--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha, 1855

“Wheresoe'er they move, before themSwarms the stinging fly, the Ahmo,Swarms the bee, the honey-maker;Wheresoe'er they tread, beneath themSprings a flower unknown among us,Springs the White-man's Foot in blossom.”

Indian village of Secotan (North Carolina)

[Engraving by Theodore de Bry, 1590]

Details of Secotan

Natives using carcasses to hunt dearWoodcut by Theodor de Bry, 1590

Average prices for furs and pelts at trading post in Fort Wayne, Indiana,

late 1700s-early 1800s

• Raccoons 37 1/2 to 40 cents each • Foxes, cats, and fishers 50 to 67 cents • Minks 50 cents each • Muskrats grown ones 25 cents each • Otters 4 to 5 DLLS each • Bears grown ones same as otters • Beavers 125 cents • Buckskins always 100 cents • Does skins 67 to 75 cents each • Dressed deer skins,

buck and does 75 cents • Does 75 cents

What did Indians trade for?

Partial inventory of trading post at Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1810

• 3 nest copper kettles-7 • 38 rifles--$12.50 • 2 casks powder • 31 head bands with eagles weight 23

oz. 8 dwts. • 1 dozen broaches [sic] weight 3 oz. 5

dwts. • 1 dozen larger round broaches

weight 5 oz. 12 dwt. • 1 dozen ear wheels weight 3 oz. • 2 boxes bar lead • 18 beaver traps--$2.25 • 330 lb. pig tail tobacco--$15 • 2 shot bags-- $1. 259 yards yellow

flannel-40 cents • 14 3/4 blue cloth-1 2/6 • 6" stroud cloth 96 1/2 • 400 small crosses-6 1/2 • 200 crosses

• 47 nose wheels-20 • 23 fish lines with hooks • 5 1/4 dozen ivory combs-300 • 1 gross straight awls • 116 bullet moulds--37 1/2 cents • 7 powder horns • 25 1/2 lb. powder-40 cents • 27 lb. vermillion--$1.40 • 15 com. gun locks--$1.20 • 3 double roller ditto--$3.13 • 28 pair two point blankets-- $2.27 • 14 calico shirts--$1.20 • 59 pipe tomahawks--$1.50 • 196 lb. buckshot • 10 fowling pieces--$11.33 • 33 plain tomahawks • 119 axes

“The English have no sense; they give us twenty knives like this for one Beaver skin.”

--Montagnais Indian, 1634

They [the Iroquois] are rather shrewd and let no one outwit them easily. They examine everything carefully and train themselves to know goods.”

--17th Century French Priest

-John Meares??

Indians’ Trade Savvy:

The Alcohol Trade from the Iroquois Point of View, 1753: Your Traders now bring scarce anything but Rum and Flour; they

bring little powder and lead, or other valuable goods. The Rum ruins us. We beg you would prevent its coming in such quantities by regulating the Traders. We never understood the Trade was to be for Whiskey and Flour. We desire it may be forbidden…. When these Whiskey Traders come, they bring thirty or forty kegs and put them down before us and make us drink, and get all the skins that should go to pay the debts we have contracted for goods bought of the Fair Traders; by this means we not only ruin ourselves but them too. These wicked Whiskey Sellers, when they have once got the Indians in liquor, make them sell their very clothes from their backs. In short, if this practice be continued, we must be inevitably ruined."

-- Iroquois Chief Scarrooyady at a conference in Carlisle, PA, 1753

Social Effects of the Fur Trade on Native Societies

• Material wealth

• Increased warfare -e.g., Iroquois Beaver War (~1650-1700)

• Dependency on Europeans and later Americans (as subsistence resources are over-exploited)

ConclusionA. Capitalist market generates a far more

intensive set of exchanges between Europe/North America/Asia

B. Social Effects of Globalization in this case?

-good for European traders, merchants, consumers

-good for Indians in the short-term (material wealth), but longer-term results were negative: resource depletion, dependency, poverty….