Trade Your Furs Or Die

"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

"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

Sometime in the 1800s, three very different women (with twenty-first century affinities) sit in a fort sharing their views on life, love, and the hot nerd Louis Riel. This historical comedy shifts perspectives from the male gaze to women's power in the past and present through the lens of the Canadian Fur Trade.

As fur traders were driven across northern North America by economic motivations, the landscape over which they plied their trade was punctuated by sound: shouting, singing, dancing, gunpowder, rattles, jingles, drums, fiddles, and – very occasionally – bagpipes. Fur trade interactions were, in a word, noisy. Daniel Laxer unearths traces of music, performance, and other intangible cultural phenomena long since silenced, allowing us to hear the fur trade for the first time. Listening to the Fur Trade uses the written record, oral history, and material culture to reveal histories of sound and music in an era before sound recording. The trading post was a noisy nexus, populated by a polyglot crowd of highly mobile people from different national, linguistic, religious, cultural, and class backgrounds. They found ways to interact every time they met, and facilitating material interests and survival went beyond the simple exchange of goods. Trust and good relations often entailed gift-giving: reciprocity was performed with dances, songs, and firearm salutes. Indigenous protocols of ceremony and treaty-making were widely adopted by fur traders, who supplied materials and technologies that sometimes changed how these ceremonies sounded. Within trading companies, masters and servants were on opposite ends of the social ladder but shared songs in the canoes and lively dances during the long winters at the trading posts. While the fur trade was propelled by economic and political interests, Listening to the Fur Trade uncovers the songs and ceremonies of First Nations people, the paddling songs of the voyageurs, and the fiddle music and step-dancing at the trading posts that provided its pulse.

A classic work of Canadian historical scholarship, first published in 1930. In his new introduction, A.J. Ray states that this book is argueably the most definitive economic history and geography of Canada ever produced.

Written when Nelson was between the ages of 15 and 17, these journals track his growth from homesick boy to weathered and experienced trader. The volume also tells of his daily work as a fur clerk, and the goings-on of the world around him; and it provides details concerning the lives of the other fur workers and the neighboring Objiwa peoples. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The development of the fur trade in the Timiskaming district of northern Ontario has been largely overlooked until now, mainly because of the lack of records for the period before 1821. This gap has been partially filled by the discovery of private papers in the possession of the late Colonel Angus Cameron of Nairn, Scotland. His great granduncle and grandfather, as well as other memebrs of his family, were involved in the Timiskaming district for almost a century. These papers, plus the voluminous records of the Hudson's Bay Company, have provided the basis for the present study. Mrs Mitchell traces the history of Fort Timiskaming and its subsidiary posts from the first French establishments in the 1670s and 80s until 1870, when the Hudson's Bay territories became part of the new Dominion of Canada. She describes the exploitation of the posts by freetraders from Montreal after 1763, their purchase by the North West Company in 1795, the struggle between rival Canadian and English traders before 1821, and the events following the amalgamation in 1821 of the North West and Hudson's Bay companies. She also discusses the effect of the district's fortunes of petty traders, lumbermen, missionaries, and settlers, and offers a general picture of the country and of life at the posts. This is a work that will appeal not only to historians, but to all Canadians interested in Canada's early history.

A Seattle Times selection for one of Best Non-Fiction Books of 2010 Winner of the New England Historial Association's 2010 James P. Hanlan Award Winner of the Outdoor Writers Association of America 2011 Excellence in Craft Award, Book Division, First Place "A compelling and well-annotated tale of greed, slaughter and geopolitics." —Los Angeles Times As Henry Hudson sailed up the broad river that would one day bear his name, he grew concerned that his Dutch patrons would be disappointed in his failure to find the fabled route to the Orient. What became immediately apparent, however, from the Indians clad in deer skins and "good furs" was that Hudson had discovered something just as tantalizing. The news of Hudson's 1609 voyage to America ignited a fierce competition to lay claim to this uncharted continent, teeming with untapped natural resources. The result was the creation of an American fur trade, which fostered economic rivalries and fueled wars among the European powers, and later between the United States and Great Britain, as North America became a battleground for colonization and imperial aspirations. In Fur, Fortune, and Empire, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin chronicles the rise and fall of the fur trade of old, when the rallying cry was "get the furs while they last." Beavers, sea otters, and buffalos were slaughtered, used for their precious pelts that were tailored into extravagant hats, coats, and sleigh blankets. To read Fur, Fortune, and Empire then is to understand how North America was explored, exploited, and settled, while its native Indians were alternately enriched and exploited by the trade. As Dolin demonstrates, fur, both an economic elixir and an agent of destruction, became inextricably linked to many key events in American history, including the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812, as well as to the relentless pull of Manifest Destiny and the opening of the West. This work provides an international cast beyond the scope of any Hollywood epic, including Thomas Morton, the rabble-rouser who infuriated the Pilgrims by trading guns with the Indians; British explorer Captain James Cook, whose discovery in the Pacific Northwest helped launch America's China trade; Thomas Jefferson who dreamed of expanding the fur trade beyond the Mississippi; America's first multimillionaire John Jacob Astor, who built a fortune on a foundation of fur; and intrepid mountain men such as Kit Carson and Jedediah Smith, who sliced their way through an awe inspiring and unforgiving landscape, leaving behind a mythic legacy still resonates today. Concluding with the virtual extinction of the buffalo in the late 1800s, Fur, Fortune, and Empire is an epic history that brings to vivid life three hundred years of the American experience, conclusively demonstrating that the fur trade played a seminal role in creating the nation we are today.