Overview

Lucrative, far-reaching, and complex, the fur trade bound together Europeans and Native peoples of North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Rethinking the Fur Trade offers a nuanced look at the broad range of contracts that characterized the fur trade, a phenomenon that has often been oversimplified and misrepresented. These essays show how the role of Native Americans was far more instrumental in the conduct and outcome of the fur trade than previously suggested. Rethinking the Fur Trade exposes what has been called the ""invisible hand of indigenous commerce,"" revealing how it changed European interaction with Indians, influenced what was produced to serve the interests of Indian customers, and led to important cultural innovations. The initial essays explain the working mechanisms of the fur trade and explore how and why it evolved in a North Atlantic context. The second section examines indigenous perspectives through primary-source writings from the period and considers newly evolving indigenous perspectives about the fur trade. The final sections analyze the social history of the fur trade, the profound effect of the cloth trade on Indian dress and culture, and the significance of gender, kinship, and community in the workings of economic exchange.

Full Product Details

Author:   Susan Sleeper-Smith
Publisher:   University of Nebraska Press
Imprint:   University of Nebraska Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 3.80cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.885kg
ISBN:  

9780803243293

ISBN 10:   0803243294
Pages:   702
Publication Date:   01 December 2009
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

"List of Illustrations List of Tables Source Acknowledgments Introduction: Cultures of Exchange in a North Atlantic World Part 1. Indigenous Perspectives Introduction 1. Of the Mission of Saint Francois Xavier on the ""Bay of Stinkards,"" or Rather ""Of Stinking Waters""       Father Allouez 2. On the Hunting of the Gaspesians       Father Chrestien LeClercq 3. The Hunting of Moose, of Bears, of Beavers, of Lynxes, and Other Animals According to Their Seasons       Father Chrestien LeClercq 4. Tarrentines and the Introduction of European Trade Goods in the Gulf of Maine       Bruce J. Bourque and Ruth Holmes Whitehead 5. The Anishinabeg Point of View: The History of the Great Lakes Region to 1800 in Nineteenth-Century Mississauga, Odawa, and Obijwa Historiography       D. Peter MacLeod 6. Fur Trade Literature from a Tribal Point of View: A Critique       Donald F. Bibeau Part 2. The Social and Political Significance of Exchange Introduction 7. Agriculture and the Fur Trade       D. W. Moodie 8. ""Give Us a Little Milk"": The Social and Cultural Significance of Gift Giving in the Lake Superior Fur Trade       Bruce M. White 9. ""Starving"" and Survival in the Subartic Fur Trade: A Case for Contextual Semantics       Mary Black-Rogers 10. The Growth and Economic Significance of the American Fur Trade, 17901890       James L. Clayton 11. ""Red"" Labor: Iroquois Participation in the Atlantic Economy       Gail D. MacLeitch 12. The Fur Trade and Eighteenth-Century Imperialism       W. J. Eccles 13. The Middle Ground       Richard White 14. Creative Misunderstandings and New Understandings       Richard White Part 3. Cloth Trade Introduction 15. Indians as Consumers in the Eighteenth Century       Arthur J. Ray 16. Dressing for Success on the Mohawk Frontier: Hendrick, William Johnson, and the Indian Fashion       Timothy J. Shannon 17. The Flow of European Trade Goods into the Western Great Lakes Region, 17151760       Dean L. Anderson 18. The Matchcoat       Gail DeBuse Potter 19. Chiefs Coats Supplied by the American Fur Company       Allen Chronister 20. The Myth of the Silk Hat and the End of the Rendezvous       James A. Hanson Part 4. Gender, Kinship, and Community Introduction 21. Women, Kin, and Catholicism: New Perspectives on the Fur Trade       Susan Sleeper-Smith 22. ""The Custom of the Country"": An Examination of Fur Trade Marriage Practices       Sylvia Van Kirk 23. Woman as Centre and Symbol in the Emergence of Metis Communities       Jennifer S. H. Brown 24. Prelude to Red River: A Social Portrait of the Great Lakes Métis       Jacqueline Peterson 25. The Glaize in 1792: A Composite Indian Community       Helen Hornbeck Tanner 26. Festivities, Fortitude, and Fraternalism: Fur Trade Masculinity and the Beaver Club, 17851827       Carolyn Podruchny Index"

Reviews

Rethinking the Fur Trade is an invaluable book. --Claiborne A./i>--Claiborne A. Skinner Annals of Iowa

Rethinking the Fur Trade is an invaluable book. -Claiborne A. Skinner, Annals of Iowa -- Claiborne A. Skinner Annals of Iowa Rethinking the Fur Trade is a welcome and valuable addition... It succeeds in giving multiple perspectives on the cultures of exchange and the fur trade for a wide audience. -Chris Johnson, North Dakota History -- Chris Johnson North Dakota History

Rethinking the Fur Trade is an invaluable book. -Claiborne A. Skinner, Annals of Iowa Rethinking the Fur Trade is a welcome and valuable addition. . . . It succeeds in giving multiple perspectives on the cultures of exchange and the fur trade for a wide audience. -Chris Johnson, North Dakota History

Rethinking the Fur Trade is a welcome and valuable addition. . . . It succeeds in giving multiple perspectives on the cultures of exchange and the fur trade for a wide audience. --Chris Johnson, North Dakota History --Chris Johnson North Dakota History

Author Information

Susan Sleeper-Smith, professor of history at Michigan State University, is the author of Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes and the editor of Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous Perspectives (Nebraska 2009). Contributors: Dean Anderson, Donald F. Bibeau, Mary Black-Rogers, Bruce J. Bourque, Jennifer S. H. Brown, Allen Chronister, James L. Clayton, Bruce White, W. J. Eccles, William F. Ganong, James A. Hanson, Gail D. MacLeitch, D. Peter MacLeod, D. W. Moodie, Jacqueline Petersen, Carolyn Podruchny, Gail DeBuse Potter, Arthur J. Ray, Timothy J. Shannon, Susan Sleeper-Smith, Helen Hornbeck Tanner, Reuben Gold Thwaites, Sylvia Van Kirk, Richard White, and Ruth H. Whitehead.

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