Furs For Men

The patterns and course of contact between traders from Europe and the Indian populations are described and both English and French sources are used to reveal the competition between the two groups of traders and its impact on the native people. As the Hudson's Bay Company was the one permanent European presence during the period, this ethnohistorical study makes extensive use of unpublished HBC papers. The authors also examine such issues as the rise of a homeguard population at the trading posts, the trading captain system, the development of hamily hunting territories, and the issue of dependence and interdependence. Partners in Furs provides new insight and makes a significant contribution to current scholarly inquiry into the impact of the fur trade on the native populations.

Jean Barman was the recipient of the 2014 George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award. In French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest, Jean Barman rewrites the history of the Pacific Northwest from the perspective of French Canadians attracted by the fur economy, the indigenous women whose presence in their lives encouraged them to stay, and their descendants. Joined in this distant setting by Quebec paternal origins, the French language, and Catholicism, French Canadians comprised Canadiens from Quebec, Iroquois from the Montreal area, and métis combining Canadien and indigenous descent. For half a century, French Canadians were the largest group of newcomers to this region extending from Oregon and Washington east into Montana and north through British Columbia. Here, they facilitated the early overland crossings, drove the fur economy, initiated non-wholly-indigenous agricultural settlement, eased relations with indigenous peoples, and ensured that, when the region was divided in 1846, the northern half would go to Britain, giving today’s Canada its Pacific shoreline.

"Trade your Furs or Die" This was not a threat — it was simply Radisson reminding his Native friends that they could die in war or starvation if they did not trade with him, as their neighboring enemies would have the European guns and knives instead. Radisson was the world’s most successful fur trader because no one understood the Natives better than he did. In 1651 he was captured as a child by the Iroquois and became one of them, even becoming a Native warrior. He left us with a fascinating written insight into what it was like to live in the virgin forests of North America in those adventurous times, giving us a frank description of the Natives as they were before any significant contact with Europeans... In 1665, he moved to England. He used his descriptions of his life with the Fiat Nations to persuade the English King Charles II to become more active in North America, and thus changed the course of history on this continent. He used French vocabulary and expressions extensively. Armed with my own knowledge of the French language and of history, I began translating and editing Radisson’s work for my own use. I soon realized that the results should be published, so over the course of several years I translated and rewrote Radisson’s entire story to modern English. Here, for the first time ever is Radisson’s own story, rewritten in modern understandable language. JAMES ROBINSON

George Nelson (1786-1859) was a clerk for the North West Company whose unusually detailed and personal writings provide a compelling portrait of the people engaged in the golden age of the Canadian fur trade. Friends, Foes, and Furs is a critical edition of Nelson's daily journals, supplemented with exciting anecdotes from his "Reminiscences," which were written after his retirement to Lower Canada. An introduction and annotations by Harry Duckworth place Nelson's material securely within the established body of fur trade history. This series of journals gives readers a first-person account of Nelson's life and career, from his arrival at the age of eighteen in Lake Winnipeg, where he was stationed as an apprentice clerk from 1804 to 1813, to his second service from 1818 to 1819 and an 1822 canoe journey through the region. A keen and respectful observer, Nelson recorded in his daily journals not only the minutiae of his work, but also details about the lives of voyageurs, the Ojibwe and Swampy Cree communities, and others involved in the fur trade. His insights uncover an extraordinary view of the Lake Winnipeg region in the period just prior to European settlement. Making the full extent of George Nelson's journals available for the first time, Friends, Foes, and Furs is an intriguing account of one man's adventures in the fur trade in prairie Canada.