Children of the Fur Trade

Children of the Fur Trade PDF Author: John C. Jackson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
During the first half of the 19th century, a unique subculture built around hunting and mobility existed quietly in the Pacific Northwest. Descendants of European or Canadian fathers and Native American mothers, these mixed-blood settlers?called M(c)tis?were pivotal to the development of the Oregon Country, but have been generally neglected in its written history. Today we know them by the names they left on the land and the waters: The Dalles, Deschutes, Grand Ronde, Portneuf, Payette; and on the peoples who lived there: Pend Oreille, Coeur d Alene, Nez Perce. John C. Jackson's Children of the Fur Trade recovers a vital part of Northwest history and gives readers a vivid and memorable portrait of M(c)tis life at the western edge of North America. This informal account shows the M(c)tis as explorers and mapmakers, as fur trappers and traders, and as boatmen and travelers in a vanishing landscape. Because of their mixed race, they were forced into the margin between cultures in collision. Often disparaged as half-breeds, they became links between the dispossessed native peoples and the new order of pioneer settlement.Meet the independently minded Jacco Finlay, the beautiful Helene McDonald, fearsome Tom McKay and the bear-fighting Iroquois Ignace Hatchiorauquasha, whose M(c)tisse wife, Madame Gray, charmed lonely fur traders. Here is the rawhide knot of the mountain men who brought their Indian wives to suffer the censure of missionaries while building a community where their mixed-blood children were no longer welcome. A riveting glimpse into a unique heritage, illustrated with historic maps, drawings, and photographs, this book will interest and inform both the scholar and the general reader.

Children of the Fur Trade

Children of the Fur Trade PDF Author: John C. Jackson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
During the first half of the 19th century, a unique subculture built around hunting and mobility existed quietly in the Pacific Northwest. Descendants of European or Canadian fathers and Native American mothers, these mixed-blood settlers?called M(c)tis?were pivotal to the development of the Oregon Country, but have been generally neglected in its written history. Today we know them by the names they left on the land and the waters: The Dalles, Deschutes, Grand Ronde, Portneuf, Payette; and on the peoples who lived there: Pend Oreille, Coeur d Alene, Nez Perce. John C. Jackson's Children of the Fur Trade recovers a vital part of Northwest history and gives readers a vivid and memorable portrait of M(c)tis life at the western edge of North America. This informal account shows the M(c)tis as explorers and mapmakers, as fur trappers and traders, and as boatmen and travelers in a vanishing landscape. Because of their mixed race, they were forced into the margin between cultures in collision. Often disparaged as half-breeds, they became links between the dispossessed native peoples and the new order of pioneer settlement.Meet the independently minded Jacco Finlay, the beautiful Helene McDonald, fearsome Tom McKay and the bear-fighting Iroquois Ignace Hatchiorauquasha, whose M(c)tisse wife, Madame Gray, charmed lonely fur traders. Here is the rawhide knot of the mountain men who brought their Indian wives to suffer the censure of missionaries while building a community where their mixed-blood children were no longer welcome. A riveting glimpse into a unique heritage, illustrated with historic maps, drawings, and photographs, this book will interest and inform both the scholar and the general reader.

Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America

Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America PDF Author: Eric Jay Dolin
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393079244
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
A Seattle Times selection for one of Best Non-Fiction Books of 2010 Winner of the New England Historial Association's 2010 James P. Hanlan Award Winner of the Outdoor Writers Association of America 2011 Excellence in Craft Award, Book Division, First Place "A compelling and well-annotated tale of greed, slaughter and geopolitics." —Los Angeles Times As Henry Hudson sailed up the broad river that would one day bear his name, he grew concerned that his Dutch patrons would be disappointed in his failure to find the fabled route to the Orient. What became immediately apparent, however, from the Indians clad in deer skins and "good furs" was that Hudson had discovered something just as tantalizing. The news of Hudson's 1609 voyage to America ignited a fierce competition to lay claim to this uncharted continent, teeming with untapped natural resources. The result was the creation of an American fur trade, which fostered economic rivalries and fueled wars among the European powers, and later between the United States and Great Britain, as North America became a battleground for colonization and imperial aspirations. In Fur, Fortune, and Empire, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin chronicles the rise and fall of the fur trade of old, when the rallying cry was "get the furs while they last." Beavers, sea otters, and buffalos were slaughtered, used for their precious pelts that were tailored into extravagant hats, coats, and sleigh blankets. To read Fur, Fortune, and Empire then is to understand how North America was explored, exploited, and settled, while its native Indians were alternately enriched and exploited by the trade. As Dolin demonstrates, fur, both an economic elixir and an agent of destruction, became inextricably linked to many key events in American history, including the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812, as well as to the relentless pull of Manifest Destiny and the opening of the West. This work provides an international cast beyond the scope of any Hollywood epic, including Thomas Morton, the rabble-rouser who infuriated the Pilgrims by trading guns with the Indians; British explorer Captain James Cook, whose discovery in the Pacific Northwest helped launch America's China trade; Thomas Jefferson who dreamed of expanding the fur trade beyond the Mississippi; America's first multimillionaire John Jacob Astor, who built a fortune on a foundation of fur; and intrepid mountain men such as Kit Carson and Jedediah Smith, who sliced their way through an awe inspiring and unforgiving landscape, leaving behind a mythic legacy still resonates today. Concluding with the virtual extinction of the buffalo in the late 1800s, Fur, Fortune, and Empire is an epic history that brings to vivid life three hundred years of the American experience, conclusively demonstrating that the fur trade played a seminal role in creating the nation we are today.

My First Years in the Fur Trade

My First Years in the Fur Trade PDF Author: George Nelson
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
ISBN: 9780873514125
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
A detailed and perceptive account of the fur trade seen through the eyes of a teenaged boy.

The Fur Trade Gamble

The Fur Trade Gamble PDF Author: Lloyd Keith
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780874223361
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In an era of grand risk, fur moguls vied to command Northwest and China markets, gambling lives and capital on the price of beaver pelts, purchases of ships and trade goods, international commerce laws, and the effects of war.

Souvenirs of the Fur Trade

Souvenirs of the Fur Trade PDF Author: Mary Malloy
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0873658337
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
American mariners made more than 175 voyages to the Northwest Coast during the half-century after 1787. The art and culture of Northwest Coast Indians so intrigued American sailors that the collecting of ethnographic artifacts became an important secondary trade. Malloy has brought details about these early collections together for the first time.

Birchbark Brigade

Birchbark Brigade PDF Author: Cris Peterson
Publisher: Astra Publishing House
ISBN: 159078426X
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
A history of the North American fur trade, based on primary sources. The North American fur trade, set in motion by the discovery of the New World in the fifteenth century, was this continent's biggest business for over three hundred years. Furs harvested by Ojibwa natives in the north woods ended up on the sleeves and hems of French princesses and Chinese emperors. Felt hats on the heads of every European businessman began as beaver pelts carried in birchbark canoes to trading posts dotting the wilderness. Iron tools, woolen blankets, and calico cloth manufactured in England found their way to wigwams along the remote rivers of North America. The fur trade influenced every aspect of life—from how Europeans related to the Indians, how and where settlements were built, to how our nation formed. Drawing on primary sources, including the diaries of Ojibwa, American, and French traders of the period, this Society of School Librarians International Honor Book gives readers a glimpse of a little-known story from our past.

Trading Beyond the Mountains

Trading Beyond the Mountains PDF Author: Richard S. Mackie
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774842466
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the North West and Hudson�s Bay companies extended their operations beyond the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. There they encountered a mild and forgiving climate and abundant natural resources and, with the aid of Native traders, branched out into farming, fishing, logging, and mining. Following its merger with the North West Company in 1821, the Hudson�s Bay Company set up its headquarters at Fort Vancouver on the lower Columbia River. From there, the company dominated much of the non-Native economy, sending out goods to markets in Hawaii, Sitka, and San Francisco. Trading Beyond the Mountains looks at the years of exploration between 1793 and 1843 leading to the commercial development of the Pacific coast and the Cordilleran interior of western North America. Mackie examines the first stages of economic diversification in this fur trade region and its transformation into a dynamic and distinctive regional economy. He also documents the Hudson�s Bay Company�s employment of Native slaves and labourers in the North West coast region.

Astoria and Empire

Astoria and Empire PDF Author: James P. Ronda
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803289420
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
In late December 1788 a worried Spanish official in Mexico City set down his fears about a new and aggressive northern neighbor. Viceroy Manuel Antonio Florez offered a gloomy prediction about the future of Spanish-United States relations in the West. He already knew about the steady march of frontiersmen toward St. Louis and now came troubling word of Robert Gray's ship Columbia on the Northwest coast. All this seemed to fit a pattern, a design for Yankee expansion. "We ought not to be surprised," warned the viceroy, "that the English colonies of America, now being an independent Republic, should carry out the design of finding a safe port on the Pacific and of attempting to sustain it by crossing the immense country of the continent above our possessions of Texas, New Mexico, and California." Canadian fur merchants and Russian bureaucrats also viewed the young republic as a potential rival in the struggle for western dominion. The viceroy's vision of the future proved startlingly accurate. Within the next two decades an American president would authorize a federally funded expedition to find just the sort of transcontinental route Florez imagined. Equally important, a New York entrepreneur would propose and put into motion an ambitious plan to make the Northwest an American political and commercial empire. John Astor's Pacific Fur Company, with Astoria as its central post on the Columbia River, was Florez's nightmare come true. Astoria had long represented either a daring overland adventure or simply a failed trading venture. The Astorians surely had their share of adventure. And the Pacific Fur Company never brought its founder the profits he expected. But all those involved in the extensive enterprise knew it meant more. Thomas Jefferson once described Astoria as the "germ of a great, free and independent empire," believing that the entire American claim to the lands west of the Rockies rested on "Astor's settlement at the mouth of the Columbia." And John Quincy Adams, the expansionist-minded secretary of state, labeled then entire Northwest as "the empire of Astoria." This book seeks to explore Astoria as part of a large and complex struggle for national sovereignty in the Northwest. The Astorians and their rivals were always engaged in more than trading and trapping. They were advance agents of empire. -- from Preface

Many Tender Ties

Many Tender Ties PDF Author: Sylvia Van Kirk
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806118475
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Beginning with the founding of the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1670, the fur trade dominated the development of the Canadian west. Although detailed accounts of the fur-trade era have appeared, until recently the rich social history has been ignored. In this book, the fur trade is examined not simply as an economic activity but as a social and cultural complex that was to survive for nearly two centuries. The author traces the development of a mutual dependency between Indian and European traders at the economic level that evolved into a significant cultural exchange as well. Marriages of fur traders to Indian women created bonds that helped advance trade relations. As a result of these "many tender ties," there emerged a unique society derived from both Indian and European culture.

Grand Portage As a Trading Post: Patterns of Trade at the Great Carrying Place

Grand Portage As a Trading Post: Patterns of Trade at the Great Carrying Place PDF Author: Bruce White
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781484920961
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
The purpose of this report is to describe the fur trade that took place at Grand Portage between Europeans and Native Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries. During this period Grand Portage was important for many reasons. A strategic geographical point in the trade route between the Great Lakes and the Canadian Northwest, it was best known as a trade depot and company headquarters in the period between 1765 and 1804.