Fur Trade is an important form of frontier development in North American history. The fur exchange began when white settlers set foot on the eastern coast of North America. Until the 1870s, this type of economy existed in a wide area from the Gulf of Mexico in the south, along the Hudson Bay in the north, and from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast. The fur trade was once the foundation of the existence of New France, and it was also a key factor for the great powers to compete for hegemony and drive them deeper into the North American interior. This is a completely different development model from other frontiers. It does not exclude the Indians and seize their land and life like other frontiers, but requires the cooperation of the latter. Without the cooperation of Indigenous peoples, this economic form could not survive a day in North America.
A Frontier of White-Indigenous Cooperation
The North American fur trade in a narrow sense only refers to the hunting and exchange of high-quality fur hides, especially beaver hides. At that time, beavers were distributed in most parts of North America, and the number was estimated to be between 10 million and 40 million; and the fur trade in a broad sense also included the exchange of other animal hides, such as white-tailed deer skins in southeastern North America, Reindeer and elk hides, bison hides from the savannah, etc. However, the trade of beaver skins is the core of the whole fur trade. In the process of exchange, the skins of other animals and the commodities exchanged must be converted into beaver skins for calculation. As in the Elk River Fur Station of the Hudson's Bay Company in James Bay in 1733, 1 piece of fine beaver hide can be exchanged for the following items: 1/2 pound of beige beads, 3/4 pound of colored beads, 1 brass jug , 1 lb buckshot, 1.5 lb gunpowder or 2 lb sugar.
What initially attracted Europeans to North America was the abundant cod resources near Newfoundland. The nearby Indians were very eager for the iron tools, small mirrors, beads and other supplies that the fishermen carried with them, so they took out what they had. Beaver skins were exchanged, and the original trade began, and the fishermen became the first fur traders. In 1534, the French explorer Cartier had traded with the Indians when he explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Since then, the fur trade has emerged from the rest as the most storied industry in North American history, so much so that "for 150 years, European interest in the western interior has almost always been limited to the fur trade".
Compared with other frontier forms in North America, fur trade also has strong expansion and fragility, and its uniqueness is that it is the only frontier development mode that relies on Indian cooperation. The fur trade was different from the agricultural frontier, which coveted only Indian lands. In the history of the United States, except that the white people were friendly to them because they needed the help of the natives in the early days, the Indians were excluded as the resistance to the evolution of civilization in most other frontier development periods. American "pioneers insisted that Indians, like those forests, must be eliminated as enemies of cultural progress". And in Canada's fur frontier, "the mantra 'a good Indian is a dead Indian' has never been applied to the fur trade". The fur trade was "a collaboration between white men as traders and yellow men as hunters". "With very few exceptions, the desire for European goods on the Indian side and for Indian furs on the European side was the only basis for the 'friendship' between merchants and the natives of the Northwest Territories".
Except for the hunting in the Rocky Mountains in the 19th century, the American fur trader Astor once introduced a gathering system that exploited white hunting, the fur trade was inseparable from the cooperation of the natives for most of its existence.
In the process of competing with each other for fur resources, the French and the British have their own Indian allies (this can be seen in the transaction between the natives and the French in the film). As early as the Champlain period, the French allied with the Hurons. In 1609, he helped the Hurons attack a tribe of the Iroquois, and since then he has feuded with the powerful Iroquois, who in turn allied with the British. The Hurons were the French's first hunters and intermediate traders in the fur trade. As the fur trade continued to penetrate the interior, so did the French hunters and middlemen.
After the 1640s, with the extinction of the Hurons, most of the Ottawas, Ojibwas, Dakotas, Mandans and even the westernmost tribes were involved in the fur trade successively, instead of becoming The hunter is the middleman.
It is precisely because of this mutual relationship between whites and indigenous people in the fur trade that a special mixed race, the Métis, was created in North American history. Most of the merchants and employees engaged in the fur trade are young people who go deep into the interior alone, far from European families and society, and many of them gradually marry indigenous women (the son of Xiao Lizi in the film is the result of a joint venture with the local indigenous people). As early as Champlain's time, interracial marriage had begun, and he once said to the Indian chief: "Our young men marry your daughters, and we are one family." For white people, "If a fur trader There is no better way to ensure that the leader of the Aboriginal people sends his pelts to his trading post every year than to marry his daughter.” For the Indians, they wanted to continue to obtain white goods, especially the supply of guns and ammunition (this is especially important when dealing with hostile tribes), and to maintain their tribe's middleman status between other marginal tribes and white fur traders , and marriage with whites is also an effective means.
It was on the basis of this mutual need that the marriage between French fur traders and Indian women gradually became popular, and women became an important part of the fur station. The merchants who share their dwellings are few." The British Hudson's Bay Company initially restrained its employees from accepting Indian women like the French merchants, but the French had the upper hand in the fur trade because of their marriage to the Indians. In order to deal with French competition and to obtain high-quality fur, the Hudson's Bay Company finally had to accept the fact of racial intermarriage. An official of the Gulf Company even addressed the London board: "It would be very beneficial to cultivate a small number of useful men who could eventually replace the European-born employees." With this special relationship, the Métis gradually formed as a special ethnic group in Canada, and eventually settled in the Red River region, acting as the middleman and logistical support for the fur trade, and played an important role in the subsequent trade. According to Punctuality International ( www.qqfx.com.cn) According to the Canadian Division, out of a population of 11,963 at the time, there were only 1,565 whites, 558 Indians, 5,757 French Métis, and 4,083 English Métis. The Métis have survived and continued in Canada as a special race. According to the 1996 census, the total number of Métis in Canada reached 210,190.
The fur trade has changed the living environment and ecological ethics of the indigenous people.
In order to obtain a sustainable fur supply, the fur trade as an economic form needs to preserve the original state of the North American fur origin, and the large-scale conquest of nature and the change of the world in the agricultural frontier. In comparison, it can be said to be one of the economic forms in North America that has less impact on the natural environment. Nonetheless, the fur trade in its special way also created a tragic ecological disaster in North American history.
First, the fur trade led to the accelerated extinction of many precious fur animals, thus changing the living environment of the Indians. The fur trade has always been highly competitive, and the wisest approach is to hunt as much as possible before other competitors arrive. For example, after the 1820s, Simpson, president of the Hudson's Bay Company, directed his employees to the disputed Southwest Rocky Mountains: "The region is very rich in beavers, and for political reasons, we should try to get out as quickly as possible. Hunt it down." This is the famous scorched earth policy adopted by the Gulf companies. The fur trade is the economic backbone of French New France.
Referring to the data of the French business department and the Canadian business department of Punctuality International , in 1743, La Rochelle, an important port for fur trade between France and Canada, imported 127,000 pieces of beaver skins, 30,000 pieces of mink skins, and 12,000 pieces of skins. Sea otter skins, 110,000 raccoon skins and 16,000 bear skins. In 1742, 130,000 beaver hides and 9,000 mink hides were traded at York Trading Post alone. Even in 1854, when the fur trade had collapsed, 509,000 beaver hides were still traded on the London market.
The frenzied massacre has led to a sharp decline in the number of this precious fur animal, and it has gone extinct in many places. By 1600, the beavers on the St. Lawrence River had been hunted; by 1610, the Hudson River beaver was still common, and by 1640, it had become extinct in this area and along the Massachusetts coast; by the end of the seventeenth century, new England's beavers were almost completely extinct; by 1831, beavers were also extinct on the northern prairie, and the hunt turned to the Pacific. In the 1830s, only 2,000 beaver pelts were caught a year throughout the Rocky Mountains. By the 1840s, beaver hunting in North America was over for good.
Just as beavers disappeared one after another, other furry animals suffered a similar calamity. White-tailed deer in southeastern North America were around 40 million at the time of the arrival of whites. In 1707, 120,000 deerskins were shipped out of Charleston; in the 1740s and 1750s, Charleston shipped an average of 178,000 deerskins annually. Some researchers believe that at the height of the trade, about 1 million deer were slaughtered every year. By the end of the 19th century, the once-giant white-tailed deer were in danger of extinction. The buffalo on the grasslands experienced almost the same fate. Needing to supply beef patties for the Northwest Company and the Hudson's Bay Company, the Métis had killed all of Manitoba's bison by 1850. After 1873, with the success of bison leather tanning, bison was slaughtered unprecedentedly. From 1872 to 1874, 3 million bison were killed every year. As a result, in just a few years, the number of bison dropped sharply from tens of millions to less than 200, and by 1903, there were 34 remaining in North America.
Before the arrival of white people, rich animal and plant resources used to be an important food source for the North American Indians, and the extinction of fur animals cut off the important food source of the North American natives, resulting in their poverty and dependence on the white society. The extinction of bison became an important reason why the Prairie Indians were forced to lay down their weapons and move to the reservation. Secondly, the fur trade has profoundly changed the ecological ethics of the North American Indians while causing extinction of fur animals.
For thousands of years, the Indians have deeply stamped their own mark on the land of North America through their own way. Although there is still a lot of controversy in the academic circles about whether Indians can be called residents who maintain ecological balance, the Indians do have some very good ecological ethics traditions, and we cannot use our current standards to demand that they conform to our norms. . Although they sometimes kill entire herds of bison, they have their own ethical grounds. Moreover, some tribes believe that if they do not kill all the animals they see, it is disrespectful to the animals, and even think that these animals will be killed more and more. They also had a strict procedure for killing animals, such as according to the famous fur trader Alexander Henry, when a beaver died, the Ojibwa would "take its head in their hands and slap it several times. and kissed her, begging for forgiveness a thousand times for taking her life, calling her his own relative and grandmother." Although we modern people do not agree with many of the practices of the Indians, it is an indisputable fact that before the arrival of the whites, the Indians lived a carefree life by migrating and changing their diets according to the seasons. And because their overall number is small, the natural environment around the place where they live will recover quickly after they move, and the number of animals they hunt is much lower than the natural rate of animal renewal, which will not affect the natural environment of the animals. The continuation of the entire species causes too much impact.
After the rise of the fur trade, the Indians changed their way of life and became a killing tool for white people to hunt fur resources, which "obviously deviates from their original values". Before the arrival of the whites, the Indians hunted fur each year to meet the needs of themselves and their families. For example, before the creeks in the white-tailed deer-intensive areas were involved in the fur trade, each family needed an average of 25-30 furs per year. Deerskin. The Algonquins generally don't waste the beavers they hunt, and they use their hides for meat, and even the beavers' fangs are used to cut things. The prairie Indians also formed a close relationship with the bison, and all the necessities of life came from the bison. However, once you get involved in hair
The fur trade, the nature of the slaughter of animals by the Indians changed, "As the fur trade prospered, the native tribes involved shifted from hunting for subsistence to hunting for the Gulf Corporation, killing far more animals than they themselves could. need". By the first half of the 19th century, as more and more steppe tribes became involved in the fur trade, they "began to treat bison as a commodity of the trade, while using them as a basis for subsistence." After becoming involved in the fur trade, a creek hunted an average of 200-400 deer a year in exchange for necessities and luxuries.
And most of the Indians are flocking to European items, so they gradually forget their traditional survival skills. The Montagnais, who were first involved in the fur trade, once said to the French priest Paul Lejeune: "The beaver has prepared everything for us, it brings pots, axes, swords and beads, and in short, it makes All in all." The arrival of European tools did change the lives of some tribes, enabling them to have iron tools, temporary prosperity, etc. However, the involvement of the fur trade has caused many indigenous people to gradually abandon their traditional way of life and become more dependent on European commodities, thus increasing their economic vulnerability. Many savvy Indians also recognized the dangers posed to them by their dependence on European goods. In the 18th century, when asked about the use of European goods, the answer was: "To seduce our women, to corrupt our people, to lead our daughters into evil ways, to make them proud and lazy." When the Indians slaughtered beavers to get rich, an old man on the shore of Lake Winnipeg predicted: "We are now slaughtering beavers effortlessly, and now we are rich, but soon we will become poor.
" In the process of deepening inland, fur traders and explorers provided first-hand information to the east and even Europe, which objectively prepared the conditions for the expansion of the agricultural frontier.
Guns, booze and plague—the reason why the white man's "gift"
fur trade has lasted for more than 3 centuries in North American history lies in its lucrative profits, which have been transformed into countless furs dyed red by the blood of beavers. Glittering silver and gold in white hands. Some data show that the highest profit of a beaver skin shipped to Europe can reach more than 200 times. In its first 20 years of existence, the Gulf Corporation paid dividends to shareholders of 298% annually. However, the fur trade brought disaster, shame and destruction to the Indians.
Of all the white goods, two are the most favored by the natives, one is guns, and the other is wine. The Aboriginal people first learned the power of guns from Champlain. In June 1609, Champlain and three Frenchmen were involved in the battle of the Hurons and Iroquois. In this conflict, white firearms left a deep impact on the indigenous people. The Iroquois, who had learned the power of firearms, obtained their coveted guns from the Dutch, which "inspired the Iroquois to conquer and expand." By 1630, they had enough guns to drive the French Algonquin allies out of their lands. The Mohawks were said to have owned 400 Mauser guns by 1643. Subsequently, the French also provided guns to their allies. Possessing guns means that one's own tribe can be in an advantageous position in the confrontation with rival tribes. Guns have become the most valuable commodity of all exchanges. In the earliest days, a pile of pelts of the same height as a gun could be exchanged for a gun. Even in the prosperous period of the fur trade, in 1718, a gun had to cost grams. 25 of the best pelts for the Rick. Moreover
, the arrival of guns not only accelerated the speed of hunting and accelerated the extinction of precious fur animals, but also greatly increased the lethality in indigenous conflicts. Conflicts broke out as tribes involved in the fur trade invaded each other's territory in order to compete for the position of middlemen, European goods and furs. In the early 18th century, the Chiktorans killed all the deer in their territory and moved into the Chikxaw's area to hunt and kill, thus causing war between the two sides. After the outbreak of the conflict, the indigenous people became more dependent on European commodities, especially the supply of guns and ammunition, forming a vicious circle.
It is estimated that in the 130 years from 1620 to 1750, 36,000 Indians died in New England, 10,000 of whom died directly in the war, accounting for 25% of all deaths.
The wine is regarded as a life-saving divine water by the indigenous people. At first, the Indians were terrified of wine, but when they tasted the sweetness, they craved it so much that it had a very negative impact on the individual and the entire tribe. In 1770, an Indian affairs officer wrote: "It is certain that there is no commodity more preferred by the Indians, and more willing to give by the whites, than wine." Liquor was sold in large quantities by the natives, usually by getting them drunk before trading with the Indians, and smuggling, both overt and covert, had been rampant. For example, in 1799, approximately 9,600 gallons of rum were shipped to Canada's Northwest Territories per quarter; in 1803, that increased to 21,000 gallons. When sold to real consumers, on average, four times as much water was added, so that the wine accounted for 1/3 of the goods transported by canoes at that time, becoming "the currency of circulation in this area". Wine can be said to be the most harmful luxury to the Indians. The famous fur merchant Alexander Henry Jr. said: "We can absolutely assert that wine is the root of all evil in the Northwest." In the 1830s, the famous painter Carter Lin once heard of 600 Sioux warriors trading 1,400 bison tongues for just a few gallons of whiskey. Even Franklin, after witnessing the chaotic scenes of Indian drinking, couldn't help but sigh: "If God really had the intention of exterminating these savages in order to make land for the cultivators, it seems likely that rum was the designated tool. . It has wiped out all the tribes who used to live on the coast." Drinking also caused many Indians to stir up troubles, disturbing the unity and peace between the original tribes. Another harmful effect of alcohol consumption is the decline in the fertility rate of the indigenous people and the deterioration of the quality of the population. On October 3, 1753, the Iroquois chief denounced the dangers of liquor to the Pennsylvania colonial governor and the investigators he had sent: "Your merchants now have nothing but rum and flour, gunpowder, lead, or other Bringing nothing of value. Rum ruins us all, we ask you to stop such a large quantity of liquor from reaching us by regulating the merchants. … The liquor dealers bring 30 to 40 kilograms of liquor to us Let us drink in front of us, and then defraud us of all the furs we had contracted with legitimate merchants to buy goods...Indians, when they are addicted to drinking, will pawn every piece of clothing on their bodies. Anyway, if this kind of thing continues, We will inevitably be destroyed."
In addition, the infectious diseases brought by the white people not only spread along the coast, but also penetrated into the interior with the fur trade, which caused the extinction of the indigenous people of North America. These infectious diseases include smallpox, pneumonia, influenza, cholera, typhus, and dysentery. Among them, smallpox is the most serious harm to the indigenous people. According to Pierre Beard, as early as 1616, infectious diseases were already endemic in Maine and Nova Scotia. In 1616, smallpox was first endemic in southern New England for three years, reaching 20 to 30 miles inland. Since then, smallpox outbreaks have been frequent throughout North America, among the Algonquins in Massachusetts in the 1630s, resulting in the Indians "extinguishing whole villages, and in some villages no one escaped doom". In 1633, a smallpox outbreak in northeastern North America had the most tragic consequences, with a mortality rate of 95% among those infected. Frequent disease strikes decimated the number of Indians, and in the first three-quarters of the 17th century, the New England native population fell from more than 70,000 to less than 12,000, and the once mighty Abenegi in the northeast The Indian population dropped from 10,000 to less than 500.
These infectious diseases brought by the whites penetrated into the interior of the North American continent with the continuous extension of the fur trade westward, bringing disaster to the Indians there. For example, the famous prairie tribe, the Blackfoot, was involved in the fur trade and brought about great changes in social life.
In 1780, smallpox brought to the Northwest Territories by whites killed 90% of the Chipwyan population; in 1818-1820, whooping cough and measles hit the grasslands, killing half of the Abyssinians (3,000) , 1/3 of the Cree died. The following event, which has been cited many times, is the best example of the fur trade spreading the plague: In April 1837, the American Fur Company steamer, the St. Pete, left St. Louis and sailed up the Missouri River with a smallpox infection on board. On June 5, the ship arrived at the Sioux Fur Agency and unloaded to
The Yanktons and Sandi Sue waiting there. Fourteen days later, the two Arikala women on board disembarked at Fort Clark. Five days later, the "St. Pete" arrived at Fort Union. Wherever the ship went, infectious diseases were prevalent. In a Mandan village, only 14 out of 600 people survived, making the Mandan almost extinct in the grasslands. Another 3/4 of the Blackfoot, 1/2 of the Abyssinian and Arikala, and 1/4 of the Pawnee, a total of 17,000 Indians were killed by the plague.
Diseases not only drastically reduced the population of indigenous people, but also completely destroyed the social order and survival foundation of the Indians. It turned out that the witch doctor had a high status in the tribe. Now, not only the ordinary Indians died in large numbers, but even the witch doctor himself could not escape the fate of the disease. The religious and spiritual foundation of the whole society was shaken in this way. At the same time, the white people in the east spread the fallacy that the Indians were barbaric and heretics, and stepped up the policy of cultural assimilation, which accelerated the collapse of the Indian society in the east. Although some Aboriginal leaders recognized the dangers brought to them by the fur trade, there were also very few, like the Chipavian people in northwestern Canada, who insisted on hunting reindeer for a living and refused to participate in the fur trade. But most tribes on the North American continent are involuntarily involved in the fur trade and suffer from it. Some scholars estimate that infectious diseases such as smallpox killed 80% of the indigenous people in North America, and even the most conservative estimate is about 65%.
In conclusion, by analyzing the ecological impact of the fur trade on Indians, we can draw the following conclusions:
First, the fur frontier has created a new mode of contact and communication between the two cultures, and is a frontier of great significance in the history of North America. The footsteps of fur traders have traveled almost all over the North American continent for more than three centuries, and most of the North American Indians have been drawn into this system successively. Compared with the blatant bounty for native skulls and the wars waged for native land in the agricultural southern frontier, the fur frontier created a new model of "cooperative engagement" between whites and natives, creating a new race— - The Métis, thus profoundly influenced the historical development of North America, especially Canada. At the same time, the fur trade also profoundly changed the Indians' social life and cultural concept. Fur traders brought white goods and cultural concepts to the Indians, which accelerated the pace of Indian social evolution to a certain extent, making them develop from the pre-Iron Age to the Firearm Age. With this change, two different opinions emerged among the Indians. One group demanded that the Indians return to the self-sufficient traditional way of life in the past, while the other group advocated adopting some advanced elements of white culture and implementing modernization. .
Second, the fur frontier, like other forms of frontier development in North American history, such as fishing frontiers, animal husbandry frontiers, etc., is a so-called commodity economy, which is characterized by the large-scale exploitation of one or several natural resources. , supply export. The fur trade mainly relies on a few animal resources such as beavers and white-tailed deer. Since the anthropocentric nature view of human conquest of nature and all things being used by human beings advocated by the Christian civilization prevailed in North America at that time, like other forms of frontier development, the fur frontier also profoundly changed the natural environment of North America, bringing An unprecedented ecological disaster has caused countless animals to become extinct or endangered.
Third, the fur trade has changed the living environment and ecological ethics of the Indians, making them degenerate into profit-making tools for whites, not only suffering from the plagues brought by the whites, but also becoming more vulnerable. Therefore, the Indians are fur Victims in trade rather than gainers. In today's academic circles, some scholars unilaterally see the temporary prosperity and progress brought by the fur trade to the Indians, while ignoring the heavy disasters it brought to the Indians, claiming: "The fur trade did not destroy the culture of the natives, the Indians are the trade participants, not victims". Through the analysis, we can clearly see that since the Indians were involved in the fur trade, the traditional ethics and social order have been severely impacted, and they have been reduced to a killing tool for white people to seek fur, and their original living environment has been severely damaged. A self-sufficient economy is difficult to maintain. At the same time, the Indians involved in the fur trade were more vulnerable to the infectious diseases carried by the white people, even the white people at that time had to admit this. In 1640 the Jesuit Jerome Laleman wrote: "Wherever we stop, death and sickness follow us... It is mentioned a hundred times that we are the most popular there, There are the most baptisms, and in fact the most people die there."
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