Nathaniel C. Hale

“ And to Albany, of course, came not only the beaver of the Five Nations but the peltries of vassal tribes deep in the hinterland for whom the Iroquois acted as middlemen.
The Five Nations were jealous enough of their trade and sovereignty to visit swift vengeance on any vassals who tried to deal direct with the white men, as happened to the Illinois in 1680 when those distant natives sold their pelts to La Salle. For the same reason they also tried to keep white pack traders from pushing farther into the west, where they might exchange their wares direct with the less sophisticated natives. ”

“ The era of the early fur trade, typified by the white trader and the Indian hunter, began drawing to a close after the French and Indian War. The white trader then became the trapper and a whole new conception of the fur trade in America developed as the frontier rolled across the plains and on to the Rocky Mountains. Today we may be on the threshold of still another era, that of the fur farmer.
In any case the fur industry continues to be big business in this country, total activity at all levels—raw furs, dressing and dyeing, and retail sales—being estimated at about one billion dollars. ”

“ Intrepid French traders often spent the winter in the wilderness with the different tribes, to learn about their habits and dialects. If they were to know what was really in the minds of the unpredictable savages with whom they dealt, it was best to know as much as possible about them and especially the exact meaning of their words. A good knowledge of the dialect of a particular tribe might mean an advantage over a competitor, a better profit, or even the difference between life and death.
The lonely fur trader in his canoe with his Indian guides soon symbolized the occupation of New France. ”

“ It sparked a blaze of red terror along the borders between Dutch and French, and between French and English, wherever the competition for the fur trade was joined, that was not to be extinguished for a hundred and fifty years.
News has a way of travelling fast in the wilderness, especially news of a war alliance. The Hurons in the west were Iroquoian, but were bitter enemies of the Five Nations. They wanted to be members of such a promising war party, one with white men carrying the astonishing “fireguns” that the nations of the enemy league had never before seen or heard. ”

“ He might lose his trading sense to the advantage of the white men who purposely plied him with aqua vitae during the feasting that always preceded barter, but when he realized he had been cheated he was apt to reach for another jug and his tomahawk at the same time. No doubt many a trader suffered a slow and bestial death while looking into the bloodshot eyes of savages galled by stomach fires that he himself had kindled. ”

“ Italy was the main center of the world’s commerce in pelts, with the Romans reaching out not only for the far eastern trade in precious fur such as sable and ermine but into northern Europe, to Flanders and even into Scandinavia for beaver, otter and bear—and for more ermine. ”

“ These lake country Indians, with practically inexhaustible supplies of the finest beaver, thought nothing of offering as many as twenty heavy skins in exchange for a musket. The great profit in this traffic had proved irresistible to the Dutchmen. So the authorities at Manhattan often winked at the illegal purveyance of arms and powder by their traders to such faraway savages. If their consciences bothered them at all, they were comforted by the knowledge that their Iroquois allies maintained a bulwark against competitive traders from French Canada, as well as against the enveloping English. ”

“ In any case, the brothers-in-law took along a particularly fine supply of merchandise on this expedition into what is now northwestern Ontario—knives, hatchets and swords, ivory combs and tin looking-glasses, awls, and needles—all those things designed to send the red men in breathless pursuit of beaver. And, when they returned home, they had the greatest single cargo of pelts ever before seen in America. Their convoy included a great fleet of fur-laden canoes, requiring hundreds of Indians to paddle them. ”

“ The natives, and even the outlawed coureurs des bois, found ready, local markets for their peltries in exchange for trade goods and supplies. And, while deep-laden canoes and company boats plied the alluvial waters of the Mississippi River to and from its mouth, ships from France set a course direct to the Gulf of Mexico—to the new French fur emporium in America.
In the meantime, the main path of the fur traders, the line of communication between Canada and Louisiana, was shortened by a far-sighted Gascon merchant named Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac. ”

“ All during the dark ages ignorant clerics of the Church preferred to think of the world as a flat platter and pretended to forbid a contrary conception because it did not conform with the Bible. The low level of western culture had blindly accepted the thesis that the inner edges of this platter-like world were inhabited by monstrous creatures, and beyond the edges—a bottomless gulf! ”

“ Their coastal border on the St. Croix River was forced back once more below the Penobscot, while in the interior the Mohawk valley itself was raided by French troops trying to wrest more southerly routes from the Iroquois.
And this was only the beginning of a bloody rivalry between the English and the French for fur and dominion in America, a rivalry that would keep the evershifting borders aflame for almost a hundred years—to culminate finally in the decisive French and Indian War of the eighteenth century. ”

“ For ermine was becoming the garment of state wherever royalty held court, pure white ermine being held in highest esteem. Demand for this regal fur far exceeded the means of supply. Not until the Germanic hordes cycloned down from the north did the impetus of this Italian trade in fine pelts abate.
Then all trade, culture, and even most western knowledge of the world, shrank almost into oblivion. The Dark Ages settled down upon civilized Europe. ”

“ Vikings and Skraelings in Vinland
By the closing years of the fifteenth century, not only were the mercantile classes of western Europe thoroughly awake to the possibilities of world trade, but a good number of other people were beginning to think for themselves about the world around them.
If one could cross by land to China, which itself faced on the sea, there must be ways to reach that fabulous country by skirting the land masses of the world. In that manner the Portuguese had discovered an all-water route to India and Malaya. ”

“ Printz’s situation deteriorated rapidly as Dutch trading factors overran New Sweden, monopolizing the beaver commerce. With pitifully few remaining subjects, desertions having cut the total population to less than a hundred souls, the governor had to leave Forts Elfsborg and Korsholm unmanned and rotting. Now that he was without trade goods even the Indians turned against him, boldly committing depredations within the limits of the colony.
The people, growing mutinous, openly accused “Big Belly” of avarice and brutality. ”

“ Mariners with an experienced eye for marketable pelts came to Virginia in increasing numbers—hardy, courageous men who were prepared to take incredible risks in the pursuit of beaver, otter, bear and the big Virginia muskrat. By 1620 there were nearly one hundred fur traders operating in and about the Chesapeake Bay, according to an official of the colony. They plied their shallops and pinnaces up unexplored tidewater streams and rivers to find the villages of the unpredictable savages, hazarding their very lives to learn the ways and language of the aborigines, and to trade with them. ”

“ Always in the front rank of the opposition to Lord Baltimore of course had been the merchants who foresaw the loss of their tidewater trade, but even more especially William Claiborne and his followers with their own grand plan for colonization and trade on the backside of Virginia. Working for them in addition to fear and prejudice during this clash of rival plans was the rising sense of political independence in the colony, an increasing determination to fight for the sovereignty of possessed land and for “democrattical rights.” ”

“ It was a poorly chosen group of colonists—these original Jamestown venturers. Fully half of them were gentlemen of sorts bent only on a quest for riches. A handful of craftsmen, a few boys and a brawling lot of seaport loafers and ex-soldiers who were indisposed to agriculture or any peaceful pursuits completed the ill-balanced company. They came to find gold and they expected to relieve the natives of it quickly, if not to scoop it up by the handful along the banks of Virginia’s rivers. Instead, they met with hostile Indians, killing diseases and famine. ”

“ The Phoenicians, the Greeks and the Arabs had navigated the waters of the Atlantic—so had the Irish and the Vikings who long since discovered and colonized “islands” across the western sea—all without falling off the edges of the world. The Arabs, even now, were making the globes they had made for centuries for their sailors and traders. Many learned men in the west, geographers and scientists, were confident that the world was round; only recently at scholarly Nuremberg a fine globe had been completed showing Asia right across from Spain. ”

“ Only in the New World where they would have no near neighbors did there seem to be a solution to the problem. They thought of going out to Guiana, and the Dutch even offered to underwrite their passage to New Netherland to plant a colony there under the auspices of the States General. But then some of their leaders learned that through the Virginia Company a patent could be obtained for a private plantation in America where they could live as Englishmen, yet “as a distincte body by themselves.” ”

“ In England as early as 1404 a group of merchant adventurers organized a company to carry trade to Baltic cities. But as it turned out the agricultural English were not ready, for, although their sailors and traders fought savagely during piratical encounters in the Baltic, at home they were still hindered by their feudal system, a system against which the Germans had early rebelled as being incompatible with commercial enterprise. The absence of a large middle class, of sufficient urban community life in England, forestalled any real commerce. ”

“ In the ninth century the Norsemen established a truly great trading city of their own at Novgorod. It was located on a table-land where four main waterways of Russia converged to form trade routes to the Caspian, Black and Baltic Seas. Here the Vikings, inter-marrying with the natives, settled down and prospered in the riches of their commerce with the farthest corners of the world. ”

“ As old cultural habits began falling away and as hardware which the Indian couldn’t make took the place of bone, wood and stone, he became the prey of every evil white man who stood to gain from him. Always deep in the Indian’s breast lay the revenge motive; always liquor stirred his most primal instincts. The displacement of bows and arrows by guns made it possible for him to kill off his aboriginal enemies much faster. ”

“ The Dutch East India Company, a military trading organization, had been chartered with this in mind. That was before Spain virtually acknowledged the independence of the Dutch Netherlands in 1609 by agreeing to a truce. After that, however, the Peace Party in the Dutch Netherlands had been strong enough to resist demands that a similar company be organized to exploit America and harass the Spanish there. It was considered dangerous to Holland’s newly gained peace and independence to goad the Spaniards in that quarter—or to offend the English, or the French either for that matter. ”

“ The Englishmen living already in America, in southern Virginia, were more concerned about the Catholic Spaniards to the south of them than about a few Dutch traders on an unknown river to the north. Jamestown had been planted by the London Company with very much the same objects that Raleigh had in mind when he planted Roanoke—a threat to New Spain among other things. While the colony was young and relatively weak, therefore, the Virginians lived in constant dread of themselves being surprised and destroyed by the Spaniards. ”

“ During King George’s War the French had trouble getting sufficient trade goods, and many Indians with whom they had been trading became contemptuous of them. It is said that, on one occasion, when a Frenchman only offered a single charge of powder for a beaver skin, the Indian with whom he was bartering “took up his Hatchet, and knock’d him on the head, and killed him upon the Spot.” Croghan and his Pennsylvanians took full advantage of the temporary French embarrassment, building up their annual business in pelts to a value of some 40,000 pounds sterling. ”

“ Then the Scandinavian powers revolted against the Hansa monopolies and the cruelties of the Germans within their borders. During the wars that followed the power of the Hanseatic League declined rapidly. With feudalism breaking up on the continent in western Europe, men had been freed for competitive commerce. It was the time of the Renaissance and trading impulses were quickening everywhere. New maritime states, sensing opportunity, had already risen to challenge the monopoly in the Baltic. Danes, Dutch and even the commercially-retarded English had been competing for the prize. ”