Download or read book Fur Fortune and Empire The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America written by Eric Jay Dolin and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-07-05 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Listening to the Fur Trade written by Daniel Robert Laxer and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As fur traders were driven across northern North America by economic motivations, the landscape over which they plied their trade was punctuated by sound: shouting, singing, dancing, gunpowder, rattles, jingles, drums, fiddles, and – very occasionally – bagpipes. Fur trade interactions were, in a word, noisy. Daniel Laxer unearths traces of music, performance, and other intangible cultural phenomena long since silenced, allowing us to hear the fur trade for the first time. Listening to the Fur Trade uses the written record, oral history, and material culture to reveal histories of sound and music in an era before sound recording. The trading post was a noisy nexus, populated by a polyglot crowd of highly mobile people from different national, linguistic, religious, cultural, and class backgrounds. They found ways to interact every time they met, and facilitating material interests and survival went beyond the simple exchange of goods. Trust and good relations often entailed gift-giving: reciprocity was performed with dances, songs, and firearm salutes. Indigenous protocols of ceremony and treaty-making were widely adopted by fur traders, who supplied materials and technologies that sometimes changed how these ceremonies sounded. Within trading companies, masters and servants were on opposite ends of the social ladder but shared songs in the canoes and lively dances during the long winters at the trading posts. While the fur trade was propelled by economic and political interests, Listening to the Fur Trade uncovers the songs and ceremonies of First Nations people, the paddling songs of the voyageurs, and the fiddle music and step-dancing at the trading posts that provided its pulse.

Download or read book Silver in the Fur Trade 1680 1820 written by Martha Wilson Hamilton and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Indians in the Fur Trade written by Arthur J. Ray and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic study of the Assiniboine and western Cree Indians who inhabited southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan between 1660 and 1870. The second edition contains a new preface and an update on all sources.

Download or read book The American Fur Trade of the Far West written by Hiram Martin Chittenden and published by . This book was released on 1901 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Trading Beyond the Mountains written by Richard S. Mackie and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Chouteaus written by Stan Hoig and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 18th century, the vast land that lay west of the Mississippi River beckoned to daring frontiersmen, who produced the first major industry of the American West--the challenging, often dangerous fur trade. Stan Hoig provides an intimate look into the lives of four generations of the Chouteau family as they voyaged up the Western rivers to conduct trade.

Download or read book The Fur Trade in Canada written by Harold Adams Innis and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic work of Canadian historical scholarship, first published in 1930. In his new introduction, A.J. Ray states that this book is argueably the most definitive economic history and geography of Canada ever produced.

Download or read book The Fur Trade Revisited written by Jennifer S. H. Brown and published by East Lansing : Michigan State University Press. This book was released on 1994-05 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Fur Trade Revisited is a collection of twenty-eight essays selected from the more than fifty presentations made at the Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference held on Mackinac Island, Michigan, in the fall of 1991. Essays contained in this important new interpretive work focus on the history, archaeology, and literature of a fascinating, growing area of scholarly investigation. Underscoring the work's multifaceted approach is an introductory essay by Lily McAuley titled "Memories of a Trapper's Daughter." This vivid and compelling account of the fur-trade life sets a level of quality for what follows. Part one of The Fur Trade Revisited discusses eighteenth-century fur trade intersections with European markets. The essays in part two examine Native people and the strategies they employed to meet demands placed on them by the market for furs. Part three examines the origins, motives, and careers of those who actually participated in the fur trade. Part four focuses attention on the indigenous fur-trade culture and subsequent archaeology in the area around Mackinac Island, Michigan, while part five contains studies focusing on the fur-trade culture in other parts of North America. Part six assesses the fur trade after 1870 and part seven contains evaluations of the critical historical and literary interpretations prevalent in fur-trade scholarship.

Download or read book Early Voyageurs JR written by Marie Savage and published by Amazing Stories. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than 200 years, voyageur canoes charged across the waters from Quebec to British Columbia, and north to Hudson Bay. The voyageurs spent many months away from home. Their days were long and hard. They braved dangerous storms and swirling rapids, and carried their canoes over rough terrain. The voyageurs were a special brand of tough, rugged adventurers.

Download or read book Guns on the Early Frontiers written by Carl Parcher Russell and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1980-01-01 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Here is a book for the historian, the student, the gun collector or aficionado. . . . It approaches understatement to call Guns on the Early Frontiers an outstanding contribution to firearms literature. It sets its own standard."--New York Times. "A Glossary of Gun Terms, ample footnotes most skillfully arranged and illustrations beyond the dreams of avarice complement the text, which achieves the miracle of scholarship without tedium."--W.H. Hutchinson, San Francisco Chronicle. "Not the least interesting portions of the book are the notes and glossary and the excellent bibliography. Here [is] a book designed primarily for the serious collector or gun historian, but whose readable style should appeal even to the casual amateur. The collecting of old guns, whether privately or by a public institution, involves a certain responsibility. These guns, whose history is inextricably linked with the history of settlement, require something more than careful preservations. They require--and the present volume goes far to supply--accurate documentation."--Canadian Historical Review. Carl P. Russell, a leading authority on firearms of the American frontier, was coordinator of planning for the science and history museums and other interpretive facilities of the National Park Service in the Western United States.

Download or read book White Fox and Icy Seas in the Western Arctic written by John R. Bockstoce and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the fur trade changed the North and created the modern Arctic: “The history is fascinating.” —Anchorage Daily News In the early twentieth century, northerners lived and trapped in one of the world’s harshest environments. At a time when government services and social support were minimal or nonexistent, they thrived on the fox fur trade, relying on their energy, training, discipline, and skills. John R. Bockstoce, a leading scholar of the Arctic fur trade who also served as a member of an Eskimo whaling crew, explores the twentieth-century history of the Western Arctic fur trade to the outbreak of World War II, covering an immense region from Chukotka, Russia, to Arctic Alaska and the Western Canadian Arctic. This period brought profound changes to Native peoples of the North. To show its enormous impact, the author draws on interviews with trappers and traders, oral and written archival accounts, research in newspapers and periodicals, and his own field notes from 1969 to the present. A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year Honorary Mention, 2020 William Mills Prize for Non-fiction Polar Books “An engaging story that is chock-full of fascinating anecdotes.” —Arctic “Invaluable . . . future generations of historians will refer to it.” —Canadian Journal of History “A compelling narrative . . . Bockstoce proves once again why he is the definitive source of all things related to Arctic maritime history.” —Sea History Includes photographs

Download or read book Mountain Men and Fur Traders of the Far West written by LeRoy Reuben Hafen and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1982-01-01 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legendary mountain men—the fur traders and trappers who penetrated the Rocky Mountains and explored the Far West in the first half on the nineteenth century—formed the vanguard of the American empire and became the heroes of American adventure. This volume brings to the general reader brief biographies of eighteen representative mountain men, selected from among the essay assembled by LeRoy R. Hafen in The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West (ten volumes, 1965-72). The subjects and authors are: Manuel Lisa (Richard E. Oglesby); Pierre Chouteau Jr. (Janet Lecompte); Wilson Price Hunt (William Brandon); William H. Ashley (Harvey L. Carter); Jedediah Smith (Harvey L. Carter); John McLoughlin (Kenneth L. Holmes); Peter Skene Ogden (Ted J. Warner); Ceran St. Vrain (Harold H. Dunham); Kit Carson (Harvey L. Carter); Old Bill Williams (Frederic E. Voelker); William Sublette (John E. Sunder);Thomas Fitzpatrick (LeRoy R. and Ann W. Hafen); James Bridger (Cornelius M. Ismert); Benjamin L. E. Bonneville (Edgeley W. Todd); Joseph R. Walker (Ardis M. Walker); Nathaniel Wyeth (William R. Sampson); Andrew Drips (Harvey L. Carter); and Joseph L. Meek (Harvey E. Tobie).

Download or read book Commerce by a Frozen Sea written by Ann M. Carlos and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-06-06 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Commerce by a Frozen Sea is a cross-cultural study of a century of contact between North American native peoples and Europeans. During the eighteenth century, the natives of the Hudson Bay lowlands and their European trading partners were brought together by an increasingly popular trade in furs, destined for the hat and fur markets of Europe. Native Americans were the sole trappers of furs, which they traded to English and French merchants. The trade gave Native Americans access to new European technologies that were integrated into Indian lifeways. What emerges from this detailed exploration is a story of two equal partners involved in a mutually beneficial trade. Drawing on more than seventy years of trade records from the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company, economic historians Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis critique and confront many of the myths commonly held about the nature and impact of commercial trade. Extensively documented are the ways in which natives transformed the trading environment and determined the range of goods offered to them. Natives were effective bargainers who demanded practical items such as firearms, kettles, and blankets as well as luxuries like cloth, jewelry, and tobacco—goods similar to those purchased by Europeans. Surprisingly little alcohol was traded. Indeed, Commerce by a Frozen Sea shows that natives were industrious people who achieved a standard of living above that of most workers in Europe. Although they later fell behind, the eighteenth century was, for Native Americans, a golden age.

Download or read book The Fur Trade in Colorado written by William B. Butler and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a vivid look into the life of the trapper and trader, the dangers they faced, and the fortunes that a few lucky ones were able to amass. Butler uses his role as an archaeologist to present floor plans of many of the posts and unknown drawings that are just now coming to light. Attention has also been given to the five of twenty-four trading posts that have been reconstructed. Rendezvous in Colorado are also covered, as well as shipping methods used to get the furs to various markets"--P. [4] of cover.

Download or read book Historical Atlas of Canada From the beginning to 1800 written by Donald P. (Peter) Kerr and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 1987-01-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uses maps to illustrate the development of Canada from the last ice sheet to the end of the eighteenth century

Download or read book Early Fur Trade on the Northern Plains written by W. Raymond Wood and published by . This book was released on 1999-11 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before their first contact with whites, the Mandan and Hidatsa villagers along the Missouri River in what is now central North Dakota had established a prosperous center for a vast intertribal trade network across the Northern Plains. Early white fur traders, learning of the existence of these villages, were quickly drawn to them. French, British, and Canadian traders were the first to arrive. Representatives of the Montreal-based North West Company were soon followed to the Missouri by employees of the rival Hudson’s Bay Company, and for nearly thirty years the two groups competed for the beaver pelts collected by the Mandans and Hidatsas from tribes farther west. Contact with the Canadian traders, and later with others who ascended the Missouri from Saint Louis, had a profound effect on the tribes, for it introduced Euro-American culture and trade goods that led to the extinction of their way of life. There is especially good documentation of the dealings between the Mandans and Hidatsas and the whites for the period 1790 to 1806, when several literate traders visited the Indian villages and recorded their experiences and impressions in lively, colorful narratives. In this book are presented new, dependable, annotated transcriptions of five of the most important of these documents, the narratives of the traders John Macdonell, David Thompson, François-Antoine Larocque (two journals), and Charles McKenzie. Through the narratives and the editors’ own thorough historical introduction, W. Raymond Wood and Thomas D. Thiessen reexamine the history of the fur trade in the North and provide fresh insight into that shadowy period. New maps show in detail the routes of the trader-narrators, and the appendix provides useful statistics, inventories, and financial accounts of the fur trade of the era. Early Fur Trade on the Northern Plains will be of use not only to scholars of the fur trade and anthropologists but also to all those interested in the exploration and early history of the vast Northern Plains.