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The Role of Native American Women in the Fur Trade in the Northern Regions Of The Role of Native American Women in the Fur Trade in the Northern Regions of America and the Hudson Bay Region of Canada Even I fear the power She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named of this one. March 29, 2014 Abstract: Fur trade flourished in the northern regions of the Americas as Europeans established trading posts with the Native Americans, once interracial marriage became frequent. The union of these Native American women to European settlers allowed for peaceful trade. These women were powerful in both their societies and were often allowed a dual membership between the two peoples. They encouraged communication, peaceful trade bargains, and acceptance of blending cultures. Women held a high status in their native tribal society and were often at trading posts with products that they had harvested. They also worked very hard in their community to catch animals, skin them, and sell the pelts. Understanding both their tribal culture and that of their European husbands, these women would work as intermediaries to assist the trading posts, and ultimately, the major fur companies. After being married to a settler, the Native American women worked hard to learn about the technology and tools that Europeans would provide for trade and help their communities grow. Native American women were crucial to the fur trade and allowed many northern regions to survive by uniting their tribes with the Europeans and encouraging peaceful trade. The Role of Native American Women in the Fur Trade in the Northern Regions of America and the Hudson Bay Region of Canada She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named Abstract Fur trade flourished in the northern regions of the Americas as Europeans established trading posts with the Native Americans, once interracial marriage became frequent. The union of these Native American women to European settlers allowed for peaceful trade. These women were powerful in both their societies and were often allowed a dual membership between the two peoples. They encouraged communication, peaceful trade bargains, and acceptance of blending cultures. Women held a high status in their native tribal society and were often at trading posts with products that they had harvested. They also worked very hard in their community to catch animals, skin them, and sell the pelts. Understanding both their tribal culture and that of their European husbands, these women would work as intermediaries to assist the trading posts, and ultimately, the major fur companies. After being married to a settler, the Native American women worked hard to learn about the technology and tools that Europeans would provide for trade and help their communities grow. Native American women were crucial to the fur trade and allowed many northern regions to survive by uniting their tribes with the Europeans and encouraging peaceful trade. Introduction When learning about the fur trade in the northern regions of the United States and Canada during the colonial period, one would mostly encounter stories of the French and 2 eventually British setting up trading posts along rivers. Early in the colonial era, Native American tribes would frequent these trading posts, supplying many Europeans with excellent grade furs including beaver, buffalo, and deer. In return for the finely stripped pelts, the European colonists would supply the Native American tribes with tools for building and planting, along with weapons to defend themselves from other tribes and perhaps unfriendly encounters with other European posts. The Native American tribes in these northern regions had plenty access to beaver, deer, and buffalo, and by nature of geography, the members of the tribe needed these skins and pelts to protect themselves from the harsh winters and used them for building their homes. Their society depended on these pelts so much that they became the experts on how to tan the skins into the finest quality. The European’s knowledge and technology was necessary for the Native American tribes to compete with their neighbors, and the colonists needed the pelts for clothing, bags, bedding, and many other uses. What is not as often mentioned is the huge role women played in these unions between the European traders and the Native American tribes. These women were also not what you would expect; the white women may have travelled with some of their husbands if they were traders, however the award for the largest role in uniting these two peoples goes to the Native American women. They were resourceful intermediaries that worked to great lengths to keep their two families/societies at peace and interacting at a level that benefitted both sides economically, politically, and of course socially. In this paper, I will attempt to discuss, in full, Native American women’s contributions and relevance to the fur trade. I will also be giving answers on how their marriage to European settlers impacted the fur trade and relations between the two 3 peoples. I hope to convey how these unions affected the economies of the settlers and of the Native American tribes, both specific tribes in the northern region of the Americas and Canada, and in general. The interracial marriages of the Native Americans and European settlers within the fur trade is relevant to United States Economic History in the way that it helps describe relations between the natives and settlers and how that ultimately affected American economies. Fur trade was important in colonial history, especially to the Hudson Bay region, and understanding small, more specific details of this help clearly paint the larger picture of how the United States is functioning today. The Beginning of the Fur Trade in the Northern Colonial United States and Canada According to Michael Lansing, fur trade among Europeans and Native American tribes started up in Missouri in the 1730s-1740s and rose to a peak in the 1830s. During this time, the British had mostly taken over the Spanish, and the French established fur trading posts. The Native American tribes that lived in this region provided beaver, deer, and buffalo pelts. The Hudson Bay Company and the North West Company had taken over the existing French posts set up by French traders, such as Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, by the 1780s. The French traded with the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara tribes, and they established trading posts further west that included the Assiniboine, Gros Ventres, Blackfeet, Crows, and Lakota tribes. The American Fur Company dominated the region in 1826 (Lansing, 414). During this time, smaller companies came and went, competing with the larger companies, which promoted more and more trading posts to be established in the Plains 4 regions. This further promoted Native American tribes and settlers to set up small communities around and/or near these posts, which contributed to more contact between the Europeans and natives. The Native American women would greet European traders with gifts of corn along with other goods and welcomed trade as well as good relations with their new neighbors, knowing that making friends would lead to free trade that would essentially economically benefit their tribe. Interracial marriage began to increase and flourish in these trading posts to encourage and promote a free, bartering system based market, creating a strong, economically sound, fur trading interracial society (Lansing, 413-416). Canada, especially in the Hudson Bay region, thrived due to the success of the Hudson Bay Company, which promoted Native American and European contact for trading purposes. Similarly, Native Americans and Europeans in this region depended on each other for a functioning market in trading furs, mainly beaver pelts, for the exchange of tools, weapons, cooking utensils, and European, as well as some Native American, planting and harvesting techniques. The Native Americans would provide the pelts, and the settlers would provide the tools, weapons, knowledge, skills, etc (Van Kirk, 9). This system of bartering at the trading posts under the Hudson Bay Company led to a huge boost in the economy that spread to the surrounding tribes, villages, and settlements. Native American Women and Intermarriage Benefits to Both the European Settlements and Native American Tribes The committee to decide on the policies for the Hudson Bay Company consisted of shareholders back in London. These English shareholders were concerned that if the 5 traders in the port took wives and had children, it would drain from the Hudson Bay Company’s profits. This led to a strict policy, obviously poorly enforced, in which traders at the Hudson Bay Company’s ports were not permitted to marry from around the 1740s to the 1760s. Many of the traders ignored the rule, including most of the important workers in the ports that held offices, such as the factors and chief factors. Not only did they completely ignore the rule, they often married more than one Native American woman (often recorded numbers count up to six women). They felt as though they could marry multiple women since they were already breaking the rule with one wife. Also, the traders knew that they could extract resources from the families of his wives; expanding to multiple marriages added to an increase in his relative wealth and the economy of the trading post he was employed under. After the major Hudson Bay Company’s officials were seen breaking this marriage restriction rule, many of the ordinary workers that were employed at the ports as traders began to marry at around the 1780s (Gottfred, 1-6). It seems that since the London Committee of shareholders was located across the ocean, the Hudson Bay Company workers felt as though they could get away with breaking the rules. When rumors of men taking Native American women in their homes, many described the work the women were doing, including making, mending, and knitting, but always excluded the fact that they were marrying these women (Gottfred, 5-7).
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