The Fur Trade Revisited
The Fur Trade Revisited

Author: Jennifer S. H. Brown

Publisher: East Lansing : Michigan State University Press

Published: 1994-05

Total Pages: 584

ISBN-13:

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The Fur Trade Revisited is a collection of twenty-eight essays selected from the more than fifty presentations made at the Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference held on Mackinac Island, Michigan, in the fall of 1991. Essays contained in this important new interpretive work focus on the history, archaeology, and literature of a fascinating, growing area of scholarly investigation. Underscoring the work's multifaceted approach is an introductory essay by Lily McAuley titled "Memories of a Trapper's Daughter." This vivid and compelling account of the fur-trade life sets a level of quality for what follows. Part one of The Fur Trade Revisited discusses eighteenth-century fur trade intersections with European markets. The essays in part two examine Native people and the strategies they employed to meet demands placed on them by the market for furs. Part three examines the origins, motives, and careers of those who actually participated in the fur trade. Part four focuses attention on the indigenous fur-trade culture and subsequent archaeology in the area around Mackinac Island, Michigan, while part five contains studies focusing on the fur-trade culture in other parts of North America. Part six assesses the fur trade after 1870 and part seven contains evaluations of the critical historical and literary interpretations prevalent in fur-trade scholarship.

The Daring Trader
The Daring Trader

Author: Kim Crawford

Publisher: MSU Press

Published: 2012-03-01

Total Pages: 537

ISBN-13: 1609173155

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A fur trader in the Michigan Territory and confidant of both the U.S. government and local Indian tribes, Jacob Smith could have stepped out of a James Fenimore Cooper novel. Controversial, mysterious, and bold during his lifetime, in death Smith has not, until now, received the attention he deserves as a pivotal figure in Michigan’s American period and the War of 1812. This is the exciting and unlikely story of a man at the frontier’s edge, whose missions during both war and peace laid the groundwork for Michigan to accommodate settlers and farmers moving west. The book investigates Smith’s many pursuits, including his role as an advisor to the Indians, from whom the federal government would gradually gain millions of acres of land, due in large part to Smith’s work as an agent of influence. Crawford paints a colorful portrait of a complicated man during a dynamic period of change in Michigan’s history.

The Merchant John Askin
The Merchant John Askin

Author: Justin M. Carroll

Publisher: MSU Press

Published: 2017-09-01

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1628953128

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John Askin, a Scots-Irish migrant to North America, built his fur trade between the years 1758 and 1781 in the Great Lakes region of North America. His experience serves as a vista from which to view important aspects of the British Empire in North America. The close interrelationship between trade and empire enabled Askin’s economic triumphs but also made him vulnerable to the consequences of imperial conflicts and mismanagement. The ephemeral, contested nature of British authority during the 1760s and 1770s created openings for men like Askin to develop a trade of smuggling liquor or to challenge the Hudson’s Bay Company’s monopoly over the fur trade, and allowed them to boast in front of British officers of having the “Key of Canada” in their pockets. How British officials responded to and even sanctioned such activities demonstrates the vital importance of trade and empire working in concert. Askin’s life’s work speaks to the collusive nature of the British Empire—its vital need for the North American merchants, officials, and Indigenous communities to establish effective accommodating relationships, transgress boundaries (real or imagined), and reject certain regulations in order to achieve the empire’s goals.

The Cadottes
The Cadottes

Author: Robert Silbernagel

Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society Press

Published: 2020-05-29

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 087020940X

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The Great Lakes fur trade spanned two centuries and thousands of miles, but the story of one particular family, the Cadottes, illuminates the history of trade and trapping while exploring under-researched stories of French-Ojibwe political, social, and economic relations. Multiple generations of Cadottes were involved in the trade, usually working as interpreters and peacemakers, as the region passed from French to British to American control. Focusing on the years 1760 to 1840—the heyday of the Great Lakes fur trade—Robert Silbernagel delves into the lives of the Cadottes, with particular emphasis on the Ojibwe–French Canadian Michel Cadotte and his Ojibwe wife, Equaysayway, who were traders and regional leaders on Madeline Island for nearly forty years. In The Cadottes: A Fur Trade Family on Lake Superior, Silbernagel deepens our understanding of this era with stories of resilient, remarkable people.

Rethinking the Fur Trade
Rethinking the Fur Trade

Author: Susan Sleeper-Smith

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

Published: 2009-12-01

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780803243293

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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.

Grand Portage As a Trading Post: Patterns of Trade at the Great Carrying Place
Grand Portage As a Trading Post: Patterns of Trade at the Great Carrying Place

Author: Bruce White

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2013-05-09

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 9781484920961

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The purpose of this report is to describe the fur trade that took place at Grand Portage between Europeans and Native Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries. During this period Grand Portage was important for many reasons. A strategic geographical point in the trade route between the Great Lakes and the Canadian Northwest, it was best known as a trade depot and company headquarters in the period between 1765 and 1804.

Waterfront Porch
Waterfront Porch

Author: John H. Hartig

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781948314022

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This unique history depicts Detroit as a city of innovation, resilience, and leadership in responding to change, and examines the current sustainability paradigm shift to which Detroit is responding, pivoting as the city has done in the past to redefine itself and lead the nation and world down a more sustainable path. This book details the building of a new waterfront porch alongside the Detroit River called the Detroit RiverWalk to help revitalize the city and region and promote sustainability practices.