Xie 2
agriculture frontier, which was “the immediate full occupation of the Indian hunting ground” (Morton 88). Consequently, “the fur trade was a cooperative undertaking by white trader and red hunter” (88).
In the 18th century, the military, economic, and colonial competition prompted the French and English to associate with different Indian tribes in succession. On one hand, the white traders were isolated in the primitive life of the tribes, and to prosecute the trade, they had to live with, and as, the Indians. Also, to the Indian way of life the work of Indian women was indispensable. The more frequently they contacted, the faster the union was formed (61-65). On the other hand, to the White, “marriage was the best way to cement a trade alliance. If a trader wanted to be sure that an Indian leader brought his furs to the post each year, there was no better way than to marry his daughter”(Francis 64). Therefore, the Métis nation was formed in North America. Morton stated that the fur trade was the cause of the mixed unions (Morton 63). Moreover, the first census (1870) taken in Red River (the fur trading capital of the West) showed that the mixed-blood population greatly outnumbered the people solely of European descent. Of the total population of 11,963, only 1,565 were European; there were 558 Indians, 5,755 French-speaking Métis, and 4,083 English-speaking Métis (McLean 37). Evidently, Due to this particular relationship between the White and the Indians in the fur trade, the Métis nation was gradually formed in Canada as a special race, and settled down in the Red River area finally as the guarantee of the fur trade. This new type of cooperative relation not only deeply influenced on the indigenous people’s society, but it also played a significant role in the fur trade.
For the continuing supply of furs, the fur traders should ensure the place of production in its natural state. It seemed that the fur trade affected nature less than other economic modes, which were used to levelling down the ground and planting other exotic species. Indeed, the fur trade has brought about a series of ecological devastations in North America by its specific means.
First of all, the fur trade directly caused a large number of precious fur-bearing animals to be killed and to face the extinction, so that it broke the biological chain in North America and changed the Indian living environment. Since the fur trade was always remaining in the high race condition, the wiser way to defeat other competitors was to reap or hunt the valuable fur-bearing animals as fast and many as possible. As a result, plenty of animals were slaughtered, and even essentially extinct. For instance, “to combat the encroaching Americans, Simpson (the president of Hudson’s Bay Company) planned a scorched earth policy. In other parts of the fur country the Hudson’s Bay Company was trying to conserve the dwindling stocks of beaver, but Simpson decided that the territory north of the Columbia would be protected by a virtual fur desert, a cardon sanitaire in which fur-bearing animals would be ruthless exterminated” (Francis 145). Then, “by the early 1830s, the number of animals killed was already in decline as they became more and more difficult to find. By 1831 the beaver was extinct on the northern Great Plains and two years later the Hudson’s Bay Company issued instructions not to waste time hunting in certain areas because the beaver was so rare”(Ponting 158). Besides, the fur trade in French New France, as the pivot of economy, also slaughtered a large variety of fur-bearing animals. “In one year (1734) La Rochelle, one of the centres of trade with Canada,
Xie 3
imported skins from 127,000 beavers, 30,000 martens, 12,000 otters, 110,000 racoons and 16,000 bears (158). Also, “similar figures were common at the other French and British ports trading with North America” (158). Obviously, unrestrained competition in the fur trade drove the number of fur-bearing animals to the point of extinction. Before the White settled down, plentiful animal resources had been a vital source of food to the Indians. The fur-bearing animals killed cut off the food supply to the Indians however, and therefore, it led to the poverty of the Indians as well as aggravated their dependence on the White.
Furthermore, while the animals were gradually extinguishing, the fur trade was changing the Indian ecological ethics. The Indians had lived in their lifestyle in North America for thousands of years. They had to follow a series of strict procedures to kill the animal they hunted. According to Alexander Henry’s description, after killing a beaver, the Ojibwa believed all the animals were his relatives. After killing a beaver, the Ojibwa would hold the beaver’s caput, beat it several times, and kiss it. In this way, the Ojibwa made his apology to the beaver. (John and Andrew 18). Although lots of modernists do not agree with some of the Indian living ways and ethics, the uncontroversial fact is that before the White arrived, the number of animals the Indians hunted was much less than the rate of their procreation. Therefore, the Indian early hunting behaviour did not affect the continued existence of the species. However, after the white traders appeared, the Indians changed their lifestyle, and back-pedalled their intrinsic values to help the White hunt more fur-bearing animals for trading. With being involved in the fur trade, the number of animals that the Indians hunted for the Bay was far more than the native actual needs (Newman 88). Moreover, at that time, the advent of the European tools certainly changed the Indian lives a lot. They brought about the convenience by different ways in the Indian daily life. That resulted in the indigenous people slowly abandoning their traditional lifestyle and living skills. The natives considered that “the beaver does everything well; it makes kettles, hatchets, swords, knives, beads; and, in short, it makes everything” (Sandoz 129).
The fur trade could flourish in three centuries in North America for reasons of its generous profits. The White traded innumerable beaver furs in exchange of money. According to Billington, Ray Allen, the price of a beaver fur transported from North America to Europe could raise over 200 times (Billington 28). The European did a great deal of business in fur trade; however, what the fur trade brought to the Indian were suffering and humiliation.
Of all the goods from the White, the Indian was fond of the guns and liquor the most. Guns were always the most luxurious article to the Indian. According to the statistics, at first, a gun was equal to over eighty pieces of furs; then even in the golden age of the fur trade (at the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century), the Indian still had to spend 25 pieces of premium furs on one gun. Besides, in fact, the Indian has known the power of guns since 1608, when the French explorer Samuel de Champlain associated with the Wendat that the French called Huron and with the Algonquin to help them in their war against the Iroquois. Then, after the Iroquois attained some guns from the Dutch, French also provided their alliances with guns. Therefore, the usage of gun not only reduced the Indian hunting time and increased the fur quantity, but it also provoked a lot of bloody and violent wars that the natives conquered other tribes and occupied their territory in order to extend their controllable areas,
Xie 4
and prompted the natives to further depend on the European goods. It estimated from 1620 to 1750, 3,000 Indians were dies from shooting in the wars (“Museum of the Fur Trade-The Northwest Gun”).
With regard to the liquor, the indigenous people called it the water to life. In 1770, an Indian affair official noted that it was certain that nothing could be more attractive to the Indian than liquor. For example, from an estimate annual average of ninety-six hundred gallons of “rum and spirits” leaving Canada each season before 1799, the amount jumped to a total of twenty-one thousand gallons in 1830. Since liquor was generally mixed with four parts water, the Northwest was awash in more than a hundred thousand gallons of “that pernicious article, rum” (Francis 79). Drinking made many Indians lose self-restraint and disorder the native peaceful society. Moreover, drinking led to the decrease in the Indian birthrate, causing the retrogression of the Indian quality. Alexander Henry the Younger pronounced: “We may truly say that liquor is the root of all evil in the North West” (80).
Besides, the epidemic the White brought to North America also seriously affected the natives. It not only generally existed on the coastland, but it also spread throughout the interior. Here, the epidemic included smallpox, pneumonia, influenza and cholera. These highly infectious diseases reduced the Indian population so soon and collapsed the Indian social orders and living base. “Smallpox proved particularly deadly to Native American populations” (Innis 21). Both ordinary people and mganga died from epidemic at that time, causing the waver in the Indian religious spirit. At the same time, the Eastern White prompted the cultural assimilation policy to make the Indian society in that area go to pieces completely. In short, “the disastrous results of these cultural changes were shown further in the spread of English diseases, especially smallpox, and the decimation of the Indians” (21).
To summarize, through the above analyses on the ecological impact of the fur trade on the Indian of North America, we can have the following conclusions:
First, the fur trade has brought about a new cooperative mode, which was basic to the marriage between two different races, the European and the North American indigenous people. It was significant in the Canadian history. In three centuries, most Indians of North America involved in the fur trade; also, the fur traders were here and there. Compared with the agricultural mode in South America, which used wars and massacre to occupy Indian territory and sources, the fur trade created a new trading mode to relate the White and the Indian, and then formed the new race – Métis in North America. At the same time, the fur trade changed both the Indian social life and their culture. On one hand, the fur trade brought about the White’s commodities and Western culture to the Indian. On the other hand, two points of view existed among the Indian. Part of Indian wanted their traditional lifestyle back, while the other part promoted the White’s culture and put modernism into practice.
Second, the fur frontier, the same as the fishing frontier and the agriculture frontier, was a kind of staple economy in North America. Those economic modes usually depended on exploring one or several sources which would be supplied exportation. Therefore, at that time, beavers, foxes, white-tailed deer and other fur-bearing animals were over hunted for the fur
Xie 5
exploring. Although the fur trade increased the economic development, it destroyed the North American environment by leading several animals to be essentially extinct.
Third, the fur trade changed the Indian living conditions and ecological ethics. Some contemporary academics believed that the fur trade did not collapse the native culture, and the Indians were not the victims in the fur trade, but the participants (Krech 81-82). Nevertheless, look back the Indian living from the 16th century to the 19th century, we can easily find that the Indian traditional ethics and social order were seriously destroyed by the White; also, the Indian suffered from different diseases and being addicted to alcohol brought by the White. Obviously, the Indian was the victim in the North American fur trade.
Xie 6
Works Cited
Museum of the Fur Trade. “Museum of the Fur Trade: the Northwest Gun.” 10 May. 2008.
<http://www.furtrade.org/3collct/3collct1.html>
Billington, Ray Allen. Westward expansion: a history of the American frontier. New
York: Macmillan, 1967.
Francis, Daniel. Battle for the West: fur traders and the birth of western Canada. Edmonton:
Hurtig, 1982.
Herron, John P., and Andrew G. Kirk. Human/nature: biology, culture, and environmental
history. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, c1999.
Innis, Harold Adams. The fur trade in Canada: an introduction to Canadian economic history.
Toronto: University of Toronto, 1956.
Krech, Shepard. The ecological Indian : myth and history. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
c1999.
McLean, Donald George. Home from the hill: a history of the Métis in western Canada. Regina:
Gabriel Dumont Institute of Native Studies and Applied Research, 1987.
Morton, William Lewis. Contexts of Canada’s past: selected essays of W. L. Morton. Toronto:
Macmillan of Canada, c1980.
Newman, Peter Charles. Empire of the Bay: an illustrated history of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Markham, Ont.: Viking, 1989.
Ponting, Clive. A new green history of the world: the environment and the collapse of great
civilizations. London: Vintage, 2007.
Sandoz, Mari. The beaver men: spearheads of empire. New York: Hastings House, 1964.
