Post on 24-Feb-2016
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Fur Traders
Chapter 6
Fur traders and missionaries were the first
permanent white settlers to live in the area that is now Washington
British and American fur companies sent trappers and traders to Oregon country to obtain the valuable pelts of beavers and otters
Fur Trade Era 1811-1846
Business
Relationships
•Native Americans hired by traders
Trading posts
•Native Americans traded fur pelts for other goods at trading posts
Global demand for
fur
•Trading posts shipped the furs to markets around the world
Companies Make A Significant Profit
Native American Trappers Didn’t overhunt Trapped what they needed
for warmth and protection Familiar with the land,
excellent trappers
White trappers
took more than they needed
Learned what they could from Native Americans
Used barter system Worked for Pacific, Rocky
Mountain (American), Hudon’s Bay, or Northwest fur company (British)
Trappers
1. Geography• Forests and waterways
2. River system• Easy access to the Pacific
OceanAsia
The Boom
3. Native Americans• Skilled, cheap labor
4. Limited competition• 4 companies controlled the
industry, isolated environment
The Boom
The mountain men of the Rocky
Mountain fur company were independent and hardy
Lived a life more like the Native Americans
Survived for months without trading posts
Had summer trading gatherings called rendezvous
Life of a fur trapper and trader
“There is … a great variety of personages amongst us, most of them calling themselves white men, French-Canadians, half-breeds, &c., their color nearly as dark, and their manners wholly as wild, as the Indians with whom they constantly associate. These people, with their obstreperous mirth, their whooping and howling, and quarrelling, added to the mounted Indians, who are constantly dashing into and through our camp, yelling like fiends, the barking and baying of savage wolf-dogs, and the incessant cracking of rifles and carbines, render our camp a perfect bedlam. I . . . am compelled all day to listen to the hiccoughing jargon of drunken traders, the sacré and foutre [French swear words; many more of the traders and trappers spoke French than English] of Frenchmen run wild, and the swearing and screaming of our own men, who are scarcely less savage than the rest, being heated by the detestable liquor which circulates freely among them.” [Townsend, 83-84.]
Rendezvous
Trappers began finding that on
stream after stream, the beaver were no longer repairing their dams, and beaver ponds were drying up. They were disappearing.
Trappers had been killing them too fast.
In Europe, stylish men were starting to like silk hats—demand decreased as fur went out of style
The Bust
Lack of planning quickly minimized
the region’s advantages in the trading industry
Established permanent settlements in Oregon Country
Rocky Mountain Fur Company discovered a wagon route through the Rocky Mountains
Results