Trade route
Voyageurs paddled freight canoes from Montreal up the Ottawa River, across the Great Lakes and over a chain of rivers and portages to the Athabasca country, trading goods for furs at inland posts. The Hudson's Bay Company shipped its furs from York Factory through Hudson Strait to London.
The North American fur trade is the historical commercial trade of furs and other goods in North America between the 16th and 19th centuries, beginning in the eastern provinces of French Canada and the northeastern American colonies (eventually the United States). The trade was initiated mainly through French, Dutch, English and Scottish settlers and explorers in collaboration with various First Nations peoples of the region, such as the Wyandot-Huron and the Iroquois; ultimately, the fur trade's financial and cultural impact would see the industry quickly expanding across the continent from the Atlantic to Pacific coast of Canada and into more continental United States and Alaska. The fur trade led to unions between Indigenous women and settler men and is linked to the origin of mixed-ancestry populations and the ethnogenesis of Métis communities in some areas. Competition in the trade, especially for the European market, led to various wars among Indigenous peoples aided by various European colonial allies.
Europeans began their participation in the North American fur trade from the initial period of their colonization of the Americas in the 16th century, bringing the financial and material gains of the trade to Europe. European merchants from France, England and the Dutch Republic established trading posts and forts in various regions of eastern North America, primarily to conduct trade transactions with First Nations and local communities. The trade reached its peak of economic prominence in the 19th century, by which time the entire operation was fueled by seasoned trails, the knowledge and experiences of numerous frontiersmen, and the system of elaborate trade networks.
The trade soon became one of the main economic drivers in North America, attracting competition amongst European nations, who maintained trade interests in the Americas. The United States sought to remove the substantial British control over the North American fur trade during the first decades of its existence. Many Indigenous peoples would soon come to depend on the fur trade as their primary source of income and method of obtaining European-manufactured goods (such as weaponry, housewares, kitchenwares, and other useful products). However, by the mid-19th century, changing fashions in Europe brought about a collapse in fur prices and led to the crashing of several fur companies. Many Indigenous (and European) communities that relied on the fur trade were suddenly plunged into poverty and, consequently, lost much of the political influence they once held.
The number of beavers and river otters killed during the fur trade was devastating for the animals' North American populations. The natural ecosystems that relied on the beavers for dams, river and water management and other vital needs were also ravaged, leading to ecological destruction, significant environmental change, and even drought in certain areas. Following this degradation, both the river otter and beaver populations in North America would continue to decline, without much noticeable improvement until around the mid-twentieth century.
French explorer Jacques Cartier in his three voyages into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in the 1530s and 1540s conducted some of the earliest fur trading between European and First Nations peoples associated with 16th century and later explorations in North America. Cartier attempted limited fur trading with the First Nations in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and along the Saint Lawrence River. He concentrated on trading for furs used as trimming and adornment. He overlooked the fur that would become the driving force of the fur trade in the north, the beaver pelt, which would become fashionable in Europe.
The earliest European trading for beaver pelts dated to the growing cod fishing industry that spread to the Grand Banks of the North Atlantic in the 16th century. The new preservation technique of drying fish allowed the mainly Basque fishermen to fish near the Newfoundland coast and transport fish back to Europe for sale. The fishermen sought suitable harbors with ample lumber to dry large quantities of cod. This generated their earliest contact with local Indigenous peoples, with whom the fisherman began simple trading.
The fishermen traded metal items for beaver robes made of sewn-together, native-tanned beaver pelts. They used the robes to keep warm on the long, cold return voyages across the Atlantic. These castor gras (in French) became prized by European hat makers in the second half of the 16th century, as they converted the pelts to felt. The discovery of the superior felting qualities of beaver fur, along with the rapidly increasing popularity of beaver felt hats in fashion, transformed the incidental trading of fishermen into a growing trade in the French and later British territories in the 17th century.
The transition from a seasonal coastal trade into a permanent interior fur trade was formally marked with the foundation of Quebec on the Saint Lawrence River in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain, officially establishing the settlement of New France. This settlement marked the beginning of the westward movement of French traders from the first permanent settlement of Tadoussac at the mouth of the Saguenay River on the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, up the Saint Lawrence River and into the pays d'en haut (or "upper country") around the Great Lakes. What followed in the first half of the 17th century were strategic moves by both the French and the Indigenous groups to further their own economic and geopolitical ambitions.
Champlain led the expansion while centralizing the French efforts. As native peoples had the primary role of suppliers in the fur trade, Champlain quickly created alliances with the Algonquin, Montagnais (who were located in the territory around Tadoussac), and most importantly, the Huron to the west. The latter, an Iroquoian-speaking people, served as middlemen between the French on the Saint Lawrence and nations in the pays d'en haut. Champlain supported the northern groups in their preexisting military struggle with the Iroquois Confederacy to the south. He secured the Ottawa River route to Georgian Bay, greatly expanding the trade. Champlain also sent young French men to live and work among the natives, most notably Étienne Brûlé, to learn the land, language, and customs, as well as to promote trade.
Champlain reformed the business of the trade, creating the first informal trust in 1613 in response to increasing losses because of competition. The trust was later formalized with a royal charter, leading to a series of trade monopolies during the term of New France. The most notable monopoly was the Company of One Hundred Associates based back in France, with a period of attempted transition towards other share trading companies, such as the Company of Habitants in the 1640s and 1650s, permitting a small group of investors within Canada an initial hold on the monopoly but then quickly pulling back and limiting trading and investment within the colony. While the monopolies dominated the trade, their charters also required payment of annual returns to the national government, military expenditures, and expectations that they would encourage settlement for the sparsely populated New France.
The vast wealth in the fur trade created enforcement problems for the monopoly. Unlicensed independent traders, known as coureurs des bois (or "runners of the woods"), began to do business in the late 17th and early 18th century. Over time, many Métis were drawn to the independent trade; they were the descendants of French trappers and native women. The increasing use of currency, as well as the importance of personal contacts and experience in the fur trade, gave an edge to independent traders over the more bureaucratic monopolies. The newly established English colonies to the south quickly joined the lucrative trade, raiding the Saint Lawrence River valley and capturing and controlling Quebec from 1629 to 1632.
While bringing wealth to a few select French traders and the French regime, the fur trade also brought profound changes to the Indigenous communities living along the Saint Lawrence. European wares, such as iron axe heads, brass kettles, cloth, and firearms were bought with beaver pelts and other furs. The widespread practice of trading furs for rum and whiskey led to problems associated with inebriation and alcohol abuse. The subsequent destruction of beaver populations along the Saint Lawrence heightened the fierce competition between the Iroquois and Huron for access to the rich fur-bearing lands of the Canadian Shield.
The competition for hunting is believed to have contributed to the earlier destruction of the Saint Lawrence Iroquoians in the valley by 1600, likely by the Iroquois Mohawk tribe, who were located closest to them, were more powerful than the Huron, and had the most to gain by controlling this part of the valley.
Iroquois access to firearms through Dutch and later English traders along the Hudson River increased the casualties in the warfare. This greater bloodshed, previously unseen in Iroquoian warfare, increased the practice of "mourning wars". The Iroquois raided neighboring groups to take captives, who were ceremonially adopted as new family members to replace the dead Iroquois; thus a cycle of violence and warfare escalated. More significantly, new infectious diseases brought by the French decimated Native communities. Combined with warfare, disease led to the near destruction of the Huron by 1650.
During the 1640s and 1650s, the Beaver Wars initiated by the Iroquois forced a massive demographic shift as their western neighbors fled the violence. They sought refuge west and north of Lake Michigan. The Five Nations of the Iroquois, who had a predatory attitude towards their neighbors even at the best of times, constantly raiding neighboring peoples in "mourning wars" in search of captives who would become Iroquois, were determined to be the only middlemen between the Europeans and the other Indians who lived in the West, and quite consciously set about eliminating any rivals as such as the Huron (Wendat).
By the 1620s, the Iroquois had become dependent upon iron implements, which they obtained by trading fur with the Dutch at Fort Nassau (modern Albany, New York). Between 1624 and 1628, the Iroquois drove out their neighbors, the Mahican, to allow themselves to be the one people in the Hudson river valley able to trade with the Dutch. By 1640, the Five Nations had exhausted the supply of beavers in Kanienkeh ("the land of the flint," the Iroquois name for their homeland in what is now upstate New York), and moreover Kanienkeh lacked the beavers with the thick pelts that the Europeans favored and would pay the best price for, which were to be found further north in what is now northern Canada.
The Five Nations launched the "Beaver Wars" to take control of the fur trade from other middlemen who would deal with the Europeans. The Wendat homeland, Wendake, lies in what is now southern Ontario being bordered on three sides by Lake Ontario, Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay, and it was through Wendake that the Ojibwe and Cree who lived further north traded with the French. In 1649, the Iroquois made a series of raids into Wendake that were intended to destroy the Wendat as a people with thousands of Wendat taken to be adopted by Iroquois families with the rest being killed. The war against the Wendat was at least just as much a "mourning war" as a "beaver war" as the Iroquois obsessively raided Wendake for ten years after their great raids of 1649 to take single Wendat back to Kanienkeh, even though they did not possess much in the way of beaver pelts. The Iroquois's population had been devastated by losses because of European diseases like smallpox for they had no immunity, and when the Iroquois finally made peace with the French in 1667, one of the terms was the French had to hand over all of the Wendat who had fled to New France.
The Iroquois had already clashed with the French in 1609, 1610 and 1615, but the "beaver wars" caused a lengthy struggle with the French who had no intention of allowing the Five Nations to set themselves up as the only middlemen in the fur trade. The French did not fare well at first, with the Iroquois inflicting more casualties than they suffered, French settlements frequently cut off, canoes bringing fur to Montreal intercepted, and sometimes the Iroquois blockaded the Saint Lawrence.
New France was a proprietary colony run by the Compagnie des Cent-Associés who went bankrupt in 1663 because of the Iroquois attacks which made the fur trade unprofitable for the French. After the Compagnie des Cent-Associés went bankrupt, New France was taken over by the French Crown. King Louis XIV wanted his new Crown colony to turn a profit and dispatched the Carignan-Salières Regiment to defend it.
In 1666, the Carignan-Salières Regiment made a devastating raid upon Kanienkeh, which led the Five Nations to sue for peace in 1667. The era from roughly 1660 through 1763 saw a fierce rivalry grow between France and Great Britain as each European power struggled to expand their fur-trading territories. The two imperial powers and their native allies competed in conflicts that culminated in the French and Indian War, a part of the Seven Years' War in Europe.
The 1659–1660 voyage of French traders Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard Chouart des Groseilliers into the country north and west of Lake Superior symbolically opened this new era of expansion. Their trading voyage proved extremely lucrative in furs. More importantly, they learned of a frozen sea to the north that provided easy access to the fur-bearing interior. Upon their return, French officials confiscated the furs of these unlicensed coureurs des bois. Radisson and Groseilliers went to Boston and then to London to secure funding and two ships to explore the Hudson Bay. Their success led to England's chartering of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1670, a major player in the fur trade for the next two centuries.
French exploration and expansion westward continued with men such as La Salle and Jacques Marquette exploring and claiming the Great Lakes as well as the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys. To bolster these territorial claims, the French constructed a series of small fortifications, beginning with Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario in 1673. Together with the construction of Le Griffon in 1679, the first full-sized sailing ship on the Great Lakes, the forts opened the upper Great Lakes to French navigation.
More native groups learned about European wares and became trading middlemen, most notably the Ottawa. The competitive impact of the new English Hudson's Bay Company trade was felt as early as 1671, with diminished returns for the French and the role of the native middlemen. This new competition directly stimulated French expansion into the North West to win back native customers.
Text from the Wikipedia article “North American fur trade”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.