The Economic History of the Fur Trade: 1. Ann M. Carlos, University of Colorado. Frank D. Lewis, Queen’s University. Introduction. A commercial fur trade in North America grew out of the early contact between Indians and European fisherman who were netting cod on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and on the Bay of Gasp. Indians would trade the pelts of small animals, such as mink, for knives and other iron- based products, or for textiles. Exchange at first was haphazard and it was only in the late sixteenth century, when the wearing of beaver hats became fashionable, that firms were established who dealt exclusively in furs. High quality pelts are available only where winters are severe, so the trade took place predominantly in the regions we now know as Canada, although some activity took place further south along the Mississippi River and in the Rocky Mountains. There was also a market in deer skins that predominated in the Appalachians. Southeastern Idaho Native American Prehistory and. The primary way for the Muscovite state to obtain furs was by exacting a fur tribute from the Siberian natives. Fur Trade: Northwest Coast Indian. Indian Middlemen: Natives in the Fur Trade (1990) Quotes on IMDb: Memorable quotes and exchanges from movies, TV series and more. The Plains Indian has. Many of these efforts came to fruition with the 1951 Indian Act, which granted the Natives. The first firms to participate in the fur trade were French, and under French rule the trade spread along the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers, and down the Mississippi. In the seventeenth century, following the Dutch, the English developed a trade through Albany. Then in 1. 67. 0, a charter was granted by the British crown to the Hudson’s Bay Company, which began operating from posts along the coast of Hudson Bay (see Figure 1). For roughly the next hundred years, this northern region saw competition of varying intensity between the French and the English. With the conquest of New France in 1. French trade shifted to Scottish merchants operating out of Montreal. After the negotiation of Jay’s Treaty (1. Mississippi passed to the American Fur Company under John Jacob Astor. In 1. 82. 1, the northern participants merged under the name of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and for many decades this merged company continued to trade in furs. Finally, in the 1. Hudson’s Bay Company, which in the twentieth century had become a large Canadian retailer, ended the fur component of its operation. Figure 1. Hudson’s Bay Company Hinterlands. Source: Ray (1. 98. The fur trade was based on pelts destined either for the luxury clothing market or for the felting industries, of which hatting was the most important. This was a transatlantic trade. The animals were trapped and exchanged for goods in North America, and the pelts were transported to Europe for processing and final sale. As a result, forces operating on the demand side of the market in Europe and on the supply side in North America determined prices and volumes; while intermediaries, who linked the two geographically separated areas, determined how the trade was conducted. The Demand for Fur: Hats, Pelts and Prices. However much hats may be considered an accessory today, they were for centuries a mandatory part of everyday dress, for both men and women. Of course styles changed, and, in response to the vagaries of fashion and politics, hats took on various forms and shapes, from the high- crowned, broad- brimmed hat of the first two Stuarts to the conically- shaped, plainer hat of the Puritans. The Restoration of Charles II of England in 1. Glorious Revolution in 1. Clarke, 1. 98. 2, chapter 1). White Oak Society > Historical Library > 18th Century Fur Trade > History of the Fur Trade. Indian middlemen traders. 24th Annual White Oak Society Rendezvous. The Fur Trade 1670-1800s. Fur Trade Map Native Peoples of the Northwest First Nations of the Northwest – 1.Ojibwa 2.Assiniboine 3.Cree 4.Chipewyan 5.Inuit. The Creek Indian Trade with Anglo. Indians in the Fur Trade: Their Roles as Trappers, Hunters, and Middlemen in the Lands Southwest of Hudson Bay, 1660-1870: Arthur Ray: 9780802079800: Books - Amazon.ca. Fur Company for domination of the fur trade. In fact, without Indian. What remained a constant was the material from which hats were made – wool felt. The wool came from various animals, but towards the end of the fifteenth century beaver wool began to be predominate. Over time, beaver hats became increasingly popular eventually dominating the market. Only in the nineteenth century did silk replace beaver in high- fashion men’s hats. Wool Felt. Furs have long been classified as either fancy or staple. Fancy furs are those demanded for the beauty and luster of their pelt. These furs – mink, fox, otter – are fashioned by furriers into garments or robes. Staple furs are sought for their wool. All staple furs have a double coating of hair with long, stiff, smooth hairs called guard hairs which protect the shorter, softer hair, called wool, that grows next to the animal skin. Only the wool can be felted. Each of the shorter hairs is barbed and once the barbs at the ends of the hair are open, the wool can be compressed into a solid piece of material called felt. The prime staple fur has been beaver, although muskrat and rabbit have also been used. Wool felt was used for over two centuries to make high- fashion hats. Felt is stronger than a woven material. It will not tear or unravel in a straight line; it is more resistant to water, and it will hold its shape even if it gets wet. These characteristics made felt the prime material for hatters especially when fashion called for hats with large brims. The highest quality hats would be made fully from beaver wool, whereas lower quality hats included inferior wool, such as rabbit. Felt Making. The transformation of beaver skins into felt and then hats was a highly skilled activity. The process required first that the beaver wool be separated from the guard hairs and the skin, and that some of the wool have open barbs, since felt required some open- barbed wool in the mixture. Felt dates back to the nomads of Central Asia, who are said to have invented the process of felting and made their tents from this light but durable material. Although the art of felting disappeared from much of western Europe during the first millennium, felt- making survived in Russia, Sweden, and Asia Minor. As a result of the Medieval Crusades, felting was reintroduced through the Mediterranean into France (Crean, 1. In Russia, the felting industry was based on the European beaver (castor fiber). Given their long tradition of working with beaver pelts, the Russians had perfected the art of combing out the short barbed hairs from among the longer guard hairs, a technology that they safeguarded. As a consequence, the early felting trades in England and France had to rely on beaver wool imported from Russia, although they also used domestic supplies of wool from other animals, such rabbit, sheep and goat. But by the end of the seventeenth century, Russian supplies were drying up, reflecting the serious depletion of the European beaver population. Coincident with the decline in European beaver stocks was the emergence of a North American trade. North American beaver (castor canadensis) was imported through agents in the English, French and Dutch colonies. Although many of the pelts were shipped to Russia for initial processing, the growth of the beaver market in England and France led to the development of local technologies, and more knowledge of the art of combing. Separating the beaver wool from the felt was only the first step in the felting process. It was also necessary that some of the barbs on the short hairs be raised or open. On the animal these hairs were naturally covered with keratin to prevent the barbs from opening, thus to make felt, the keratin had to be stripped from at least some of the hairs. The process was difficult to refine and entailed considerable experimentation by felt- makers. For instance, one felt maker “bundled . Although such processes removed the keratin, they did so at the price of a lower quality wool. The opening of the North American trade not only increased the supply of skins for the felting industry, it also provided a subset of skins whose guard hairs had already been removed and the keratin broken down. Beaver pelts imported from North America were classified as either parchment beaver (castor sec – dry beaver), or coat beaver (castor gras – greasy beaver). Parchment beaver were from freshly caught animals, whose skins were simply dried before being presented for trade. Coat beaver were skins that had been worn by the Indians for a year or more. With wear, the guard hairs fell out and the pelt became oily and more pliable. In addition, the keratin covering the shorter hairs broke down. By the middle of the seventeenth century, hatters and felt- makers came to learn that parchment and coat beaver could be combined to produce a strong, smooth, pliable, top- quality waterproof material. Until the 1. 72. 0s, beaver felt was produced with relatively fixed proportions of coat and parchment skins, which led to periodic shortages of one or the other type of pelt. The constraint was relaxed when carotting was developed, a chemical process by which parchment skins were transformed into a type of coat beaver. The original carrotting formula consisted of salts of mercury diluted in nitric acid, which was brushed on the pelts. The use of mercury was a big advance, but it also had serious health consequences for hatters and felters, who were forced to breathe the mercury vapor for extended periods. The expression “mad as a hatter” dates from this period, as the vapor attacked the nervous systems of these workers. The Prices of Parchment and Coat Beaver. Drawn from the accounts of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Table 1 presents some eighteenth century prices of parchment and coat beaver pelts. From 1. 71. 3 to 1. Once carotting was widely used, however, the prices were reversed, and from 1. The same general pattern is seen in the Paris data, although there the reversal was delayed, suggesting slower diffusion in France of the carotting technology. Nollet’s L’Art de faire des chapeaux included the exact formula, but it was not published until 1. A weighted average of parchment and coat prices in London reveals three episodes. From 1. 71. 3 to 1. During the period, 1. The years 1. 74. 6 to 1. There are far fewer prices available for Paris, but we do know that in the period 1. Table 1. Price of Beaver Pelts in Britain: 1. Year. Parchment. Coat. Averagea. Year. Parchment. Coat Averagea. 17. A weighted average of the prices of parchment, coat and half parchment beaver pelts. Weights are based on the trade in these types of furs at Fort Albany. Prices of the individual types of pelts are not available for the years, 1. Source: Carlos and Lewis, 1. The Demand for Beaver Hats.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2017
Categories |