حيث لم يكن لديهم للسفر إلى مركز تجاري لبيع صيدهم. لم يتم إغلاق هذين النظامين من بعضهما البعض. اعتمادا على التضاريس، ورأس المال المتاح، وموقف القبائل الهندية القريبة، فإن شركة الفراء في كثير من الأحيان استخدام كل من نظام الالتقاء والمناصب التجارية.
أول شركة عمالقة الفرو هي شركة خليج هدسون البريطانية، التي استأجرتها في عام 1670. هيمنت شركة خليج هدسون على تجارة شمال كندا وأراضي ولاية أوريغون بشكل جيد في القرن التاسع عشر. وكان أول مشروع أميركي كبير هو شركة الفراء في المحيط الهادئ التي بدأها جون جاكوب أستور في عام 1810. كان حلم أستور هو إنشاء شركة تغطي جميع الغرب، بدءا بحصن عند مصب نهر كولومبيا. أرسل مجموعة واحدة عن طريق السفن لبناء الحصن وأخرى عن طريق البر لإقامة طريق برا قابلة للاستعمال. تم بناء الحصن "أستوريا" كما كان مخططا، ووصلت المجموعة البرية في عام 1811. وكانت شركة شمال غرب فرنسا محاصرة بالفعل في المنطقة المجاورة وقدمت منافسة حادة لأستور. مع التهديد القادم من الغزو البريطاني خلال حرب عام 1812، باع أستور حصنه لشركة شمال غرب لجزء بسيط من تكلفته. قام البريطانيون بغزو الحصن واستولائهم عليه، وأعيد تسميته فورت جورج. بعد أن فازت الولايات المتحدة بالحرب، أعيد المنصب إلى أمريكا، ولكن ليس لأستور.
وكانت تجارة الفراء الأمريكية نائمة من 1814 إلى 1819 بسبب الاضطرابات الاقتصادية والسياسية الناجمة عن حرب عام 1812. كما تسبب فقدان أستوريا والمشاكل مع الهنود بلاكفيت في ولاية ميسوري ضربة لهذه التجارة. مانويل ليزا لم تدير لتشغيل شركة ميسوري الفراء من حوالي 1807 حتي 1820؛ بنيت هذه المجموعة فورت ريمون في عام 1807 وحاصرت وتداولت مع الهنود في ولاية ميسوري العليا. في عام 1822، قدم جون جاكوب أستور مرة أخرى لاول مرة في صناعة الفراء من خلال إنشاء القسم الغربي لشركة الفور الأمريكية في سانت لويس. قبل عام، اندمجت شركة خليج هدسون وشركة شمال غرب، مما أدى إلى الهيمنة البريطانية لنهر كولومبيا. وفي عام 1822 أيضا، أعلن ويليام هنري أشلي عن "مائة شابا يصعدون إلى نهر ميسوري إلى مصدره، ليتم توظيفهم لمدة سنة أو سنتين أو ثلاث سنوات". وكان هذا بداية بداية شركة روكي ماونتن فور. على الرغم من أنها ستغير اليدين عدة مرات، فإن هذه الشركة ابتكار هذه الصناعة من خلال خلق "نظام الصياد الحرة" و موعد.
وستكون كل من شركة "فور" الأمريكية الجديدة "آستور" وشركة "فروكي ماونتن فور" ناجحة في إنشاء نظام التداول في جبال روكي. ومع تشعب الشركتين، سيتنافسون في النهاية على السيطرة على تجارة ميسوري العليا. انتهت المنافسة الشديدة مع انهيار الشركة الأمريكية في عام 1834. وكان هذا كذلك. بحلول عام 1834، تراجع الطلب على القبعات القندس (الأزياء تحولت إلى الحرير) جنبا إلى جنب مع ندرة الموارد المتزايدة (كان القندس محاصرين تقريبا) لإضعاف السوق. في أوائل عام 1830، كان سمور يستحق ما يقرب من 6 $ / رطل في فيلادلفيا. بحلول عام 1843 كان السعر حتى لا 3 $ / رطل.
وكانت شركات الفراء قوة مركزية في حياة الرجال الجبل. فقد وفرت النظام الاقتصادي وكثيرا ما كان رأس المال الأولي ضروري لحياة الصائد. ولكن إذا ساعد عمالقة الفراء في تشغيل الصياد، فإنها تسيطر عليه أيضا. وكان رجل الجبل عبدا لسوق الفراء التي أنشأتها المنافسة بين الشركات. كان مقدار السيطرة على الشركة على صائد يعتمد على ما عقد لخدماته كان تحت. "المشاركات" هم من الرجال الذين تم تزويدهم بأجر من قبل الشركة. الفراء التي جمعت كانت جميع ممتلكات الشركة. تم تجهيز "صائغي الجلد" أو "حصة كروبرز" من قبل الشركة في مقابل حصة من مجموعة من الطوب في نهاية الموسم. وكان "الصياد الحرة" في الجزء العلوي من هذا الهرم الاجتماعي. لم يكن له أي شركة. قام بتجهيز نفسه ومحاصرين معه وحيث يسر. في الكلمات المحررة من رجل الجبل جو ميك:
"لقد فخروا بأنفسهم بشجاعتهم وشجاعتهم، حتى على إهمالهم وتطلعاتهم، حيث زعم كل منهم أنه يمتلك أفضل حصان؛ وأن يكون له أشد المغامرة، وأن يكون قد نجح في الهرب، وأن يكون قد قتل أكبر عدد من الدببة والهنود ؛ ليكون أكبر المفضلة مع بيليس الهندي، أكبر مستهلك للكحول، والحصول على أكبر قدر من المال لقضاء ".
وكان الصياد الحر يدفع ثمنا باهظا لحريته لأنه كان في نزوة تقلبات السوق وكان في بعض الأحيان لا يزال تحت رحمة شركة لإعطائه الائتمان في نهاية سنة سيئة.
كل ما قال، المتتبع نموذجي، على الرغم من انه قد يكون موسم جيد، أو سنة جيدة، لم يخرج من الديون. وكان أصحاب الشركة والموردين يعودون في سانت لويس التي جنيت الحصاد الاقتصادي لتجارة الفراء.

تجارة الفراء في النظام
حفرة كبيرة الملكيت.
وقد بدأ التقليد من الالتقاء الجبلي من قبل الجنرال ويليام أشلي والرجال في شركته في عام 1825. وكان أول لقاء مجرد مكان معين لتبادل لباد للإمدادات وإعادة تنظيم وحدات محاصرة بعد محاولات كارثية للحصول على الرجال واللوازم فوق النهر الماضي قرى أريكارا في 1823-1824. لمفاجأة، اكتشف اشلي أن الصيادين يفضلون هذا الترتيب إلى الممارسة السابقة للعودة إلى سانت لويس و "الحضارة" سنويا أو مرتين في السنة لإعادة الإمداد.
ومن الواضح أن سحب كيلبوات 1000 أو أكثر من الأميال حتى نهر ميسوري لم يكن مهمة مرغوبة. اشلي استولت على هذا لتصبح المورد من السلع التجارية إلى موعد الجبل، بيع من شركة الفراء له سميث وجاكسون وسوبليت. لم يكن الكحول واحدا من العناصر المدرجة في الإمدادات في أول موعد. سيتم تصحيح هذا الإشراف والإمدادات السخية من الروم و / أو الويسكي كانوا حاضرين في كل موعد لاحق.
تراوحت على السلع المتداولة في لقاء تتراوح بين 600٪ لتصل إلى 1500٪ على الأسعار المتاحة في سانت لويس. "أسعار الجبال" أصبحت مرادفة للغش. بعد فترة من الوقت، أصبح التسعير لا يطاق حتى تحت شركة سميث وجاكسون وسوبليت، أن الصيادين الحرة أرسلت وفدا، بما في ذلك هيو غلاس، وصولا الى سانت لويس لاستدعاء الزي المنافس (شركة الفور الأمريكية) أن يأتي إلى الجبال.
كان النظام مربحا جدا لأشلي أنه كان قادرا على التقاعد من الجبال في عام 1826 ومن تجارة الفراء تماما في عام 1830. ذهب إلى أن يصبح ممثلا للكونغرس الأمريكي من ولاية ميسوري.
بعد أول لقاء، تقليد التقاء بسرعة تطورت إلى حزب البرية دائم أي مكان من بضعة أسابيع إلى الاقتراب من ثمانية أسابيع. وعلى الرغم من أن أعمال تبادل فراء الإمدادات قد اختتمت في غضون بضعة أيام، فإن المشاركين سيبدأون في التجمع قبل عدة أسابيع من وصول القطار، ويمكن أن تستمر الاحتفالات لعدة أسابيع بعد أن كان قطار العبوة محمل بالفراء والجلود غادر إلى سانت لويس.
ولم يقتصر الاجتماع على صائدي الشركة، بل اجتذب أيضا الصيادين، والهنود، والكنديين الفرنسيين، والصيادين / التجار من سانتا في وطاووس، وزوجات الأم وأطفال الصيادين، والمسافرين الذين يقفون إلى أوريغون، وفي السنوات الأخيرة من السياح و سيتسيرس من بعيدا بقدر أوروبا سوف رحلة إلى الجبال لمجرد مراقبة المشهد. وحضر ممثلون من شركة خليج هدسون الاجتماع كمراقبين، للحصول على قدر من المنافسة والحفاظ على الضغط التجاري على الشركات الأمريكية.
وفي بعض السنوات، قد يتجاوز مجموع الحضور في الاجتماع 2000 شخص. وصف جبل مان جيمس بيكورث الاحتفالات كمشهد & كوت؛ والأغاني، والرقص، والصراخ، والتداول، والقفز، والغناء، والسباقات، والهدف، والرماية، والغزول، مع كل أنواع الإسراف التي يمكن أن الرجال البيض أو الهنود الابتكار. & كوت؛ أعطى إيسترنر وجهة نظره: & كوت؛ يتم تجميع جميع الشركات الجبلية في هذا الموسم وجعل مجنون مجموعة من الرجال رأيت من أي وقت مضى. & كوت؛
ويضيف كيرك تاونسند (المرجع)، وهو مصاحب لطاقة طبيعية مصحوبا بمدرب للإمداد إلى موعد 1834، الوصف التالي: "إن هؤلاء الناس، مع طقوسهم العديسة، وعصيتهم، وعويلهم، ومشاجرتهم، أضافوا إلى الهنود المحاربين، من خلال معسكرنا، والصراخ مثل الشياطين، وحاء وبيينغ من الكلاب الذئب الكلاب، والتكسير المستمر للبنادق والكربينات، وجعل معسكرنا بدلام الكمال. أنا محصورة بشكل وثيق مع خيمة مع المرض، وأنا اضطر كل يوم للاستماع إلى المصطلحات هيكوجينغ من التجار في حالة سكر، و ساكري و فوتر من الفرنسيين تشغيل البرية، وأداء الشتائم والصراخ من رجالنا، الذين هم أقل ندرة أقل من والباقي، ويجري تسخينها من قبل الخمور القابلة للاشتعال التي تعمم بحرية فيما بينها. "
أيضا لاجتماع 1834 الكابتن B. L.E بونفيل (الصفحة المرجعية 300) يوفر هذا الوصف: "وصول إمدادات أعطى النهاية العادية إلى عربد السنوي. اندلع فجر كبير من الشجاعة البرية بين المتسلقين الشرب والرقص، والتهيج، والقمار، والشجار، والقتال. الكحول، الذي، من صفاته المحمولة، التي تحتوي على أكبر كمية من الروح الناري في أصغر البوصلة، هو الخمور الوحيدة التي تنقل عبر الجبال، هو المشروبات الالتهابية في هذه الكاروسالات، ويتم التعامل مع الصيادون في أربعة دولارات لتر . عندما الملتهبة من هذا المشروبات الناري، وقطعوا جميع أنواع المزح جنون والغامبول، وأحرق في بعض الأحيان كل ملابسهم في برافادوز سكران. المخيم، الذي يتعافى من واحدة من هذه الشغب الشائكة، يعرض مشهد سيريو الهزلي عيون سوداء، رؤساء مكسورة، عدم وجود بريقا فيساجيس. العديد من الصيادون قد تبددت في واحدة سكران أجرة من الصعب كسب الأجور من سنة. وبعضها في الديون، ويجب أن تتكبد على دفع ثمن المتعة الماضية. وكلها مشجعة بهذا المشروع العميق من المتعة، وحريصة على بدء حملة محاصرة أخرى؛ عن المشقة والعمل الشاق، متبل مع المنشطات من المغامرة البرية، وتصدرت قبالة مع كاروسال المحموم السنوي، هو الكثير من الصياد لا يهدأ. "
كان لهذا الحدث بعض جوانب دورة الالعاب الاولمبية المرتجلة وكان هناك سباقات الخيل، تشغيل السباقات، اطلاق النار الهدف، القمار والقتال. وشرب ويسكي يرافق كل هذه الأنشطة وكان حدثا في حد ذاته. بعد الالتقاء كان في كثير من الأحيان الصيادون مفلس الآن جمع معا هانغوفرز لها والخروج إلى سقوط محاصرة أسباب لتجميع الفراء والجلود للاجتماع العام المقبل.
بيد أن الاجتماع لم يكن تجمعات غير قانونية تماما. واعتمدت قواعد السلامة البدائية لهذه التجمعات، على الأقل بصورة غير رسمية، وتم التقيد الصارم ببعض القواعد. على سبيل المثال في نهر الأخضر ريندزفوس من عام 1833، جاء ذئب أو ذئاب رابدة في مخيم العض الرجال في عدة ليال متتالية. تشارلز لاربنتيور (المرجع) يكتب من هذا "كنا يمكن أن أطلق النار على الذئب، ولكن أوامر لم يكن لاطلاق النار في المخيم، خوفا من قتل عن طريق الخطأ بعض واحد ..."
وايومينغ، -، هنري's، تفرع، الغرب، بسبب، النهر الأخضر.
أوتاي، - الصفصاف، (كاش)، واد، الغرب، بسبب، أعطى، ليك.
يوتا، -، الجنوب، أنهى، بسبب، حلوى، (بير)، ليك.
يوتا، -، الجنوب، أنهى، بسبب، حلوى، (بير)، ليك.
-، 1st، ريندزفوس، إلى، بوبو، أجي، دفق، على مقربة من، اليوم الحاضر، لاندر.
ايداهو - 2nd العام اللقاء في حفرة بيير بالقرب من اليوم الحالي تيتونيا.
وايومنغ - التقاء الرياح ونهر بوبو أجي بالقرب من ريفرتون.
يوتا، -، الصفصاف، (كاش)، واد، الغرب، بسبب، أعطى، ليك.
آيداهو، -، بيير's، بئر، على مقربة من، في الوقت الحاضر، تيتونيا.
وايومنغ - التقاء النهر الأخضر وخليج الخيل (فورت بونيفيل)
وايومينغ، -، سترونغ، خارج، على طول، هام's، تفرع، أيضا، النهر الأخضر.
وايومنغ - التقاء النهر الأخضر وخليج الخيل (فورت بونيفيل)
وايومنغ - التقاء النهر الأخضر وخليج الخيل (فورت بونيفيل)
وايومنغ - التقاء النهر الأخضر وخليج الخيل (فورت بونيفيل)
وايومنغ - التقاء النهر الأخضر وبوب أجي الأنهار بالقرب من ريفرتون.
وايومنغ - التقاء النهر الأخضر وخليج الخيل (فورت بونيفيل)
وايومنغ - التقاء النهر الأخضر وخليج الخيل (فورت بونيفيل)
ويليام دروموند ستيوارت الخاص رانديفو.
هنا هو خريطة تبين مواقع من ريندزفوس السنوي.
ومن المقرر أن ينتهي نظام الالتقاء في عام 1840، وهو ضحية لانقراض القندس بالقرب من الجبال، وتغيير الموضة في أوروبا، وتضاؤل المحاصيل، وتقليص الأسواق وانخفاض الأسعار. على الرغم من أن محاصرة الفراء والجلود سوف تستمر في أن تكون الأعمال التجارية الرئيسية حتى نهاية 1800، بعد عام 1840، سيتم تغيير نموذج الأعمال إلى الأبد، وأنها لن توفر أكثر بكثير من لقمة العيش للرجال في الجبال. ذهب سيكون "الأوقات الساطعة" عندما الرجل الذي كان طموحا وذكية، يمكن أن تتراكم ثروة واسعة في بضعة فصول.
ومع ذلك، كان رجال الجبال المهرة في طرق البقاء على قيد الحياة وكانت قابلة للتكيف. وفي نهاية فترة الالتحاق، سيطلب منهم تطبيق هذه المهارات بطرق جديدة من أجل البقاء على قيد الحياة. العديد من المتداولين على معرفتهم واسعة من الجغرافيا الغربية لتصبح أدلة لأطراف المهاجرين إلى أوريغون، أو كاليفورنيا، في حين أن آخرين أصبح الكشافة للجيش. ومع ذلك اختار آخرون الانضمام مع المهاجرين، ليصبحوا رجال أعمال أو مزارعين أو مربي مزارع أو قادة في ولاية أوريغون وكاليفورنيا. والبعض، الذي لم يستطع التخلي عن طريقة الحياة القديمة، سوف يستمر في إحياء وجود محاصرة الفراء، على الرغم من أن أيام المجد ذهب.
لمزيد من المعلومات حول موعد انظر المرجع التالي:
روكي ماونتن ريندزفوس، من قبل فريد R. غوانز، التي نشرتها جيبس سميث 1985. يقدم هذا الكتاب وصفا ممتازا للحاضرين والسلع التجارية والمواقع، فضلا عن الخرائط والصور الحديثة لكل من مواقع الالتقاء من 1825 حتى 1840.

أنشطة اقتصادية.
من الصعب المبالغة في تقدير أهمية الفراء في التطور التاريخي لفرنسا الجديدة. في الواقع، كان إغراء هذا المورد الذي دفع الفرنسيين إلى إقامة وجود دائم في وادي نهر سانت لورانس في أوائل القرن السابع عشر، وبعد ذلك للتوسع في منطقة البحيرات الكبرى، والميسيسيبي، وأوهايو، وأودية نهر إلينوي ، ومستجمعات مياه خليج هدسون. على هذا المسالك الشاسعة من قارة أمريكا الشمالية، شارك الفرنسيون في مشروع تجاري طموح مصمم لتلبية الطلب الأوروبي على الفراء. هذه المؤسسة - المعروفة من قبل مصطلح بسيط مخادع & # 8220؛ تجارة الفراء & # 8221؛ - لها أبعاد اقتصادية واجتماعية وسياسية معقدة وشكلت التجربة الاستعمارية الفرنسية بطرق متنوعة. وعلى الرغم من أن قيمته السنوية تتضاءل مقارنة بمصائد سمك القد في شمال الأطلنطي، إلا أن تجارة الفراء كانت المحرك الاقتصادي لفرنسا الجديدة: فقد عززت أعمال الاستكشاف والتبشير والمبادرات الاستيطانية مع توفير الدخل للأسر المعيشية المعتادة وتوليد ثروات خاصة للمسؤولين، والتجار، والمستثمرين. وبالإضافة إلى ذلك، شكلت تجارة الفراء أنماط التنقل والتسوية في فرنسا الجديدة من خلال احتياجاتها من القوى العاملة المتجولة ومناصب التجارة الداخلية. وأصبحت بعض هذه الوظائف - مثل تلك الموجودة في كيبيك وديترويت وخليج جرين - نواة المراكز السكانية الدائمة.
ليبر-ليموين البيت، لاشين.
والأهم من ذلك، أن تجارة الفراء استقطبت الفرنسيين إلى مقربة وثيقة ومستمرة من الشعوب الأصلية. ونظرا لعدم وجود ما يكفي من القوى البشرية والموارد اللازمة لإجراء التجارة وحدها، فإن الفرنسيين يعتمدون على الشعوب الأصلية في حصاد وتجهيز ونقل الفراء، وكذلك على خدماتهم كمرشدين ووسطاء. وتأمين هذه الخدمات يتطلب من الفرنسيين إقامة تحالفات مع العديد من الأمم الأولى، بما في ذلك مونتاغنيز، الغونكينز، وهرونز في النصف الأول من القرن السابع عشر، و سولتيوكس، و بوتاواتوميس، و تشوكتاوس في الثانية. وقد ضمنت هذه التحالفات أن الفرنسيين أصبحوا متجانسين بعمق في اقتصادات السكان الأصليين ومجتمعاتهم وسياساتهم، وفي الوقت نفسه رسم الشعوب الأصلية إلى منطقة نفوذ أوروبية. ومن ثم فإن تجارة الفراء تنطوي على أكثر من مجرد تبادل بسيط للسلع الأساسية: فهي تعزز تبادل المعارف والتكنولوجيا والثقافة المادية؛ فقد دعمت االئتالفات العسكرية القوية؛ وأدى إلى ظهور أشكال وهويات ثقافية جديدة. وحرصا على الحفاظ على هذه التفاعلات المعقدة والمربحة في كثير من الأحيان، طور الفرنسيون مواقف وسياسات تجاه الشعوب الأصلية التي اختلفت بشكل ملحوظ عن مواقف المستوطنين الناطقين باللغة الإنجليزية على ساحل المحيط الأطلسي.
السياقات التاريخية: جانب العرض وجانب الطلب (عرض)
تجارة السكان الأصليين.
وبحلول أوائل القرن السابع عشر، كانت الشعوب الأصلية قد وضعت نظاما متقدما وديناميكيا للتجارة. وقد أجروا هذه التجارة من خلال الشبكات التي عبرت أمريكا الشمالية من المحيط الأطلسي إلى المحيط الهادئ، ومن خليج المكسيك إلى القطب الشمالي. تتألف هذه الشبكات من الممرات المائية، والموانئ، والممرات البرية، ونقلت هذه السلع التجارية المتنوعة مثل الصدف من الساحل الشرقي والنحاس من شواطئ بحيرة سوبيريور ونهر كوبيرمين والزجاج الزجاجي من مواقع مختلفة في الغرب، والتبغ من الجنوب والبحيرات الكبرى، فضلا عن الأطعمة المجففة، وشباك الصيد، واللباد من جميع أنحاء القارة. وقد أدى توسيع هذه الشبكات وكفاءتها إلى ضمان تصفية السلع الأوروبية الصنع إلى الداخل قبل وقت طويل من دخول التجار الأوروبيين إلى اليابسة من الشاطئ الأطلسي. على سبيل المثال، اكتشف علماء الآثار الفضيات الأوروبية والنحاس الأصفر والحلي الفخارية ديلفت التي يرجع تاريخها إلى منتصف القرن السادس عشر في وطن شعب سينيكا - جنوب بحيرة أونتاريو ومئات الكيلومترات غرب المحيط الأطلسي.
في عام 1636، وصف المبشر اليسوعي جان دي بريبيوف بعض القواعد التي تحكم تشغيل الشبكات التجارية بين هورونس: & # 8220؛ وإلى جانب وجود نوع من القوانين المحافظة فيما بينها، وهناك أيضا أمر معين أنشئت فيما يتعلق بالأمم الأجنبية. أولا، فيما يتعلق بالتجارة؛ العديد من الأسر لديها الصفقات الخاصة بها، ويعتبر الماجستير في سطر واحد من التجارة الذي كان أول من يكتشف ذلك. ويتقاسم الأطفال حقوق والديهم في هذا الصدد، وكذلك أولئك الذين يحملون نفس الاسم؛ لا أحد يذهب إليه دون إذن، والتي تعطى فقط في الاعتبار من الهدايا. انه يربط معه عدد كبير أو قليل كما يشاء. إذا كان لديه إمدادات جيدة من البضائع، فمن مصلحته لتقسيمه مع عدد قليل من الصحابة، لذلك فهو يؤمن كل ما يريد، في البلاد. هو في هذا أن معظم ثرواتهم تتكون. ولكن إذا كان أي واحد يجب أن يكون جريئا بما يكفي للانخراط في التجارة دون إذن منه من هو سيد، وقال انه قد القيام بعمل جيد في السر والإخفاء. ولكن، إذا فاجأ من الطريق، وقال انه لن يكون أفضل معاملة من اللص، - أنها لن تحمل سوى جسده إلى بيته، وإلا فإنه يجب أن يكون مصحوبا بشكل جيد. إذا عاد مع أمتعته آمنة، وسوف يكون هناك بعض شكوى حول هذا الموضوع، ولكن لا مزيد من الملاحقة. & # 8221؛
جان دي بريبيوف، & # 8220؛ حول سياسة هورونز، وحكومتهم، & # 8221؛ في العلاقات اليسوعية والوثائق المتحالفة معها: سفر واستكشاف المبشرين اليسوعيين في فرنسا الجديدة، 1610-1791، إد. روبن غولد ثويتس (كليفلاند: بوروس Bros. Co.، 1896-1901)، 10: ب. 223-225.
وبينما تمتلك الشعوب الأصلية القدرة على الهياكل الأساسية للمشاركة في تجارة واسعة النطاق مع الأوروبيين، فإنها لا تتقاسم بالضرورة المواقف أو النهج الأوروبية إزاء التجارة. وعلى النقيض من النزعة الأوروبية نحو تراكم الثروة الشخصية، كانت الشعوب الأصلية تميل إلى الحصول على سلع بغرض إعادة توزيعها. من بين هورونس، على سبيل المثال، البضائع التي تم جمعها بشكل فردي استعدادا لإضفاء الطابع المؤسسي على منح الهدايا - مثل تلك المصاحبة للزواج، والدفن، والاحتفالات اسم العطاء. وقد مكنته هذه المناسبات من تعزيز وضعه الاجتماعي من خلال عرض الكرم والنكران. ومهما كانت الهدايا التي تلقاها في هذه المناسبات، فإنه يتقاسمها مع أقربائه المباشرين والممتدين. وبعيدا عن المستوى المحلي، خدمت الهدايا وظيفة دبلوماسية حرجة لأنها عززت وأعادت التأكيد على التحالفات بين هورونز وجيرانهم الناطقين بالجالغونكيين - بما في ذلك الغونكوينات وأوتااس والنيبيسينغ. وقدمت الهدايا كلما واجه أعضاء هذه المجموعات، سواء في عبور بعضهم البعض أو الأقاليم أو في معا للتفاوض، للاحتفال، أو لشن حرب ضد عدو مشترك. وهكذا، فإن تقديم الهدايا التزام اجتماعي ودبلوماسي، وتوفر التجارة وسيلة للحصول على السلع اللازمة للوفاء بهذا الالتزام.
السوق الأوروبية.
وشهد أواخر القرن السادس عشر بداية من النمو الهائل في الطلب الأوروبي على الفراء. وكان الطلب على هذا الطلب تقلبات الموضة: فقد سعى بشكل متزايد إلى الحصول على الملابس الفراء والملابس الفراء بعد التعبير عن الوضع والثروة والأسلوب. وبحلول أوائل القرن السابع عشر، ظهر عنصر واحد على وجه الخصوص باعتباره عنصرا أساسيا في ملابس الرجل المألوف & # 8217؛ ق قبعة شعر واسعة الحواف. وقد استخدمت أنواع مختلفة من لباد الحيوانات في إنتاج هذا الرأس، ولكن أعلى جودة وأغلى القبعات مصنوعة تماما من الفراء سمور. من خلال عملية التصفية المتخصصة، الفراء سمور أسفرت عن النسيج الذي كان لا مثيل لها ليونة، ليونة، ومقاومة للماء، والتي كانت بالتالي مناسبة تماما ل هاتماكينغ. ومما يؤسف له أن الطلب المتزايد على هذا النسيج ساهم في الإفراط في الصيد والإفراط في محاصرة القندس الأوروبي (ألياف الخروع)، بحيث تم تقليل الأنواع إلى الانقراض القريب في أواخر القرن السادس عشر وأوائل القرن السابع عشر.
وقد أدى استنزاف مخزونات القندس الأوروبية إلى حفز تطور السوق الأوروبية لفراء سمور أمريكا الشمالية (كاستور كانادنسيس). وعلى غرار ابن عمها الأوروبي الذي تعرض للخطر، تطور سمور أمريكا الشمالية في مناخ شتاء قاسي، وبالتالي حمل معطفا سميكا كان مثاليا لصنع الشعر وصنع القبعات. وكان هذا المعطف طبقتين - طبقة خارجية تتكون من شعر طويل، على نحو سلس، وقوي، وطبقة داخلية تتكون من ناعمة قصيرة، لينة، رقيق. وكان الحاصل هو الذي استحوذ على اهتمام التجار الأوروبيين، حيث أن كل من فروعها كان شائكة، وبالتالي يمكن ربطها مع خيوط أخرى لتشكيل قطعة صلبة من شعر. إلا أن هذا لا يمكن أن يتم إلا بعد فصل الحامض عن شعر الحرس من خلال إحدى الطريقتين، وكلاهما ينطوي على المعالجة من قبل الشعوب الأصلية. وأنتجت الطريقة الأولى ما يسمى قشر سمور دهني، أو غراس الخروع - وهي قشرة التي كانت مخيط في الملابس وارتداءها في اتصال مباشر مع شخص السكان الأصليين والجلد. بعد عدة أشهر من التآكل المستمر والتعرض للعرق البشري، والزيوت، وحرارة الجسم، وكانت الشعر الحرس خففت وسقطت من بلت ترك فقط وندفور. وأنتجت الطريقة الثانية ما يسمى بسمق سمور بيلت، أو الخروع ثانية - قشر التي تم تجفيفها على الفور بعد أن تم حصادها. إزالة الشعر الحرس من هذا النوع من بيلت تتطلب معالجة متخصصة من صناع في أوروبا.
من بيلت إلى شعر: تجهيز العجلات غراس والقواطع ثانية.
بعد الشحن عبر المحيط الأطلسي، خضعت العجلات غراس والقواطع لعملية معقدة التي وضعت على مدى قرون من التجريب والصقل. وحدثت صناعة الورشة في عدد من ورش العمل في أوروبا، ولكن بحلول أوائل القرن الثامن عشر، تم إنتاج أرقى وأرقى البناطيل من قبل حفنة من المؤسسات الكبيرة في باريس وليونس ومرسيليا. وقعت العملية على مرحلتين: أولا، تم فصل الحامض عن الشعر الحرس والجلد. ثم، تم رفع بارب على كل حبلا من أسفور وارتبطت مع فروع أخرى من خلال مجموعة متنوعة من التقنيات - بما في ذلك التعرض للمياه والحرارة والاحتكاك. كانت عجلات غراس سهلة نسبيا في المعالجة، حيث تم إزالة الشعر الحارس بالفعل من هذه اللبانيات بحلول الوقت الذي وصلت صناع الملابس الأوروبية. وعلى النقيض من ذلك، تحتاج الدعامات ثانية إلى علاج تمشيط مكثف من أجل فصل النحل عن شعر الحرس. وقد تم تنقيح هذا العلاج في 1720s من خلال تطوير تقنية تعرف باسم & # 8220؛ كاروتينغ & # 8221؛ - & # 8220؛ سكريجات & # 8221؛ باللغة الفرنسية - التي تم فيها تنظيف عجلات العجلات بأملاح الزئبق المخففة في حامض النيتريك. وعلى الرغم من أن هذه التقنية زادت من سرعة وكفاءة عملية الفصل، إلا أنها استغرقت خسائر فادحة على صحة صناع الملابس والصناعيين. وقد طورت العديد من الأضرار العصبية الخطيرة نتيجة التعرض لفترات طويلة للزئبق - وهو مصير قد يكون قد أدى إلى التعبير الإنكليزي & # 8220؛ جنون كما هاتر & # 8221؛.
ومن أجل تأمين إمدادات منتظمة من هذه الأبقار وغيرها من الحيوانات، وضعت فرنسا أسس الوجود الاستعماري الدائم في أمريكا الشمالية في أوائل القرن السابع عشر. وبحلول ذلك الوقت، كان الفرنسيون يذوقون شهية فراء العالم الجديد بفضل الأنشطة التجارية الموسمية لأبقار الباسك والصيادين الفرنسيين في خليج سانت لورانس طوال 1500s. وقد أصبحت هذه التجارة الموسمية مربحة ومتنافسة على نحو متزايد خلال القرن، بحيث بدأ التجار الفرنسيون بإرسال السفن إلى المنطقة لغرض وحيد هو شراء الفراء بحلول 1580. في محاولة للسيطرة على التجارة المزدهرة، منح التاج الفرنسي حقوق الاحتكار لخلافة الشركات التجارية. ويتطلب احتكار الاحتكار أن تلتزم الشركة بتعزيز الاستيطان الفرنسي في أمريكا الشمالية، وكذلك لرعاية النشاط التبشري الروماني الكاثوليكي بين الشعوب الأصلية. وبموجب هذه الشروط أنشأت الشركات التجارية أول مستوطنات فرنسية دائمة على طول نهر سانت لورانس - تادوساك في 1600، كيبيك في 1608، وترويس-ريفييه في 1634. ومع ذلك لم يكن الفرنسيون هم الأوروبيين الوحيدين الذين يتم سحبهم بشكل دائم إلى الشمال أمريكا عن طريق إغراء الفراء: الشركات التجارية الهولندية تقيم مستوطنات على مدار العام على طول نهر هدسون خلال الفترة نفسها - الأولى في ألباني في عام 1614 ثم في المصب في جزيرة مانهاتن في 1625-26. وتعكس مواقع هذه المستوطنات المصالح التجارية لمؤسسيها الفرنسيين والهولنديين. وتقع كل مستوطنة في مخرج شبكة تجارية موجودة من قبل والتي امتدت عميقا إلى المناطق الداخلية الغنية بالفراء في القارة.
اللوجستية وتنظيم التجارة (عرض)
التوصيل بالشبكات التجارية، 1600-1660.
ومن خلال إنشاء المستوطنات على طول نهر سانت لورانس، أدخل الفرنسيون أنفسهم في شبكات نقلت السلع التجارية - بما في ذلك البيلات - على مسافات شاسعة. وفي تادوساك، ربطوا بشبكة امتدت شمال غربا على طول نهر ساغيناي ومن خلال مئات الكيلومترات من الغابات الشمالية إلى خليج جيمس. وفي كيبيك وترويس-ريفيير، ربطوا بشبكات تمتد غربا إلى البحيرات الكبرى وشمال غربا على طول نهري سانت موريس وأوتاوا. ويقع كل من هذه المنافذ في إقليم مجموعة معينة من السكان الأصليين التي تسيطر على تدفق البضائع من وإلى نهر سانت لورانس - مونتاجنيس في تادوساك، الغونكوين في كيبيك، و أتيكامكو شمال ترويس-ريفيرس. وكقاعدة عامة، لم تتاجر هذه الجماعات إلا بحلفاء سياسيين وعسكريين وثيقين. وهكذا، من أجل الوصول إلى الطوب التي انتقلت من خلال الشبكات، اضطر الفرنسيون للتفاوض على سلسلة من التحالفات الاستراتيجية مع الشعوب الأصلية في وادي نهر سانت لورانس. وقد وضع صمويل دى شامبلين الكثير من الأسس الدبلوماسية، حيث أقاموا وتحالفوا مع مونتاجنيس والالغونكوين من خلال الانضمام إلى أحزاب الحرب ضد عدوهم الطويل - الأمم الخمس لرابطة إيروكوا - فى 1609 و 1610.
من الفرنسيين في منافذ هذه الشبكات، أجرى الفرنسيون التجارة من خلال وسطاء من السكان الأصليين - أو الوسطاء - الذين جمعوا لبنا من الصيادين الداخليين، الصيادون، والمعالجين، ومن ثم حملتهم بواسطة المياه والطرق البرية إلى المستوطنات الفرنسية الوليدة في سانت نهر لورانس. في مقدمتها هؤلاء الوسطاء هورونز - وهو الناس الناطقة الإيروكويانية ممارسة الزراعة على الشاطئ الجنوبي للخليج الجورجي. بعد تأسيس تحالف مع شامبلين في 1615-16، وضعت هورونس تجارة واسعة تحمل بين الفرنسيين ومجموعة من السكان الأصليين على طول الشاطئ الشمالي لنهر سانت لورانس وفي منطقة البحيرات الكبرى. بين 1615 و 1649، هورونز نقل البضائع التجارية الفرنسية إلى الداخل الغربي وأرسلت فلوتيلاس محملة الفراء دونريفر إلى كيبيك وبعد ذلك إلى ترويس-ريفيرس. وهبطت هاتان المستوطنتان في وقت لاحق من قبل مونتريال كوجهة للسفن التجارية للسكان الأصليين. على الرغم من تأسيسها كمؤسسة دينية في عام 1642، سرعان ما برزت مونتريال كمركز تجارة الفراء في فرنسا الجديدة بسبب موقعها الاستراتيجي عند التقاء نهري سانت لورانس وأوتاوا. وفي كل صيف في الستينيات والستينيات من القرن العشرين، أقامت المستوطنة معرضا تجاريا استقطب قوافل كبيرة من وسطاء من السكان الأصليين تحمل لباد لتبادل السكاكين والغلايات والبطانيات والسلع الفرنسية الأخرى.
& # 8220؛ C & # 8217؛ إست l & # 8217؛ أفيرون كوي نوس مين إن هوت & # 8221 ؛: إكسهانج موفس إن ذي إنتيريور، 1660-1696.
ومع الإبقاء على مركزها المركزي في تجارة الفراء خلال النصف الأخير من القرن السابع عشر، توقفت مونتريال عن العمل كنقطة التبادل الرئيسية بين الشعبين الفرنسيين والسكان الأصليين. Rather, it became the principal staging ground and entrepôt for a trade that was moving steadily west into the pays d’en haut – the vast inland territory subsuming the Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi River Valley. Frenchmen began moving into this region and establishing direct contact with Aboriginal hunters, trappers, and processors of furs. Three interrelated factors underlay this development. First, the Hurons could no longer function as commercial intermediaries after 1649-50, when they were decimated and dispersed by concerted attacks from the Iroquois League. The Hurons’ inability to resist these attacks had resulted, in part, from their military disadvantage: the Iroquois had been supplied with more and better quality muskets from their Dutch trading partners on the Hudson River. Second, the destruction of the Hurons’ carrying trade had resulted in the diversion of furs to the Dutch and – after 1664 – the English on the Hudson River. Third, decades of intensive exploitation had resulted in the depletion of fur-bearing animals in the St. Lawrence River Valley, pushing the trade further into the North American interior.
Less than four years after the dispersal of the Huron intermediaries, Jesuit Superior-General François-Joseph Le Mercier reported on a popular scheme among French settlers in the St. Lawrence River Valley: “[A]ll our young Frenchmen are planning to go on a trading expedition, to find the Nations that are scattered here and there; and they hope to come back laden with the Beaver-skins of several years’ accumulation. In a word, the country is not stripped of Beavers; they form its gold-mines and its wealth, which have only to be drawn upon in the lakes and streams, — where the supply is great in proportion to the smallness of the draught upon it during these latter years, due to the fear of being dispersed or captured by the Iroquois. These animals, moreover, are extremely prolific.”
François-Joseph Le Mercier, “The Poverty and the Riches of the Country,” in The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791 , ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland: Burrows Bros. Co., 1896-1901), 40: p. 215.
The work of carrying the French trade into the pays d’en haut was undertaken by independent pedlars known as coureurs de bois – literally “runners of the woods”. Outfitted for the most part by Montreal merchants, the coureurs de bois transported French goods into the interior by birchbark canoe and traded directly with Aboriginal fur suppliers in villages, camps, and hunting grounds. Their range of travel expanded rapidly, taking in Lakes Ontario, Michigan, and Huron as well as the Upper Mississippi, Ohio, and Illinois River Valleys by the mid 1670s and thus drawing far-flung Aboriginal groups into the French commercial orbit. Concurrently, increasing numbers of Frenchmen left the St. Lawrence River Valley to swell the ranks of the coureurs de bois . Some embarked on trading excursions that lasted only a season or two, whereas others spent years – even decades – in the pays d’en haut . In 1679, Intendant Jacques Duchesneau de la Doussinière et d’Ambault estimated that between five and six hundred coureurs de bois were plying the rivers of the western interior. The following year, he revised his estimation to eight hundred coureurs de bois out of a total population of 9,700 in the St. Lawrence River Valley settlements. According to Duchesneau, every family in New France could count at least one coureur de bois .
As more and more Frenchmen departed for the interior, colonial and metropolitan officials grew ever warier. These officials began to perceive the coureurs de bois and their activities as inimical to the development of a strong and sustainable colony. Under the far-reaching reform programme of Minister of Marine Jean-Baptiste Colbert, New France was intended to become a “compact colony” – economically diversified, demographically self-sustaining, and geographically confined to a defensible corridor along the St. Lawrence River. The exodus of coureurs de bois undermined this programme by draining the colony of its labour pool and scattering French resources over a vast territory. Ironically, Colbert himself had contributed to this overexpansion when, in the early 1660s, he had required the holders of the fur-trade monopoly to purchase beaver and moose hides at fixed prices. Coureurs de bois were therefore guaranteed a market for their pelts, and they responded to this opportunity by redoubling their trading activities in the western interior. In so doing, however, they saturated the European market and prompted Colbert to impose legal restrictions on the trade. In 1681, for instance, New France inaugurated the congé system under which a limited number of fur-trading licences – or congés – were issued annually. The system quickly proved ineffective: young men continued to abandon the St. Lawrence River Valley for the pays d’en haut – often illegally – and furs continued to flow into Montreal warehouses. By the mid 1690s, the supply of furs had so exceeded European demand that New France faced economic collapse. Hence, on May 21, 1696, Louis XIV revoked all congés and ordered the immediate closure of all but a handful of trading posts. Despite the prospect of severe punishment for trading in contravention of the royal ordinance, many coureurs de bois remained active in the interior and simply opted to sell their furs illicitly in Albany.
From chaos to structure: the expansion and reorganization of the fur trade, 1715-1760.
The fate of the coureurs de bois was determined less by royal decree than by the dictates of economics. Already by the 1690s, traders had felt the need for additional capital as they expanded their operations over greater distances. Some had even begun working as wage-earning canoemen – or engagés – for merchants based in the St. Lawrence River Valley settlements. This type of salaried employment became increasingly common after 1715, when the European fur market began to revive and the trade ban was lifted. Every year, habitant men accepted contracts to transport goods, supplies, and pelts between Montreal and the far-flung posts of the pays d’en haut . Most of these engagés were recruited from Montreal and its immediate vicinity, though some hailed from the Trois-Rivières region. Each had his own reasons for accepting a fur-trade contract: some sought to supplement their families’ farm incomes, others to settle debts, others to escape the social and religious constraints of life in the St. Lawrence River Valley. Whatever their disparate motives, engagés joined together in an activity that was acquiring coordination, structure, and rhythm over the first half of the eighteenth century. After the spring thaw, they assembled in brigades at Lachine – above the treacherous rapids between the island of Montreal and the south shore – and boarded canoes laden with hundreds of kilograms of merchandise. Those aboard the spacious canots de maître transported goods and supplies to the posts of Detroit (at the narrows between Lakes Erie and St. Clair) and Michilimackinac (at the junction of Lakes Huron and Michigan), and carried furs from these posts back to Lachine in the late summer or autumn. These engagés were known, somewhat contemptuously, as “mangeurs de lard” – pork eaters – by the “hommes du nord” – men of the north – who paddled smaller canots du nord beyond Detroit and Michilimackinac into the Mississippi River Valley, Lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba, and the Saskatchewan River basin. Priding themselves on their hardiness and grit, the “hommes du nord” wintered in the interior and cultivated close relationships with Aboriginal groups there.
On the other side of the contractual relationship were merchants based in Quebec, Trois-Rivières, and especially Montreal – the organizational and administrative hub of the fur trade. By the 1730s, Montreal merchants had become specialized in recruiting engagés , outfitting fur-trade expeditions, and overseeing the shipment of pelts to Quebec and thence across the Atlantic to France. The most prosperous merchants were French-born and benefited from personal and professional connections to insurers, creditors, and shipping merchants in Rouen, Bordeaux, and La Rochelle. From his Montreal shop, for instance, the Parisian Pierre Guy conducted a steady business importing merchandise and exporting furs through the agency of the Rouen-based Robert Dugard et Cie and its Quebec-based factors, François Havy and Jean Lefebvre. Canadian-born merchants tended to have more modest capital bases and smaller business networks, and were therefore inclined to form partnerships to participate in the fur trade. These partnerships usually comprised three or four members who pooled their investment capital to purchase the lease on the trade at a particular inland post. One such partnership was Baby Frères , whose members – Canadian-born brothers François, Jacques, and Antoine Baby – were deploying themselves strategically between Montreal and the posts of the pays d’en haut by 1757. This arrangement afforded the brothers different vantage points from which to oversee their trading, transportation, and marketing operations.
Thus, by the mid eighteenth century, the fur trade of New France was becoming rationalized and structured along capitalist lines. The trade was coming under the control of urban merchants, who coordinated the movement of labour, goods, and supplies through an integrated transportation network connecting the far-flung posts of the pays d’en haut into the broader French Atlantic world. Yet although this network existed primarily for commercial purposes, it had also acquired political, social, and cultural dimensions that were critical to the French presence in North America.
Political aspects of the fur trade (show)
When French fur traders established a permanent presence in the St. Lawrence River Valley in the early seventeenth century, they were obliged to comply with the norms, values, and protocols that governed trade among local Aboriginal groups. These groups traded exclusively with close political and military allies, so the French were compelled to negotiate a place for themselves in an intertribal alliance that had taken shape before their arrival – an alliance comprising the Montagnais, the Hurons, the Algonquins, the Ottawas, the Nipissing, and others. Membership in this alliance required regular reaffirmation through gift-giving, speech-making, and – most critically – participation in war against the Iroquois League. It was in fulfillment of this military obligation that Champlain joined Montagnais and Algonquin raiding parties against the Iroquois in 1609 and again in 1610, both times employing firearms to devastating effect. Champlain’s actions confirmed to the Iroquois that the French were the latest tribe to join the enemy alliance and were therefore legitimate targets for aggression. Over the following century, the Iroquois mounted a violent campaign against the French and their Aboriginal allies – a campaign that escalated from the harassment of trade flotillas on the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers in the early 1640s, to the dispersal the Hurons in 1649-50, to the capture or killing of nearly six hundred French colonists in the St. Lawrence River Valley in the late 1680s and 90s. For their part, the French and their allies launched multiple invasions into the Iroquois country where they razed villages, destroyed crop harvests, and looted graves. It was not until 1701 that the French and their allies reached a lasting truce with the Iroquois – the Great Peace of Montreal.
Having been drawn into an alliance system through the exigencies of the fur trade, the French began to use the trade for their own political and military ends in the early eighteenth century. Indeed, the trade became a central component of France’s North American strategy, which was largely a reaction to English – and, after 1707, British – territorial and commercial expansion. In the eyes of colonial and metropolitan officials, New France was coming under threat on two fronts. The first front was the chain of English-speaking colonies along the Atlantic seaboard, whose farmers and planters desired to push the agricultural frontier further inland. The second front was the southern shore of Hudson Bay, where the London-based Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) had been operating fur-trading posts since the early 1670s – thanks in large part to the assistance of renegade French traders, Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard Chouart des Groseilliers. Despite their efforts to dislodge the HBC by naval force, the French were compelled to acknowledge British claims to Hudson Bay under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Thereafter, French policy aimed at restricting the British to these two coastal strips so as to block their future encroachment into the interior. This policy necessitated the abandonment of Colbert’s vision of a “compact colony” and its replacement with a vision of a vast cordon sanitaire hemming in the British east of the Appalachian Mountains and along the coastline of Hudson Bay. Lacking the manpower and resources needed to occupy this tract themselves and to impose formal governance structures, the French turned to their Aboriginal trading partners to implement their policy. They resolved to tie these partners more firmly into the alliance system, and to prepare them for the eventuality of war.
Under this new geopolitical policy, the fur-trading posts of the interior acquired tremendous strategic importance. They doubled as military command centres, provisioning depots, and meeting places where the French forged and reaffirmed alliances with Aboriginal groups. Over the first half of the eighteenth century, these posts became the principal nodes of a military-cum-commercial network that stretched from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes, and thence branched off in two directions: south, down the Mississippi River system to the Gulf of Mexico; and west, to the forks of the Saskatchewan River. Posts located along these two branches played a particularly important role in blocking English/British colonial and commercial expansion. On the Gulf of Mexico, for instance, Canadian-born brothers Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville established posts at Biloxi in 1699-1700 and Mobile in 1701. These posts became centres of exchange with the up-country Choctaw people, who provided deerskins to the French in return for arms, ammunition, and military accoutrements. Thus equipped, the Choctaws assumed an active military role as a bulwark against the English-speaking settlers of the Carolinas and their Aboriginal allies, the Chickasaws. Similarly, the Canadian-born Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vérendrye and his sons established a chain of fur-trading posts in the hinterlands of Hudson Bay between 1731 and 1743 – including Fort St. Charles on Lake of the Woods, Fort Maurepas near Lake Winnipeg, and Fort Paskoya on the Saskatchewan River. These posts enabled La Vérendrye and his sons to forge alliances with the Cree and the Assiniboine, and consequently to draw their pelts away from British traders on the bayside.
Until the fall of New France in 1760, the fur trade served as an effective means of winning and holding the allegiance of Aboriginal peoples against the English/British. It enabled the sparsely populated colony to extend its political and military influence over a vast swathe of the North American interior, thereby thwarting the expansionist designs of English-speaking farmers, planters, and traders. The fur trade also enabled New France to mobilize thousands of well armed and strategically located Aboriginal groups at the start of the Seven Years’ War – known, tellingly, as the “French and Indian War” in the Thirteen Colonies and later the United States. To many Aboriginal groups, the French represented a more palatable – or at least subtler and less immediately destructive – version of colonialism than did the British. Unlike the British, the French did not pursue the large-scale appropriation of Aboriginal lands for settlement and agriculture. What the French wanted was fur, and this pursuit required the preservation of existing ecosystems and the exploitation of Aboriginal knowledge and skills. “Brethren, are you ignorant of the difference between our Father [the French] and the English?”, asked a Catholic Iroquois in 1754. “Go see the forts our Father has erected, and you will see that the land beneath his walls is still hunting ground, having fixed himself in those places we frequent, only to supply our wants; whilst the English, on the contrary, no sooner get possession of a country than the game is forced to leave it; the trees fall down before them, the earth becomes bare, and we find among them hardly wherewithal to shelter us when night falls.”
Social and cultural aspects of the trade (show)
Impact of the trade on Aboriginal peoples.
As a conduit for European influence, the fur trade was an agent of change in seventeenth - and eighteenth-century Aboriginal societies and cultures. One component of this change was the influx of tools, utensils, and weapons that were more efficient and more durable than their prehistoric equivalents. Indeed, French traders and missionaries noted that Aboriginal peoples were especially eager to acquire copper kettles, iron utensils, and steel axes, knives, awls, and needles. As early as the 1660s, some of these traders and missionaries believed that the Hurons and their Algonquian-speaking neighbours were growing dependent on French metal goods and were ceasing to manufacture similar objects of stone, wood, or bone. Archaeological evidence suggests, however, that these Aboriginal groups persisted in making and using traditional tools long after obtaining access to metal ones. Moreover, these groups appear to have assimilated French goods into traditional cultural patterns and practices. For instance, the Hurons accumulated French goods in order to share them with immediate and extended kin, or to redistribute them at institutionalized gift-giving ceremonies – a practice that served to honour the dead, to seal agreements and alliances, and to enhance an individual’s social status. In other words, French goods did not necessarily – or at least, did not immediately – transform underlying values, attitudes, or beliefs. These goods often brought surface changes without fundamentally remaking Aboriginal societies and cultures.
Writing from Quebec in summer 1626, Jesuit Superior Charles L’Allement described the wares carried by newly arrived merchant ships on the St. Lawrence River: “These two ships bring all the merchandise which these Gentlemen use in trading with the Savages; that is to say, the cloaks, blankets, nightcaps, hats, shirts, sheets, hatchets, iron arrowheads, bodkins, swords, picks to break the ice in Winter, knives, kettles, prunes, raisins, Indian corn, peas, crackers or sea biscuits, and tobacco; and what is necessary for the sustenance of the French in this country besides. In exchange for these they carry back hides of the moose, lynx, fox, otter, black ones being encountered occasionally, martens, badgers, and muskrats; but they deal principally in Beavers, in which they find their greatest profit. I was told that during one year they carried back as many as 22,000. The usual number for one year is 15,000 or 12,000, at one pistole each, which is not doing badly.”
Charles L’Allemant, “Letter from Charles L’Allement, Superior of the Mission of Canadas, of the Society of Jesus. To Father Jerome l’Allement [sic], his brother,” in The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791 , ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland: Burrows Bros. Co., 1896-1901), 4: p. 207.
Nevertheless, some trade goods did bring rapid and wrenching change for Aboriginal peoples. Foremost among these goods were the products of European warfare and hunting technology – notably firearms. In the first half of the seventeenth century, the religious and civil authorities of New France attempted to restrict the trade of firearms to Aboriginal people who had converted to Catholicism. They lifted this restriction, however, when they realized that their Aboriginal allies were heavily outgunned by the Iroquois, whose Dutch and English trading partners did not scruple to arm the unconverted. Thereafter, muskets and ammunition became stock-in-trade for coureurs de bois and engagés . This development had two interrelated consequences. First, it rendered Aboriginal warfare more psychologically devastating if not more physically deadly. Second, it facilitated an ongoing shift in Aboriginal subsistence strategies: the fur trade had provided Aboriginal peoples with an incentive to kill ever-greater numbers of fur-bearing animals, and now firearms – together with metal traps – were increasing their killing capacity. The large-scale harvesting of furs represented a major departure from the traditional exploitation of the total environment. It may also have altered Aboriginal conceptions of the natural world and their relationship to it. Aboriginal cosmologies may have evolved – perhaps through dialogue with post-Reformation Christianity – to justify and accommodate the overexploitation of living resources.
Ironically, the overall impact of French trade goods paled in comparison to the impact of an unintentional by-product of the fur trade – the spread of deadly pathogens. Lacking immunity to diseases that had been endemic to Europe for centuries, Aboriginal peoples were ravaged by measles, smallpox, and other infectious diseases that spread through the fur-trade network from the St. Lawrence River Valley settlements to the far-flung communities of the pays d’en haut . These epidemics wrought havoc on Aboriginal societies, striking disproportionately at the elderly and at children and thus creating generational imbalances. During the smallpox epidemics that raged from 1634 to 1640, the Hurons lost between a half to two-thirds of their total population. These losses hindered their ability to resist Iroquois incursions over the following decade – incursions that may have been motivated by the Iroquois’ need to replace their own population losses.
Impact of the trade on the French (show)
In order to access and exploit the fur resources of the North American interior, the French drew heavily on Aboriginal knowledge, skills, and hospitality during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From their Aboriginal trading partners, coureurs de bois and engagés adopted technologies that were ideally suited to transporting furs and trade goods – snowshoes and toboggans in the winter, birchbark canoes in the spring, summer, and autumn. The latter means of travel was unrivalled for efficiency and dependability, being sturdy enough to carry heavy loads, but light enough to portage around rapids or between waterways. Additionally, the French relied on Aboriginal knowledge of canoe routes, overland trails, and portages as they pushed the trade ever further into the interior. In 1728, for instance, La Vérendrye obtained vital geographical information from his Cree guide, Ochagach, who sketched for him a map of water and land routes between Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg. Ochagach’s guidance enabled La Vérendrye to expand the fur-trade network westward onto the prairies and, in the process, to enhance European geographical knowledge of the region.
Because the fur trade depended so thoroughly on Aboriginal peoples, the French went to considerable lengths to curry favour with them. The newcomers abided by the codes and norms that governed trade between Aboriginal groups: they observed rituals of gift-giving and speech-making; they paid tolls and tributes when passing through a particular group’s territory; and they conducted themselves in Aboriginal languages to the best of their ability. As the trade acquired increasing importance in the French geopolitical policy of the eighteenth century, French fur traders assumed the mantle of wilderness diplomats and received Crown subsidies to ply Aboriginal peoples with presents of cloth, tools, weapons, ammunition, and other goods. Some historians have attributed these gestures to a colonial approach that was inherently more respectful, benevolent, and magnanimous than that of the English/British. One must not lose sight, however, of the self-serving – and sometimes manipulative – function of these gestures. “Le sauvage ne sçait ce c’est que d’obéir,” wrote the seasoned fur trader Nicolas Perrot around 1715. “[I]l faut plustost le prier que de le commander ; il se laisse néantmoins aller à tout ce qu’on exige de luy, surtout quand il s’imagine qu’il y a de la gloire ou du profit à espérer ; il se présente et s’offre alors de luy-mesme… [L]e caractère des sauvages est de pencher toujours du costé de ceux qui leur donnent le plus et qui les flattent davantage.”
Although bent on cultivating ties with Aboriginal peoples, the French were nevertheless ambivalent about the close and constant proximity that this cultivation entailed. In the eyes of colonial officials, fur traders who ventured beyond the St. Lawrence River Valley placed themselves in a dangerous liminal space between “les Français” and “les sauvages”. All too often, coureurs de bois and engagés crossed over the cultural threshold, taking on Aboriginal lifeways and identities. Governor General Jacques-René de Brisay de Denonville decried this “ensauvagement” in 1685: “[J]e ne saurais[…] assez vous exprimer l’attrait que tous les Jeunes gens ont pour cette vie de Sauvages qui est de ne rien faire, de ne se contraindre pour rien, de suivre tous ses mouvemens et de se mettre hors de la correction.” As an extension of casting coureurs de bois and engagés as casualties of “l’ensauvagement”, Denonville cast them also as agents of this contagion: they infected the St. Lawrence River Valley settlements with ideas and habits imported from the pays d’en haut . Among the most insidious of these imports was the notion of individual liberty – an idea identified by Denonville and other officials as a threat to the legitimate authority of Church and State, and as a root cause of the habitants’ excessive lenience in childrearing, their indulgence of headstrong wives, and their impertinence to social superiors. Such statements were undoubtedly overdrawn, revealing far more about the anxieties of colonial officials than about an actual process of cultural borrowing. Still, they do speak to the role of the fur trade in mitigating official power structures in New France, and in refashioning identities.
Métissages (show)
The fur trade of New France gave rise to a population of mixed ancestry, issued from marriages between French traders and Aboriginal women. These marriages – often contracted “à la façon du pays” or without clerical sanction – served a strategic function in the trade: they provided a mechanism for incorporating French traders into Aboriginal communities by creating bonds of kinship and mutual obligation across ethno-linguistic lines. Marriage transformed strangers into family members, thus ensuring French traders access to furs and vital resources in their Aboriginal in-laws’ hunting territories, while ensuring their Aboriginal in-laws access to French trade goods. As a result of this transformation, commercial exchange was shaped and determined by the exigencies of kinship. Aboriginal women played a central role in this process, serving as intermediaries between their French husbands and their birth families. These women taught their husbands Aboriginal languages, customs, and behavioural standards, while also providing skilled services in the bartering and processing of furs. Over time, these women strengthened cross-ethnic kinship ties through their delivery and rearing of mixed-blood progeny.
On the basis of his travel experience in New France from October 1699 to October 1700, the French surgeon Dièreville made the following observation about trade with the Ottawas: “When a Frenchman trades with them, he takes into his services one of their Daughters, the one, presumably, who is most to his taste; he asks the Father for her, & under certain conditions, it is arranged; he promises to give the Father some blankets, a few shirts, a Musket, Powder & Shot, Tobacco & Tool; they come to an agreement at last, & the exchange is made. The Girl, who is familiar with the Country, undertakes, on her part, to serve the Frenchman in every way, to dress his pelts, to sell his Merchandise for a specified length of time; the bargain is faithfully carried out on both sides.”
John Clarence Webster, ed., Sieur de Dièreville, Relation of the Voyage to Port Royal in Acadia or New France (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1933), p. 187.
By the early eighteenth century, concentrations of mixed-blood people were developing around the principal fur-trading centres of the pays d’en haut – notably Detroit, Michilimackinac, and Green Bay. Because of their linkages to both Aboriginal and French societies, these people were esteemed by fur traders as ideal interpreters, guides, and marital partners. However, their mixed ancestry did not yet provide the basis of a distinct métis identity. Many of these people self-identified according to their mothers’ ethnicity as Ottawas, Potawatomis, Illinois, Nipissing, and so on. Some were identified by traders and missionaries as “des Français”, especially if they had spent time in the St. Lawrence River Valley settlements or had otherwise acquired French behaviours. For others, identity was defined by local and regional kinship connections rather than by ethnicity, nationality, or language. It was not until the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century that an identifiable and self-identifying Métis collectivity began to take shape in the Great Lakes region and further west. This new people drew on Aboriginal and European influences to develop its own laws, institutions, and forms of government as well as its own mixed language – Michif, which blended the most complex elements of Cree and French. Although historians continue to investigate the origins and evolution of Métis identity, there can be little doubt that it emerged from patterns of intermarriage and exchange established by the fur trade of New France.
Conclusion (show)
The fur trade was a complex and multifaceted venture that shaped the economy, politics, and social life of New France from the birth of the colony in 1600 to its final defeat in 1763. As the commercial raison d’être of the colony, the trade determined patterns of settlement, mobility, labour, and resource extraction. It provided both the impetus and the means to probe the waterways of the North American interior, and ultimately to sustain a vast river empire stretching from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes, west onto the prairies and south down the Mississippi system to the Gulf of Mexico. Through its concomitant creation of an alliance system, the fur trade enabled France to stake a claim to territories where it could not impose formal governance structures for lack of manpower and resources. These territories – which included the pays d’en haut – were places of negotiation and exchange, where Aboriginal and French met to obtain goods, services, and knowledge from one another. Both were transformed by their encounter in these places, as material cultures, technologies, customs, and laws were interchanged, and identities were refashioned.
Suggested readings (show)
Allaire, Gratien. “Fur Trade Engagés, 1701-1745.” In Rendezvous: Selected Papers of the North American Fur Trade Conference , edited by Thomas C. Buckley, pp. 15-26. St. Paul, MN: North American Fur Trade Conference, 1984.
Allaire, Gratien. “Officiers et marchands: Les sociétés de commerce des fourrures, 1715-1760.” Revue de l’histoire de l’Amérique française , vol. 40, no 3 (1987), pp. 409-428.
Anderson, Dean L. “The Flow of European Trade Goods Into the Western Great Lakes Region, 1715-1760.” In The Fur Trade Revisited: Selected Papers of The Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference , edited by Jennifer Brown, W. J. Eccles, and Donald P. Heldman, pp. 93-115. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1994.
Bliss, Michael. Northern Enterprise: Five Centuries of Canadian Business . Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1987.
Bosher, J. The Canadian Merchants, 1713-1763 . Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1987.
Burpee, L. J. Journals and letters of Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de La Vérendrye and his sons . Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1927.
Champagne, Antoine. Nouvelles études sur La Vérendrye et le poste de l’Ouest . Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1971.
Crean, J. F. “Hats and the Fur Trade.” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 28, no. 3 (1962), pp. 373-386.
Cook, Peter. “Symbolic and Material Exchange in Intercultural Diplomacy: The French and the Hodenosaunee in the Early Eighteenth Century.” In New Faces of the Fur Trade: Selected Papers of the Seventh North American Fur Trade Conference, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1995 , edited by Jo-Anne Fiske, Susan Sleeper-Smith, and William Wicken, pp. 75-100. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1998.
Dechêne, Louise. Habitants et marchands de Montréal au XVIIe siècle . Montréal: Pion, 1974.
Delâge, Denys. Le pays renversé. Amérindiens et européens en Amérique du nord-est, 1600-1664 . Montréal: Boréal Express, 1985.
Dickason, Olive Patricia. “From ‘One Nation’ in the Northeast to ‘New Nation’ in the Northwest: A Look at the Emergence of the Métis.” In The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Métis in North America , edited by Jacqueline Paterson and Jennifer S. H. Brown, pp. 19-36. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1985.
Eccles, W. J. France in North America . Revised edition. Markham, ON: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1990.
Francis, Daniel and Toby Morantz. Partners in Furs: A History of the Fur Trade in Eastern James Bay, 1600-1870 . Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1983.
Germain, Georges-Hébert. Les coureurs des bois. La saga des Indiens blancs . Paris: Éditions France Loisirs, 2003.
Grabowski, Jan. “Les Amérindiens domiciliés et la ‘contrebande’ des fourrures en Nouvelle France.” Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec , vol. 24, no 3 (1994), pp. 45-52.
Greer, Allan. Peasant, Lord, and Merchant: Rural Society in Three Quebec Parishes, 1740-1840 . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985.
Havard, Gilles. Empire et métissages. Indiens et Français dans le Pays d’en Haut, 1660-1715 . Sillery et Paris: Septentrion et Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2003.
Heidenreich, Conrad E. and Arthur J. Ray. The Early Fur Trades: A Study in Cultural Interaction . Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976.
Igartua, José E. “The Merchants of Montreal at the Conquest: Socio - Economic Profile.” Histoire Sociale/Social History , vol. 8, no. 16 (November 1975), pp. 275-293.
Innis, Harold. The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History . Revised edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970.
Jaenen, Cornelius. “Amerindian Views of French Culture in the Seventeenth Century.” Canadian Historical Review , vol. 55, no 3 (1974), pp. 261-291.
Jaenen, Cornelius. “French Attitudes Towards Native Society.” In Old Trails and New Directions: Papers of the Third North American Fur Trade Conference , edited by Carol M. Judd and Arthur J. Ray, pp. 59-72. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980.
Jaenen, Cornelius. Friend and Foe: Aspects of French-Amerindian Cultural Contact in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries . Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976.
Lande, Lawrence M. The Development of the Voyageur Contract, 1686-1821 . Montreal: Lawrence Lande Foundation for Canadian Historical Research, 1989.
Lewis, G. Malcolm. “Indian Maps.” In Old Trails and New Directions: Papers of the Third North American Fur Trade Conference , edited by Carol M. Judd and Arthur J. Ray, pp. 9-23. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980.
Morantz, Toby. “The Fur Trade and the Cree of James Bay.” In Old Trails and New Directions: Papers of the Third North American Fur Trade Conference , edited by Carol M. Judd and Arthur J. Ray, pp. 39-58. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980.
Perrot, Nicolas. Mémoire sur les mœurs, coustumes et relligion des sauvages de l’Amérique septentrionale , edited by Jules Tailhan. Leipzig and Paris: Librairie A. Franck, 1864.
Peterson, Jacqueline. “Many Roads to Red River: Métis Genesis in the Great Lakes Region, 1680-1815.” In The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Métis in North America , edited by Jacqueline Peterson and Jennifer S. H. Brown, pp. 37-71. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1985.
Ray, Arthur J. Indians in the Fur Trade: Their Role as Hunters, Trappers and Middlemen in the Lands Southwest of Hudson Bay, 1660-1870 . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974.
Sleeper-Smith, Susan. Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes . Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001.
Sonenscher, Michael. The Hatters of Eighteenth-Century France . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
Stanley, George F. “The Indians and the Brandy Trade During the Ancien Régime.” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française , vol. 6, no 4 (mars 1953), pp. 489-505.
Thistle, Paul C. Indian-European Trade Relations in the Lower Saskatchewan River Region to 1840 . Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1986.
Trigger, Bruce G. The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660 . 2 فولس. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987.
Trigger, Bruce G. Les Indiens, la fourrure et les Blancs . Traduit de l’anglais par Georges Khal. Montréal et Paris: Boréal et Seuil, 1990.
Usner, Daniel H. Indians, Settlers, & Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783 . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
Van Kirk, Sylvia. Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870 . Winnipeg: Watson & Dwyer, 1980.
Webster, John Clarence, ed. Sieur de Dièreville, Relation of the Voyage to Port Royal in Acadia or New France . Toronto: Champlain Society, 1933.
White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 . New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Wien, Thomas. “Castor, peaux, et pelleteries dans le commerce canadien des fourrures, 1720-1790.” In ‘ Le Castor fait tout’: Selected Papers of the Fifth North American Fur Trade Conference , edited by Bruce G. Trigger, Toby Morantz, and Louise Dechêne, pp. 72-92. Montreal: Lake Saint Louis Historical Society, 1987.
Wien, Thomas. “Exchange Patterns in the European Market for North American Furs and Skins, 1720-1760.” In The Fur Trade Revisited: Selected Papers of The Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference , edited by Jennifer Brown, W. J. Eccles, and Donald P. Heldman, pp. 19-37. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1994.
Wien, Thomas. “Selling Beaver Skins in North America and Europe, 1720-1760: The Uses of Fur-Trade Imperialism.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association , (1990), pp. 293-317.
Archives des notaires du Québec, des origines à 1931.
Voyageur Contracts Database, 1714 à 1830.
Louis Nicolas’s Codex canadensis , ca.1700.
Fur Trade Stories.
Exploration, the Fur Trade and Hudson’s Bay Company.
The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents , compiled and edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites.
In Pursuit of Adventure: The Fur Trade in Canada and the North West Company.

Wyoming Almanac and History.
В В В В В В В В В В В History and Opinion.
В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В By Phil RobertsВ.
Everything About Wyoming.
New History, Chap. 2, Fur Trade and Rendezvous System.
Chapter 2:п»ї Fur Trade and the Rendezvous System.
The brief 16-year period of the fur trade rendezvous in Wyoming illustrates enduring truths in the economic development of the state. While none of the events occurred in the 20th century, striking parallels can be drawn from the fur trade which help explain the evolution of later industries in Wyoming, including agriculture and cattle, tourism and the mineral industry. The product was natural resource-based, the market for the product was virtually non-existent within the state, and it was subject to wild fluctuations in prices depending on international trends. В.
It must be emphasized that none of these characteristics are unique to Wyoming. Similar conditions apply to any colonial economy. Nonetheless, what makes studying the fur trade period useful is that, to a great extent, Wyoming remains colonial. Even two decades into the new millennium, primary products come from natural resource extraction rather than from manufacturing. Further, like employees in modern-day mining, the earliest white travelers never considered Wyoming as a place for permanent settlement. It was simply a route to somewhere else. Locating in what is now Wyoming was a temporary sojourn or else it was simply harsh passage toward more promising opportunities in other directions.
The origins of the fur trade in Wyoming and to the use of Wyoming as a trail can be traced to the Lewis and Clark expedition. Although the famed explorers never stepped foot into Wyoming, the interest they generated from their reports after their return fueled tremendous interest in the West. В Further, one of their party, John Colter, became the first white American to step foot within Wyoming. Colter, a Virginia-born, probably illiterate mountain man, went with the famous explorers to the West Coast. [ix] В Prior to the onset of the expedition, he signed (or applied his mark on) the agreement that he would not be released from their service until the conclusion of the round trip. Nevertheless, during the Lewis and Clark partyвЂ™s return to St. Louis in 1806, the party encountered two trappers along the Missouri River, probably in the neighborhood of present-day Omaha, Nebraska. There, Colter asked his bosses if he could leave their employ, given that they were fairly close to St. Louis, to travel back up river with the two men to the fur fields of the northern Rockies. Lewis and Clark reluctantly agreed that Colter had upheld most of the agreement and allowed him to leave. В.
By the end of the year, Colter was seeking out good fur trapping areas and planning excursions to find likely Indians with whom to trade. An employee of the New Orleans-born trader Manuel Lisa, Colter was headquartered at Fort Manuel Lisa where the Big Horn River enters the Yellowstone in present-day southern Montana. From that location, Colter set out in the late fall of 1807 to see if he could locate trading partners or fur trapping grounds to the south. He traveled afoot, carrying a 40-pound pack of trade goods, a musket and accompanied only by a dog.
His exact route is subject to debate, but most authorities believe he entered Wyoming through Sunlight Basin, north of present-day Cody, walked to the south until he encountered the present Shoshone River just west of Cody. [x] В There, he saw hot springs and, probably, active geysers. The springs exuded the pungent smells of sulfur and he dubbed the river, the "Stinkingwater." (Is it little wonder that Cody area residents at the turn of the century petitioned the Wyoming legislature to change it to the less odorous name, Shoshone River?) [xi] В Depending on the source, Colter either walked west toward present Yellowstone National Park or in a southerly direction toward the distant Owl Creek range. Some historians believe he walked due south, over the present Owl Creek mountains and then turned west, following the Wind River and then over Union Pass into Jackson Hole, perhaps further west into present Idaho and then north through Yellowstone, eventually making his way back to Fort Manuel Lisa by following the Shoshone and then the Big Horn River. A second suggested route has Colter entering Yellowstone, traveling south through Jackson Hole and then turning east, following the Wind River to some point in the neighborhood of present-day Riverton and then north through the Big Horn Basin, following the Big Horn River the entire distance back to Fort Manuel Lisa. [xii] В.
The exact route is unimportant. The main point of his trip was to find trading partners. He did not succeed although he did see the wonders of Yellowstone, becoming the first white American eyewitness to what became known as "ColterвЂ™s Hell." [xiii] В ColterвЂ™s expedition also demonstrated that the Spanish empire was not as close as some people initially believed. [xiv] 8 В The main reason for Colter's trip was economic.. He was not an explorer simply out mapping and describing the area such as his previous bosses, Lewis and Clark, had been. He made the trip during the winter months of 1807-08, an amazing feat given the frequent inclement weather that normally plagues the area. He reported back to his colleagues at LisaвЂ™s fort what he had seen, but none seemed interested in furthering the exploration. He did not observe rich fur grounds nor encounter native people interested in developing a trade relationship. Consequently, the main lasting importance of ColterвЂ™s walk came from his oral report to William Clark after Colter left the territory for the last time. Clark converted ColterвЂ™s descriptions onto a map, along with routes of other explorers that would become useful to later travelers. [xv]
ColterвЂ™s foray into the Wyoming wilds illustrates yet another point. Like many of the mountain men who followed him, he was an expectant capitalist. [xvi] В He anticipated gaining great wealth from the trapping and trading in the mountains, but he had no desire to make a permanent home there. Once his fortune was made, he expected to return to the St. Louis area, buy a farm or a business and settle down to the life of a comfortable gentleman. Brief stays in Wyoming were a means to economic security, nothing more. Future economic booms in Wyoming were to attract the same type of individualsвЂ”men who would work in Wyoming just long enough to earn the money so that they could live comfortably back home. [xvii]
Numerous anonymous fur trappers worked their way across what is now Wyoming before and after ColterвЂ™s time. Some were French Canadian like the mythical Jacques LaRamee, the fur trapper who lent his name to numerous Wyoming places posthumously. Reportedly killed by Indians somewhere along the river that bears his name, LaRamee probably trapped in what is now southeastern Wyoming in 1820-21. [xviii]
Edward Rose, of mixed African American, Native American and white ancestry, built a rude temporary cabin in the Big Horn Basin area as early as 1809. [xix] В Little is known of RoseвЂ™s activities in these early years, although a later party of overland Astorians reported meeting him near the Big Horn Mountains in the summer of 1811. Quite likely, Rose shared the views of Colter, LaRamee, and others-- that their stays in Wyoming would be only temporary.
Soon after Colter made his report to Clark, John Jacob Astor raised an expedition designed to establish a trading post on the Pacific Coast. The German-born entrepreneur who had earned a fortune in trade by importing such items as flutes from Europe, studied the Lewis and Clark reports. Recognizing the importance of American claims to the Oregon country, AstorВ sought assistance from Congress in order to mount an expedition west. [xx]
Astor was a cautious man. Rather than relying on the unknowns of an overland route, he hedged his bets by sending a ship, theВ Tonquin , around the tip of South America. He hoped one of the two expeditions would succeed in reaching the West Coast. After stops along the South American coast and on the island of Hawaii, theВ Tonquin В located the mouth of the Columbia River and, soon after, the crew set up a crude fort they called Fort Astoria.
At about the time the fort was being built, AstorвЂ™s overland party was leaving St. Louis. Led by a New Jersey-born merchant, Wilson Price Hunt, who had almost no experience outside of general merchandising, the party of 60 men finally set out in April 1810 for Oregon. The initial plan was to follow the Lewis and Clark route as closely as possible, but when the party came to a point along the Missouri River between present-day Pierre and Mobridge, South Dakota, Hunt opted to abandon his boats and try a short cut overland to the West. The party traded for horses with the local Indians and set out in a generally straight line West in late July. By early August, the expedition reached what is now the extreme northeast corner of Wyoming, crossed the Belle Fourche River and continued south and westward into the Powder River country. There, the extremely hot temperatures caused serious discomfort. For instance, the lack of water caused HuntвЂ™s dog to die from heat exhaustion and thirst. Nonetheless, by late August, the Hunt party was encamped near present-day Buffalo, along the eastern edge of the Big Horn Mountains. There, the party encountered Edward Rose, but many of his actions caused suspicion and Hunt spurned his offers to serve as a guide. В After several daysвЂ™ rest, the party crossed the Big Horns, probably over what is now called Powder River Pass, following Ten Sleep Creek until they reached the site of present-day Ten Sleep where they turned south and followed the No Wood River. They crossed the Owl Creek Range and then turned west, following a similar route Colter had used three years earlier.
The Hunt party encountered the Wind River Mountains and then the Tetons, reaching them in early September when the weather was highly changeable. В After circling in several directions for several days, the Hunt party finally opted to proceed to Fort Hall, a fur company post in present-day Idaho. From there, Hunt made a tragic mistake. He traded his horses for rudely constructed rafts and loaded the men and supplies aboard, planning to navigate the Snake River on down to the Pacific. This early-day version of "whitewater rafting" ended in disaster for HuntвЂ™s party. The party, separated in three groups, В lost supplies just as winter was approaching. After wandering through the Idaho wilderness for weeks, the Hunt party straggled into Fort Astoria, the first group arriving inВ January 1812. [xxi]
Meanwhile, theВ Tonquin В departed for a trading mission with Indians along the northwest coast. The traders anchored at an Indian village on Vancouver Island. There, the ship was boarded by Indians who killed the entire crew, except for one sailor who was luckily ashore when the attack occurred. At the same time, rumors continued to circulate that the United States and Britain were at war. American leadership at Fort Astoria was alarmed at word that Britain was winning.
In the summer of 1812, Astorian commanders recruited Robert Stuart and six other men to return east, report to Astor and determine the true state of the war. Stuart, who had come to the West Coast via theВ Tonquin , was an unusual choice as expedition leader. Nonetheless, he ably traversed the Idaho wilderness and picked up Indian trails in what is now west central Wyoming over South Pass. Stuart and his men were the first white Americans to report using the famous pass. From there, they followed the Sweetwater River east. Near present-day Casper, they decided to spend the winter. There, at Bessemer Bend, they built a rude cabin, but Indians passing through the area caused them great concern. Consequently, by early December, the party elected to follow the North Platte River east, finally deciding to spend the winter at a well-protected stopover near present-day Torrington. [xxii]
The Stuart party pioneered the Oregon Trail route, but had done it backwardsвЂ”west to east rather than in the usually expected east-to-west direction. Significantly, the Stuart party found South Pass, which was to prove to be the least difficult passageway through the Rockies. [xxiii]
The Hunt and Stuart expeditions also reflect the theme in Wyoming history that the state has been "a trail to somewhere else." Neither party made any serious effort to explore the economic potentials of Wyoming. Like thousands of visitors along WyomingвЂ™s present-day interstate highways, both groups simply viewed the terrain as a necessary obstacle to travel east or west. Later travelers, en route to homes in Oregon and Utah and the gold fields of California, held similar views about Wyoming's geography.
Economically, few of the early fur trappers plying their trade in Wyoming were very successful. For one thing, the markets for their furs were distantвЂ”too far except for extended annual returns with the bulky beaver pelts. By the time these early trappers returned from civilization with their complement of goods for another year in the mountains, much of the prime fur-trapping season was over.
A former Missouri lead mine operator recognized the problem and, in 1822, he organized a fur trading company with a plan to make a fortune in the West. The mine operator, William Ashley, advertised for "100 enterprising young men" in theВ Missouri Gazette and Public Advertiser, В Feb. 13, 1822. He received dozens of responses, including one from a young man named Jim Bridger. [xxiv]
AshleyвЂ™s well-organized expedition left Missouri in early spring, crossed present Kansas, into northeastern Colorado and then into Wyoming over the Laramie Plains, westward to the Green River. There, Ashley turned south, following the Green River (then known by other trappers as "Spanish River" probably for the fact that it eventually came out in the Spanish southwest). [xxv]
At a point near the present Wyoming-Utah state line, Ashley cached his trade goods, intending to travel light until he could retrieve the goods upon his return north. When the parties reunited, it was at a rendezvous locationвЂ”the first fur trade rendezvous. Strictly speaking, it was not a true rendezvous, but Ashley had the idea for a trade fair in the West. Hardly unique to the Western experience, the trade fair was an opportunity for mountain men to trade furs for goods without having to make the arduous trip to a distant trading post or east to the population centers. The individual trapper could concentrate on trapping, relying on supplies from the annual mid-summer visits of the trade companies sponsoring the rendezvous. [xxvi] В.
The rendezvous captured the attention of local Native Americans who participated in the lively trade and contests at the brief mid-summer carnivals. Shoshones, in particular, recognized these events as similar to their annual pow-wows and trade fairs, held throughout the intermountain West over the centuries. At the rendezvous, Indians out-numbered white trappers and traders at every one of the rendezvous held on the Upper Green River, sometimes by as much as ten times. [xxvii]
Rendezvous have become mythical in modern film and literature as places for debauchery and drunkenness, knife and ax-throwing contests, and tests of skill and strength. Their most important function, the reason they were patronized, was primarily economic.
Ashley set prices based on his St. Louis costs, plus a reasonable charge for transporting the supplies and a modest profit. From the beginning, trappers complained of the uneven rates of exchange. For instance, Ashley offered to purchase each beaver skin for $3 per pound. Since the average beaver pelt weighs approximately 1.44 pounds, a trapper could get $5 per pelt. Meanwhile, he could trade for coffee ($2 per pound), gunpowder ($2 per pound), buttons and fish hooks ($1.50 per dozen) or even heavily diluted rum ($16 per gallon). [xxviii] В Trappers complained but Ashley was the only game in town. In his defense, AshleyвЂ™s risks were considerable. Transporting hundreds of pounds of beaver pelts back to St. Louis required planning and a bit of good luck. [xxix] В Circulating the word in the far-flung wilderness by word of mouth among mountain men, the directions and dates of the rendezvous could lead to missing the suppliers altogether. [xxx]
In the ensuing years, Ashley sold out his interest in the rendezvous supply company, using his profits in an unsuccessful run for governor of Missouri. The successor companies soon faced competition from combines made up of fur trappers themselves. В These men, experienced trappers who knew the dangers of the wilderness, saw the profit supplying other trappers far exceeded the risks in beaver trapping, year-round, В in the wild. В Thomas Fitzpatrick, Jim Bridger and Jedediah Smith formed their own companies, sometimes as partners and other times as competitors. One year, FitzpatrickвЂ™s company packed goods in from Santa Fe, not the more distant but easier to reach St. Louis. [xxxi] В.
The annual rendezvous gained identities much like todayвЂ™s family or school reunions. They were referred to by fur trappers and traders, not by the year they were held, but by the main events occurring at them. For instance, the 1827 rendezvous featured the first wheeled vehicle pulled over South Pass, a cannon mounted on a two-wheeled cart pulled by horses as part of William SubletteвЂ™s company. The feat demonstrated that South Pass could be crossed by wheeled vehicles, prompting later West Coast-bound travelers to use the trans-Wyoming route. Capt. B. L. E. Bonneville took wagons over the pass in 1836. [xxxii]
Many of the annual rendezvous were held in what is now Wyoming, most along the Upper Green River in the neighborhood of present-day Pinedale. [xxxiii] В At the 1835 rendezvous along the Green, Jim Bridger asked traveling doctor and missionary Marcus Whitman to remove an arrow point from his back. Bridger suffered the wound two years earlier in a skirmish with the Bannacks. Without the use of anesthesia, Whitman removed the offending arrow point, thus completing the first surgical operation in Wyoming history. Whitman went on to Oregon Territory where he established a mission. The next year, after returning to the East Coast via sailing ship around the tip of South America, the missionary returned west. This time, he was accompanied by his new bride, Narcissa. She and the wife of another missionary, Eliza Spaulding, became the first white American women to travel across Wyoming. [xxxiv]
Sir William Drummond Stewart, a Scottish nobleman, came to the 1837 rendezvous. В He had made a similar visit three years earlier by paying the supply company to transport him to the site. (He became WyomingвЂ™s first tourist as a result). This time, Stewart brought with him a Baltimore artist, Alfred Jacob Miller. In the days before cameras, Stewart wanted a permanent record of the colorful rendezvous. From the sketches Miller made that year, he painted oil canvases ofВ rendezvous scenes. They became the first Euro-American produced visual records of what is now Wyoming. [xxxv] В Stewart also brought with him a white-plumed steel helmet of a British regiment, which he presented, to Jim Bridger. Artist Miller painted the mountain man riding about displaying the headgear to Indians and other trappers. [xxxvi] В В В.
But the rendezvous, dependent for success on market conditions, soon passed from the scene. The price of beaver pelts dropped rapidly in the late 1830s when European fashions in menвЂ™s hats turned from beaver to felt and other materials. With the price drop came declining interest in trapping. Besides, in some places in Wyoming, beaver were trapped out because of overzealous pressures on the natural resource. The inevitable bust, following the boom, set in. Like the cycles in the cattle industry, oil and coal in later decades, the wild fluctuations in economic fortunes shattered dreams of quick and easy wealth.
It was not simply the "boom-bust" cycle that influenced the end of the rendezvous system. By the late 1820s, traders planned permanent points for fur bartering and sales of supplies. Mountain men in Wyoming for the first time had the luxury of year-round trading at the trading posts set up closer to the fur trapping grounds. In 1828, a Portuguese trader named Antonio Montero (or "Mateo") established a post made of cottonwood logs in the Powder River Basin near present Kaycee. Evidently, the location proved impractical and unprofitable. Montero closed the post and moved on, allowing the log structure to fall apart and rot away. [xxxvii]
Another post was more permanent. In 1834, William Sublette and his partner, Robert Campbell, were racing the Boston-based merchant Nathaniel Wyeth, to the Green River rendezvous. Sublette stopped long enough at the confluence of the Laramie River and the North Platte to set up a trading post where he could cache some supplies for later trading. [xxxviii] В He named the post "Fort William" and, later, the name was changed to "Fort John on the Laramie" to distinguish it from another Fort John. Soon, the lengthy title was shortened to "Fort Laramie." It was the first permanent white American settlement in Wyoming, a product of the economic competition in the fur trade. [xxxix]
The collapse of the fur trade market caused mountain men either to return east and seek employment in more traditional modes or to turn to other endeavors in the West. Many of them, like Jim Bridger and Joseph Walker, used the knowledge they gained about the territory as a means of guiding travelers west. Had not the fur trade collapsed, westward travelers would not have had competent guides across the Rockies. At the same time, many of these mountain men set up supply stations for the convenience of travelers.
To profit from the "trails to somewhere else," men like Bridger and his partner Louis Vasquez (born in St. Louis, descended from a pioneer Spanish family), built forts designed to attract travelers as much as to entice area Indians and trappers to the trade. [xl] В Fort Bridger, built in 1841-42, became a key supply point on the trail west to California and Oregon and, in the late 1850s, a point of controversy between the Mormons in Utah and the United States government. [xli]
В The fur trade and the migration that followed introduce several of the organizing concepts in Wyoming history. Early on, the area has been "a trail to somewhere else." At the same time, the federal governmentвЂ™s influence, both from legislation and from appropriations, was substantial. Large enterprises, organized and controlled from outside WyomingвЂ™s borders, dominated the economic life of Wyoming. The fur industry was natural resource based and, consequently, highly susceptible to "boom and bust" cycles. Only later did the water and the land attract those who wished to exploit the resources or those willing to make a permanent commitment to Wyoming. Among both groups--trappers and travelers--some valued wilderness and its non-economic contributions to human existence. Most did not. The population during the fur trade era was remarkably diverse. The trappers included African-Americans, French Canadians, farm boys from Kentucky, lead miners from Missouri and, of course, Native Americans. From the beginning, Wyoming was a diverse society containing competing and complementary cultures.
В В В During the first decades of theВ new millennium, Wyomingites of diverse cultures face similar questions of federal-state-private relationships. They debate whether or not to preserve wilderness. В They consider how to allocate water, what to do about vast open spaces. В Through it all, the rutted Oregon Trail and the other "trails to somewhere else" have become interstate highways and airfields where planes seem bound from Wyoming to a handful of out-of-state hub airports. High above the empty plains and shimmering mountains, vapor trails shine red in the sunset sky marking in less permanent traces than what wagons and cars left behind. In the place still pocked by Oregon Trail ruts and crossed by straight-line interstates, modern airplanes no longer even bother to touch down.
[i] Sheridan County resident Glenn Sweem reported finding part of a 16th century Spanish sword near Dayton, Wyoming, in the early 1960s. The author has viewed the item and heard the arguments made by many local historians that the presence of such artifacts proves that Spaniards had traveled in Wyoming much earlier than French-Canadian fur trappers. The author leans toward the view taken by other historians that the items likely made their way into Wyoming via the active Native American trade networks.
[ii] В Lawrence J. Burpee (editor).В Journals and Letters of Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de la La VГ©rendrye and His Sons, with Correspondence between the Governors of Canada and the French Court, Touching the Search for the Western Sea. В (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1927, pp. 406-432. (The work is in the original French, but translations are available).
[iii]В Edward G. Gray. В The Making of John Ledyard: Empire and Ambition in the Life of an Early American Traveler . (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
[iv] В Mackenzie's journals first appeared in print in 1801. For a reprinting, seeВ The Journals of Alexander Mackenzie: Exploring Across Canada in 1789 and 1793 . (Torrington, Wyo.: Narrative Press, 2001).
[v] В Francois Antoine Larocque. В Journal of a Voyage to the Rocky Mountains . (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1910). A facsimile edition is available from the Library of Western Fur Trade Historical Sources website, mtmen along with documents involving other aspects of the Rocky Mountain fur trade during the early years. Quoting from the American Mountain Men homepage, " This website is an on-line Research Center devoted to the history, traditions, tools, and mode of living, of the trappers, explorers, and traders known as the Mountain Men."
[vi] В A good analysis of Lewis and ClarkвЂ™s relationship with native peoples may be found in James Ronda, В Lewis and Clark Among the Indians . (University of Nebraska Press, 1991). The popular biography of Lewis is Stephen Ambrose. В Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West . (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). For Clark, see Landon Y. Jones. В William Clark and the Shaping of the West . (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004).
[vii] В For a critique of Hebard's methods, see MikeВ Mackey. В Inventing History in the American West: The Romance and Myths of Grace Raymond Hebard . (Powell, Wyo.: Western History Publications, 2005).В See also: wyohistory/essays/grace-raymond-hebard.
[viii] Grace Raymond Hebard. В Sacajawea: Guide and Interpreter of Lewis and Clark Expedition . (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur Clark & Co., 1933).
[ix] В The best biographical information on Colter may be found in LeRoy Hafen, (ed.).В Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West. В (10 vols., Glendale, Calif: Arthur H. Clark, 1965-72), but see also Burton Harris. В John Colter, His Years in the Rockies . (New York: Scribners, 1952). See also, W. J. Ghent, "Sketch of John Colter,"В Annals of WyomingВ 10 (July 1938), 111. The mountain men as "mappers: of the West is the subject of a book by Robert M. Utley. В A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific . (New York: Henry Holt, 1997).
[x] See, for instance, В HarrisвЂ™ description of the excursion, В op. cit . В For debates over the validity of the so-called "Colter stone," see В Annals of Wyoming В 38 (Spring 1942).
[xi] В Wyoming Session Laws В (1901), ch. 39.
[xii] В This is the route Hill favored, В op. cit.
[xiii] В В Most historians believe the term "ColterвЂ™s Hell" actually was first applied to the area just west of Cody along the Shoshone River where Colter first encountered hot springs and geysers. The geysers in the area are now extinct, but many of the hot springs still flow from the banks of the Shoshone River, including DeMaris Springs, the site local authorities such as Bob Edgar favored as the spot where Colter encountered the river.
[xiv] В For descriptions of early mapping, see William Goetzmann. В Exploration and Empire . (New York: Knopf, 1966), but see also, Utley, В op. cit.
[xv] В The importance of federal financing of the Lewis and Clark expedition cannot be overemphasized. In essence, it was this federal research seed money that made western exploration attractive. John Colter, when he first came West, could be described as a federal employee, given that he was part of the federally-financed project supported through the efforts of President Thomas Jefferson. For discussion of the maps, see John L. Allen. В Passage through the Garden: Lewis and Clark and the Image of the American Northwest. В (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1975), 378-79.
[xvi] В The term is applied by many historians of the fur trade, including William H. Goetzmann, "The Mountain Man as Jacksonian Man,"В American Quarterly В 15 (Fall, 1963), 402-415. See also Fred Gowens. В Rocky Mountain Rendezvous . (Provo: BYU Press, 1976).
[xvii] В For evidence of this trend, the author consulted many ofВ the biographies in LeRoy R. Hafen, В The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West . 10 vols. (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark, 1965-72).
[xviii] В For a report on the investigation of the LaRamee "myth" and the probability that even his first name may be in error, see John D. McDermott, "In Search of Jacques LaRamee: A Study in Frustration,"В Annals of WyomingВ 36 (October, 1964, 169-174 .
[xix] В A reliable biography is in: LeRoy Hafen, (ed.).В Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West. В (10 vols. Glendale, Calif: Arthur H. Clark, 1965-72)
[xx] В Much of what is known about the travels of the overland Astorians comes from a book commissioned by Astor many years later as an official history of his company. Washington Irving. В Fort Astoria . (New York, 1837). For a carefully documented recent analysis of the Hunt expedition, see James Ronda. В Astoria and Empire . (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990).В Born in the Duchy of Baden in what is now Germany, he immigrated to the United States when he was 16 years old and began working in the fur trade in upstate New York. He amassed a fortune based on the fur trade, overseas commerce (especially with China) and land speculation. В For a brief biography, see Richard E. В Oglesby, "John Jacob Astor: a better businessman than the best of them." В 25В Journal of the West В (1986), pp. 8-14.
[xxi] В Hunt eventually returned to St. Louis where he became postmaster and served in that capacity for 18 years. See Ronda, В ibid .
[xxii] В Robert Stuart. В The Discovery of the Oregon Trail: Robert Stuart's Narratives of His Overland Trip Eastward from Astoria, 1812-13. В Philip Ashton Rollins, ed. (Privately printed, 1936).
[xxiii] The trails across Wyoming had been known and used by Native peoples. Many of the routes began as game trails for buffalo, antelope and other indigenous animals.
[xxiv] Missouri Republican , March 22, 1822.
[xxv] Richard M. Clokey. В William H. Ashley: Enterprise and Politics in the Trans-Mississippi West . (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980)
[xxvi] В Gowens, В Rocky Mountain Rendezvous, В op. cit. Similar types of trade fairs were used throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. Thanks to my UW colleague Dr. Kris Utterback for bringing this comparison to my attention.
[xxvii] В Dr. Rory Becker has demonstrated the presence of significant numbers of Indians at the 1837 rendezvous as well as from several others along the Upper Green River of Wyoming in the 1830s. See, Rory J. Becker. В Finding Rendezvous: An Approach to Locating Rocky Mountain Rendezvous Sites through Use of Historic Documents, Geophysical Survey, and LiDAR . Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of Wyoming, 2018.
[xxviii] Figures cited are from Gowens, В op. cit.
[xxix] В After the 1825 rendezvous, Ashley sent the furs by pack train to the Big Horn River and then loaded them aboard crudely constructed rafts for transport down the Missouri River system back to St. Louis. See Clokey. В William H. Ashley: Enterprise and Politics in the Trans-Mississippi West , for an account of the trip.
[xxx] В For instance, there was no rendezvous in 1838 because two separate sites apparently had been determined but communication breakdowns led to confusion between traders and trappers as to the exact dates and places. For a good account of the rendezvous period, see Dale L. Morgan. В Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West. В (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1953).
[xxxi] В The rendezvous itself proved to be a handy forum for organizing, disbanding and reconfiguring trading partnerships and companies. For a history of the various companies, see Hiram M. Chittenden, В A History of the American Fur Trade of the Far West . 2 فولس. (Stanford, Calif.: Academic Reprints, 1954).
[xxxii] В Washington Irving. В The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, Digested from His Journal (1837). For a free facsimile, see gutenberg/files/1372/1372-h/1372-h. htm.
[xxxiii] See Gowens, end papers, for exact locations of the rendezvous sites in Wyoming, Utah and Idaho.
[xxxiv] For a well-documented description of the travels of the two women and others who followed, see Clifford M. Drury, В First White Women over the Rockies: Diaries, Letters, and Biographical Sketches of the Six Women of the Oregon Mission Who Made the Overland Journey in 1836 and 1838 . 2 فولس. (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur Clark, 1963).
[xxxv] В Miller painted many of the oils while he lived at StewartвЂ™s Murthley Castle in Scotland. In the 1980s, University of Wyoming journalism professor Robert Warner effectuated the receipt of a half dozen Miller paintings by the UniversityвЂ™s American Heritage Center. The paintings are now on permanent display in the loge of the building. For descriptions of the paintings, see Marvin C. Ross, ed. В The West of Alfred Jacob Miller . (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968); and Robert Warner. В The Fort Laramie of Alfred Jacob Miller. В (Laramie: University of Wyoming Publications, 1979).
[xxxvi] В Mae Reed Porter and Odessa Davenport. В Scotsmen in Buckskin: Sir William Drummond Stewart and the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade . (New York: Hastings House, 1963), 150-151;В Ross, В op. cit ., 159.
[xxxvii] В The site is noted in many Wyoming guidebooks, including Mark Junge, ed. В Guide to Wyoming Historic Sites . (Cheyenne: Wyoming Recreation Commission, 1977). In the summer of 2007, two University of Wyoming archaeologists examined the site, now on private land, В for possible future excavation.
[xxxviii] В Wyeth worried that Sublette's party, at least some two days ahead, would beat him to the rendezvous. In his journal, Wyeth registered his disappointment to find that the Sublette/Campbell group had down-sized their load by leaving a group behind to build what was to become Fort Laramie:В "June 1st. Made 15 miles to Laramies fork just before coming to which we made a cut off of about 3 miles over and about 5 miles by the river forded this fork with ease and made 8 miles up the Platte in afternoon. At the crossing we found 13 of Sublettes men camped for the purpose of building a forte he having gone ahead with his best animals and the residue of his goods he left about 14 loads. "В FromВ The Correspondence and Journals of Captain Nathaniel, 1831-36 . (Eugene, Ore.: University Press, 1899).
[xxxix] В Leroy R. Hafen and Francis M. Young. В Fort Laramie and the Pageant of the West, 1834-1890 . (Glendale: Arthur H. Clark, 1938).
[xl] В Many historians believe Bridger was illiterate. Consequently, Vasquez handled the business records of the jointly run enterprise. Bridger blazed the trail for Captain H. H. Stansbury in the fall of 1850 that would become the transcontinental railroad route across southern Wyoming and the routes of Highway 30 and Interstate 80. For a brief description of this work, see Utley, В op. cit. , 268-271.
[xli]В For details concerning the controversy, see Robert Ellison. В Fort Bridger: Its Place in History . (Cheyenne: Wyoming State Historical Dept., reprint, 1980).
Prices for Goods at Various Rendezvous* В.
Goods sold, 1827.
Prices paid for beaverВ ( Trappers received about $5 per pelt)
п»їп»ї Advertisement in the Missouri Gazette and В В Public Advertiser (1822)
Opinions expressed herein are solely those of the writer. Copyright Wyoming Almanac. كل الحقوق محفوظة.

Rendezvous system fur trade

Mountain Men and the Fur Trade: The First Boom Years in Wyoming.
“I defy the annals of chivalry to furnish the record of a life more wild and perilous than those of a Rocky Mountain trapper.” – Francis Parkman.
I. The Legacy of Colter and the Astorians.
ا. fur trapper as "expectant capitalist"
ب. as illiterate ruffian in a buckskin suit.
ب. the "colonial economy" of the fur trade.
II. The "Invention" of the Rendezvous System.
ا. answering Ashley's job opening ad: Jedidiah Smith, Jim Bridger, Thomas Fitzpatrick, James Clyman, Hiram Scott, William Sublette, David E. Jackson.
ب. first rendezvous, July 1, 1825, on Henry’s Fork on the Green River--two years after Ashley’s first expedition to the Rockies; 120 men present.
ج. first rendezvous furs taken by pack train to the Big Horns near present Thermopolis, by bullboat down the Big Horn and the Yellowstone, keel boat down Missouri to St. Louis.
د. the economy of the rendezvous—some price examples.
ه. social and cultural interactions at rendezvous.
F. trappers as explorers: Smith “rediscovers” Jackson Hole; Sublette and Bridger “rediscover” Salt Lake.
ز. Bridger and Fitzpatrick become first to successfully trap in Jackson Hole (1825)
III. Highlights at Various Rendezvous Locations: Wyoming, Utah, Idaho.
ا. 1826 rendezvous: Willow Valley, border of Utah and Idaho—supply train up North Platte to Sweetwater River to Green River and south; Ashley sells out to Smith, Jackson, Sublette.
ب. 1827 rendezvous: near Bear Lake — cannon, first wheeled vehicle over South Pass; Smith took furs to San Francisco to sell; Hiram Scott abandoned and dies at Scotts Bluff.
ج. 1828 rendezvous: on Bear Lake—battle with Blackfeet.
د. 1829 rendezvous: Popo Agie and Pierre’s Hole. Smith, thought dead, reappears.
ه. 1830 rendezvous: Wind River (present Riverton)—Smith, Jackson, Sublette sell company to Bridger et al.
F. 1831 rendezvous: Willow Valley, supplied from Santa Fe, but competing companies showed up.
ز. 1832 rendezvous: Pierre’s Hole, at least four companies present and Bonneville in area. 1,000 attended; afterward, fight with Indians left Sublette wounded and Bridger with arrow in back. Later, Sublette sold furs for $4.25 per lb. in St. Louis.
ح. 1833 rendezvous: Green River (spread out for ten miles), Campbell brought William Drummond Stewart, son of Preident Harrison, others; Bonneville present; group attacked by rabid wolves; Bonneville sent Walker party to Calif.
أنا. 1834 rendezvous: Ham’s Fork, race between Wyeth’s company and the Sublette-Campbell company; Fort Laramie set up as supply base. Sublette won race; later Wyeth founded Fort Hall, Idaho. Later in year, Sublette and Campbell sold their interests in Fort William (Laramie).
ي. 1835 rendezvous: Green River, Whitman and Parker with Fontenelle; Whitman removed arrowhead from Bridger’s back (first "surgery" in Wyoming)
ك. 1836 rendezvous:Green River, Whitman and wife Narcissa; Henry Spaulding and wife Eliza present; market starting to decline as silk hat gained popularity.
l. 1837 rendezvous: Green River, company train under Fitzpatrick; Stewart brought Alfred Jacob Miller.
م. 1838 rendezvous: Wind River, missionaries and Stewart on last trip; 125 trapppers and 2,000 pelts, smallest.
ن. 1839 rendezvous: Green River, missionaries present but small turnout.
o. 1840 rendezvous: Green River, last rendezvous. Father DeSmet’s first mass; large crowd.
IV. The Adventures of Captain B. L. E. Bonneville: Popularizing the Fur Trade.
ا. Bonneville, born in France and a West Point graduate, takes leave in 1832.
ب. remains in the West until 1835, long overstaying his leave.
ج. returns; restored to army service by Jackson; encounters Washington Irving.
د. popularity of Irving’s account: The Adventures of Captain Bonneville.
V. The Paintings of Alfred Jacob Miller: Illustrating the Rendezvous and Wyoming.
ا. sketches made on the trail.
ب. murals painted at Murthley Castle, Scotland.
السادس. The End of the Rendezvous.
VII. Mountain Men as Guides and Settlers.
ا. Fort Laramie (1834): Wyoming's first permanent settlement as fur trade product.
ب. Fort Bridger (1841 or 1842): Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez.
ج. "Portugese houses" near present Kaycee: Antonio Montero (Mateo)
VII. The Legacy of the Rendezvous.
William Ashley American Fur Company William Drummond Stewart Louis Vasquez.
Jim Bridger "free trappers" Alfred Jacob Miller Washington Irving.
James Beckwourth Dr. Marcus Whitman Jedediah Smith B. L. E. Bonneville.
James Clyman William Sublette Robert Campbell David E. Jackson.
Thomas Fitzpatrick Robert Campbell Jacques LaRamee Antonio Montero (Mateo)

بطاقة النقد الاجنبى الخرج

Thursday 15 February 2018

نظام الفراء التجارة النظام

Rendezvous system fur trade

No comments:

Post a Comment