Native American Fur Trade Clip Art Kindle Clip Art
The Economic History of the Fur Merchandise: 1670 to 1870
Introduction
A commercial fur merchandise 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 Gaspé near Quebec. Indians would trade the pelts of pocket-size animals, such as mink, for knives and other iron-based products, or for textiles. Substitution at first was haphazard and it was simply in the belatedly sixteenth century, when the wearing of beaver hats became stylish, that firms were established who dealt exclusively in furs. High quality pelts are bachelor but where winters are severe, so the merchandise 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 too a market place in deer skins that predominated in the Appalachians.
The first firms to participate in the fur trade were French, and nether French rule the trade spread along the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers, and downwardly the Mississippi. In the seventeenth century, following the Dutch, the English developed a merchandise through Albany. So in 1670, a charter was granted by the British crown to the Hudson's Bay Visitor, which began operating from posts along the declension of Hudson Bay (see Figure one). For roughly the side by side hundred years, this northern region saw competition of varying intensity between the French and the English. With the conquest of New France in 1763, the French merchandise shifted to Scottish merchants operating out of Montreal. After the negotiation of Jay'due south Treaty (1794), the northern border was defined and trade along the Mississippi passed to the American Fur Company under John Jacob Astor. In 1821, the northern participants merged nether the name of the Hudson's Bay Company, and for many decades this merged company continued to trade in furs. Finally, in the 1990s, under force per unit area from brute rights groups, the Hudson'south Bay Company, which in the twentieth century had become a large Canadian retailer, ended the fur component of its operation.
Figure 1
Hudson'due south Bay Company Hinterlands
Source: Ray (1987, plate 60)
The fur merchandise was based on pelts destined either for the luxury clothing market or for the felting industries, of which hatting was the near of import. This was a transatlantic merchandise. The animals were trapped and exchanged for goods in North America, and the pelts were transported to Europe for processing and final auction. Equally a result, forces operating on the demand side of the market place in Europe and on the supply side in North America determined prices and volumes; while intermediaries, who linked the ii geographically separated areas, determined how the trade was conducted.
The Demand for Fur: Hats, Pelts and Prices
Nonetheless much hats may be considered an accessory today, they were for centuries a mandatory part of everyday dress, for both men and women. Of form 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 2 Stuarts to the conically-shaped, plainer lid of the Puritans. The Restoration of Charles Two of England in 1660 and the Glorious Revolution in 1689 brought their own changes in style (Clarke, 1982, chapter 1). What remained a constant was the material from which hats were fabricated – wool felt. The wool came from various animals, merely towards the stop of the fifteenth century beaver wool began to be predominate. Over time, beaver hats became increasingly popular eventually dominating the market place. Only in the nineteenth century did silk supersede beaver in high-fashion men's hats.
Wool Felt
Furs have long been classified every bit either fancy or staple. Fancy furs are those demanded for the beauty and luster of their pelt. These furs – mink, fob, 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 chosen guard hairs which protect the shorter, softer hair, called wool, that grows next to the beast skin. Only the wool tin exist felted. Each of the shorter hairs is spinous and one time the barbs at the ends of the hair are open, the wool can be compressed into a solid slice of material called felt. The prime staple fur has been beaver, although muskrat and rabbit have as well been used.
Wool felt was used for over 2 centuries to make high-fashion hats. Felt is stronger than a woven material. It volition not tear or unravel in a directly line; it is more resistant to water, and it will hold its shape even if it gets wet. These characteristics fabricated felt the prime material for hatters especially when way called for hats with large brims. The highest quality hats would be fabricated 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 action. 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 procedure of felting and fabricated their tents from this light but durable material. Although the art of felting disappeared from much of western Europe during the get-go millennium, felt-making survived in Russia, Sweden, and Asia Small-scale. As a result of the Medieval Crusades, felting was reintroduced through the Mediterranean into French republic (Crean, 1962).
In Russia, the felting industry was based on the European beaver (castor cobweb). Given their long tradition of working with beaver pelts, the Russians had perfected the art of combing out the brusque barbed hairs from among the longer baby-sit hairs, a engineering that they safeguarded. Equally a consequence, the early felting trades in England and France had to rely on beaver wool imported from Russia, although they too used domestic supplies of wool from other animals, such rabbit, sheep and goat. But by the stop 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 merchandise. N American beaver (brush canadensis) was imported through agents in the English, French and Dutch colonies. Although many of the pelts were shipped to Russian federation for initial processing, the growth of the beaver market place in England and French republic 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 pace in the felting process. Information technology was also necessary that some of the barbs on the short hairs be raised or open up. 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 [the skins] in a sack of linen and boiled [them] for twelve hours in water containing several fatty substances and nitric acid" (Crean, 1962, p. 381). Although such processes removed the keratin, they did so at the price of a lower quality wool.
The opening of the Northward American trade non just increased the supply of skins for the felting manufacture, it as well provided a subset of skins whose guard hairs had already been removed and the keratin broken downward. Beaver pelts imported from N America were classified as either parchment beaver (brush sec – dry beaver), or coat beaver (brush gras – greasy beaver). Parchment beaver were from freshly caught animals, whose skins were but dried before being presented for trade. Glaze beaver were skins that had been worn by the Indians for a twelvemonth 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 heart of the seventeenth century, hatters and felt-makers came to learn that parchment and glaze beaver could exist combined to produce a strong, polish, pliable, superlative-quality waterproof cloth.
Until the 1720s, 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 adult, a chemic 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 acrid, which was brushed on the pelts. The utilize of mercury was a big advance, only it as well had serious health consequences for hatters and felters, who were forced to exhale 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
Fatigued from the accounts of the Hudson's Bay Company, Table 1 presents some eighteenth century prices of parchment and glaze beaver pelts. From 1713 to 1726, earlier the carotting procedure had become established, coat beaver generally fetched a higher price than parchment beaver, averaging 6.6 shillings per pelt equally compared to five.5 shillings. Once carotting was widely used, withal, the prices were reversed, and from 1730 to 1770 parchment exceeded coat in almost every year. The aforementioned general blueprint is seen in the Paris data, although there the reversal was delayed, suggesting slower diffusion in France of the carotting technology. As Crean (1962, p. 382) notes, Nollet's L'Art de faire des chapeaux included the verbal formula, just information technology was not published until 1765.
A weighted average of parchment and coat prices in London reveals three episodes. From 1713 to 1722 prices were quite stable, fluctuating within the narrow band of five.0 and 5.v shillings per pelt. During the flow, 1723 to 1745, prices moved sharply higher and remained in the range of vii to 9 shillings. The years 1746 to 1763 saw another big increase to over 12 shillings per pelt. There are far fewer prices available for Paris, only we do know that in the period 1739 to 1753 the trend was too sharply higher with prices more than than doubling.
Table 1
Price of Beaver Pelts in Britain: 1713-1763
(shillings per skin)
| Twelvemonth | Parchment | Coat | Boilerplatea | Year | Parchment | Coat Averagea | |
| 1713 | v.21 | four.62 | 5.03 | 1739 | 8.51 | 7.eleven | eight.05 |
| 1714 | 5.24 | 7.86 | 5.66 | 1740 | viii.44 | 6.66 | 7.88 |
| 1715 | iv.88 | 5.49 | 1741 | viii.xxx | 6.83 | seven.84 | |
| 1716 | 4.68 | 8.81 | five.16 | 1742 | 7.72 | 6.41 | 7.36 |
| 1717 | five.29 | 8.37 | 5.65 | 1743 | viii.98 | 6.74 | viii.27 |
| 1718 | 4.77 | 7.81 | 5.22 | 1744 | 9.xviii | half dozen.61 | 8.52 |
| 1719 | five.30 | six.86 | 5.51 | 1745 | 9.76 | six.08 | 8.76 |
| 1720 | 5.31 | half dozen.05 | v.38 | 1746 | 12.73 | 7.xviii | 10.88 |
| 1721 | five.27 | 5.79 | v.29 | 1747 | ten.68 | half dozen.99 | 9.50 |
| 1722 | four.55 | 4.97 | iv.55 | 1748 | ix.27 | 6.22 | 8.44 |
| 1723 | 8.54 | v.56 | 7.84 | 1749 | eleven.27 | 6.49 | 9.77 |
| 1724 | 7.47 | 5.97 | vii.17 | 1750 | 17.eleven | 8.42 | 14.00 |
| 1725 | 5.82 | half-dozen.62 | 5.88 | 1751 | xiv.31 | x.42 | 12.90 |
| 1726 | five.41 | vii.49 | 5.83 | 1752 | 12.94 | 10.18 | 11.84 |
| 1727 | 7.22 | 1753 | 10.71 | 11.97 | x.87 | ||
| 1728 | 8.13 | 1754 | 12.xix | 12.68 | 12.08 | ||
| 1729 | 9.56 | 1755 | 12.05 | 12.04 | 11.99 | ||
| 1730 | viii.71 | 1756 | xiii.46 | 12.02 | 12.84 | ||
| 1731 | 6.27 | 1757 | 12.59 | 11.sixty | 12.17 | ||
| 1732 | 7.12 | 1758 | 13.07 | 11.32 | 12.49 | ||
| 1733 | 8.07 | 1759 | 15.99 | 14.68 | |||
| 1734 | 7.39 | 1760 | xiii.37 | 13.06 | thirteen.22 | ||
| 1735 | 8.33 | 1761 | x.94 | xiii.03 | 11.36 | ||
| 1736 | 8.72 | seven.07 | 8.38 | 1762 | thirteen.17 | 16.33 | 13.83 |
| 1737 | 7.94 | 6.46 | seven.50 | 1763 | 16.33 | 17.56 | 16.34 |
| 1738 | 8.95 | half-dozen.47 | 8.32 |
a A weighted average of the prices of parchment, coat and half parchment beaver pelts. Weights are based on the merchandise in these types of furs at Fort Albany. Prices of the private types of pelts are not available for the years, 1727 to 1735.
Source: Carlos and Lewis, 1999.
The Demand for Beaver Hats
The main cause of the rising beaver pelt prices in England and France was the increasing demand for beaver hats, which included hats made exclusively with beaver wool and referred to equally "beaver hats," and those hats containing a combination of beaver and a lower cost wool, such equally rabbit. These were chosen "felt hats." Unfortunately, aggregate consumption series for the eighteenth century Europe are not available. We do, still, take Gregory Male monarch's gimmicky piece of work for England which provides a practiced starting point. In a table entitled "Annual Consumption of Apparell, anno 1688," Rex calculated that consumption of all types of hats was virtually three.3 1000000, or nearly one lid per person. King also included a second category, caps of all sorts, for which he estimated consumption at 1.6 million (Harte, 1991, p. 293). This means that equally early on every bit 1700, the potential market place for hats in England alone was almost 5 1000000 per year. Over the adjacent century, the rising demand for beaver pelts was a result of a number factors including population growth, a greater consign market, a shift toward beaver hats from hats made of other materials, and a shift from caps to hats.
The British export data point that demand for beaver hats was growing not simply in England, but in Europe also. In 1700 a minor 69,500 beaver hats were exported from England and about the same number of felt hats; but by 1760, slightly over 500,000 beaver hats and 370,000 felt halts were shipped from English ports (Lawson, 1943, app. I). In total, over the 70 years to 1770, 21 million beaver and felt hats were exported from England. In addition to the final product, England exported the raw cloth, beaver pelts. In 1760, £15,000 in beaver pelts were exported forth with a range of other furs. The hats and the pelts tended to go to unlike parts of Europe. Raw pelts were shipped mainly to northern Europe, including Germany, Flanders, Holland and Russia; whereas hats went to the southern European markets of Espana and Portugal. In 1750, Germany imported 16,500 beaver hats, while Kingdom of spain imported 110,000 and Portugal 175,000 (Lawson, 1943, appendices F & G). Over the first six decades of the eighteenth century, these markets grew dramatically, such that the value of beaver chapeau sales to Portugal alone was £89,000 in 1756-1760, representing near 300,000 hats or two-thirds of the entire export trade.
European Intermediaries in the Fur Merchandise
By the eighteenth century, the demand for furs in Europe was existence met mainly by exports from North America with intermediaries playing an essential part. The American merchandise, which moved forth the chief water systems, was organized largely through chartered companies. At the far north, operating out of Hudson Bay, was the Hudson's Bay Company, chartered in 1670. The Compagnie d'Occident, founded in 1718, was the most successful of a series of monopoly French companies. It operated through the St. Lawrence River and in the region of the eastern Great Lakes. There was also an English trade through Albany and New York, and a French trade down the Mississippi.
The Hudson's Bay Company and the Compagnie d'Occident, although similar in championship, had very unlike internal structures. The English trade was organized along hierarchical lines with salaried managers, whereas the French monopoly issued licenses (congés) or leased out the apply of its posts. The structure of the English company allowed for more than control from the London head role, just required systems that could monitor the managers of the trading posts (Carlos and Nicholas, 1990). The leasing and licensing arrangements of the French made monitoring unnecessary, but led to a arrangement where the eye had little influence over the acquit of the trade.
The French and English were distinguished too by how they interacted with the Natives. The Hudson's Bay Company established posts around the Bay and waited for the Indians, oftentimes middlemen, to come to them. The French, by contrast, moved into the interior, directly trading with the Indians who harvested the furs. The French arrangement was more than conducive to expansion, and by the end of the seventeenth century, they had moved beyond the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers into the western Smashing Lakes region (meet Figure 1). Later they established posts in the center of the Hudson Bay hinterland. In addition, the French explored the river systems to the south, setting upwards a post at the oral cavity of the Mississippi. As noted earlier, after Jay'southward Treaty was signed, the French were replaced in the Mississippi region by U.Southward. interests which later on formed the American Fur Company (Haeger, 1991).
The English language takeover of New France at the end of the French and Indian Wars in 1763 did not, at commencement, fundamentally change the structure of the trade. Rather, French direction was replaced by Scottish and English merchants operating in Montreal. Simply, inside a decade, the Montreal trade was reorganized into partnerships between merchants in Montreal and traders who wintered in the interior. The most important of these arrangements led to the formation of the Northwest Company, which for the first two decades of the nineteenth century, competed with the Hudson's Bay Visitor (Carlos and Hoffman, 1986). Past the early on decades of the nineteenth century, the Hudson'southward Bay Company, the Northwest Company, and the American Fur Company had, combined, a organisation of trading posts across Due north America, including posts in Oregon and British Columbia and on the Mackenzie River. In 1821, the Northwest Visitor and the Hudson's Bay Company merged under the name of the Hudson's Bay Company. The Hudson's Bay Company then ran the trade as a monopsony until the late 1840s when it began facing serious competition from trappers to the due south. The Company's part in the northwest changed again with the Canadian Confederation in 1867. Over the adjacent decades treaties were signed with many of the northern tribes forever changing the sometime fur trade order in Canada.
The Supply of Furs: The Harvesting of Beaver and Depletion
During the eighteenth century, the changing engineering science of felt production and the growing need for felt hats were met past attempts to increase the supply of furs, particularly the supply of beaver pelts. Any permanent increment, however, was ultimately dependent on the brute resource base. How that base changed over fourth dimension must be a thing of speculation since no animate being counts exist from that menstruation; still, the evidence we practice accept points to a scenario in which over-harvesting, at least in some years, gave rising to serious depletion of the beaver and peradventure other animals such equally marten that were also being traded. Why the beaver were over-harvested was closely related to the prices Natives were receiving, but of import as well was the nature of Native property rights to the resource.
Harvests in the Fort Albany and York Factory Regions
That beaver populations along the Eastern seaboard regions of North America were depleted as the fur trade advanced is widely accepted. In fact the search for new sources of supply further due west, including the region of Hudson Bay, has been attributed in part to dwindling beaver stocks in areas where the fur trade had been long established. Although in that location has been little word of the impact that the Hudson'south Bay Company and the French, who traded in the region of Hudson Bay, were having on the beaver stock, the remarkably complete records of the Hudson's Bay Company provide the footing for reasonable inferences about depletion. From 1700 there is an uninterrupted annual series of fur returns at Fort Albany; the fur returns from York Manufactory begin in 1716 (see Figure 1).
The beaver returns at Fort Albany and York Manufactory for the period 1700 to 1770 are described in Figure 2. At Fort Albany the number of beaver skins over the period 1700 to 1720 averaged roughly 19,000, with broad year-to-year fluctuations; the range was nearly 15,000 to 30,000. Afterwards 1720 and until the late 1740s average returns declined by most five,000 skins, and remained within the somewhat narrower range of roughly 10,000 to 20,000 skins. The catamenia of relative stability was broken in the final years of the 1740s. In 1748 and 1749, returns increased to an average of nearly 23,000. Following these unusually strong years, the trade barbarous precipitously so that in 1756 fewer than 6,000 beaver pelts were received. In that location was a brief recovery in the early 1760s but by the end decade merchandise had fallen beneath even the mid-1750s levels. In 1770, Fort Albany took in simply iii,600 beaver pelts. This blueprint – unusually big returns in the late 1740s and low returns thereafter – indicates that the beaver in the Fort Albany region were being seriously depleted.
Effigy ii
Beaver Traded at Fort Albany and York Manufacturing plant 1700 – 1770
Source: Carlos and Lewis, 1993.
The beaver returns at York Factory from 1716 to 1770, besides described in Figure 2, accept some of the primal features of the Fort Albany data. After some low returns early on (from 1716 to 1720), the number of beaver pelts increased to an average of 35,000. There were extraordinary returns in 1730 and 1731, when the average was 55,600 skins, but beaver receipts so stabilized at about 31,000 over the remainder of the decade. The first break in the design came in the early 1740s shortly after the French established several trading posts in the area. Surprisingly perhaps, given the increased contest, trade in beaver pelts at the Hudson's Bay Company mail increased to an average of 34,300, this over the menstruation 1740 to 1743. Indeed, the 1742 return of 38,791 skins was the largest since the French had established any posts in the region. The returns in 1745 were besides potent, but after that year the trade in beaver pelts began a decline that connected through to 1770. Boilerplate returns over the rest of the decade were 25,000; the average during the 1750s was 18,000, and simply 15,500 in the 1760s. The pattern of beaver returns at York Manufacturing plant – high returns in the early 1740s followed by a big decline – strongly suggests that, as in the Fort Albany hinterland, the beaver population had been greatly reduced.
The overall conveying capacity of whatsoever region, or the size of the animal stock, depends on the nature of the terrain and the underlying biological determinants such equally nascency and death rates. A standard relationship between the annual harvest and the fauna population is the Lotka-Volterra logistic, commonly used in natural resources models to relate the natural growth of a population to the size of that population:
F(10) = aX – bX2 , a, b > 0 (one)
where Ten is the population, F(10) is the natural growth in the population, a is the maximum proportional growth rate of the population, and b = a/X, where X is the upper limit to population size. The population dynamics of the species exploited depends on the harvest each menstruum:
DX = aX – bX2– H (2)
where DX is the annual change in the population and H is the harvest. The choice of parameter a and maximum population Ten is central to the population estimates and take been based largely on estimates from the beaver ecology literature and Ontario provincial field reports of beaver densities (Carlos and Lewis, 1993).
Simulations based on equation 2 suggest that, until the 1730s, beaver populations remained at levels roughly consequent with maximum sustained yield management, sometimes referred to as the biological optimum. Just after the 1730s in that location was a decline in beaver stocks to virtually half the maximum sustained yield levels. The cause of the depletion was closely related to what was happening in Europe. There, buoyant need for felt hats and dwindling local fur supplies resulted in much college prices for beaver pelts. These college prices, in conjunction with the resulting competition from the French in the Hudson Bay region, led the Hudson's Bay Visitor to offer much better terms to Natives who came to their trading posts (Carlos and Lewis, 1999).
Effigy iii reports a cost index for furs at Fort Albany and at York Mill. The index represents a measure of what Natives received in European goods for their furs. At Fort Albany, fur prices were shut to lxx from 1713 to 1731, but in 1732, in response to higher European fur prices and the entry of la Vérendrye, an of import French trader, the price jumped to 81. After that twelvemonth, prices continued to rise. The pattern at York Factory was similar. Although prices were high in the early years when the mail was being established, beginning in 1724 the toll settled downward to well-nigh lxx. At York Manufacturing plant, the jump in price came in 1738, which was the year la Vérendrye gear up a trading postal service in the York Factory hinterland. Prices and then continued to increase. Information technology was these higher fur prices that led to over-harvesting and, ultimately, a reject in beaver stocks.
Figure 3
Price Alphabetize for Furs: Fort Albany and York Factory, 1713 – 1770
Source: Carlos and Lewis, 2001.
Holding Rights Regimes
An increase in price paid to Native hunters did non take to atomic number 82 to a decline in the animal stocks, because Indians could have called to limit their harvesting. Why they did not was closely related their system of property rights. One can allocate property rights along a spectrum with, at ane finish, open access, where anyone can hunt or fish, and at the other, complete private belongings, where a sole possessor has full control over the resource. Between, at that place are a range of property rights regimes with access controlled by a customs or a government, and where individual members of the group do not necessarily have private holding rights. Open access creates a situation where there is less incentive to conserve, considering animals non harvested by a item hunter will be bachelor to other hunters in the hereafter. Thus the closer is a system to open up access the more than likely information technology is that the resource will be depleted.
Across aboriginal societies in N America, one finds a range of holding rights regimes. Native Americans did have a concept of trespass and of holding, but individual and family rights to resource were not absolute. Sometimes referred to as the Good Samaritan principle (McManus, 1972), outsiders were not permitted to harvest furs on another's territory for trade, but they were immune to hunt game and even beaver for food. Combined with this limitation to private belongings was an Ethic of Generosity that included liberal gift-giving where whatsoever visitor to one'southward encampment was to be supplied with food and shelter.
Why a social norm such as souvenir-giving or the related Proficient Samaritan principle emerged was due to the nature of the aboriginal surroundings. The primary objective of aboriginal societies was survival. Hunting was risky, and then rules were put in place that would reduce the risk of starvation. Every bit Berkes et al.(1989, p. 153) notes, for such societies: "all resource are subject to the overriding principle that no one tin can foreclose a person from obtaining what he needs for his family'south survival." Such actions were reciprocal and especially in the sub-arctic globe were an insurance mechanism. These norms, however, also reduced the incentive to conserve the beaver and other animals that were part of the fur trade. The combination of these norms and the increasing price paid to Native traders led to the large harvests in the 1740s and ultimately depletion of the animal stock.
The Merchandise in European Goods
Indians were the primary agents in the Northward American commercial fur merchandise. It was they who hunted the animals, and transported and traded the pelts or skins to European intermediaries. The commutation was a voluntary. In return for their furs, Indians obtained both access to an iron applied science to improve production and access to a broad range of new consumer goods. It is important to recognize, even so, that although the European goods were new to aboriginals, the concept of exchange was not. The archaeological prove indicates an extensive merchandise between Native tribes in the north and south of North America prior to European contact.
The boggling records of the Hudson'south Bay Company let us to course a clear picture of what Indians were buying. Table 2 lists the goods received by Natives at York Factory, which was by far the largest of the Hudson's Bay Company trading posts. Every bit is evident from the table, the commercial merchandise was more in beads and baubles or even guns and alcohol; rather Native traders were receiving a wide range of products that improved their ability to meet their subsistence requirements and allowed them to raise their living standards. The items have been grouped past utilise. The producer appurtenances category was dominated past firearms, including guns, shot and powder, but also includes knives, awls and twine. The Natives traded for guns of different lengths. The iii-foot gun was used mainly for waterfowl and in heavily forested areas where game could be shot at close range. The four-foot gun was more than accurate and suitable for open spaces. In addition, the 4-foot gun could play a role in warfare. Maintaining guns in the harsh sub-arctic environment was a serious problem, and ultimately, the Hudson's Bay Visitor was forced to transport gunsmiths to its trading posts to assess quality and assist with repairs. Kettles and blankets were the master items in the "household goods" category. These goods probably became necessities to the Natives who adopted them. So in that location were the luxury goods, which have been divided into 2 broad categories: "tobacco and alcohol," and "other luxuries," dominated past cloth of various kinds (Carlos and Lewis, 2001; 2002).
Table two
Value of Goods Received at York Manufactory in 1740 (fabricated beaver)
We have much less information about the French trade. The French are reported to accept exchanged similar items, although given their college transport costs, both the furs received and the goods traded tended to be higher in value relative to weight. The Europeans, information technology might be noted, supplied no food to the trade in the eighteenth century. In fact, Indians helped provision the posts with fish and fowl. This role of food purveyor grew in the nineteenth century every bit groups known as the "habitation guard Cree" came to live around the posts; too, pemmican, supplied by Natives, became an important source of nourishment for Europeans involved in the buffalo hunts.
The value of the goods listed in Tabular array 2 is expressed in terms of the unit of account, the made beaver, which the Hudson's Bay Visitor used to record its transactions and determine the rate of exchange between furs and European goods. The price of a prime number beaver pelt was 1 made beaver, and every other type of fur and good was assigned a price based on that unit. For instance, a marten (a blazon of mink) was a made beaver, a blanket was 7 fabricated beaver, a gallon of brandy, 4 fabricated beaver, and a grand of cloth, 3? made beaver. These were the official prices at York Manufactory. Thus Indians, who traded at these prices, received, for case, a gallon of brandy for four prime beaver pelts, two yards of material for vii beaver pelts, and a blanket for 21 marten pelts. This was barter trade in that no currency was used; and although the official prices implied certain rates of commutation between furs and goods, Hudson's Bay Company factors were encouraged to trade at rates more favorable to the Company. The actual rates, however, depended on market weather in Europe and, most importantly, the extent of French competition in Canada. Figure three illustrates the rise in the price of furs at York Factory and Fort Albany in response to higher beaver prices in London and Paris, every bit well as to a greater French presence in the region (Carlos and Lewis, 1999). The increase in cost also reflects the bargaining ability of Native traders during periods of direct competition betwixt the English and French and later the Hudson's Bay Visitor and the Northwest Company. At such times, the Native traders would play both parties off confronting each other (Ray and Freeman, 1978).
The records of the Hudson'south Bay Company provide the states with a unique window to the trading process, including the bargaining ability of Native traders, which is axiomatic in the range of commodities received. Natives simply bought goods they wanted. Clear from the Company records is that it was the Natives who largely determined the nature and quality of those goods. As well the records tell u.s.a. how income from the merchandise was existence allocated. The breakdown differed past mail and varied over fourth dimension; but, for instance, in 1740 at York Factory, the distribution was: producer goods – 44 percent; household goods – 9 pct; alcohol and tobacco – 24 percent; and other luxuries – 23 percent. An of import implication of the trade data is that, similar many Europeans and nigh American colonists, Native Americans were taking function in the consumer revolution of the eighteenth century (de Vries, 1993; Shammas, 1993). In improver to necessities, they were consuming a remarkable diversity of luxury products. Cloth, including baize, duffel, flannel, and gartering, was past far the largest class, but they also purchased beads, combs, looking glasses, rings, shirts, and vermillion among a much longer list. Because these items were heterogeneous in nature, the Hudson'southward Bay Visitor's head office went to great lengths to satisfy the specific tastes of Native consumers. Attempts were likewise made, not e'er successfully, to introduce new products (Carlos and Lewis, 2002).
Perhaps surprising, given the emphasis that has been placed on information technology in the historical literature, was the comparatively small part of alcohol in the trade. At York Factory, Native traders received in 1740 a total of 494 gallons of brandy and "potent water," which had a value of ane,976 made beaver. More than twice this amount was spent on tobacco in that twelvemonth, nigh five times was spent on firearms, twice was spent on cloth, and more was spent on blankets and kettles than on alcohol. Thus, brandy, although a pregnant item of merchandise, was past no ways a dominant one. In addition, alcohol could hardly have created serious social problems during this period. The amount received would have allowed for no more than than ten two-ounce drinks per twelvemonth for the adult Native population living in the region.
The Labor Supply of Natives
Another of import question tin be addressed using the trade data. Were Natives "lazy and improvident" as they take been described by some contemporaries, or were they "industrious" like the American colonists and many Europeans? Cardinal to answering this question is how Native groups responded to the price of furs, which began ascent in the 1730s. Much of the literature argues that Indian trappers reduced their try in response to college fur prices; that is, they had astern-bending supply curves of labor. The view is that Natives had a fixed need for European goods that, at higher fur prices, could be met with fewer furs, and hence less try. Although widely cited, this argument does not stand up up. Not but were higher fur prices accompanied by larger total harvests of furs in the region, but the blueprint of Native expenditure besides points to a scenario of greater effort. From the late 1730s to the 1760s, as the price of furs rose, the share of expenditure on luxury goods increased dramatically (run into Figure 4). Thus Natives were not content simply to accept their expert fortune by working less; rather they seized the opportunity provided to them past the strong fur market by increasing their try in the commercial sector, thereby dramatically augmenting the purchases of those goods, namely the luxuries, that could heighten their living standards.
Effigy four
Native Expenditure Shares at York Factory 1716 – 1770
Source: Carlos and Lewis, 2001.
A Note on the Not-commercial Sector
As of import every bit the fur trade was to Native Americans in the sub-chill regions of Canada, commerce with the Europeans comprised simply one, relatively small, office of their overall economy. Verbal figures are not available, but the traditional sectors; hunting, gathering, food preparation and, to some extent, agriculture must accept accounted for at least 75 to 80 percent of Native labor during these decades. Nevertheless, despite the limited time spent in commercial activity, the fur trade had a profound effect on the nature of the Native economy and Native social club. The introduction of European producer goods, such as guns, and household goods, mainly kettles and blankets, changed the way Native Americans accomplished subsistence; and the European luxury goods expanded the range of products that allowed them to motility beyond subsistence. About importantly, the fur merchandise continued Natives to Europeans in ways that affected how and how much they chose to work, where they chose to live, and how they exploited the resources on which the trade and their survival was based.
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