Commerce by a Frozen Sea: Native Americans and the European Fur Trade

Chapter 7: Indians and the Fur Trade: A Golden Age?

Chapter 7 Indians and the Fur Trade: A Golden Age? The Indians in general exceed the middling stature of Europeans; are straight well made people, large boned, but not corpulent; their features regular and agreeable . . . the teeth white and even. . . . Their constitution is strong and healthy; their disorders few. —Andrew Graham, governor of York Factory, circa 1767 T he fur trade gave natives access to goods they could not produce themselves—goods that had a great impact on native life. Now, rather than relying exclusively on implements of stone, bone, and wood, they could substitute guns, knives, ice chisels, kettles, and other metal products. And the European technology embodied in these goods made daily activities easier. Iron kettles, knives, awls, and needles all improved the daily round of women’s work. Cooking was easier in kettles, especially since, as we saw in Chapter 3, women were able to specify the characteristics of the kettles that were sent over, and knives made food easier to prepare.1 But perhaps for the women awls and needles were even more exciting. Awls allowed women to punch holes in leather that was being used for clothing, and metal needles were a big improvement over bone or animal quills. Beads, that sometimes disparaged trade item, allowed for greater creative expression. The Cree had always decorated their clothing . Dyed porcupine quills, for example, adorned moccasins, but beads allowed greater color, variety, and texture. Knives, ice chisels, twine, nets, hatchets, and firearms raised men’s pro- 168 Chapter 7 ductivity in hunting and other activities. Ice chisels allowed them to break into the beaver lodges in winter, and with twine nets it was easier to capture the beaver as they tried to escape underwater. Firearms greatly increased the catch during the bird migrations and were increasingly used to hunt large game animals. Hatchets helped the Indians gather firewood. The trade also provided cloth, lace, and other textiles, which changed the material culture of native society, and European jewelry further enhanced the quality of native life.2 In the 1730s, when a strong market in Europe led to higher fur prices at the trading posts, natives began purchasing many more luxury items. Tobacco and alcohol, especially, became an increasing part of the social and spiritual life of native communities. At the same time, and despite the greater use of alcohol, the Cree and other natives living in the region remained moderate drinkers. Contrasting with a view of Indian traders who asked for ‘‘good measure ’’ in the manner of a supplicant, the records of the Hudson’s Bay Company describe a trade where the volumes, qualities, and varieties of luxury goods were strongly influenced by the Indians themselves.3 Letters to the posts from company headquarters are filled with inquires about how natives were reacting to the nature and quality of the goods they were sending out. These letters along with the company’s trade accounts reveal the Cree, Assiniboin, and Chipewyan to have been part of a rise in material culture that was taking place in much of Europe. For just as English, French, and other European consumers were enjoying the increased range of products made possible by long-distance trade, so too were these huntergatherers living in the interior of North America. Native Americans did not purchase the same mix of goods as the Europeans. No tea services, silverware , or milk jugs were sent to Hudson Bay, but natives did obtain a wide variety of other luxury items. More than forty types of luxury goods were traded by the Hudson’s Bay Company, among them combs, mirrors, rings, vermillion, and Venetian and Chinese beads. There seems little doubt that the producer and household goods enumerated in Chapter 3 allowed natives to meet their subsistence needs more effectively, while the luxury goods, including alcohol and high-quality Brazil tobacco, were greatly valued, as they were by Europeans. But to what extent did the fur trade allow natives a material condition of life equivalent to that of Europeans? In this chapter, we address this issue of comparative living standards. By combining the goods produced in the traditional native economy with the new goods that the fur trade made available to them, we Indians and the Fur Trade 169 compare the standards of living of Native Americans and Europeans, using as our basis of comparison the low-wage English worker of the mid-eighteenth century. One way...