Commerce by a Frozen Sea: Native Americans and the European Fur Trade 9780812204827

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Commerce by a Frozen Sea

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Commerce by a Frozen Sea Native Americans and the European Fur Trade

Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis

universit y of pennsylvania press phil adelphia ∙ oxford

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Copyright  2010 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104–4112 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Carlos, Ann M. Commerce by a frozen sea : Native Americans and the European fur trade / Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8122-4231-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Indians of North America—Commerce—Hudson Bay Region—History. 2. Fur trade—Hudson Bay Region—History. 3. Europeans—Hudson Bay Region—History. 4. Hudson’s Bay Company—History. 5. Hudson Bay Region—Commerce—History. 6. Hudson Bay Region—Ethnic relations. I. Lewis, Frank D. II. Title. E98.C7C375 2010 305.8970714⬘111—dc22 2009044824

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To Jim and Donna

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Contents

Introduction. Native Americans and Europeans in the Eighteenth-Century Fur Trade

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1.

Hats and the European Fur Market

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2.

The Hudson’s Bay Company and the Organization of the Fur Trade

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3.

Indians as Consumers

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4.

The Decline of Beaver Populations

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5.

Industrious Indians

130

6.

Property Rights, Depletion, and Survival

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7.

Indians and the Fur Trade: A Golden Age?

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Epilogue. The Fur Trade and Economic Development

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A.

B. C. D.

Appendixes Fur Prices, Beaver Skins Traded, and the Simulated Beaver Population at Fort Albany, York Factory, and Fort Churchill, 1700–1763 Simulating the Beaver Population A Model of Harvesting Large Game: Joint Ownership Versus Competition Food and the Relative Incomes of Native Americans and English Workers

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189 192 195 198

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Contents

Notes

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Bibliography

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Index

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Acknowledgments

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Native Americans and Europeans in the Eighteenth-Century Fur Trade

We therefore beg your Majesty to accept these two elks and two Black Beavers which we now offer to You in terms of the Charter and in the same manner in which they were offered to your illustrious Father King George VI on the occasion of his visit to these territories in May, 1939. —Address of Hudson’s Bay Company governor William Keswick to Queen Elizabeth II, Winnipeg, July 24, 1959

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isiting heads of state are routinely offered gifts. One unusual giftgiving ceremony took place on July 14, 1970, at Lower Fort Garry, the site of an old fur trading post, on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Manitoba. In the course of the ceremony, Queen Elizabeth was presented with a quantity of poplar along with a tank holding two live and very frisky beaver. When the Queen ‘‘bent over the tank to inspect her new possessions, she turned to the Hudson’s Bay Company governor, Viscount Armory, and asked ‘Whatever are they doing?’ ’’ In the best diplomatic tradition, the governor replied, ‘‘Ma’am, it’s no use asking me. I am a bachelor.’’1 The incident, while amusing, was much more than that. The ceremony highlighted a relationship that spanned continents and centuries. The gift to the Queen of England symbolized a commitment set out in a royal charter written three hundred years earlier during the reign of Charles II. The charter granted the ‘‘Company of Adventurers Trading into Hudson Bay’’ ‘‘sole Trade and Commerce’’ over what was then known as

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Rupert’s Land, named after Prince Rupert, cousin of the king. Although not known at the time, Rupert’s Land was a vast area that encompassed the entire drainage basin of Hudson Bay. Embedded in the charter, and among the conditions relating to the operation of the company, was the requirement: ‘‘to be holden of Us, Our Heirs and Successors . . . yeilding [sic] and paying yearly to Us, Our Heirs and Successors . . . two Elks and two black Beavers, whensoever, and as often as We Our Heirs and Successors, shall happen to enter into the said Countries, Territories and Regions hereby granted.’’2 It was to be 257 years before the company had to make good on the provision. On August 9, 1927, in a ceremony in Winnipeg, the company presented to the Prince of Wales on behalf of his father, King George V, two black beaver pelts and two mounted elk heads. The Hudson’s Bay Company fulfilled this condition of the 1670 charter three more times: in 1939, when King George VI came to Canada, and in 1959 and 1970, when Queen Elizabeth II visited. The timing of the payments highlights the extraordinary longevity of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Moreover, the ceremonies symbolize not just the link between the company and the English Crown but also the intertwining of state policies and decisions in Europe with the trade environment of the New World. The two frisky black beaver given to Queen Elizabeth in 1970 are reminders of the basis of the trade and of the vast array of connections that brought the native peoples of the Canadian subarctic into the Atlantic economy. Even the site of the event, the former trading post of Lower Fort Garry, reminds us of the physical locations where exchanges between native and European traders took place, while the gift-giving nature of the ceremony brings to mind the structure of trade relations between Native Americans and Europeans, which included the aboriginal practice of exchanging gifts before the actual trading began. And, although the Hudson’s Bay Company did not literally meet its charter obligation at the ceremony in 1970, those present must have been grateful that young poplar trees were substituted for the two elk.3 The earliest interactions between Europeans and the native groups who occupied the North American subarctic had elements that were social, cultural, and religious, but theirs was primarily a commercial relationship. From the isolated exchanges between natives offering pelts to European fishermen, who, in turn, beckoned these same individuals with metal items, grew a broadly based trade. Native Americans had raw materials that were valued in Europe, and Europeans could supply a wide variety of goods not

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available in North America. This bilateral exchange provided new technologies that improved the natives’ ability to meet their basic needs of food and clothing, and it gave them access to a wide range of consumer goods previously unknown to them. In exchange, England and France received a steady supply of furs, most importantly beaver, for use in the European felting and hatting industries. Because the harsh subarctic winters produced furs of exceptional quality, beaver pelts from the Hudson Bay region could be used in garments, and some of the pelts imported to Britain were reexported to the Continent for that purpose. But beaver pelts were valued primarily for their wool, which was turned into felt for high-fashion hats. At first beaver hats were purchased only by the wealthy, but as the industry grew in the seventeenth century and new felting techniques were developed in the early eighteenth century, hats with a lower beaver content became available to those with more modest incomes. The commercial relationships that were formed between the Cree, Assiniboin, Chipewyans, and other Native American nations and those Europeans who came to trade involved forces that were economic, institutional, political, and environmental. How these forces played out on each side of the trading relationship and on each side of the Atlantic is the focus of this book. The history of colonial North America is often conceived in terms of those British North American colonies that formed the republic of the United States of America. Yet British North America also encompassed much of the area that would ultimately become Canada, which provides a counterpoint to our understanding of events farther south. Moreover, the Hudson Bay region stands apart even from the other northerly colonies, both French and British. It was an area without a structured government or governor and without permanent European settlers, due to its isolation and lack of agricultural land. There were no European trappers in competition with the natives, and there were no clergy or European women.4 Britain took possession of the hinterland of Hudson Bay for the purpose of trade, although the trade was not exclusively British. French traders competed with the Hudson’s Bay Company, traveling to the region from Montreal on an annual cycle. But because of the great distance involved, French, English, and Indian peoples in the Bay region interacted to a large extent outside the political forces that played out in the lower thirteen colonies and New France.5 This isolation allows us to focus more clearly on how transatlantic and transcultural trade took place in an environment largely untainted by imperial conflict and European settlement. The major Indian

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Hudson Strait

Lake Athabasca

Hudson Bay

Churchill River Nelson River Hayes River

N. Saskatchewan River

Severn River S. Saskatchewan River

Lake Winnipeg

James Bay

Albany River Moose River

Assiniboine River

Lake Superior French River Mississippi River

0

250 500 750 1,000 Kilometers

G. McQuat 2009

Map 1. Hudson Bay Drainage Basin.

trading nations, the Cree and Assiniboin, were astute in exploiting French and English rivalries in the economic sphere, while avoiding the political tensions that pervaded the more easterly colonies. The English and French traders in this region of North America were removed as well from the world of politics. Their interest was business and trade, and war was bad for business.6 Political events as they played out in Europe and in the eastern regions of the continent had limited impact on the hinterlands of Hudson Bay. The area encompassed by this study is the western drainage basin of Hudson Bay, a region that stretches from the bay to the Rocky Mountains and covers much of present-day Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta (see Map 1). These are the ancestral lands of the Algonquian-speaking peoples, the Cree, Assiniboin, and Dakota, as well as the more northerly Athapaskan-speaking Chipewyan. The region is defined by rivers, including the North and South Saskatchewan rivers, which flow west to east from the Rocky Mountains to Lake Winnipeg and on into Hudson Bay. It is bounded to the north by the height of land around Lake Athabasca, which is the

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source of rivers that flow into the Arctic, and to the south by the height of land near the source of the Mississippi River that separates the Hudson Bay and Gulf of Mexico drainage basins. The whole Hudson Bay drainage basin, both west and east, covers roughly 1.5 million square miles and captures about 30 percent of total Canadian precipitation and groundwater flows.7 The Hudson’s Bay Company was established in 1670 under royal charter. The involvement of the Crown reflected Britain’s mercantilist policy of expanding its territory, and promoting and protecting domestic industry.8 During the first half of the seventeenth century, furs were already being shipped to England from the seaboard colonies of North America, but a number of factors gave Britain the impetus to support the new trading company. In Russia, the beaver population had been depleted, and in eastern North America, beaver stocks were declining. The Europeans wanted new sources of supply. In the case of the British, the desire for additional supplies was heightened by the dominance of the French over the existing fur trade.9 Indeed, the years following 1670 were ones of conflict, as the French tried to maintain their position; but in 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht defined the Hudson Bay drainage basin as British, and from that point the threat of military action in the Hudson Bay region was greatly reduced. For the next fifty years, the playing field was one of economic, not military, competition. It was during this time that the Hudson’s Bay Company became a major player in the fur market. The Hudson’s Bay Company was a physical presence along the coast of Hudson Bay throughout the eighteenth century, and its archives provide the most extensive documentary evidence available on the history of the region and the trade. The documents, which contain both qualitative and quantitative evidence, are a window on the structure of aboriginal society and the fur economy during a time when few Europeans had penetrated inland. Despite its importance in illuminating the history of the period, the Hudson’s Bay Company was just one of the principals. The French also traded for furs. And, unlike the trade in other parts of North America where some Europeans were involved in hunting the animals, in the Hudson Bay region only the Indians supplied the pelts and skins. Their decisions to trap and trade were made in the interior of the country at the family or tribal level. English and French could influence these decisions, but only through the types of goods they made available and the rates of exchange they offered. English and French traders and trading companies were the conduits

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between two markets: one in North America and the other in Europe. Both markets depended on a demand for furs in England, France, and other European countries. These furs could be made into luxury garments, but they were used mainly in the felting and hatting trades. In fact, it was increasing consumer demand for beaver wool hats in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that was the foundation of the fur trade. These hats became part of a material culture that linked the aboriginal nations of the North American woodlands with producers, consumers, and governments in Europe. The trade in furs took place over extraordinarily long distances. The Hudson’s Bay Company was headquartered in London, while its posts were located on the coast of Hudson Bay connected through the often fog-and iceberg-bound Hudson Strait. The French trade stretched from Paris and La Rochelle to Quebec City and Montreal. From there French voyageurs traveled by canoe into the heart of the continent in search of native traders. Those natives who traded with the Hudson’s Bay Company also traveled long distances. They came downriver to the coast often from far in the interior, timing their travel between the spring thaw and the autumn freezeup. The great distance between the head office in London and the post managers located at Hudson Bay forced company directors to pay special attention to their modes of communication. Apart from infrequent reports from returning traders, communications were limited to letter books, post journals, and account books. For historians, geographers, anthropologists, ethnohistorians, and economists, these records are an unrivaled source of information.10 In 1958 E. E. Rich completed what is now regarded as the canonical history of the Hudson’s Bay Company.11 He based his account on the more qualitative Hudson’s Bay Company documents, among them the letters between the head office in London and the post managers, as well as the reports and other forms of correspondence. These sources provide insight and context into how the trade was conducted, and we too make considerable use of them. But we also consider the quantitative record. For, in addition to the letters, instructions, and general discussion of the trade, the archives contain documents reporting, for example, the number of beaver pelts of different types sold at auction in London and the prices received for each lot, the number of furs of each type brought to the various Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts each year, the price of each trade good and each fur or skin, and the quantity of all European goods received by

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the Indians at each trading post each year, both as gifts and during the trading process. Our formal analysis of this evidence sets our book apart from most research on the fur trade and allows us to address controversial issues concerning native and European economic and social behavior. The trade in furs, which ultimately extended over much of the North American continent, was pursued by both English and French. In fact, until their defeat in the Seven Years’ War of 1756 to 1763, the French were the largest if not the dominant player. By the end of the 1750s, French trade extended from Quebec City to the shores of Lake Winnipeg and south to much of eastern and central North America. Because of their greater geographic reach, the French had a larger share of the total trade, and until the early 1760s France imported many more beaver pelts than did England. Despite this level of activity, the French have been much less studied than the English, although not completely ignored.12 Indeed, the more extensive literature on the Hudson’s Bay Company is a reflection not of its importance relative to the Compagnie des Indes and other French trading groups, but rather of the extraordinary records contained in the Hudson’s Bay Company archives. But even though extant French documentary sources are lacking, we treat the French as important participants in the fur trade, and we are able to gain insight into their involvement in part through our interpretation of the quantitative evidence from the Hudson’s Bay Company records. Initially, historians characterized the Hudson’s Bay Company’s role in North America as the ‘‘sleep by the frozen sea.’’ This view, however, has long been rejected. It is true that until the 1770s nearly all trade between the English and the Indians took place at company-built posts located along the shore of the bay rather than inland. Yet in every other respect, the company was an active, engaged participant. Economist Harold Innis recognized this involvement in his early work on the fur trade. Subsequently, Arthur Ray, a historical geographer, and others have documented the way the company responded to native traders and its French competitors. But even more important, these researchers shifted the focus from the Europeans to the Native American traders. Arthur Ray has been especially effective at combining both the qualitative and quantitative evidence to bring natives to the forefront.13 Following on Ray’s pathbreaking work, historians Kerry Abel and Jean Friesen have studied the behavior of natives in the nineteenth century, exploring aspects of native property rights on the Great Plains and

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in the subarctic regions of western Hudson Bay.14 Others have discussed the ethnographic and anthropological impacts of the trade.15 Our book is part of this larger literature. It examines the degree to which natives were influenced by their relationships with the Europeans and how their social structures, in turn, affected those same relationships. By including both sides of the trade, we are also able to address outstanding disputes. Calvin Martin’s provocative book Keepers of the Game highlights the contradiction between the natives’ goal of preserving the animal stocks and the fact that in many regions beaver populations were depleted, and in The Ecological Indian, Shepard Krech III shows that throughout the history of native peoples, there were instances where they undermined the resource base. Indeed, within this literature lie two contradictory stories of native behavior. On the one hand there is an acceptance that native trappers at times overexploited the resources, and on the other there is a view that native peoples constrained their hunting for the commercial trade by selflimiting their demand for goods that they purchased from the Europeans. Our analysis of the quantitative record allows us to resolve the tension between these two opposing viewpoints. At the heart of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s trade was the establishment of its official standard, which was essentially a price list. This achievement, quite remarkable for its time, created a monetary unit for the region, the made beaver. No made beaver coins were ever minted; nonetheless, this standard acted as a common unit of account by which all European goods, such as kettles, blankets, beads, or lace, and furs, such as fox, martin, lynx, or wolf, were measured. The trading post transactions, meticulously recorded in this unit of account, reveal that both native and company traders were astute and responsive to the markets in which they operated. We learn, for example, that the official standard prices varied across company trading posts in ways that reflected the strength of French competition and the natives’ ability to play English off against French, and French against English. Thus at Fort Albany and Moose Factory, posts that served a region where French voyageurs were active from the time they were established, the company’s official prices for European goods averaged 30 percent below the prices at York Factory and Fort Churchill, two posts that were free from competition until well into the eighteenth century. Indeed, the sophistication of the company was such that the price differentials for individual goods even varied according to how effectively the French could transport those goods. Items that had a low value relative to weight such as alcohol,

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guns, or blankets sold for similar official prices across posts because these were generally not traded by the French. By contrast, jewelry and cloth, which had high values relative to their weight, sold for much higher prices at those posts that were initially free from French competition.16 The company records also show that by making the company aware of French actions and vice versa the Cree, Assiniboin, and other native traders took advantage of their market position to force the company to increase the price they paid for furs in terms of trade goods.17 Once French traders moved further west into the regions that had previously been served only by the Hudson’s Bay Company, native traders received higher prices for their pelts. The official standard, established by the company directors in London, also became an auditing tool to monitor the post managers. Although the directors set policy, it was the post governors and factors who engaged in direct exchange with the natives. During the period from 1700 to 1763, when market conditions changed both in Europe and in the Hudson Bay hinterland, remarkable is the extent to which the English traders on the ground were able to adapt, especially given that communication was solely by way of the annual ship from London.18 We document their responses to changing market conditions by deriving a price index for furs, based on the actual exchanges between natives and the company and the accounts of gift-giving. Our fur price index is a single measure that reflects the overall terms of trade between the ten to twenty types of furs and skins brought by native traders and the sixty to seventy varieties of trade goods sold by the Europeans. The index allows us to examine quantitatively the response at the posts to events taking place thousands of miles away in Europe and hundreds of miles away in the interior of the North American continent. Changes at the posts in the rate of exchange between furs and trade goods, as reflected by our fur price index, were closely related to movements in the price of beaver pelts in European markets. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fur Sale Books provide a detailed record of the London fur auctions. Prices at these auctions and prices in France reveal an exceptionally buoyant eighteenth-century market for beaver pelts.19 This was a period of technological change in felting and increasing European demand for hats. As we document, the price index of furs at the posts tracks the price of beaver pelts in Europe. This price index, which is a construct based on the actions of the individuals in North America and not in London, shows that traders at the posts adjusted their exchanges in a way that reflected

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conditions in the broader fur market. This meant combining the reports from the head office on the London fur auctions with the information they were receiving from the Indians about conditions far in the interior. The quantitative accounts reveal a company that responded appropriately to markets in both North America and Europe. The more qualitative record, found in the correspondence and letter books, reinforces this view of the company’s behavior and suggests that company factors and natives were trading on an equal footing. Native traders were the company’s customers, and as customers, they considered not just the price of the company’s goods but also their quality and variety. Of particular concern to them was the quality of the guns and other metal products. There is every indication that the company was sending firearms that met English standards, but the Indians were not satisfied and demanded better. The problem was that because metal becomes brittle in subzero temperatures, gun barrels could explode. From the letters we learn that once Indians began refusing some guns, the company sent armorers to the posts to ensure that only guns free of flaws were offered in trade. Armorers also repaired guns that were damaged, often by frost wedging, a problem that was almost unknown in England.20 The company’s responsiveness to concerns about firearms extended to the other trade items. It was typical for the annual letter from each post to include a section itemizing any problems Indians found with goods that had been sent the previous year. At the same time, the letter also noted shipments that had proved especially satisfactory to the Indians. In the case of luxuries, such as beads, there was extraordinary specificity as to the varieties Indians wanted. For practical items efficacy was paramount. In the case of knives, for example, company traders made clear to the head office that natives were concerned more about the quality of the blade than the color of the handle, and messages relating to kettles dealt with the most suitable weight and shape. In response to the post letters, company directors adjusted the types of goods they sent out in subsequent shipments. Our analysis of the quantitative and qualitative evidence presents a view of the Hudson’s Bay Company that is for the most part in keeping with the writings of E. E. Rich, Arthur Ray, and others who attribute the company’s long-run success to the effectiveness of its management and workers on both sides of the Atlantic. More contentious, and certainly surprising in light of the large body of literature that points in another direction, is our characterization of Indian behavior. Although we support the historical

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consensus that natives were astute traders who took advantage of EnglishFrench rivalries to improve their terms of trade, in other respects we describe natives in a way that is contrary to much that has been written, especially about their supply of labor to the fur trade. Our findings stem in part from a close examination of the underlying historiography. We explore in particular the reports from the Parliamentary inquiry of 1749. E. E. Rich, whose seminal paper on native responses established the conventional view, claimed that ‘‘all who had any knowledge of the trade were convinced that a rise in [fur] prices would lead to the Indians bringing down less furs.’’21 This is the view that has been accepted in the literature. He based his conclusion mainly on the statements of Hudson’s Bay Company officials to the Parliamentary inquiry committee, and while he correctly interpreted these statements, the testimony of former company employees, which was included in the committee’s final report, presents quite a different picture of native behavior. In the view of these employees, Indians responded to higher fur prices at the posts by increasing their hunting effort. We resolve the opposing positions by analyzing the volume and types of trade goods received by the Indians at the company’s largest trading post, York Factory. By documenting the large increase in the trade in luxury goods, which coincided with the increase in fur prices, we show that Indians could not have been the ‘‘indolent’’ people described by Hudson’s Bay Company officials. Rather, native behavior was characteristic of the industrious workers emerging in Europe, who too were increasing their work effort in response to greater market opportunities. Further, our discussion of the view that Native Americans were indolent traces its origins to a selective use of the evidence presented to the 1749 Parliamentary inquiry and accepted uncritically in the subsequent historiography. Our finding that Indians were industrious is further supported by the evidence on alcohol. The perception that brandy was central to the trade or that native groups had developed a dependency on alcohol to the detriment of their consumption of other goods is clearly at variance with the company records.22 Focusing again on the trade at York Factory, which served the largest of the Hudson’s Bay Company hinterlands, we show that at least until the 1740s alcohol was unimportant. Natives spent more on firearms and they spent more on blankets and kettles. Tobacco and cloth also took up larger shares of the natives’ trade budget. But more significant than these findings is our account of the role of alcohol in native social life. Because the Hudson’s Bay Company was the only supplier of alcohol until

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the late 1730s, we can quite accurately determine natives’ total alcohol consumption.23 The data reveal a population that far from being addicted to alcohol was largely abstemious. Average alcohol consumption was just onetwentieth that of contemporary English workers. In fact, the alcohol provided by the Europeans in the Hudson Bay region could have supported no more than light drinking even among the subset of natives directly involved in the fur trade. The growth of the North American business in beaver was, in the first instance, the result of declining and disappearing beaver stocks in the Old World, especially Russia. Then, as the trade became established in the eastern portion of the North American continent, beaver populations became depleted there as well, with the result that the trade extended further into the interior. Yet even in the interior of the continent, the beaver trade could not be sustained. By 1821, when the Hudson’s Bay Company merged with its Montreal rival, the North West Company, beaver in the entire Hudson Bay hinterland had become so depleted that the merged company was forced to suspend fur trading activity at many of its posts. The decline in beaver stocks was a long-run process caused directly by the Indians themselves, since they were the trappers. We conclude that the seeds of this nineteenth-century depletion were sown much earlier, certainly by the first half of the eighteenth century. We do not, of course, have a count of the beaver population, but the annual pattern of beaver returns at each of the trading posts and the trade in other skins provide compelling evidence that beaver populations were falling in some of the Hudson Bay Company’s trading regions. Natives did the trapping, but responsibility for the overharvesting also lay with the Europeans, both the Hudson’s Bay Company managers and the French traders. They controlled the price paid to the native traders for their pelts. When the company and the French increased the price of furs by offering more goods in exchange for pelts, natives responded by raising their trapping effort. The increased effort reduced beaver stocks and led to harvests that were ultimately unsustainable. So it was that in the main subarctic regions served by the Hudson’s Bay Company and then the French, native trappers depleted the resource base that was their avenue to European goods and technologies. The native labor supply response to rising fur prices places them in the same category as the industrious workers of eighteenth-century Europe, but their failure to protect the fur-bearers is harder to understand. Given that it was in the interest of native groups to preserve resources, why did they not restrain their trap-

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ping of beaver? The answer, we argue, lies in their rules concerning ownership. We explore the question of property rights and native territoriality, focusing on the extent to which families or tribes had control over specific areas. In order to conserve, native groups needed to establish boundaries and prevent trespass. Tribal boundaries and family hunting grounds did exist, and territoriality was enforced,24 but, because the Cree, Assiniboin, and other native groups were hunter-gatherers living in a subarctic environment, paramount were the rules they had developed to minimize the risk of starvation. Although these norms did include designated hunting grounds, the extent of privilege to the beaver stocks was limited. Natives with rights to an area could prevent hunting for trade, but outsiders in need were always permitted to take animals, including beaver, for food. This ‘‘good Samaritan’’ rule reduced the incentive to conserve. Other features of native society such as its migratory nature and the social norms of gift-giving and a general ‘‘ethic of generosity’’ were essential to the longrun viability of the native population, but they were inimical to the protection of the beaver. Thus, preservation of the society took precedence over the preservation of the beaver stocks. The commercial fur trade provided Europeans with the basic resource for felting and hatting. This same trade gave native groups access to iron technologies and to commodities previously unknown to this subarctic region. Such changes in material culture affected the standard of living of Native Americans. Metal pots and knives, awls and needles, thread and thimbles improved the work life of women, and knives, twine, nets, hatchets, and guns made hunting easier. Meanwhile, beads, cloth, jewelry, alcohol, and tobacco brought new degrees of luxury.25 But to what extent did the fur trade and their traditional economy allow the Cree, Assiniboin, and other groups a living standard similar to that of Europeans? To answer this question we compare the consumption of food, clothing, housing, and luxury goods across these two populations. We find that relative to workingclass English households, Native Americans had a high-protein, mainly meat diet that was far superior to the English diet, and their clothing was of higher quality as well. In contrast, the English had better housing and consumed more luxury goods, especially alcohol. As we show, any conclusion about relative living standards depends on how one weights food, clothing, housing, and luxuries. Where weights appropriate to the native economy are used, we find that native consumers had real incomes somewhat higher than those of English workers, but if English weights are

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assumed, the ranking is reversed. In either case, however, the difference is not great. Thus, in the middle of the eighteenth century, Native Americans in the Hudson Bay region appear to have been about equally well off materially as low-income English households. Finally, we place the experience of the period from 1700 to 1770 in the context of the later trade. The Seven Years’ War of 1756–63 ended French control of the fur trade, but the impact on the Hudson’s Bay Company and native society was much less than in other regions. With the British conquest of New France and the departure of the Compagnie des Indes, Scottish merchants took over the trade operating out of Montreal. Thus, war replaced some of the actors but did not fundamentally change the nature of the competition.26 In fact, the rivalry became more intense and led in the early nineteenth century to the undermining of the resource base. Given our findings on living standards, the eighteenth century, in contrast to the nineteenth century, may very well have been a golden age for the Native Americans living in the Hudson Bay region. It was only in later years that they fell far behind, in part because the beaver stocks continued to decline, but also because an economy based on furs offered no real avenue for productivity growth. Our reassessment of native and European interactions in the fur trade draws on the wealth of information available from the Hudson’s Bay Company archives and other sources, which we interpret using an approach that in the 1960s became known as ‘‘new’’ economic history. We have added a short appendix for those interested in the technical details. The discussion in the chapters, though, is presented in a way that is fully accessible to those without a background in economics. Our approach may be novel in many ways; still, the view of the fur that we present is grounded on the archival evidence and past research. Our conclusions are often in keeping with the received wisdom, but on important questions our work points in entirely new directions. Overall, we find that both Europeans and Native Americans responded effectively to the enormous challenges of their new commercial relationship, a commercial relationship that was characterized by competition and cooperation underpinned by mutual respect.

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Hats and the European Fur Market

He threw his bonnet, which was all the covering his brains had ever known in Aberdeenshire (from thence he came) and bought himself a good felt hat. —Daniel Defoe, The Complete English Tradesman, 1726

A

s Daniel Defoe suggests, a good felt hat to cover his brains was more than this traveler had known. Was he a servant copying his superiors, or a provincial shifting his dress to conform to the fashions of the city? Or was his bonnet simply worn out after his long journey? We do not know. Yet, by the simple action of changing hats he tapped into a trade that linked Europe with North America and connected English, French, Spanish, and colonial consumers with Native Americans. A ‘‘good felt hat’’ not only linked continents, but it propelled a commercial trade that would change the face of North America and the economy of Native Americans. If Europeans had not been willing to purchase beaver hats during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there would have been little by way of a North American fur trade. And, equally important, the European hatting industry could have developed as it did only because Native American trappers and traders chose to supply Europeans with beaver pelts. In sum, the beaver hat can be viewed as the end point of a line that stretched from the fur-trading hinterlands of North America to the output markets of England and the Continent. Today, head covering, at least in the West, is considered an accessory, but from as early as the twelfth century and into the twentieth century, hoods and then hats, caps, and bonnets were part of everyday dress for

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both women and men. Hats were an essential part of women’s attire and were often complicated affairs whose style changed with shifting fashions. But hats, whether worn or carried under the arm, were also an important element of men’s dress.1 And like women’s hats, men’s hats varied greatly in form and shape, responding over time to the vagaries of fashion and even politics. The conical ‘‘sugar loaf’’ of the Puritans, worn in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, was gradually replaced with a high-crowned, broad-brimmed squarish hat that became popular during the reign of the early Stuarts. Following the Restoration of 1660 the well-dressed man typically wore the ‘‘slouch,’’ a hat with a broad and drooping brim; then with the Glorious Revolution of 1688/89 came the low-crowned, broadbrimmed, clerical ‘‘shovel,’’ which was supplanted in the eighteenth century by the three-cornered, cocked hat.2 Over the centuries men’s hats expanded and contracted, brims increased and decreased, crowns rose and fell, but what remained invariant was the raw material: wool felt. As a fabric, felt is stronger than woven cloth. It does not tear or unravel in a straight line, it is lightweight but warm, it is resistant to water, and with a sufficient level of beaver wool content, it will hold its shape even when wet. These characteristics made beaver wool felt the prime material for hatters, especially when the hat had to be large enough to be worn over a wig or when fashion called for hats with large brims. The quality of a felt hat was determined largely by the amount of beaver wool used in its manufacture. ‘‘Beavers,’’ as the top-ofthe-line hats were called, had the most beaver wool, but they also included varying amounts of hare or rabbit wool. Less expensive ‘‘castors’’ had a greater proportion of lower-cost fur, while ‘‘felts’’ had no beaver wool at all.3 The beaver hats illustrated in the top row of Figure 1 are cocked hats, which were popular in the eighteenth century. Wool felt could be manufactured from a variety of raw materials, but beaver wool was the best, producing the highest-quality felt. During the sixteenth century, beaver wool came mainly from Russia and the Baltic. But with the decline and then virtual disappearance of the European beaver in the seventeenth century, a supply of beaver from North America became necessary for the continued growth of the high-fashion felt hat industry. Beaver dominated the North American trade, although a variety of other furs were also shipped to Europe. In 1750 England imported at least fifteen different types of animal skins, with the more important being bear, cat (bobcat), fisher, fox, marten, mink, musquash (muskrat), otter, and rac-

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Figure 1. Beaver Wool Hats of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Source: E. E. Rich, ‘‘Pro Pelle Cutem,’’ The Beaver, Spring 1958, p. 14. Reproduced by permission from Canada’s National History Society.

coon.4 Those classified as fancy furs include most of those just listed in addition to the highest-quality beaver. These furs were prized for the beauty and luster of their pelts, and were in demand by furriers who fashioned them into expensive garments. What mattered, however, to the felting and hatting industries were those pelts classified as staple furs: beaver, muskrat, rabbit, and hare.

The Making of Felt Hats All staple furs have a double coating of hair. On the outside are long, stiff, hairs called guard hairs. Below is an underfur, which consists of shorter,

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softer hairs that lie next to the pelt. Only the wool underfur can be felted. Each wool hair has a barbed edge, and when the barbs are open the wool can be compressed to form the material we call felt. Felting dates back to the nomads of Central Asia who are said to have made their tents from this light but durable material. Their coarse felt was made from the wool of goat, sheep, or camel. Although the art of felting disappeared from much of western Europe during the first millennium, there was a continuous tradition of felt-making in Russia and the Baltic. During the Crusades feltmaking was reintroduced to Europe from Asia Minor, but as with the origins of most textiles, our dating is imprecise. The making of felt hats seems to have been first introduced into France around the middle of the fifteenth century and into England by the beginning of the sixteenth century.5 Some argue that the London industry was not established until the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685 and skilled French Huguenot hatters migrated to London, bringing with them their trade secrets.6 Certainly the Huguenot hatters helped expand the felting and hatting trades, but it is more likely that the arrival of French refugees at the beginning of the sixteenth century led to the early development of the London hatting industry. Indeed, felt hat making had expanded sufficiently that the Worshipful Company of the Art or Mistery of Feltmakers of London was incorporated perhaps as early as 1604 and certainly by 1629—in other words, many decades before the arrival of the Huguenots.7 The Company of Feltmakers organized the trade and influenced government policy for the next two centuries, until hatting shifted from London to southwest England. The effect of the English felt makers on government policy is evident from what was taking place by the early seventeenth century. In 1613 the felt makers and hatters persuaded Parliament to ban the import of foreign felt hats, securing them sole access to the domestic market. But not all policies benefitted the hatters. In 1638 Charles I imposed a tax of one shilling on each hat made with beaver wool. The government also began to regulate the trade, requiring that at least some beaver wool be used in the manufacture of what were sold as ‘‘beaver’’ hats.8 The need for such truthin-advertising legislation had arisen because only experienced felt makers could distinguish a hat that included beaver wool from one that was made exclusively with lower-quality wool, such as rabbit. The buyer would discover the difference only over time since hats made with inferior wool collapsed more quickly, especially in the rain. In 1660 the Restoration Parliament changed the form of protection

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given to the domestic felt hat industry. In that year, Parliament removed the ban prohibiting imports of beaver hats and replaced it with an import tariff. The tariff, which was first set at 9 shillings 6 pence per hat, rose steadily over the next century, until by 1784 it was a prohibitive 51 shillings per hat. The official value of a hat at the time was just 5 shillings 10 pence.9 Thus throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the government was providing trade protection to the domestic hatters and felters. At the same time and despite the rhetoric of the mercantilists, who argued for the development of domestic industries, especially export industries, the government was imposing duties on hat exports. These duties were introduced in 1660 and not rescinded until 1700. By the seventeenth century, the transformation of a beaver pelt into a felt hat was a highly skilled occupation. Where the Russian industry had been based on a native supply of European beaver, Castor fiber, the English and French industries relied on a steady supply of Castor canadensis, the species of beaver found in North America. But whichever species was used, the process of making a hat was the same. First, the inner coating of beaver wool was removed from the pelt. An early method was to shave the pelt and then separate the longer guard hairs from the shorter beaver wool. But shaving was wasteful of beaver because it left a hide rather than a pelt, so techniques were sought that would allow for use of the whole pelt. Perhaps because of their long history of producing felt, the Russians had the most advanced technology. Russian felters had developed a technique that allowed them to comb the wool hair from the pelt without damaging the long guard hairs. This method allowed the combed pelt to be used in garments. Through much of the seventeenth century, these felters were successful in keeping this combing technology a trade secret. As a consequence, North American beaver pelts were first shipped to Amsterdam and then to the port of Archangel in northern Russia to be combed, after which the beaver wool was re-exported to England and France. Gradually, with the growth of the English and French hatting industry, the combing technology diffused to western Europe, and by the first quarter of the eighteenth century beaver pelts were no longer being shipped to Archangel for processing. The separation of the beaver wool from the pelt was only the first step in making a beaver hat. On a fresh animal pelt, the wool hairs are covered with keratin, a protein which keeps the hairs smooth and the barbed ends closed. But to make felt, some of the barbs have to be raised or opened in order to allow the wool hairs to lock together. Stripping keratin from the

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hairs was difficult, and each felt maker experimented with different processes. One seventeenth-century felt maker described his method in this way: ‘‘Skins were bundled in a sack of linen and boiled for twelve hours in water containing several fatty substances and nitric acid: the choice of these drugs and their proportions varied according to the ideas and fantasies of the Masters.’’10 Although this method and others like it removed the keratin, they did so at a cost—a lower-quality wool. Indeed, one advantage of the beaver trade from North America was that in addition to increasing the supply of beaver, it provided a type of pelt for which such boiling techniques were not needed. Beaver pelts from North America came in two types: parchment beaver (called castor sec by the French) and coat beaver (castor gras). Parchment beaver were skins that had simply been dried in the sun before being presented for trade. Coat beaver, as the name suggests, were skins that had been used as clothing by the Indians usually for about a year before they were traded. As the pelt was worn, it became more pliable and greasy, and over time, the guard hairs fell out and the keratin covering the shorter hairs broke down. This process of change-through-use was already known from the Russian trade. A Dutch fur trader, Adriaan van der Donck, described a similar process: The skins are usually first sent to Russia where they are greatly valued for their outside shining hair. . . . The skins are used for mantle linings . . . after the hairs have fallen out, or are worn, and . . . become old and dirty and apparently useless, we get the article back, and convert the fur into hats, before which it cannot be well used for this purpose, for unless the beaver has been worn, and is greasy and dirty, it [will] not felt properly, hence these old peltries are the most valuable. The coats which the Indians make of beaver skins and which they have worn for a long time about their bodies until the skins have become fould [fouled] with perspiration and grease are afterwards used by hatters and make the best hats.11 By the end of the seventeenth century, coat beaver with the characteristics described by van der Donck was being combined with parchment beaver to produce high-quality felt. With experimentation, felters found that parchment beaver and coat beaver in a ratio of four or five to one produced strong, smooth, pliable, waterproof felt.12

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The amount of felt that could be made using this combination of coat and parchment beaver depended on the supply of both types of pelt. Since a beaver skin had to be worn by a native over the course of a year to become coat beaver, the quantity of coat beaver potentially available for trade was ultimately limited by the size of the native population. For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the native population was quite stable, and so the trade in coat beaver was relatively constant. The quantity of parchment beaver, however, could change dramatically depending on the level of hunting effort by native trappers and the number of beaver in a region. Large increases in the supply of parchment beaver could outstrip the available coat beaver, which limited the production of felt and hence beaver hats. Perhaps in response to the growing demand for felt hats and the limited quantity of coat beaver, felters continued to experiment with ways of breaking down the keratin in parchment beaver to create a raw material similar to coat beaver. Sometime in the 1720s a chemical process that became known as ‘‘carroting’’ was discovered.13 The original formula was based on nitric acid, as in the process described above, but it now included diluted salts of mercury. This solution broke down the amino-acid molecular chains of the hair. Although carroting gave parchment beaver the characteristics of coat beaver, true coat beaver remained superior, and felters continued to incorporate some coat beaver in top-quality felt. Importantly, though, the ratio of coat beaver to parchment beaver used in the felt could now be reduced. In addition to encouraging the production of beaver hats, carroting also improved the felting qualities of rabbit and hare, and so contributed to the growth of the lower end of the hat market. Carroting was similar to other technological advances in felting in that it was at first a closely guarded trade secret. The process originated in London and was later disseminated across the channel to France. In his encyclopedia on the art of felt making, the Abbe´ Nollet describes how carroting was introduced to the felters in Paris: About thirty years ago [c. 1730] a French hatter named Mathieu, having worked for several years in London, came back to establish himself in Paris, settling in the Faubourg St. Antoine. He boasted that he had learned from the English a manner of carroting skins much better than all those practised in France. He gave proofs of it, and some masters paid him for letting them know the secret. This carrot, at least as to the foundation, soon became that of everybody.

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It was known that the principal drugs which Mathieu used were nitric acid diluted with common water, and a little lard, which he rubbed on the skins. With the passing of time several [hatters] added to the formula a little mercury.14 Although carroting was a major breakthrough in the art of felt-making, it had serious health consequences for workers in the trade. In making a hat, the wool hair was first turned into a piece of felt, called a bat. This bat was then shrunk and blocked into shape, which involved repeated pressing and rolling in steam. When the felt was heated or steamed, mercury vapor was given off and this vapor attacked the nervous systems of the hat makers; ‘‘mad hatters’’ were real and not a fictional character at a tea party.15 The growth in the demand for beaver hats began in the seventeenth century and continued through much of the eighteenth century. In her wide-ranging history of the trends and traditions in hats and hat making, Madeleine Ginsburg notes that James I, who was also James VI of Scotland, ordered twenty beaver hats on his elevation to the throne of England in 1603: ‘‘17 of them were to be black, lined with taffeta, trimmed with black bands and feathers, perhaps for the period of court mourning.’’16 It may, therefore, have been James I who helped establish the ‘‘beaver’’ as the dominant hat type among the aristocracy. Indeed, Ginsburg suggests that in the seventeenth century, ‘‘to be a ‘beaver gallant’ was the aim of every smart young man.’’17 As was often the case with fashion, the demand for beaver hats gradually extended below the upper classes. Men across the social ladder were eager to have a hat that included or appeared to include some beaver wool, with Daniel Defoe’s servant illustrating the depth of consumer demand. The ‘‘good felt hat,’’ as we noted, came in a range of qualities. A beaver hat made mainly of beaver wool would have been the most expensive. Such hats were purchased by the wealthiest and were treated with great care. Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary of a beaver hat that had cost him 45 shillings. On an evening ride in April 1662, not wanting to wear his beaver hat in bad weather, he ‘‘was in nothing troubled by the badness of my hat, which I borrowed to save my beaver.’’18 Yet this beaver hat would have been waterproof and as light as ‘‘butterflys wing to put on’’ and could easily have been worn in the rain without damage.19 Less expensive hats could also be classified as ‘‘beaver’’ as long as they included some beaver mixed with mostly lower-quality wool. Thus, beavers and castors could contain

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from as little as one ounce or less of beaver wool to ten ounces or more. In the seventeenth century a high-quality beaver hat was reported to cost between £3 and £4, or about two to three months’ wages of a low-skilled worker.20 In the eighteenth century most beaver hats ranged in price from 9 to 27 shillings, with hats of exceptional quality selling for more.21 The advertised cost of the hat worn by Alice’s Mad Hatter was 10 shillings 6 pence, putting it at the lower end of the quality ladder. Given their high value, beaver hats were a tempting item for thieves. In August 1688, John Averye was found guilty of ‘‘stealing two Beaver Hats, value 40s. one Demy Castor Hat, value 8s’’ and was sentenced to be transported, likely to the American colonies.22 In that same year, George Stockwell was tried for ‘‘Stealing a Beaver-hat, value 55s from John Holmes Esq.’’ According to the trial summary, Holmes had just purchased the hat, and it was in a hat box beside him on a coach seat. At some point in the journey, someone reached in the window and took the box. Even though the hat was found in the possession of Stockwell, he was acquitted because Holmes could not identify him as the thief.23 A similar incident occurred in 1710 when John Sturt tried to steal a hat case containing a beaver hat valued at 30 shillings from James Whitlock as he alighted from his hackney coach. Whitlock identified John Sturt, who was found guilty and sentenced to branding.24

The Output of Beaver Hats and Beaver Imports By the eighteenth century, beaver hats were de rigeur for the well-dressed man. We do not, unfortunately, know the total output of beaver hats, because no census of production for the hat industry was taken during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But Gregory King, a pioneer in political arithmetic, as the statistical study of society was known, provides us with a starting point. Among King’s many calculations is a table entitled ‘‘Annual Consumption of Apparell, anno 1688,’’ which formed a small part of his estimate of aggregate expenditure in that year.25 His list begins with ‘‘hats of all sorts’’ and continues through forty-three other categories that include ninety different types of garments. King estimated that about 3.3 million hats were purchased each year, or close to one per person over the age of fourteen, not a surprising number given that hats were part of everyday dress.26 A proposal to tax hats, presented to Parliament in 1690, also put annual consumption at roughly three million. King’s calculations

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Chapter 1 700 90

500

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400 50 300

pelts - thousands

hats - thousands

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30 200 100

10

1720 1725 1730 1735 1740 1745 1750 1755 1760 1765 1770 number of hats

number of pelts

Figure 2. Exports of Beaver Hats and Net Imports of Beaver Pelts: England, 1720–70. Sources: Elizabeth Schumpeter, English Overseas Trade Statistics, p. 66; Great Britain, Inspector-General of Imports and Exports, Ledgers of Imports and Exports.

included all types of hats: felt hats, wool and straw hats, along with bongraces.27 He added a second category, caps of all sorts, which he estimated at 1.6 million.28 Thus, in 1690, the domestic market for hats and caps may have been as large as five million.29 The high end of the hat market— namely, the segment that included beaver-wool hats—was much smaller, but as incomes rose that market grew as well.30 While our estimates of domestic hat consumption are admittedly rough, we know a great deal more about the foreign market, including the number of beaver hats and other felt hats exported from England. On account of the export tax and the diligence of the port authorities in enumerating exports and imports, excellent trade records are available on a large number of goods. Elizabeth Schumpeter used these records to produce an export series for beaver and castor hats, which gives us a lower bound on domestic production. Exports, small initially, increased from just over 100,000 hats in 1710 to about 300,000 during the 1720s and 1730s (Figure 2). During the 1740s and 1750s exports increased further to an average of roughly 500,000 but then fell dramatically in the 1760s to 200,000 hats, which was

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close to the levels of fifty years earlier. Until the 1760s, most of the English hats produced for export were destined for Spain and Portugal, and their American colonies, especially Brazil. In 1750, for example, of the 556,000 beaver hats exported from England, Portugal received 175,000, and Spain 110,000.31 H. E. S. Fisher has documented the importance of Portugal and Brazil in the markets for British woolen textiles and felt hats.32 The growth of their markets was due in part to the end of a depression, the AngloPortuguese alliance against the French, and population increases in their metropolitan areas. In total, England exported twenty-one million beaver hats from 1700 to 1770. Trade statistics for France are not as complete, but we know that it too was exporting large numbers of beaver hats. The dramatic expansion of the English and French felting and hatting industry during the eighteenth century was possible only because North America provided a steady supply of beaver pelts. Because Castor canadensis inhabited much of North America, beaver pelts were exported to Europe from most of the continental British colonies, as well as from New France and the Hudson Bay region. Hudson Bay, New York, and New England together supplied England with almost 70 percent of its total fur imports, with Hudson Bay accounting for 35 percent, New York about 25 percent, and New England 10 percent.33 Beaver was the dominant fur, accounting for more than half of all British fur imports, while the other felting furs— hare, rabbit, and muskrat—accounted for a further 15 percent. The quality of the beaver pelt varied according to the severity of the winter in a region: the colder the winter, the denser the animal’s winter coat. Thus, the highest-quality pelts were those harvested in the region of Hudson Bay and exported to England by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Significant as British purchases of North American furs were, France received more because the French traded over a much larger area. England, as just noted, received its furs mainly from Hudson Bay, New York, and New England, whereas France had access to a fur-trading region that extended north from the boundary of the Thirteen Colonies through New France, and west as far as the Mississippi River basin. French voyageurs also traded in the Hudson Bay region, which was where the English were most active.34 Figure 3 shows the pattern of beaver imports in England and France from 1725 to 1758. Apart from a few years in the 1730s when imports were similar, France received many more furs than England. From 1725 to 1740, France imported on average 105,000 beaver pelts, or 23 percent more pelts than England. After 1740 the differential widened as the

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150

100

50

0 1725

1730

1735

English total imports

1740

1745

French imports

1750

1755

English net imports

Figure 3. Imports of Beaver Pelts to England and France. Sources: Great Britain, Inspector-General of Imports and Exports, Ledgers of Imports and Exports; Thomas Wien, ‘‘Selling Beaver Skins.’’

French extended their trading empire and competed more vigorously, especially in the southern and later the western reaches of the Hudson Bay region. From 1741 to 1758 France imported more than twice as many beaver pelts as England. Even this comparison understates the relative supply of beaver pelts to France. Beaver was not just the premier pelt for hatters; European tailors wanted beaver for garments, especially the high-quality pelts from Hudson Bay. As a result, some of the beaver imported into England was re-exported to Holland and Germany for this purpose. The growing impact of reexports on English hatting is evident in the trade data (see Figure 3). In 1725 less than one-quarter of the beaver pelts were re-exported to the Continent, but by 1739 that share had increased to more than a third, and by 1750 to more than half. In a period of shrinking gross imports, the net effect was a decline of perhaps 60 percent in the quantity of beaver fur available to the English felting and hatting industry.35 The rising demand for hats and thus for beaver pelts, in conjunction with growing re-exports, played out not just in the prices of pelts but also in the halls of Parliament. Following the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, which ended the War of the

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Spanish Succession, the Walpole administration in England made a serious effort to expand trade. Felt makers and hatters were quick to appeal to the government’s concern for trade as a way of furthering their own interests. Felters and hatters wanted low-cost beaver pelts. Employing rhetoric that is still used today, English hat makers of the eighteenth century talked about losing market share to the French because the cost of beaver was too high. The English hatters argued that they were at a competitive disadvantage because the French had a larger fur-trading region and because the English government was imposing higher import tariffs on beaver. The hatters also complained that the French, ‘‘having their labour cheaper,’’ could further undercut them in foreign markets. In one of their presentations to Parliament, they describe an instance in which ‘‘the French seduced twelve English hatters, and one hat-dyer to Paris, and there set [up] a manufactory of beaver hats.’’ The petition ended with the request ‘‘that the duty be so alleviated or proportioned, as to set the English manufacturer at least on the same level with foreigners.’’36 Parliament responded and in 1722 reduced the import duty on beaver. The tariff per pelt was lowered from 16d to 6d, representing a percentage reduction from roughly 25 percent of the value of a pelt to about 10 percent. At the same time, the drawback on re-exports was adjusted from 13.25d to 4.9d.37 The drawback was the amount of the import tariff returned by the government if a beaver pelt was re-exported. In terms of competing with the European garment makers, what mattered to the English producers was the difference between the tariff and the drawback. That difference fell from 2.75d to 1.1d. So even though the tariff was reduced, the overall impact of the change in the tariff and the drawback was likely small, at least for those types of pelts that were re-exported. On the lower-quality beaver pelts that were not in demand by furriers, the hatters did gain in that a lower tariff meant lower prices. The lower import duty, in particular, allowed for the shipment of some especially inferior pelts whose price in England would otherwise not have covered the cost of buying them from the Indians and transporting them to London.38 To further help the British hatters, Parliament designated beaver pelts an enumerated commodity under the Navigation Acts. With the rule change, pelts could no longer be exported directly from Britain’s American colonies to ports in continental Europe. Rather, they had to be sent first to London and then re-exported. It is estimated that prior to 1722, 20,000 to 30,000 skins had been exported annually from the colonies directly to Amster-

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dam.39 The new enumeration policy increased the cost of shipping such skins to the Continent, giving the British producers an advantage. Ten years later, in 1732, Parliament again intervened on behalf of the hatters. Despite a large increase in beaver hat exports, from just over 200,000 in 1720 to roughly 300,000 in 1730, hatters were continuing to complain about their market share. This time they argued that the export of colonial-produced hats to the West Indies and other British colonies was harming their trade. Parliament responded in a mercantilist fashion, stipulating that no hats or felt could be shipped by colonial hatters outside their home colony. The legislation went further, requiring that only those who had served an apprenticeship of seven years in England could make hats in the colonies, and it limited master hatters in the colonies to no more than two apprentices.40 It is unlikely that the legislation had a big impact on the colonial hat makers, but nevertheless the government actions do indicate that the London hatters continued to have influence. Twenty years later, in response to sharply higher prices for beaver pelts, the hatters of Chester, London, and Manchester once again petitioned Parliament for help. They claimed that differences in the export policies of Britain and France, combined with French access to a larger fur-trading region, was giving rise to a significant differential in the price of furs. Comparing price levels is somewhat problematic because prices of beaver in France were reported by weight, in livres, one of which was equivalent to 1.08 pounds, whereas English prices were given per pelt. If there were a standard weight for a beaver skin, comparing prices would be straightforward, but parchment pelts varied from about 1.3 to 1.5 pounds. Further complicating the comparison are quality differences between the pelts that were sent to England and France. The quality of a pelt depended on the age of the animal, and on when and where it was trapped. A larger proportion of English pelts came from the hinterland of Hudson Bay, where beaver were of higher quality than those trapped elsewhere. Despite these complications, there is enough information on prices for us to evaluate the hatters’ petitions and shed light on other aspects of the trade.

The Price of Beaver Pelts in London and Paris The Hudson’s Bay Company had the largest share of the London market for beaver fur. Moreover, as a result of operating in the Canadian subarctic, the Hudson’s Bay Company provided the highest-quality beaver pelts.

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Because these pelts could be used by furriers as well as in the hat trade, the company’s fur-selling policies were of particular concern to the English hatting and felting community. The hatters were looking for a source of low-cost prime beaver, whereas the Hudson Bay Company wanted the highest price for its furs. The Hudson’s Bay Company was chartered in 1670, and in 1690, the year the charter was to be reconfirmed, Parliament enacted legislation governing the company’s selling policies, partly in response to appeals by the hatters and felters. The legislation stipulated that the company was to hold no fewer than two and no more than four fur sales in London each year, and it was to sell its furs at public auction in relatively small lots of £100 to £200. The intent was to improve access to furs by the smaller felt makers. The felters feared that if only large lots were offered, the major furriers would dominate the market. Auctions were ‘‘by the candle’’; that is, a base price was called out and a candle lit. The person with the highest bid when the candle burned out obtained the lot. The legislation did not prevent all private sales, but it required that when they did occur, the price could be no less than the price that had prevailed at the previous auction. Despite these rules, the major furriers still had an advantage in that they could buy multiple lots and benefitted more so than the hatters from a policy of rebates for those who could pay immediately.41 The transactions at the London fur auctions are listed in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fur Price Book.42 Along with the date of each sale, the records give the name of the purchaser, the number of pelts in each lot, and the amount paid. The records also note whether the purchaser bought coat beaver, parchment beaver, or cub (juvenile) beaver. In addition, the Fur Price Book indicates if the pelts were ‘‘damaged.’’ Table 1 reports the returns from the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fur auctions of November and December 1748. Parchment pelts, at these particular auctions, sold in lots of 280 or 286 pelts, with the smaller of the lots fetching bids of around £130, or just above 9 shillings per pelt. The larger lots, which were of apparently higher quality, brought in roughly 11 shillings per pelt. Cub beaver sold in lots of 380 at an average price of 4.6 shillings. Despite the hatters’ petitioning of the government to keep fur prices down, the price of beaver pelts in London increased markedly from 1713 to 1763 (see Table 2). The records of the fur auctions reveal three episodes. From the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 to the Parliamentary legislation of 1722,

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Table 1. The Hudson’s Bay Company Beaver Pelt Auctions of November and December 1748 Parchment Pelts November

Coat Pelts

Cub Peltsa

Sale Price

280 380 1,050 (3 lots) 700 (2 lots) 380 380 380 280 350 280 858 (3 lots) 340

December

286 280 2,450 (7 lots) 760 (2 lots)

Price per pelt 10.48 shillings

350 6.69 shillings

£131 86 353 231 87 85 87 132 117 127 500 122 163 131 811 178 116

0s 15 2 0 17 7 9 13 10 6 13 3 18 5 16 2 8

0d 5 0 9 0 1 7 4 10 8 0 0 10 9 2 11 2

4.61 shillings

Half parchment pelts. Source: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Fur Sale Books, MG 20 A48/2.

a

prices per pelt appear relatively stable, fluctuating between 5 shillings and 5 shillings 6 pence. In the 1720s, prices moved sharply higher and remained in the range of 7 to 9 shillings until 1745. In the second half of the 1740s, prices rose again to over 12 shillings per pelt and remained at or above this level to 1763. Over the period from 1713 to 1763 the five-year average price of parchment beaver, which was the dominant form of pelt, rose from 5 shillings in 1713–17 to more than 8 shillings by the 1740s and to between 12 and 14 shillings in the 1750s and 1760s. The five-year average price of coat beaver, in contrast, exhibited little trend until the 1760s. Its price remained at about 6 to 7 shillings. But in the 1760s the price of coat beaver doubled to between 14 and 15 shillings.43 Parchment and coat beaver were both used to make felt, but, as noted earlier, the amount of coat needed relative to parchment was affected by the technology of felt-making. With advancing technology came a change in requirements and thus in the relative price of the two types of beaver

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5.21 5.24 4.88 4.68 5.29 4.77 5.30 5.31 5.27 4.55 8.54 7.47 5.82 5.41

1713 1714 1715 1716 1717 1718 1719 1720 1721 1722 1723 1724 1725 1726 1727 1728 1729 1730 1731 1732 1733 1734 1735 1736 1737 1738 7.07 6.46 6.47

8.81 8.37 7.81 6.86 6.05 5.79 4.97 5.56 5.97 6.62 7.49

4.62 7.86

Coat 5.03 5.66 5.49 5.16 5.65 5.22 5.51 5.38 5.29 4.55 7.84 7.17 5.88 5.83 7.22 8.13 9.56 8.71 6.27 7.12 8.07 7.39 8.33 8.38 7.50 8.32

Averagea 1739 1740 1741 1742 1743 1744 1745 1746 1747 1748 1749 1750 1751 1752 1753 1754 1755 1756 1757 1758 1759 1760 1761 1762 1763

Year 8.51 8.44 8.30 7.72 8.98 9.18 9.76 12.73 10.68 9.27 11.27 17.11 14.31 12.94 10.71 12.19 12.05 13.46 12.59 13.07 15.99 13.37 10.94 13.17 16.33

Parchment

13.06 13.03 16.33 17.56

7.11 6.66 6.83 6.41 6.74 6.61 6.08 7.18 6.99 6.22 6.49 8.42 10.42 10.18 11.97 12.68 12.04 12.02 11.60 11.32

Coat 8.05 7.88 7.84 7.36 8.27 8.52 8.76 10.88 9.50 8.44 9.77 14.00 12.90 11.84 10.87 12.08 11.99 12.84 12.17 12.49 14.68 13.22 11.36 13.83 16.34

Averagea

a

A weighted average of the prices of parchment, coat, and cub beaver, where two cub (half-parchment) beaver are treated as one pelt. Weights are based on the trade in these types of furs at Fort Albany (basing the average on York Factory or Fort Churchill gives similar values). The prices of coat and parchment beaver were generally close, and about double the price of cub beaver. Prices of the individual types of pelts are not available for the years 1727 to 1735. Prices in the table are averages based on the company’s Minute Books. A complete listing of prices and output weights for the three posts is available from the authors. Source: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Fur Sale Books, MG 20 A48/1–4; Grand Journal, MG 20 A15/8; Minute Books (rough), MG 20 A1/121.

8.72 7.94 8.95

Parchment

Year

Table 2. Price of Beaver Pelts in London, 1713–63 (shillings per pelt)

32

Chapter 1 250 225

1723/26 = 100

200 175 150 125 100 75 50 1723

1728

1733

1738 London

1743

1748

1753

1758

Paris

Figure 4. Price of Parchment Beaver in London and Paris, 1723–59. Data from Table 2; Thomas Wien, ‘‘Castor, Peaux, et Pelleteries.’’

pelts. In the early years of the eighteenth century before the carroting process was in widespread use, the price of coat beaver was generally higher than the price of parchment, averaging 6.6 shillings as compared with 5.5 shillings. But with the diffusion of the process, more parchment relative to coat beaver was used in felting, which led to a reversal in prices. From the mid-1730s, the five-year average price of parchment beaver was higher than coat and remained so until nearly the end of the period. The data on beaver prices in the Paris market, although less complete, exhibit a similar pattern. The price of parchment beaver per livre (1.08 pounds) rose from 4 livres tournois in 1739 to 5.5 livres tournois in 1740.44 By 1744 the price was 6.5 livres. In 1747 the price had increased to 7 livres, and six years later it was 8 livres.45 We do not know the relative quality of the beaver pelts sold on the London and Paris markets, so rather than compare prices directly, we derive a price index of beaver pelts for each city.46 By setting price in an initial period (1723–26) equal to 100, we can compare price movements in the two capitals (Figure 4). After 1725 there was a runup in beaver prices in London, which, as we have seen, was the major complaint of the English hatters in their petitions to Parliament. But the price in the Paris market increased as well. In fact, with the exception

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of the year 1750, when the price in London was unusually high, the index of London beaver prices was equal to or below the Paris index.47 So although the English hatters and felters were correct that fur prices were increasing, prices were not rising faster in England than in France.

The Quality Dimension In their testimony to the 1752 Parliamentary Committee, the English hatters, in addition to complaining about high beaver prices, pointed to the French hatters’ greater access to beaver pelts. Beaver supplies, as shown in Figure 3, had in fact shifted dramatically in favor of France. Worsening matters, from the viewpoint of the English hatters, were the European furriers who favored the beaver pelts from Hudson Bay because of their high quality. This European demand, which took up most of the beaver reexported from Britain, lowered the supply of beaver on the English market. As a House of Commons document commenting on the hatters’ petition pointed out: ‘‘Of the beaver imported into England, considerable Part has always been exported abroad, chiefly for Garments.’’48 The high levels of beaver re-exports, despite the higher fur prices, are strong evidence that the demand for beaver as a fancy fur was also increasing. Combined, the rising demand for high-quality beaver for use in garments and the shift in beaver imports toward France sharply reduced the amount of beaver available to the English hat trade. But what impact did this decline in the supply of beaver pelts have on the output of beaver hats in Britain? The answer is surprising. The expulsion of the Huguenots from France in the late seventeenth century helped bring more hatters and felters to England, but by the eighteenth century the number of hat makers was relatively fixed, at least in the short term.49 Because their labor supply was fixed and the supply of beaver wool was falling, hatters responded by shifting their production to hats that did not require as much beaver. These were the lower-quality hats. Not surprisingly, a low-quality hat was made with less labor than a high-quality hat. This meant that a given amount of labor went further in terms of numbers of hats produced. So even though the hatters had less beaver wool to work with, they actually began producing more hats because they switched from hats of high quality to hats of low quality. From 1740 to 1760, when the supply of beaver pelts available to hatters fell by about 60 percent, the exports of beaver hats rose by more than 30 percent.50 Over the entire

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period from 1720 to 1770, there was a negative relation between English hat exports and beaver imports (see Figure 2). The hatters themselves testified that the limited beaver supply was affecting the quality of English hats both absolutely and relative to those made by the French. Hat maker James Rosseter stated, ‘‘The making of Beaver Hats hath arrived at very great Perfection; and that, about Twenty Years ago, our Hats were in greater reputation abroad than the French Hats, or any other; but that of late the French Hats are in greater credit.’’51 And William Estcutt claimed, ‘‘That the French out-work us, as they have their Materials (particularly Beaver) cheaper than we; and, by that means, they make their Manufactures finer than ours, as they can afford to put more Beaver in them.’’52 Indeed, nearly every hatter testified to the decline in the quality of English hats in the years before 1760. At the same time, the increase in beaver hat exports over the same period was also acknowledged. A witness commenting on the hatters’ case remarked: ‘‘That the Trade for Castor and Beaver Hats has not, of late Years, declined, appears most manifest from the Custom House Accounts of the Exports thereof; which on the contrary, shew the Exports have increased within these Twenty Years, to near double what they were.’’53 With the Treaty of Paris in 1763 ending the Seven Years’ War, England took possession of New France and gained access to a very much expanded fur-trading territory. From 1760 to 1770 net imports of beaver pelts to England increased from 44,000 to 136,000.54 The same forces that caused the quality of hats to decline and the number of hats produced to increase continued to be felt, but now in reverse. From 1760 to 1770 the number of beaver hats exported from England fell from 43,000 to 15,600. The decline reflected in part the virtual disappearance of the markets for English beaver hats in Spain and Portugal, yet we do not observe a similar decline in other textile and clothing exports to those markets. It appears, instead, that conditions specific to the hat trade explain the drop in production. Despite the increasing imports of beaver pelts, the English hatters in 1764 presented a petition similar to their unsuccessful representations of ten years earlier. They pressed Parliament to reduce re-exports of beaver pelts, but now they put particular emphasis on the high price of labor: ‘‘In 1764 the Board of Trade had reported that the ‘decrease in the exportation of hats’ was due in part to ‘the great increase in the price of labour in this country.’ ’’55 There is little indication that other wages were going up during this period;56 thus the Board of Trade was correct only to the extent that

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the increase in the price of labor was specific to hatting.57 From the late 1750s to the mid-1760s, it seems, the fourfold increase in the net supply of beaver pelts to England drove up the demand for labor and hence wages in the hat trade, and may very well have led to specialization in higher-priced hats. Over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the London felting and hatting industry was growing. This expansion was due in large measure to taste and fashion. But taste and fashion could take the industry only so far. Ultimately, the felting and hatting trades depended on imports of beaver pelts, the raw material from which these hats were made. From the middle of the seventeenth century, nearly all the beaver pelts came from North America. Although the English hatters’ petitions to Parliament were intended to improve their situation at the expense of the Europeans through tariff policy and restrictions on competition, what mattered to the overall market was the trade in North America. Had they not been fashionable, beaver hats would not have been produced; but, at the same time, had there not been a demand by Native Americans for the commodities that Europeans had to offer in exchange for furs, beaver hats could not have been produced for lack of the essential raw material. It is to the market for that raw material, beaver pelts, and to the environment in North America that we next turn our attention.

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The Hudson’s Bay Company and the Organization of the Fur Trade

Hearing also some Frenchmen discourse in New England of a passage from the West Sea to the South Sea, and of a great trade of beaver in that passage, and afterwards meeting with sufficient proof of the truth of what they had said, and knowing what great endeavours have been made for the finding out of a north-west passage, he thought them the best present he could possibly make His Majesty, and persuaded them to come to England. —Report attributed to ‘‘George Carr,’’ London, 1665

T

he flow of pelts that transformed the English felting and hatting industries in the late seventeenth century was the result of two fortuitous events. The first was the signing of the Treaty of Breda marking the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. England, the United Provinces, France, and Denmark signed the treaty in the Dutch city of Breda in July 1667. England had captured New Amsterdam from the Dutch, and as part of their negotiations the English commissioners had offered to return New Netherlands in exchange for Dutch sugar factories on the coast of Surinam. The Dutch declined. And so it was that the region became British, and New Amsterdam became New York City. In the same negotiations Acadia, the region of present-day New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, was returned to France, although the French territorial boundary was left unspecified. Thus, in the middle of the 1660s, the northern coastal

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region of North America was divided between France and England. The second event was a chance meeting in New England in 1664 between British commissioners George Cartwright and Sir Robert Carr, and two French Canadians, Me´dard Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers, and Pierre Esprit Radisson.1 At this time, pelts destined for the felters and hatters of La Rochelle and Paris were sent down the St. Lawrence River to Quebec City for shipment to Europe. Pelts from the New York region, which had previously flowed to the Dutch, now entered the London market. These furs were an important part of the transatlantic trade and were the raw material on which the hatting industry in Europe depended. But fur stocks in the eastern part of North America were declining. That, combined with the knowledge that the best pelts came from more northerly regions, led Europeans to search for new sources of supply. The two French traders Radisson and Groseilliers, who met with the Englishmen in 1664, were central figures in that search. The voyageurs had been looking for a trade route north of the St. Lawrence River that would allow them to access new sources of furs safe from the predations of the Iroquois and their English partners. In the course of his travels, Groselliers accompanied some Huron Indians up the Ottawa River, through Lake Nipissing and down the French River to Georgian Bay at the top of Lake Huron.2 The journey taken in the 1650s was highly significant because it gave the coureurs de bois a relatively direct route from Montreal to the upper reaches of the Great Lakes.3 During these travels he met members of the Cree nation and probably heard talk of a fabulous ‘‘frozen sea’’ to the north, and by the time he returned to Quebec in 1656, he had acquired fourteen thousand livres of furs.4 Subsequent journeys by Radisson and Groseilliers were equally successful as trading expeditions but much less so in terms of the reception these traders received at Quebec. Both were assessed heavy taxes on the furs and then fined for violating the French authorities’ ban on travel to the interior. As E. E. Rich so aptly puts it: ‘‘They [Radisson and Groseilliers] had brought a stream of life-giving furs to the colony; they had proved the wealth of the north and they had pioneered a new and efficient approach to it. Their reward was fines, imprisonment and abuse.’’5 Unhappy with their treatment at the hands of the authorities in Quebec, Groseilliers traveled to France in 1661 to seek redress from the king. He also tried to enlist support for a sea expedition to the north. On both counts

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he was unsuccessful. Groseilliers then sailed to New England, again to seek sponsors for a voyage to the north. It was serendipitous that both Groseilliers and Radisson were in New England at the same time as George Cartwright and Robert Carr. As Radisson wrote: ‘‘The Commissioners of the King of Great Britain [Cartwright and Carr] arrived in that place, and one of them would have us to come to New York, and the other advised us to come to England and offer ourselves to the King, which wee did.’’6 And so in 1666, Me´dard Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers, and Pierre Esprit Radisson sailed to England. They immediately went to Oxford, where the Court had moved as a result of the plague. They subsequently followed the Court from there to Windsor and back to London, where they finally had an audience with Charles II. What these French men had to offer the English was experience in the fur trade and a vision of an alternate trading regime. They believed there was a sea route to a new, northerly fur-bearing land, a region that could be serviced directly by ship rather than through the interior by canoe. This idea met with a sympathetic reception in England both because it meshed with the belief that a northwest passage (to China) existed and because it played into a mercantilist perspective that saw raw materials as the key to building an empire. England’s hope was to claim these northern lands that had yet to be explored by the French. With the backing of a number of courtiers, London merchants, and financiers, a trial voyage was conducted in the summer of 1668 by two ships, the Eaglet and the Nonsuch. The Eaglet could not handle the weather and was forced to return to Plymouth. But the voyage of the Nonsuch to Hudson Bay was a great success. That voyage demonstrated the viability of a commercial venture in the region, and in 1670 a royal charter was granted under the official title ‘‘Governor and Company of Adventurers of England tradeing into Hudson’s Bay.’’7 From that point on the structure of the North American fur trade was permanently altered. The charter granted the company ‘‘sole Trade and Commerce of all those Seas Streightes Bayes Rivers Lakes Creekes and Soundes in whatsoever latitude they shall bee that Lye with the entrance of the Streightes commonly called Hudsons Streightes together with all the Landes and Territoryes upon the Countriyes Coastes and confynes of the Seas Bayes Lakes Rivers Creeks and Soundes aforesaid that are not actually possessed by or granted to any of our Subjectes or possessed by the Subjectes of any other Christian Prince or State.’’8 This grant covered the entire drainage basin of Hudson Bay (see Map

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1). The headwaters of the rivers in the west are located in the Rocky Mountains. In the south, the height of land between those rivers draining into Hudson Bay and those draining ultimately into the Gulf of Mexico is at the headwaters of the Mississippi, while the height of land between the Hudson Bay and Arctic drainage basins is near Lake Athabasca. Thus, the land granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company covers much of present-day Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. The grant also included parts of presentday northern Ontario and northeastern Quebec. In 1670 this region was totally unexplored by Europeans. Indeed, given the size of the area, even native groups were unfamiliar with large parts of it. In contrast to the trade of eastern North America, which was pursued in the interior by independent traders who sold their furs to merchants and merchant houses, the trade around Hudson Bay was conducted by a jointstock company. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the evolution of other chartered long-distance trading companies, including the East India Company and the Royal African Company. As an organizational form, these joint-stock chartered companies have generated intense debate. The issue is whether they were inefficient, rent-seeking monopolies, or whether the charters were the equivalent of a patent allowing these firms to cover the cost of exploration and establishing a market.9 Much of the current historiography sees them for the most part as efficient, if not highly profitable, entities. The Hudson’s Bay Company, like other joint-stock companies, was hierarchical. At the head office in London, there was a governor and a board of directors, known as the Court of Assistants. All were drawn from and elected by the shareholders and they ran the company.10 They determined the types and quantities of trade goods, hired men to work at the bay, and arranged fur sales in England. Most important, they established trading posts or ‘‘factories’’ around the bay and employed salaried managers or ‘‘factors’’ to run them, along with accountants, skilled tradesmen, and laborers, who were known as company servants. The great distance separating the directors in London from the managers in Canada led to problems of information and control for the head office. The managers at the bay posts had better information than London about many aspects of the trade because they were the ones who traded directly with the Indians and supervised the company servants. The directors in London recognized this and they did not try to micromanage the posts. Instead, they gave those at the bay a lot of latitude as to how they conducted the company’s operation. The flexibility, however, led to the

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possibility that post managers might work on their own behalf rather than in the best interests of the company. In order to deal effectively with this issue of agency, the head office needed to know what was happening at the bay. All contact with the posts was by means of the annual ship that traveled between London and the Hudson Bay coast.11 Although information from the posts could not be used until the following trading season, the London directors were able to put in place procedures that allowed them to assess the reliability of their employees at the bay and evaluate their performance from year to year. Like other long-distance trading companies, the Hudson’s Bay Company specified the means by which its employees were to communicate with the head office. Central to this process were the company’s correspondence and account books, which became the basis of nearly all the information obtained in London about activities at the bay.12 Partly because of its long-term success, the Hudson’s Bay Company has built up a rich archive that includes the letter books, journals, diaries, maps, and account books that were so important to its early operation. First housed in London, these documents were moved in the 1950s, when the company’s head office was relocated to Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 1999 the Hudson’s Bay Company donated its archives to the Province of Manitoba.13 The extant records for the first few decades of the company’s history are spotty, but from the beginning of the eighteenth century, the archives contain a continuous record of the company’s activities, both at the head office in London and at all its trading posts. In a narrow sense, these documents describe a fur-trading business—goods bought and sold. In a broader sense, though, the archives reveal a relationship between two very different societies and cultures. Indeed, the depth and richness of this resource are unparalleled. After receiving its charter in 1670, the Hudson’s Bay Company began its operation by building several trading posts, strategically placed on the bay coast, at or close to some of the key waterways. The physical pattern of trade, which was determined by the rivers flowing into the bay, comprised three relatively distinct hinterlands that included a large part of the Hudson Bay basin.14 These hinterlands varied markedly both in area and in the number of beaver they could support. Regions with more small lakes and streams and less tundra or high northern boreal forest could sustain a greater beaver density. Fort Charles, on the east coast of James Bay, close to the mouth of the

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Hudson Bay

FORT CHURCHILL

n

hill

lso

urc

Ne

Ch

James Bay

1741

Lake Winnipeg

100

0

100

200

300

FORT ALBANY Albany

Fort Daupin 1741

TRADE ROUTES ENGLISH, FRENCH

YORK FACTORY

MOOSE FACTORY

Fort Maurepas

HENLEY HOUSE Lake Superior

Fort La Raine

400 Mi Fort St. Charles

Map 2. Trading Hinterland of Hudson Bay. Sources: Arthur Ray, ‘‘Bayside Trade,’’ and Arthur Ray et al., ‘‘Rupert’s Land.’’

Rupert River, was the first factory to be built. Although Fort Charles was soon abandoned, other, more permanent posts were soon established. Moose Factory was built in 1672 near the conjunction of the Missininabi and Abititi rivers (Map 2). The post was intended to divert Indians, living in the region west of what is now the Quebec-Ontario border, who had been trading with the French.15 Better located than Moose Factory in terms of attracting Indian traders was Fort Albany, completed in 1679 by the company’s second governor, Charles Bayly, just before he finished his term and returned to England. Fort Albany was built at the mouth of the Albany River just 150 kilometers from Moose Factory.16 During the first half of the eighteenth century, Fort Albany and Moose Factory together served an area of roughly 600,000 square kilometers that extended from Quebec in the

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east to a line roughly two hundred kilometers from the Manitoba border, somewhat east of what later became Fort Severn.17 The southern reach of the hinterland was just north of Lake Superior. Although the area within one hundred kilometers of the Hudson Bay coast is not suited to beaver, the habitat further south is ideal. In the 1980s the Ontario government conducted an extensive land use survey of the region and found that the districts making up this hinterland were supporting roughly one beaver per two square kilometers (or 1.3 beaver per square mile).18 York Factory was destined to become the most important trading post, receiving by far the greatest numbers of furs. The company first established a small settlement on the Hayes River in 1782 but built a more substantial, permanent structure two years later on the adjacent Nelson River.19 For much of the eighteenth century, York Factory had a catchment area of nearly one million square kilometers. Although the natural beaver densities are lower in this hinterland than in Fort Albany’s, its larger catchment area more than compensated. In addition to including a portion of northwestern Ontario, the York Factory hinterland encompassed much of presentday Manitoba and part of Saskatchewan. York Factory’s more westerly location in comparison to the James Bay posts protected it from serious competition from French traders until the late 1730s. In fact, because of its relative isolation and large hinterland, York Factory underpinned the success of the Hudson’s Bay Company during much of its first hundred years.20 The last post to be established prior to the Seven Years’ War of 1756 to 1763, and the most northerly of the Hudson’s Bay Company factories, was Prince of Wales Fort, later renamed Fort Churchill, built at the mouth of the Churchill River.21 Although a structure had been erected in 1687, it was not until 1716 that Fort Churchill began receiving significant numbers of furs. The post was located at 58 75⬘ latitude, less than eight degrees south of the Arctic Circle, and, despite being relatively insulated from competition, it never became an important part of the company’s operation. The area that it served, 500,000 square kilometers, was not much smaller than the Albany hinterland, but lying on the northern edge of a boreal forest that transitioned into tundra, the region was generally inhospitable to beaver, and animal densities were low. To the extent that movement across hinterlands occurred, it seems to have been potentially greatest between York Factory and Fort Churchill, but the company factors at both posts were serious about reducing such cross-hinterland trade. In 1725 Richard Norton, the governor at Fort

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Churchill, told some Cree Indians who had previously traded at York Factory to return to that post.22 One reason for imposing such restrictions was to reduce the potential for conflict between Cree, Assiniboin, and Chipewyan. In fact, Fort Churchill had been set up in part because of a history of warfare between these groups and was seen as a way of keeping them separate. So we can be reasonably sure that the bulk of the pelts traded at each of these posts came from their respective hinterlands. This is not to say that those Indians who traded the pelts necessarily trapped them. There was intermediation. Some natives, many of them Cree, acted as middlemen for natives living far from the bay and the trading routes of the French voyageurs.23 During the first forty years of the company’s operation, wars between England and France spilled over to the Hudson Bay region. During these decades, Hudson’s Bay Company posts changed hands from English to French several times, and it was only with the signing of Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 that peace was restored and all the posts returned to company hands. The treaty deemed the lands in the drainage basin of Hudson Bay to be British, and from that point on, competition in the area was mainly economic and not political or military. Although the company did remain concerned about possible French attacks, the reality was one of peaceful coexistence among the European traders and among the Indians. Even during the Seven Years’ War, the company trading posts saw no military action.

Life at the Bay The posts built by the company at the mouth of the Moose, Albany, Nelson, and Churchill rivers were crude log structures. We get some idea of just how crude from the various descriptions of those who lived at the posts. Joseph Robson, a critic of the construction work, describes the logs as being ‘‘of white fir eight or nine inches square which are laid upon one another.’’24 These logs were not dried and so they shrank ‘‘very much and ought to be caulked for some time yearly until it has done shrinking.’’ The lack of insulation became a problem in winter, especially if the stoves went out, because then, according to James Isham, who became governor at York Factory in 1737, ice froze on the inside of the walls to a thickness of six or eight inches, ‘‘which is everyday cut away with Hatchetts.’’25 The posts were heated with wood in large brick stoves, which made the rooms very smoky and dark, especially as the windows were covered with three-inch wooden

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shutters. During the winter months, men often journeyed a few miles inland to cut timber; there they slept in temporary shelters. Despite the primitive nature of these shelters, conditions might not have been very different from those at the posts.26 The most southerly point of James Bay lies at the same latitude as London, but because it is located in the interior of the continent and exposed to water currents from the Arctic, its climate is much harsher, with subfreezing temperatures that typically stretch from October to April. The company officials in London wanted the posts to grow their own food and keep their own livestock, but the very short subarctic growing season meant that little could be home-grown. What crops could be grown, how to treat livestock, and how European goods functioned in this environment were learned over the course of many decades. The company men did hunt, and native hunters who remained in the area supplied the posts with meat and fish. Still, the posts were highly dependent on the provisions that arrived with the annual ship from London, which was their one contact with the European world. York Factory’s provisions list for 1706 includes: 21,017 pounds of flour, 148 bushels of peas, 64 bushels of oatmeal, 2 hundred weight of biscuit bread, 20 flitches (sides) of bacon, 1,171 pounds of prunes, 315 pounds of currants, 1,006 pounds of raisins, 567 pounds of sugar, 1,001 pounds of molasses, 68 gallons of vinegar, 28 gallons of oil, 1 bushel of mustard seeds, 12 pounds of ginger, 1.5 pounds of nutmeg, 1 pound of mace, 1 pound of cloves, 2 pounds of cinnamon, 60 cheeses, 3 barrels of salt, half a barrel of suet, and 16 firkins of butter. In addition, the company sent 360 gallons of strong beer, 80 bushels of malt, and 20 gallons of wine.27 Writing in 1750, Andrew Graham, later governor of York Factory, asserted that ‘‘the Company’s Servants lives like Princes, seldom a week passes but when they have fresh provisions of different kinds, and the Factors and Officers lives in so grand a manner beyond description: this living, with the healthfulness of the Climate, the easy labour, and regular command induces the generality of us to continue many years in Hudson’sBay.’’28 Countering this idyllic view of life at the bay, Edward Umfreville wrote: ‘‘the provisions allowed the servants are, taken altogether, but of the middling kind. . . . Great quantities of venison and geese are salted for the use of the Factories during the spring and fall of the year. This provision will sometimes remain three or four years in the casks unopened; after which it becomes so completely putrified, rancid, and devoid of taste, that a person might as well expect nutriment from the shavings in a carpenter’s

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shop.’’29 The reality probably lies between these two descriptions, although certainly in a good hunting year the men would have had plenty of fresh meat and fish. An important consideration for the ships that made the annual journey between London and the bay was the thawing and freezing of northerly Hudson Strait. Hudson Strait is icebound for most of the year, and when it is open, icebergs and fog pose a constant threat. The strait lies so far north that magnetic compasses cannot be used.30 Nevertheless, the quality of seamanship was such that very few ships were lost on the passage.31 In his Account of Six Years Residence in Hudson Bay, Joseph Robson describes his voyage to the bay: ‘‘In the year 1733 I embarked on board the Mary frigate. . . . We sailed from Gravesend the 16th of May, put into Tinmouth the 24th, touched at Carstown in the Orkneys the 7th of June, and arrived at Churchill-river the 3rd of August.’’32 This was a typical journey, yet the fact that occasionally a ship did not arrive fueled anxiety for those living in this remote area.33 For the men living at the company posts, the year can be seen as starting with the arrival of the ship from London. This would happen in July, August, or September. Ships could only arrive and leave during these three months, since the thawing and freezing of Hudson Strait imposed a strict regime on voyages to and from the bay. Moreover, the timing of both the thaw and freeze-up was uncertain, limiting the period any ship could anchor at the bay posts to no more than two or three weeks. These ships were the posts’ lifeline. They carried trade goods for the following year, provisions for the posts, and all correspondence between the head office and the post factors. The ships left with the furs collected in the just-completed trading season, any excess timber that the men had obtained, mainly during the winter, and the letters and record books for the head office. Men coming to the posts and those leaving Hudson Bay also went with the ship. The unloading and loading of the ship typically took place within a ten- to twenty-day window.34 Since contact with Europe was extremely limited, the arrival of the ship was no doubt one of the highlights of the year. The daily journals, kept by all post factors, offer a gripping picture of the traders’ world on the Hudson Bay coast. Here we summarize chief factor James Isham’s journal for 1740–41, which describes the daily activities of the men and conditions at York Factory over what appears to have been a typical year.35 Figure 5 is Joseph Robson’s depiction of the area around York Factory. At the post were a doctor, armorer, tailor, carpenter,

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Figure 5. Joseph Robson’s Sketch of the Area Around York Factory (Port Nelson). Source: Glyndwr Williams, ed., Hudson’s Bay Miscellany, opposite p. 92. Reproduced by permission from the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Archives of Manitoba.

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blacksmith, cooper, bricklayer, and other men, mainly laborers. The normal complement at York Factory was between thirty-six and fifty men, but in 1740 there were fewer than thirty at the post. Because of York Factory’s almost complete isolation and its reliance on a single shipment from London, it was designed to be largely self-sufficient. We begin with Isham’s entry for August 2, 1740, the day after the annual ships raised anchor and sailed for London, carrying a cargo of pelts and timber, letters and post records, and the men who were returning to life in England. The ships had left behind provisions for the men, the trade goods that would be exchanged the following year, and those workers who were beginning employment at the post. On that day, among many other tasks, beer was being brewed by two men, an activity that took place weekly. The following day a sick Indian woman came to the post and was seen by the doctor. During the month of August, as was true throughout the year, the tradesmen were employed at work related to their training. The armorer was mending or cleaning guns, including ‘‘old’’ Indian guns that been left. He also spent time making gun locks.36 The bricklayer was working on a fishing house. The blacksmith was making, at different times of the month, scrapers, bayonets, and hatchets. He also made hinges for the doors and windows of the fish house. The cooper was making staves for casks, and the tailor was mending the men’s clothing as well as making them new outfits. On August 5 seven men were sent upriver with one week’s provisions to gather firewood. They returned on the tenth for more provisions, and on the sixteenth, they brought the firewood from the interior, which they rafted downriver. Isham complained that he did not have enough men to bring all the timber that had been cut. On August 18 some men were sent back with twelve days’ provisions. By August the main trading period was long over, but still ‘‘home guard’’ Indians, as they were called by the company, were coming to trade on a regular basis. Mostly they brought game. In total, fifteen canoes arrived over the month in addition to a number of families and individual traders. Very few stayed long, and by August 13, just one Indian family was left at the post. The game and fish provided by both the Indian hunters and the company men were necessary supplements to the provisions from England. In August, which was not especially good for hunting, chief factor Isham’s journal records a total of 246 geese, 30 ducks, and 143 fish (mainly pike). Game was more plentiful in September. In that month the post received

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565 geese, 115 pike and trout, 12 deer, and some deer tongues. The southern migration of geese was over by mid-September, and the men turned their attention to rabbit and partridge. Snares were set on October 3, and on October 4 they caught 57 rabbits. But the area was quickly trapped out. The catch over the following days was 20 rabbits, then 15, 6, and 2. More snares were set on the ninth but with little result. Company men or Indians were bringing in partridge almost every day; the total for October was 76. Venison was, of course, highly valued. On October 27 nine men went inland. They made over a mile of deer hedges and set 27 snares. No deer were caught. In fact, nearly all the deer received by the post were from the Indians, who were more skilled and could move further into the interior. The last canoe of the year arrived on September 29, and a few days later the river was reported ‘‘full of ice.’’ From that point until February the company men were almost completely on their own, with a mere handful of Indians coming to the post. During this time, the armorer continued repairing or making parts for the guns, the tailor made winter clothing (beaver mittens and beaver overcoats) for the men at the post and ‘‘fine coats’’ for trade, the carpenter and a number of men were sent into the interior to square timber, and others went farther inland, for periods often over a month, to hunt and trap. Although the men left with provisions, they supplemented them with what they could catch themselves. So, for example, a group might take four weeks of provisions for a six-week trip. Throughout the winter, then, many of the men were away, but they all returned for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. In February and March Indians began arriving at the post; the total for each month was twelve individuals or families. Nearly all had game to trade, but two Indians came because they needed food, both for themselves and for their families, who had been left behind, being too weak to travel. Indians were at times a source of information about conditions at the other Hudson’s Bay Company posts. On January 5, for example, an Indian man and his son were sent to Fort Churchill for news and to bring buttons if any could be spared, as well as lamp oil. They left Fort Churchill on January 24 and returned to York Factory on February 5, a journey (on foot) of twelve days. The Indian informed the post that all at Fort Churchill were well, although one of the company men had frozen to death due to an accident. The men also learned that the governor of Fort Churchill, Richard Norton, was in his new house and awaiting supplies from the annual ship to complete it. The Indian man also brought some buttons.

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Activity at the post increased in April, and for the first time since the previous autumn Indians were supplying the post with venison. More important, though, were the preparations for the spring goose hunt. Indians were arriving at the post almost daily, and by April 26 there were twenty-six families, totaling 130 individuals. The following day twenty-five of the families left for the Fourteens River and the marsh for the goose hunt (see Figure 5). Company men participated by supplying the Indians with gunpowder and salting the freshly killed geese. It was not until May 15 that the hunt, which was dictated by the timing of the migration, began in earnest, and by May 21 the men had 430 geese in salt. The hunt was effectively over by May 25. Overall it produced 800 geese for the post, which were stored in casks that had been prepared over the winter by the company’s cooper. Despite this apparently impressive haul, chief factor Isham commented that this was a poor year for the hunt, affected by the easterly wind that had driven many geese from their usual migration path. Isham also reported that the ice on the rivers was breaking up. Because the rivers flow north to Hudson Bay, the water closest to the bay thaws last, and it was not until May 26 that the first canoes arrived at the post. The numbers at first were small, six canoes on the twenty-sixth, three on the twenty-seventh, six on the twenty-eighth, and there were similar numbers in early June. Undoubtedly, the most significant date of the trading year was June 12. On that day eighty-five canoes arrived at York Factory, with traders representing at least four different native groups. The following day there were another thirteen canoes, and on June 17, thirty canoes. The Indians who came to trade spent very little time at York Factory. Some stayed as little as one day, and others just a few days. In fact, by June 20 all those who had arrived on or after the twelfth had left. Another thirty canoes came to the post on June 22, but by the end of the month the trading season was effectively over. Thus, even though the company men spent the entire year at Hudson Bay, fur trading itself occupied less than a month, and nearly all of that trade was concentrated in just one week. In July Indians continued to arrive, but now they brought mainly game rather than furs. July was more important as the month when the post prepared for the ships from London. The furs received from the Indians had to be sorted, counted, and packed into bundles for the casks that the cooper had prepared. It was essential to pack the furs properly; otherwise they could arrive in England damaged and possibly unsaleable. During this month the carpenter made a beacon, which was set on July 20. On July 24

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buoys were placed at five fathoms and three fathoms. Finally, on August 2, the Churchill, captained by George Spurrell, arrived along with a sloop.37 Almost immediately the men began removing the cargo from the ships, and by August 6 both vessels were fully unloaded. Over the next three days the homeward cargo, mainly furs and lumber, was boarded. Also placed on the ship would have been the post records and accounts, as well as other correspondence. On August 12, having spent just ten days at the post, the ships weighed anchor, and the following day set sail for London, bringing to an end the 1740–41 trading year. In addition to describing the daily activities of the men, the post journals make clear the dangers of the subarctic climate. In 1749, when he was fifteen or sixteen, Andrew Graham sailed on the Churchill to work as one of the company servants at the bay. In 1753, while working at Fort Churchill, he was appointed ‘‘Assistant Writer’’ at York Factory, and in September he made the journey overland. The following January, James Isham, chief factor at York, sent Andrew Graham, Humphrey Marten, and four Indians back to Churchill to get his personal belongings and some trade goods. The group returned from Churchill on January 22 and arrived at York Factory on January 31. During the trip, Graham’s feet were severely frostbitten. James Isham’s entry for February 7 brings home the reality of a fur trader’s life: Andrew Graham the surgeon has scarified [bled; at the time bleeding was the treatment for many injuries] again in several places of his feet, being froze in a most dismal manner, and is the opinion of the surgeon that it’s impossible to save his toes, if so he can save his feet but hope for the best. In examining into the affair, I found he complained of a pain in his ankle three days before he came to the Fort. Being asked by his companions how he was, and if his feet was cold, he answered no, and so continued till he came within ten mile of the Fort, where crossing Port Nelson River he froze his feet unknown to him or any of his companions, who asked him as they were entering upon the island if his feet sweat, or if he was a cold. He told them he was quite warm and hearty. Now the case is plain, he being in a manner sotted and numb never felt any pain through the frozen part still increased insensibly. But as I observed on the 2nd instant, for in truth it was out of mere carelessness and neglect; for ordering the surgeon to show me the socks he had on at that

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time, which I would not have walked in such forty miles from the Factory for £10,000. Not but he had good socks when he set out to and from the forts, but burned them in the night in drying. Besides, notwithstanding he burnt his socks, as he had blankets it was very easy to take part to keep his feet warm, so that in the whole affair it is allowed to be mere carelessness and neglect.38 By the end of March, Graham was, according to the not very sympathetic chief factor, ‘‘in a fair way of doing well.’’ Graham fully recovered and went on to become chief factor at York Factory and Fort Churchill. Nearly twenty-five years later, in June of 1773, he described his then current state to the directors in London: ‘‘I am now rendered useless and an object of pity by being afflicted with a grievous disorder, an inguinal hernia, which is become so troublesome since last February that I dread a mortification, the pain at times being acute, and seconded with sickness, headache, and a slight vertigo. This malady is of such a nature that my continuing any longer in your service may be improper, as I may die a miserable death without assistance, and your affairs here wants an active person, and one who will continue a considerable time; often changing your factors confuses the natives.’’39 But Andrew Graham must have been remarkably robust, because the next year he noted that ‘‘by using an elastic truss I have been without complaints since last autumn, and my constitution being sound I hope I shall do very well by being hauled at intervals.’’40 Graham left the company’s employ the following year, 1774, and lived for another forty years in Edinburgh.

Pricing Furs at Hudson’s Bay Company Trading Posts By keeping men year-round at posts along the Hudson Bay coast, the company was able to establish a long-term, stable trading environment for the exchange of European goods for furs. Permanent trading posts at welldefined locations with salaried employees provided the Indians with what might be regarded as a type of general store. As the equivalent of owners of a general store, the company directors set the prices for furs in terms of European goods. They developed a list, called the official standard, that specified a price for each type of fur and each trade good in terms of a unit of account. The unit of account was the made beaver (mb), given that name

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Table 3. Price of Selected Skins and Trade Goods at Fort Albany, 1700 (official standard) Skins

made beaver

Trade Goods

made beaver

Beaver: Whole parchment Half parchment Coat

1 1/2 1

Guns Hatchets Ice chisels Powder ( lb.) Shot (lb.)

7 1/2 1/2 2/3 1/5

Marten Cat Red fox Wolf Bear Moose

1/4 1 1/2 1 2 6

Blankets Kettles

5 1

Brandy Tobacco (lb.) Baize (yd.) Beads (lb.) Cloth (yd.) Combs Duffle (yd.) Flannel (yd.) Needles Shirts Thread (lb.) Vermillion (lb.)

4 1 1 1 1/3 2 1/2 1 1/2 1 1/12 1 2 10

Source: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Post Account Books: Fort Albany, MG 20 B3/d/11.

because a prime beaver pelt was assigned a price of one made beaver.41 A portion of an early Fort Albany price list is shown in Table 3. In 1700, for example, the price of cloth was 2mb per yard, meaning that Indian traders coming to Fort Albany, who traded at the official rate, exchanged two prime beaver pelts for one yard of cloth.42 In the same year a gun sold for seven prime beaver pelts and a blanket for five. Marten had a price of 1/4mb, which meant four marten pelts were equivalent to one beaver pelt. It therefore took four martens to purchase one pound of tobacco, since tobacco had a price of 1mb. These prices established a rate of exchange between furs and trade goods that became central to the conduct of the trade. The official standard also allowed for more transparent accounting on the part of post managers. By valuing all furs and commodities in the same unit of account the directors in London were able to measure managerial performance, since they could compare the value of the

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furs purchased with the cost of the European goods traded. If the made beaver value of the trade goods was the same as the made beaver value of the furs, then the managers were exactly following the official standard.43 Natives were not shown, nor could they have read, the price list; nevertheless, they came to expect continuity in the rate that each type of fur could be exchanged for specific European goods. The directors in London initially expected the post factors to adhere rigidly to the official standard, but it soon became apparent that trade could be improved by permitting them more discretion. Post managers needed to respond to changing market conditions in Europe and to competition from French traders. Increased latitude over pricing also allowed the trading mechanisms of the company to mesh more seamlessly with native trade practices—in particular, it facilitated the exchange of ceremonial gifts at the opening of the trade. Accordingly, toward the end of the seventeenth century, the pricing structure was made more flexible, although all exchange continued to be underpinned by the official standard. Post factors were now permitted and ultimately encouraged to bargain with the Indians over specific furs and European goods. For example, in 1716 the official standard price of a pound of Brazil tobacco at Fort Albany was 1mb. In his annual letter to the head office, Richard Staunton, the chief factor at Fort Albany, reported that during the summer of 1716 he had traded Brazil tobacco at 1/2 pound per made beaver rather than at the official rate.44 Other examples included shot at 31/4 pounds per pelt rather than the official standard of 5 pounds; vermillion, 3/4 ounces per pelt rather than 11/2 ounces; and blankets, seven rather than six beaver pelts per blanket. These comparisons are typical of the period before 1750 in that post factors were exchanging European goods for furs at rates far less than the official standard. With the increase in market power of native traders in the 1730s and 1740s, furs began to be exchanged at higher rates, eventually becoming higher even than the official standard. Allowing changes in the rate of exchange between goods and furs was more than an accounting modification. The purchase of furs below the official standard freed up European goods for other uses and allowed factors to structure the trade more in line with native cultural practices.45 An ‘‘ethic of generosity’’ was an important element of native society, not just in the region of Hudson Bay but throughout the Americas, and a component of this ethic was the practice of gift-giving. The company directors became aware, as had French traders earlier, that if they were to attract

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significant numbers of Indians to its posts, it would be essential to conduct the trade in a way that mirrored this native practice. At first the company tried to accommodate the Indians by ‘‘inadvertently’’ leaving items for native traders to pick up, but by the eighteenth century gift-giving had become formalized in terms of both structure and the company’s accounting procedures.46 Prior to the start of actual trading, Indians and company officials participated in a ceremony intended symbolically to cement their friendship. During this ceremony, gifts would be exchanged. Native traders would offer a few items to the English, but it was the company that gave much more of substance in return.47 The company gifts included many of the same goods that were subsequently exchanged in trade, although the gifts tended to be luxury items like alcohol and cloth. Because of this ceremony, the Indians’ overall return for their pelts included the goods they received as gifts as well as those for which they traded. Recollecting the concentrated nature of the trading season, the men at the post would have been trading and holding gift exchanges almost continuously, activities that were facilitated by the long period of daylight during the northern summer. Post managers had discretion both in terms of gift-giving and during the actual trading process, which meant that the official values of furs traded did not necessarily balance with the value of European goods. From a head office perspective, this latitude made it harder to ensure that managers were working in the best interests of the company because there was no longer an exact correspondence between the made beaver values of the pelts and trade goods. So, at the same time as managers were allowed flexibility over pricing, the head office introduced the accounting concept of the overplus to help assess their performance. This measure was calculated simply as the difference between the value of furs received and the value of trade goods expended, all priced in terms of the official standard. In the summer of 1716, for example, Richard Staunton, governor at Fort Albany, took in 20,583mb in furs. In exchange for these furs, he paid out 13,810mb in European goods. He reported the difference as an overplus of 6,773mb, or nearly 33 percent of the official value of furs received. Just as they kept an accounting of how their trade differed from the official standard, post factors also recorded the value of the goods the Indians received in the gift-giving ceremonies, entered in the accounts as expenses. In 1716 Governor Staunton distributed gifts with an official value of 928mb, which partially offset the overplus. These accounting measures acted as monitoring devices for the

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company’s head office, but they also provide us with a convenient gauge of market conditions. Accounting practices may not seem exciting, but the fact is the accounts kept by the post factors offer a unique window on the conduct of the fur trade. Most important, they allow us to document the competing interests of the European and native traders. On the one hand, each post factor had the incentive to minimize the quantity of European goods that he traded for a given number of furs. The fewer goods he traded, the better he would look in the eyes of the London officials, unless, of course, native traders were driven away. At the same time, Indian traders had an incentive to extract as many European goods as possible for each pelt delivered to the post. More European goods represented a higher price per pelt and a higher implied wage for the time spent hunting, trapping, and traveling. We can use the information on the overplus and expenses in combination with the made beaver values of furs and goods exchanged to generate an index of how the two groups, native traders and post factors, were doing over time. If all trade took place at the made beaver prices listed in the official standard, then our index of the fur price would be 100. The actual price in each year can be compared to that base. Using Fort Albany in 1716 again as the example, the post accounts show that the official value of goods paid out was 13,810mb in goods and 928mb in gifts, while the official made beaver value of the furs was 20,583mb. The value of the goods and gifts expressed as a percentage of the value of the furs is the fur price index. Thus, in 1716, the fur price index was 71.6.48 It follows that those Indians who came to Fort Albany in that year received 28.4 percent less in European goods than they would have received had they traded at the official company rate. It might be tempting to treat an index of less than 100 as a measure of exploitation, but this would not be correct. What must be remembered is that the trade involved bilateral negotiation. Indians were not forced to do business with the Hudson’s Bay Company, nor did they have to accept goods they did not want. And, more important, they could not be compelled to return to the bay posts in subsequent years. It is better to see this index as an indication of the relative distribution of gains. In some years, the company had a greater share of gains from trade, and in others, the native traders did. For example, when French competition increased in a bay post hinterland, Indians had more bargaining power and could force the post managers to increase the fur price. Indeed, as we describe in Chapter 3, greater competition led in the late 1740s to price indexes at the com-

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pany posts that were above 100. The official standard was the lynchpin of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s pricing policy and our window on the nature of exchange between the Indian and company traders. In contrast to an independent French coureur de bois, who had a relatively short time horizon of no more than a few seasons, the Hudson’s Bay Company was a commercial operation that planned to trade for furs over the long term. As we discuss in detail in Chapters 4 and 5, the prices the company paid the Indians affected how many pelts would be brought to its posts in future years, and determined, in essence, the long-run profitability of the trade. But what determined the prices that made up the official standard? The directors and shareholders of this company were established merchants and financiers in London. In deciding what to pay the Indians for furs, they had to take several elements into account. First, they had to consider the expected sale prices of furs in England, especially beaver pelts. Since the company was a late entrant into the fur market, there was already a good deal of information on the price of beaver in London, Amsterdam, and Paris. Some of the major furriers, such as Thomas Glover, were early stockholders in the company and so would have been able to bring their expertise to bear.49 Second, the head office had also to include the cost in England of the trade goods that it would offer in exchange for furs. Third, there were transportation, tariffs, and the costs of administering the trade to consider. Transport costs comprised several components. There was the direct cost of the voyage—namely, the cost of the ship and crew—and the cost of docking in London and loading and unloading the cargo. Export duties on trade goods sent to the bay and import duties assessed on furs brought to England were another cost. The specific tariff had an especially large impact on the lower-quality pelts, so much so that the company could lose money by transporting such furs to London.50 The general letter sent to Governor Beale at Albany in 1711 stated: ‘‘You are ordered not to send home any stage [damaged] or summer beaver either parchment or coate’’ because it was not worth the customs duties paid on them. The general letter to Governor Knight in 1714 and in 1715 included the same order. He was told to ‘‘send us none [damaged beaver] home’’ again, because the price relative to the cost of the pelt, transportation, and import tariff made it a losing proposition.51 Finally, the company had to cover the costs of administering the trade on both sides of the Atlantic. These included the wages and provi-

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Table 4. The Official Standard Price at York Factory and the Price in England of Selected Trade Goods, 1742–43 Quantity Receiveda Beads (lb.) Shot (lb.) Tobacco (lb.) Blankets (per) Duffel (yd.) Flannel (yd.) Combs (per) Guns (per) Hatchets (per) Ice Chisels (per) Knives (per) Twine (skein) Scrapers (per) Brandy (gal.) Total Value Total Value (excluding guns)

501 15,628 1,266 335 301 443 490 443 1,246 280 4,155 252 200 1,204

Price in England (shillings)

Official Standard Price at York Factory (made beaver)a

1.88 0.15 0.42 6.00 1.25 0.83 0.52 22.00 0.84 0.50 0.16 1.08 0.58 3.00 22,424 12,678

2 1/4 1 7 2 3/2 1 14 1 1 1/4 1 1/2 4 24,211 18,009

Based on returns from York Factory. There was no change in the official standard at any of the trading posts after 1720. Quantities received are drawn from the post’s General Charge account, which reports quantities delivered to the post. The figures differ somewhat from the amounts traded to natives because of gifts and carryovers to other years. Using the amounts traded in 1743 produces a different weighting of the shilling and made beaver prices, and would lead to a slightly higher price of furs, 0.74 shillings per made beaver rather than 0.70. Note that the General Charge may have been less sensitive to yearly fluctuations in the trade in individual items. Source: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Post Account Books: York Factory, MG 20 B239/d/ 33. a

sions of the workers at the bay and the cost of the company’s operation in London. We can get some sense of company costs by comparing the prices paid by the Hudson’s Bay Company for trade items in England with the official standard price of those same items at the company’s most important post, York Factory (Table 4). In 1742 the company paid 1.88 shillings per pound for beads in England, while the official price at York Factory was 2mb per pound.52 Blankets, which the company purchased for 6 shillings per blanket, were assigned a price of 7mb. On these and most goods, the per-shilling

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cost in England was the same or less than the made beaver price at the post. Guns were an exception in that they were purchased for 22 shillings but had a price of just 14mb.53 Excluding guns, which had a relatively low made beaver price compared with their cost in London, the per-shilling cost of trade goods averaged roughly 30 percent less than the official made beaver price of those goods. In other words, 0.7 shillings’ worth of trade goods corresponded to one made beaver’s worth of furs. At the time the official standard at York Factory was established, the company was receiving about 5 shillings for prime beaver pelts at its fur auctions in London. This means that Indians who traded at the official standard received 14 percent (that is, 0.7 divided by 5) of the ultimate value of their furs. The remaining 86 percent covered the company’s costs and any profit it received from the trade. At Fort Albany, the official standard was more generous to native traders, averaging about one shilling’s worth of trade goods for one made beaver’s worth of furs. Since a prime beaver pelt was 5 shillings, natives at Fort Albany were receiving 20 percent of the value of their furs in England. While it may appear from these numbers that Indians were receiving far less than the true worth of their furs, these differentials between the price in London and at the bay were, in fact, needed to cover the company’s operations on both sides of the Atlantic as well as the high transport costs. Michael Wagner, using the Grand Journal accounts, has itemized the various costs of the company’s operation.54 In the trading year 1748–49 the approximate breakdown was: trade goods, £4,000; provisions for the post employees, £6,000; shipping expenses, £5,000; servant salaries and expenses, £5,000; duty charges, £3,500; and central administrative expenses, including the salaries of committeemen, £1,500.55 The total cost of £25,000, which can be compared with the company’s operating revenue of £31,000, left the company an operating profit of £6,000.56 The £4,000 value of the trade goods received by the Indians represented, therefore, 13 percent of the company’s costs and operating profit, a share roughly in keeping with our estimates for York Factory and Fort Albany. If the cost issues were not complicated enough, the head office also had to consider the extent of French competition in the region. Trading by the French varied in degree and intensity depending on the year and the location of the particular Hudson Bay Company trading post. From the inception of the French trade, coureurs de bois gradually pushed westward up the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers into the northern reaches of the Great Lakes, following the original routes of Sieur des Groseilliers and Pierre

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Esprit Radisson. By the end of the seventeenth century, the French were trading in the hinterland served by Fort Albany and Moose Factory, and so were competing with the Hudson’s Bay Company. It was not until the late 1730s that the French penetrated the York Factory hinterland. Fort Churchill was so remote that it faced virtually no competition until after the Seven Years’ War. In setting its original price list, the company directors recognized that in hinterlands where French traders were active, they had to make exchange more attractive to the Indians. With coureurs de bois present in the more southeasterly parts of the Hudson Bay hinterland, the James Bay posts of Fort Albany and Moose Factory established lower official standard prices on most trade goods than York Factory and Fort Churchill. For example, the official standard price of cloth was 40 percent less at Fort Albany and Moose Factory and the official price of combs was 50 percent less. But not all prices differed by region. Brandy was 4mb per gallon at all the posts, and blankets had similar prices: 6mb at Fort Albany and Moose Factory, and 7mb at York Factory and Fort Churchill. A list of made beaver prices at York Factory and Fort Albany for 1740 is shown in Table 5. Although the generalization does not hold in every case, it appears that those items with a high value relative to weight were the ones where the price differential was greater. These were also the goods for which the French were most competitive. The Hudson’s Bay posts were supplied directly by ship, whereas the French traders traveled by canoe from Montreal along the Ottawa and French rivers into the Great Lakes, portaging over the heights of land. At the end of the trading season they had to make the return trip to Montreal. The overland route meant higher transport costs for the French, but the differential was not the same across trade goods, being less on the high value-to-weight items. As a consequence, Fort Albany and Moose Factory set lower prices on high value-toweight items than did York Factory. The official price of tobacco, a highvalue good, was 27.5 percent less at Fort Albany than at York Factory, whereas there was no difference in the price of alcohol, which was more costly to transport.57 Transport costs also explain why cloth, another high value-to-weight item, officially sold for 40 percent less at Fort Albany than York Factory, while the differential on blankets, a comparatively low-value good, was only 15 percent.58 Overall, a French trading presence in a region had a marked effect on the official standard. In 1740, for example, native traders at York Factory received European goods with an official value of 27,460mb, meaning that

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Producer Goods Files Fishhooks Flints Guns Gun worms Hatchets Ice chisels Knives Mocotaggans Net lines Powder horns Powder (lb.) Scrapers 218 181 3,360 108

192 3,500 85 762 472 828

308

a

Value made beaver 1 0.071 0.083 14 0.25 1 1 0.25 0.5 1 1 1 0.5

Price mb/unit

York Factory

1 0.05 0.05 11 0.25 0.5 0.5 0.125 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.67 0.5

Fort Albany Price mb/unit Other Luxuries Baize (yd.) Bayonets Beads (lb.) Buttons Cloth (yd.) Combs Duffel (yd.) Egg boxes Flannel (yd.) Gartering (yd.) Handkerchiefs Hats Lace (yd.)

Table 5. Prices of European Trade Goods at York Factory and Fort Albany, 1740

11 150 318 10 3,454 346 14 47 29 244 18 140 123

Valuea made beaver

1.5 1 2 0.25 3.5 1 2 0.33 1.5 0.67 1.5 4 0.67

Price mb/unit

York Factory

1 0.5 1.33 0.083 2 0.5 1.5 0.25 1 0.5 0.5 4 0.5

Fort Albany Price mb/unit

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0.125 7 0.25 1.5 4 1 1.31 1 0.5

1,514 350 4,543 162

0.25 1

105 1,323 94 1,018

1,847 114

4 1 0.95 0.5 0.5

0.083 6 0.25 1

0.2 1

Needles Pistols Rings Sashes Scissors Shirts Shoes (pair) Spoons Stockings Sword blades Trunks Vermillion (lb.) Totalb Total (Fort Albany)c 12 64 5 148 296 27,457 19,553

34 182 106 72 28 226

0.083 7 0.225 1.5 0.5 2.5 3 0.5 2.5 1 4 16

0.083 4 0.167 1.5 0.5 1 1 0.5 1.25 0.5 2 10.67

Note: Trade goods have been combined into four categories: Producer goods, Household goods, Tobacco and alcohol, and Other luxuries as discussed in Chapter 3. a The value of goods received in trade at York Factory in 1740. b This total includes some miscellaneous items. c Based on prices at Fort Albany. Source: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Post Account Books: Fort Albany, MG 20 B3/d/49; York Factory, MG 20 B239/d/30

Shot (lb.) Twine (skein) Household Goods Awls Blankets Fire steels Kettles Tobacco and Alcohol Brandy (gal.) Rundlets Tobacco (lb) Tobacco boxes Tobacco tongs

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at the official standard they would have exchanged 27,460 prime beaver skins or the equivalent in other furs. Conversely, had those same goods been priced at the official standard in use at Fort Albany, only 19,550mb in furs would have been exchanged. Thus, in 1740, Fort Albany and Moose Factory had official prices on European goods that were on average 29 percent less than those at York Factory.59 Why native traders in the York Factory hinterland did not journey to Fort Albany to take advantage of the better prices may seem puzzling, but it must be kept in mind that York Factory was nearly one thousand kilometers up the coast from Fort Albany and was served by a completely different river system.60

The European Market and Fur Prices at the Bay Furs shipped from Hudson Bay were sold at auction in lot sizes controlled by government legislation. In the early eighteenth century, prime beaver pelts were selling for about 5 shillings, but by the 1740s prices had roughly doubled. In 1748 whole parchment beaver sold for between 9 and 11 shillings per pelt, and the average price of half parchment pelts was 4.6 shillings. The company’s official standard at its bay posts of one made beaver for a whole parchment pelt and one-half made beaver for a half parchment pelt thus reflected their relative price at the fur auctions.61 As noted in Chapter 1, the trend in beaver prices in Europe was significantly upward, with average sale prices increasing at 2 percent per year.62 Over the fiftyyear period from 1713 to 1763, the price of beaver pelts nearly tripled.63 How did the rising price of pelts in Europe affect the price received by native traders? One possibility is that higher output prices simply increased company revenues and so dividends for shareholders without benefiting the Indians. Our fur price index reveals instead that successive chief factors responded to the rising price of beaver pelts in London by raising prices at the trading posts as well. In the case of Fort Albany (and Moose Factory), furs were trading at an index price of 68.3 in 1713, and this index stayed in a narrow band of 66 to 72 for the next twenty years, as shown in Figure 6. Then in 1733, due to a combination of a lower overplus and many more gifts, the price index jumped to 81. The index continued to increase in the following decades, reaching a peak of 128 in 1756. Although the price index declined somewhat during the Seven Years’ War, native traders were still receiving close to 100 over the years 1758 to 1763. From 1713 to 1763, the annual trend in fur prices at Fort Albany was 1 percent, implying an

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110 12 100 10 90 8

80

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price of beaver (shillings per pelt)

fur price index (official standard = 100)

The Hudson’s Bay Company

4 60 1713 1718 1723 1728 1733 1738 1743 1748 1753 1758 1763 fur price index (Fort Albany) average price of beaver pelts (London)

Figure 6. Fur Price Index at Fort Albany and Price of Beaver Pelts in London, 1713–63. Data from Table 2 and Appendix A.

increase of 65 percent over the fifty-year period.64 Had the Hudson’s Bay Company been the sole purchaser of furs, the price index would likely have remained in the range of 66 to 72. What led the company to raise the price index was the way higher fur prices in Europe, especially Paris, affected the intensity of French competition. The French had always been a presence in the Fort Albany hinterland, yet the price of furs did not begin to increase until the 1730s. As E. E. Rich puts it, in the 1730s ‘‘the French threat took on a new vigour.’’65 He attributes the change to the impact of ‘‘fresh and vigorous personalities,’’ with La Ve´rendrye being the most important.66 Personalities certainly mattered, but it was the higher European fur prices of the 1720s and 1730s that provided the French with the incentive to move farther into the interior. Because French trade was operated by independent coureurs de bois or voyageurs in contrast to the hierarchical, joint-stock Hudson’s Bay Company, their response to higher European prices was central to what happened on the Hudson Bay coast. Higher prices in Europe allowed individual traders to move farther west because, in effect, these higher prices covered the cost of traveling a greater distance. A coureur de bois or voyageur could

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now compete both with his fellow French traders and the Hudson’s Bay Company by going into new territory. In 1731 La Ve´rendrye set out with fifty men and built a post on Lake of the Woods, near the border of the Fort Albany and York Factory hinterlands, with the aim of increasing French trade in the region by diverting the Indians from Hudson Bay.67 Indian wars prevented the post, Fort St. Charles, from doing much trade the first year, but it soon became active, and by 1733 the Hudson’s Bay Company factors were responding by offering the Indians better terms, as the price index at Fort Albany illustrates (see Figure 6). Later, as the price of furs in Europe rose further, French activity again increased and, as a consequence, Fort Albany offered higher and higher prices to the Indians in the region, a pattern that held through to 1763.68 The prices received by native traders at York Factory display a similar profile. In the York Factory hinterland, the company had a virtual monopoly until 1738, but with the relocation of a French trading post, Fort Maurepas, to the mouth of the Winnipeg River in 1739 and the building of additional posts, the French became increasingly successful at diverting trade. The fur price index at York Factory reflects the emerging French presence (Figure 7). It was only with the settlement laid out in the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 that the Hudson’s Bay Company regained control of trade in the region, and so York Factory began receiving furs later than Fort Albany. Its first few years of operation, 1716 to 1722, were spent reestablishing contacts with the natives. It did so by offering generous terms to those who came to the post. But once the trade was secure and natives began bringing large numbers of furs to the post, the price of furs was reduced sharply. In 1723 native traders received just 69.9 percent of the official standard, and for the next fifteen years the price index hardly deviated from that level, despite much higher fur prices in Europe.69 The return of La Ve´rendrye to the region, and the establishment of Fort Maurepas, Fort Dauphin, and two other posts shortly thereafter, led to a dramatic change in York Factory pricing policy. In 1739 the price index at the post jumped to 75.3. From that year to the end of the period, James Isham and the other chief traders at York Factory acted to protect their share of the fur trade by offering increasingly more generous terms to native traders. In 1754 the index peaked at 115. From 1738 to 1763 fur prices at the York Factory post rose at an annual rate of 1.2 percent, or 35 percent in total.70 The more northerly Fort Churchill was so distant from the Quebec base of French operations that it faced hardly any competition. It was too costly

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fur price index (official standard = 100)

16

110

14 100 12 90 10 80

8

70

6

60

4 1716

1721

1726

1731

1736

1741

1746

1751

1756

price of beaver (shillings per pelt)

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120

1761

fur price index (York Factory) average price of beaver pelts (London)

Figure 7. Fur Price Index at York Factory and the Price of Beaver Pelts in London, 1716–63. Data from Table 2 and Appendix A.

for the French to canoe from Montreal, and it was not until well after the Seven Years’ War that traders from Montreal were operating in the region. Only in the 1780s did Montreal traders begin to organize themselves in a way that allowed them to penetrate the Fort Churchill trading grounds, wintering over west of Lake Superior, with Grand Portage on the western side of the lake becoming the meeting point. Some traders traveled between Montreal and Grand Portage, while others moved between the interior and Grand Portage, collecting supplies and dropping off their furs. But prior to 1763 this specialization had not occurred. Even a doubling of fur prices in Europe was insufficient to induce a French trade in the Fort Churchill hinterland. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s resulting monopoly in the Fort Churchill hinterland is reflected in its pricing of furs (Figure 8). The price index at Fort Churchill exhibits much wider year-to-year fluctuations than at Fort Albany or York Factory due to the smaller size of the hinterland and hence thinner market. More important, the marked upward trend in fur prices seen at Fort Albany and York Factory is absent. Excluding the years 1723 to 1727, when the post was in its infancy and apparently being mis-

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130

18

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16 14

110

12

100

10

90

8

80

6

70

4 1722 1727 1732 1737 1742 1747 1752 1757 1762

price of beaver (shillings per pelt)

fur price index (official standard =100)

66

fur price index (Fort Churchill) average price of beaver pelts (London)

Figure 8. Fur Price Index at Fort Churchill and the Price of Beaver Pelts in London, 1722–63. Data from Table 2 and Appendix A.

managed by chief factor Richard Norton, the annual trend in fur prices at the post was just 0.56 percent, about half the rates seen at the other posts.71 The implication of the more modest trend is that the company factors at Fort Churchill did respond to the buoyant market for furs in Europe by offering somewhat better terms to the Indians over time, but because they felt no pressure from French competitors their response was far less. Increasing the price of furs at its trading posts was the Hudson Bay Company’s primary response to French competition, but it was not the only one. A second approach, used only occasionally, was to send individuals into the interior to persuade the Indians to come to the bay. This policy was adopted in the Fort Albany hinterland in 1743 when, on his own initiative, the governor, Joseph Isbister, set up an inland station, Henley House.72 Henley House was considered not a trading post but rather an interception point to entice Indians down to the bay. The establishment of Henley House was one of the very few instances in the pre-1763 period when representatives were sent inland. The outpost met with mixed success and came to an unfortunate end. In early 1755, conflict with the home guard Cree led to the destruction of Henley House and the death of all the personnel.73

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Five years later, in 1750, York Factory’s governor, James Isham, built Flamborough House up river from the coast. The goal was the same, to intercept Indians who otherwise might have traded with the French. The head office agreed with the governor’s plan: ‘‘As you are of opinion that if a proper Person were sent a great way up into the Country with presents to the Indians it May be a means of drawing down many of the Natives to Trade We approve therof.’’74 But after several years, perhaps because of the ineptitude of its commander, Samuel Skrimshire, it was decided that the outpost was not serving its purpose, and Flamborough House was abandoned.75 Even though the Flamborough House endeavor was not successful, James Isham sent Anthony Henday, a general laborer, to winter with the Archithinue (Blackfoot) Indians, who resided in the plains of Alberta, to persuade them to come to the post to trade. Leaving York Factory on June 26, 1754, Henday finally reached members of the tribe on October 15. He gave them presents and explained through an interpreter that he hoped that some of the young men would travel to York Factory to trade. The chief answered that ‘‘It was far off, & they could not live without Buffalo flesh; and that they could not leave their horses &c and many other obstacles, though all might be got over if they were acquainted with a Canoe; and could eat Fish, which they never do. The Chief further said they never wanted food, as they followed the Buffalo and killed them with the Bows and Arrows.’’76 Anthony Henday did not winter over; rather, he spent just a few days with the group before heading back to York Factory. It was not until a decade after the end of the Seven Years’ War that the Hudson’s Bay Company changed the nature of its trading arrangements and successfully moved inland. By that time, Montreal traders had already entered large areas of the company’s western hinterlands. There is much in the literature on how the Hudson’s Bay Company’s trade was administered. In many ways the descriptions fit economic historians Karl Polanyi and Immanuel Wallerstein’s view of trade in frontier regions.77 They could see the company’s posts as ‘‘ports of trade,’’ which they define as sites offering military security and protection, and facilities of anchorage and storage. At these sites, agreement on the goods to be traded has been pre-established or is traditional. Karl Polanyi claims that ‘‘the port of trade [was] a universal institution of overseas trade preceding the establishment of international markets. It was as a rule situated on coastal or riverain sites, where inlets and extensive lagoons eased transportation by land.’’78 The Hudson’s Bay Company’s trading posts had some of

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the features of his description of ports of trade. The official standard, for example, established rates of exchange between furs and European goods, and there was a general understanding about what furs natives would bring and the sorts of goods the company would provide. However, the system that developed on the shore of Hudson Bay was much more than an unchanging set of relations between an industrializing power and a primitive society. Not all rules were set in Europe, and the official standard allowed for flexible pricing. Moreover, as we will discuss in Chapter 3, even the mix and the total value of the trade goods adjusted to market conditions. The fur trade of Hudson Bay was, in fact, a vibrant set of relations between two equal partners. Native traders as much as the company controlled the terms at which goods and furs were exchanged. Native traders decided how much time to spend on commercial activity, and they controlled the number of pelts that they would offer to the Hudson’s Bay Company and the French coureurs de bois. Such decisions were not imposed from outside. Rather, they framed the conduct of a trade that had broad implications for native economic life.

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We have before mentioned our intention of sending such goods as shall be pleasing to the Indians therefore if at any time they should prove otherwise, let us know and we do hereby order you to send home all such goods or stores which are not useful or want any repair especially the combs with single teeth and such of the larger kettles as will not trade and you shall be supplied with better next year. —London Correspondence to Governor Thomas White of York Factory, 1735

T

he commercial fur trade of the Hudson Bay region that provided raw materials to the hatting and garment industries of Europe depended for its very existence on the ability of European traders to provide goods that were ‘‘pleasing to the Indians.’’ This phrase not only captures how the London directors of the Hudson’s Bay Company saw the trade; ‘‘pleasing to the Indians’’ epitomizes the roles of the respective parties. The city merchants who came to make up the Court of Assistants or board of directors of the company soon learned that the furs and pelts brought to the bayside posts were part of a voluntary exchange, and this realization was central to their conduct of the trade. There are few primary records from the French coureurs de bois and none from the native traders themselves, but we can draw on the wealth of information contained in the correspondence, accounts, and diaries of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s post factors and its London directors to explore the actions of the company and the actions of the natives with whom it traded.

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Natives, whether Cree, Assiniboin, Dakota, or Chipewyan, were the primary agents in the trade. After all, it was they who hunted the animals and then transported the furs and pelts downriver to the posts. These Indians could not be forced to trade, nor could they be coerced into exchanging furs for goods they did not want. The letters from the post governors to London make clear that the European trade goods had to be ‘‘satisfactory.’’ More important, the directors took action on the post letters. For example, in 1715, the directors wrote to James Knight, governor of York Factory: ‘‘You will find a few [gun] stocks of English walnut which is whiter than the French, pray acquaint us whether the Indians like them as well as the others, if they do not return them back again to us and we will make those that delivered them Exchange them for others.’’1 Even in this brief extract, we see English directors worrying about the nature of the gun stocks and how they stood in relation to those being traded by the French. Moreover, the directors had these concerns even though the French did not trade actively in the region served by York Factory until the late 1730s. In this chapter we explore various aspects of the role of Native Americans as consumers of European goods. We examine which goods they purchased and which they rejected, what demands they placed on the Hudson’s Bay Company and how the company responded, and how the presence of French traders affected the relationships among the various parties involved in the trade. We are by no means the first to examine such questions. The literature on Indians as consumers ranges from E. E. Rich’s seminal volumes on the Hudson’s Bay Company to the work of Karl Polanyi, Arthur Ray, and Calvin Martin, among others.2 In his discussion of the trade habits of North American Indians, E. E. Rich posited that natives and Europeans had different motivations, and later Calvin Martin elaborated on the theme that Indians did not behave like Europeans in economic matters.3 Coming out of a tradition that viewed Europeans as the developed center, Karl Polanyi claimed that, because the fur trade was administered by Europeans, the Indian role was largely passive. These arguments were extended in the work of economic historian Abraham Rotstein, who viewed Indians as primarily interested in security and political relations and unresponsive to prices.4 In the mid-1970s, however, Arthur Ray brought Native Americans to center stage by recognizing the leading role they played in the exchange of furs for European goods. At the same time, though, these authors harked back to E. E. Rich’s characterization of one aspect of Indian behavior—namely,

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their reluctance to raise their material living standards as Europeans were doing. Natives, according to this view, simply wanted a given quantity of European goods and were unwilling to change their behavior in order to acquire more. This perception of Indians as ‘‘satisficers’’—that is, as people satisfied with a given income from the commercial fur trade—later entered the work of renowned ethnohistorians Shepard Krech and James Axtell, even though Axtell notes that ‘‘Indians no less than the colonists had a right to acquire new tastes, to form new aesthetic preferences, . . . And they exercised it.’’5 In Chapter 5, we explore one aspect of this question by investigating whether native traders did indeed place a ceiling on their consumption, and later in Chapter 7 we discuss the standard of living achieved by natives during this period. But here we address the issue of native ‘‘agency’’ by examining how natives exercised and exploited the options made available to them by the fur trade.

Trade and the York Factory Region The trading area of the Hudson’s Bay Company described more thoroughly in Chapter 2 stretched from the Eastmain and Upper Ottawa Rivers in the east, and from the northern boundary of the Great Lakes in the south to James Bay; and it extended from the Rocky Mountains in the west to north of the Churchill River on Hudson Bay (see Map 2). York Factory served by far the largest hinterland, nearly one million square kilometers, and this hinterland is the focus of our analysis of how Indians behaved as consumers. The York Factory post stood at the end of the drainage basin of the North and South Saskatchewan rivers, which rise in the Rocky Mountains and drain into Lake Winnipeg (see Map 1). This lake feeds the Nelson and Hayes rivers, which flow to the post. The region from James Bay to the headwaters of the Churchill River was controlled by Algonquian-speaking Cree bands. The lands along the southern and western boundaries were controlled by Cree allies: the Siouan-speaking Assiniboin and the Algonquian-speaking Ojibwa. It was only in the region north of the Churchill River that the Cree faced the rival Athapaskan-speaking Chipewyans. In the decades between the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 and the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, the hinterlands of the Assiniboin, Ojibwa, and western Cree shifted.6 The Ojibwa moved north and west around Lake Superior pushing up toward Lake Winnipeg. As the Ojibwa expanded their territory, the Assiniboin moved into the parkland and grass-

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land areas farther to the south and west, while the western Cree moved into the Lake Athabasca region.7 Despite these changes in territorial boundaries, the Cree remained the dominant group served by the traders at York Factory and by French traders, once they moved into the region. As hunter-gatherers, the Cree, Assiniboin, and Ojibwa who were served by York Factory occupied a wide area, the size of which is easier to estimate than the native population who lived there and could potentially trade with Europeans. One problem with determining the population is uncertainty about the extent and timing of mortality from European-borne disease.8 Without in any way downplaying the devastation visited on native populations farther to the south, it does appear that the climate of the more northerly regions moderated the impact of smallpox, measles, influenza, and the other new diseases. Their impact was less and not felt until later in the eighteenth century.9 The cold winters and lower population density common to the hunter-gatherer societies in the subarctic helped protect its inhabitants. The population density on the northern Canadian shield has been estimated at roughly one person per fifty to seventy square miles.10 Taking the lower figure of one person per fifty square miles as more reflective of conditions in the southern part of the shield, a relatively well-forested area, the implied pre-contact native population in the 400,000-square-mile York Factory hinterland is 8,000. This number is close to the estimates derived from late eighteenth-century accounts written by Europeans who spent time in the Hudson Bay hinterland. Using their reports, which based population on the number of lodges counted at summer gatherings, Arthur Ray gives population ranges for the three main native groups who inhabited the region. He puts the Plains Assiniboin at 2,400 to 3,000, the Ojibwa at roughly 1,400, and the Woodland Cree at 2,200 to 6,800.11 These estimates may be biased downward in that they are drawn from counts made for the most part in the latter part of the eighteenth century and, in the case of the Ojibwa, the early nineteenth century. Taking the mean of these ranges implies a population in the mid-eighteenth century of 8,600 and a density of one person per forty-six square miles, which seem plausible given the environment. Of course, these numbers include children as well as adult men and women. Each summer, as described in the post journals, the natives in the region formed trading parties, varying from a few traders to larger groups, who traveled from their grounds in the interior down to the bay. Decisions

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concerning who would go to the bayside posts were made at the household or community level, but we do not know the exact process. It was not until mid-century that any Europeans, French or English, journeyed into the hinterland, and only a few of them described their voyages and the activities of native peoples in the interior.12 Much of what we know, therefore, is based on what happened at the post, especially during the trading period. As we describe in Chapter 2, that period was hectic. The trading process comprised ceremony and negotiation. Etiquette required that trading be preceded by an elaborate gift-exchange ceremony between natives and their trading captain on one side and the governor and post factors on the other. Exchanges formally began with the discharge of guns by the Indians on their arrival at the post, which was met by a response from the fort cannons and the flying of the company flag. Then the two sides would meet outside the post and exchange gifts. In one ceremony the governor and factors presented the trading captain with a suit of clothes, stockings, shoes, a sash, handkerchief, and a highly decorated hat, and the whole group was given bread, prunes, tobacco, and brandy.13 Typically in return, the Indians would present the governor with some furs and pelts. There would also be ceremonial drinking and pipe smoking. Later, during the actual trading of furs for European goods, the trading captain was allowed in the warehouse, but all others traded through an opening or window.14 The several weeks when the trade was taking place were marked by a flurry of activity. And soon after the Indian traders left, there was much to do to prepare for the arrival of the ship from London, with the furs having to be baled and documented as to number and quality. In the general letter to Fort Albany of 1711 the factors were told to ‘‘pack thick skins 45 to 50 per bundle and lighter ones 55 to 60 per bundle,’’ and the next year, the factors were told to ‘‘put 80 whole parchment beaver in a bundle and put as many of the halfe parchment and cub in each bundle as will make them about the same bigness as the whole parchment is.’’15 Ten years later the head office was sending similar instructions to the governor at York Factory. He was told that he had trimmed too much off the coat and parchment and not to do this any more. He too was to pack parchment beaver at 80 skins to a bundle and half parchment at 160 skins to a bundle, and to ‘‘put no single skins in casks of coat beaver.’’16 Although the instructions were clear, it is not surprising given the time constraint that the occasional error crept in. In the general letter of 1739, the directors informed Gover-

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nor Bird at Fort Albany of the following mistakes in the invoices: ‘‘Cask No. 2 90 martins more than on the invoice; cask 7, 70 otters more; cask 19, 1 cat more and 1 woodchuck less; cask 26 1 beaver coat being 2 cub and 1 parchment.’’17 In the accounts, the chief factor or governor also had to specify the trade goods that were expended to purchase the furs, and those goods that had been given in the gift ceremonies. He then calculated his overplus resulting from trading away from the official standard, documented which goods remained in the posts as inventory and which goods were needed by the post for the following year’s trade, and as provisions for the men.18 Having little appreciation of the hectic pace of the short trading period, the directors had initially ordered the post factors to report which precise commodities were exchanged for which furs. The factors, however, pointed out that this was not possible given the volume of trade being conducted and the limited time available. In his letter of 1738, the governor wrote: ‘‘And Whereas . . . your honours do direct that the warehouse-keeper do keep a warehouse book and enter therein every particular parcel of goods or skins that are traded with the Indians, and also the quantity and sorts of goods that is traded for such skins etc. which we should have gladly complied to, but your honours must know that . . . those people are obliged to get their trade and be gone as soon as possible they can in order to provide food for themselves . . . it is impractical for the warehouse-keeper to take an account of the goods that is traded for each sort of furs etc. in the manner your honours has directed.’’19 The trade at the posts was based on a formal, organized structure; still, Hudson’s Bay Company officials both at the post level and in London could not control all aspects of the trade, including the extent of future trade volumes. The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht provided more security by alleviating the French military threat, but there remained the serious possibility of tribal warfare as a direct danger both to the men at the posts and to the viability of the trade. There was a history of conflict between the Cree and Assiniboin on one side and the Chipewyan on the other. In the annual letter to York Factory of 1721, the company directors expressed their concern that violence among native groups was affecting the trade. To a question by the post factors on how they should proceed, the directors responded: ‘‘Whereas you desire to know our opinions as to the Indians about York Factory killing the northern Indians whether you should stop trading with them for one year, which you then would prevent them, we defer that

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matter to your discretion, but would have you be very cautious and not exasperate too much.’’20 Whether exasperation would lead merely to a decline in trade with the Cree or to something deadly, a wariness about relations between post factors and the Indians is evident in the correspondence of the post governors and the head office. In 1727 the directors reiterated the point that treating the natives well was in the interest of the company: ‘‘[You] will carefully observe our former instructions to treat the Natives very civilly.’’21 Tribal conflict could reduce the size of the trade. It also had the potential of spilling over into violence at the posts, though with the exception of the Henley House incident in 1755 described in Chapter 2, this did not happen. Even the Henley House killings had more to do with passion than war.22 The issue of conflict aside, the very existence of the posts depended on native traders choosing to travel hundreds of miles to Hudson Bay with their furs. They would do so year after year only if they were satisfied with the selection of European goods the English offered. Dissatisfied traders could choose not to return, and, in regions with a French presence, they could trade with the competition. Unlike patterns seen farther east, there were no strategic alliances between native and European groups. Rather, when they had the choice, the Cree and Assiniboin sent some traders to the French and some to the English. Thus the long-term profitability of the trade to the Hudson’s Bay Company depended on its having goods that the natives would buy, and it depended on their treating the Indians with civility. In the company’s conduct of the trade and in its correspondence, these were major themes, which we now explore.

The Language of the Trade If the London directors’ stated concern about civility was to be more than window dressing, how did the company and its managers manifest it? A striking feature of the long-distance trades of the eighteenth century, which has received little comment, is the extent to which buyers and sellers had different cultural, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds. For commerce to be successful, they had to overcome these differences. One barrier was language. In some circumstances, such as typified by the informal trade of the sixteenth century between natives and fishermen in the Gaspe´, gestures or a basic pidgin were sufficient for barter. These brief, one-off exchanges were conducted with very little use of language. But, given the complex nature

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of the Hudson’s Bay Company and French trades, in which many different European goods were being purchased with a variety of pelts, verbal communication was vital between traders, who initially would have spoken only early modern English, and Native Americans, most of whom spoke Algonquian Cree.23 Over time, Cree emerged as the dominant language of the trade and was used by both English and French traders. The advantage to the Hudson’s Bay Company of having their traders learn Cree was that, as a jointstock company, it had entered the region with the intention of being a long-run player. The company was a legal entity separate from its individual governors and even the members of its board of directors. Its posts were staffed by factors, tradesmen, and laborers, who were contracted to spend three to five years there, although many spent a large part of their working lives at the bay posts. In fact, the specific natives who came to trade each year could change more often than the personnel who served at the posts. Decisions concerning the language of the trade, which were made early in the company’s operation, highlight the way the company viewed itself in relation to its customers. The records from the first few decades, although incomplete, reveal much about the company’s initial recruitment strategy. In the early years, the company had a two-pronged approach. It hired as factors men who had the necessary mercantile skills to run the trade and keep the books. At the same time the London directors indentured, as apprentices, boys, many from Christ’s Hospital in London, a charitable school for students from poor backgrounds. These boys, educated in writing and arithmetic, would normally have been destined for the mercantile community in England. The directors hoped that they would grow in the trade and eventually be promoted to the upper ranks of the company. Notable in a letter of 1689 from the directors to the factors at Hudson Bay, describing these new apprentices, is their recognition that it was important for the apprentices to learn the language of the natives: ‘‘They all write faire hands and Cast accompts, and being young will easily attaine the Lingua and bee trained up in our service and if you think such Ladds may be useful in a few years to send up with the Indians wee have thoughts yearely or every other year to take the like or a greater number from the said Hospital.’’24 This letter, written during a time of instability in the Hudson Bay region, notes the need for traders who could communicate effectively with the target popula-

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tion. Thus these fourteen-year-olds would learn not only the trade and accounting procedures but also the Cree tongue. Two decades later, in a letter to Deputy Governor Henry Kelsey, the directors made a similar point: ‘‘You do well to educate the men in Literature but especially in the Language that in time wee may send them to travel.’’25 Apprenticed in 1684 as one of the ‘‘Blue Coat Boys,’’ as the students from Christ’s Hospital were known, Henry Kelsey would go on to become governor at York Factory and at Fort Churchill. He was a distinguished explorer and trader, and according to E. E. Rich, the loyalty of the Cree to the Hudson’s Bay Company during the early part of the eighteenth century had much to do with Kelsey’s appreciation of native culture and language. Henry Kelsey was in fact instrumental in organizing and improving the company’s ability to communicate across the linguistic divide. By 1700 not only had he mastered Cree, but he had also prepared a Cree dictionary, which he sent back to London. This dictionary, written for traders, provided company servants with a phonetic English/Cree translation based on a Latin alphabet. The company printed multiple copies of Kelsey’s dictionary and distributed them to all its posts, where they were used in the teaching of Cree.26 The head office wrote in 1710: ‘‘wee have sent you your dictionary Printed that you may the better Instruct the young ladds with you, in the Indian Language.’’27 Company officials in London thought that knowing Cree would benefit mainly those who traveled in the interior, but Kelsey regarded language as more important to the trading process itself.28 Indeed, during the 1720s, when there was an almost complete lack of interest in exploration on the company’s part, all traders were required to learn Cree. In the 1740s, when the French were moving west of Lake Superior, the company added an interior post in the York Factory hinterland: Flamborough House, built in 1749. The master, Samuel Skrimshire, has been described as ‘‘an unsteady man, lazy and unfit for forwarding any business, . . . but . . . he was competent in the Cree tongue.’’29 The French traders too learned Cree. Their choice of route to the Rockies, which went through Saskatchewan rather than Missouri, was based not just on the relative ease of canoe travel but also on the ability of the voyageurs to communicate with the natives in Cree on the entire route.30 Throughout the eighteenth century, the company appreciated the importance of native language to the trade. James Isham, governor of York Factory from 1737 to 1741 and at Fort Churchill from 1741 to 1745, wrote

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extensively on the region’s inhabitants, plants, and wildlife and produced a compendium of dialogue suitable for a variety of purposes. His Observations on Hudsons Bay, 1743 includes a section entitled ‘‘Observations on the Trader & a Gang of Indians,’’ which was likely used for training purposes.31 In the chart below, E is the company trader, and B and F are two native traders. B

I will trade a Long gun small and handy with a Red gun case

parskasigan wekawtaway Cawkenaworsquck na  howock misquock u’ Spikanawgan

E

here is a very good gunn itt will not freese in the winter

mawkane methoshasit parskasigan nema cutta  miskowatin pepunnoack

F

how many Long Beads for a Beaver

tantarto norto menuck piuc aurtie

E

ten

metartut

F

that’s hard I will not trade them

addaman nema weder Kokawtaway

Andrew Graham, who as described in Chapter 2 almost lost his feet to frostbite early in his career, followed James Isham as governor of Fort Churchill. To a greater extent even than Isham, Graham wrote detailed descriptions of the region’s plant and animal life. His Observations on Hudson’s Bay was received as an important book within the naturalist community in England.32 Graham also included in Observations dictionaries of the tribal languages spoken in the region, and as was true of earlier dictionaries and phrase books, he too wrote phonetically for European use. Despite many attempts, a Latin-based alphabet proved unsuitable for written Cree. It was not until the 1840s that a proper Cree syllabary was created. James Evans, a Wesleyan missionary at Norway House just north of Lake Winnipeg, frustrated from working with a Latin base, created a syllabary for Ojibwa partly based on Pitman shorthand. This syllabary was quickly adopted and is still in use today. An example of Cree text is shown in Figure 9. Evans has been called ‘‘the man who made birchbark talk.’’33

The European Goods Received by Native Traders, 1716–70 The Cree, Assiniboin, Dakota, and Ojibwa traders who made the journey down the Nelson or Hayes River to York Factory came to buy European goods. Trade provided natives with access to new technologies. Iron pots,

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Figure 9. Sample of a Cree Language Text. This is the start of the Book of Genesis from The Holy Bible. The Old Testament and New Testament in plain Cree. London: British and Foreign Bible Society, 1908.

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awls, blankets, twine, and knives were all superior to the stone, bone, and wood implements that they replaced. What Kathryn Braund has noted in the context of a more southerly trade held equally in the Hudson Bay region. The new tools improved the natives’ ability to complete traditional tasks as ‘‘metal replaced stone, bone, and shell.’’34 Of course, not all European technologies were superior to native practice. The bow and arrow, for example, continued to be used for some hunting many decades after natives had access to firearms. In addition to making new technologies available, the commercial trade allowed Indian traders access to a wide variety of consumer goods. Some items, such as kettles and blankets, came in different sizes and weights, while beads came in a wide range of colors and shapes. Even ignoring size variations, native traders could typically select from among sixty to seventy different goods.35 This variety helped attract natives to the posts. The directors, in their letter of May 26, 1708, told Captain Fullartine, governor of Fort Albany, that once he had arrived in ‘‘ye country to send word amongst the natives, to give them notice that you are there with a considerable cargoe of all sorts of goods for theire supply, and to encourage them to come with their commodities as much as you can to trade with you.’’36 These instructions were given during a time of war with France, when who would occupy the posts was never clear from year to year. Nevertheless, the directors were determined that their potential customers know the company was open for business and well stocked. The beauty of the account books, which the post factors maintained for the head office in London, is that they report what was traded in every year at all the Hudson’s Bay Company posts.37 Moreover, because the account books report not just how many beads or kettles or awls were purchased but also their value in made beaver, we can approximate how much was spent on these different types of goods. Using the York Factory account books, we have tabulated for each year all the goods received by native traders over the period 1716 to 1770. Table 6 shows the trade by five-year intervals. The first column gives the official standard price of each commodity denominated in made beaver, and subsequent columns report the made beaver value of each commodity obtained in trade. The corresponding values of the goods received as part of the ceremonial gift exchange are given in Table 7. Table 6 shows, for example, that in 1720, a file had a price of 1mb and the value of files received in trade was 190mb. Thus native traders exchanged enough furs to acquire 190 files. Turning to another

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Producer goods Files Fishhooks Flints Guns Gun worms Gatchets Ice chisels Knives Mocotaggans Net lines Powder horns Powder (lb.) Scrapers Shot (lb.) Twine (skein) Gunsb Other Total Household Goods Awls Blankets Fire steels Kettles Total 0.125 7 0.25 1.5

1 0.071 0.083 14 0.25 1 1 0.25 0.5 1 1 1 0.5 0.25 1

mb/ unita

126 280 124 808 1,338

150 3,770 38 712 547 688 46 23 138 3,048 89 1,423 51 8,566 2,155 10,721

1716 240

1725

115 581 160 214 1,069

169 791 94 1,360 2,414

304 460 1,820 3,906 56 60 1,500 763 224 813 622 1,121 68 22 49 185 126 229 2,057 4,050 90 113 840 1,812 22 57 5,204 10,517 2,765 3,314 7,968 13,831

190

1720

167 1,659 164 1,482 3,472

329 11 256 4,410 70 854 846 843 4 245 440 4,796 150 2,356 139 12,327 3,421 15,748

1730

192 3,500 85 762 472 828

308

1740

276 2,730 61 853 549 649

484

1745

120 749 106 1,162 2,137

105 1,323 94 1,018 2,540

67 1,729 150 910 2,856

200 218 221 59 181 178 2,661 3,360 3,282 108 108 144 1,284 1,847 1,281 57 114 90 6,086 9,165 7,808 2,327 2,810 2,990 8,413 11,974 10,798

185 1,876 22 657 407 684

214

1735

Table 6. Goods Received in Trade at York Factory, 1716–1770 (made beaver)

25 791 31 853 1,700

80 71 1,703 26 605 45 3,801 1,359 5,160

166 30 294 1,106 23 341 396 275

1750

58 938 39 343 1,378

158 17 1,689 26 761 62 4,234 1,549 5,783

92 1,638 38 508 196 356

243

1755

876 1,993

53 1,064

360 26 208 2,380 23 897 253 586 4 169 66 4,080 18 578 66 7,334 2,378 9,712

1760

32 259 26 581 898

174 79 1,326 8 782 18 3,572 1,976 5,548

261 9 66 1,288 31 732 242 532

1765

615 1,384

13 756

163 117 2,114 11 976 26 5,253 1,843 7,096

155 1,876 15 662 169 485

327

1770

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Tobacco and alcohol Brandy (gal.) Rundlets Tobacco (lb.) Tobacco boxes Tobacco tongs Water, strong (gal.) Alcoholc Tobaccod Total Other Luxuries Baize (yd.) Bayonets Beads (lb.) Buttons Cloth (yd.) Combs Duffel (yd.) Egg boxes Flannel (yd.) Gartering (yd.) Glasses, burning Handkerchiefs Hats Hawkbells (pair) Lace (yd.) Looking glasses Needles Pistols

Table 6. (Continued)

1.5 1 2 0.25 3.5 1 2 0.33 1.5 0.67 0.5 1.5 4 0.083 0.67 1 0.083 7

4 1 2 1 0.5 4

mb/ unita

39 87 46

24 24

99 88 8

593 135 6

513 2 1,869 157 184 82 24 36

42

499 2,724 3,223

0 2,418 2,418 33 173 629

2,704 1 19

499

1720

2,369 41 8

1716

126 41 7

136 75

95 4

3 121 514 15 2,856 390 38 8

727 44 4,077 167 36 60 831 4,280 5,111

1725

132 40 98

264 3 56 40 78

303 337 9 2,984 445 155 32

1,784 4,910 6,694

1,568 216 4,679 156 75

1730

141 42 147

214 386 7 1,677 269 32 36 9 238 4 18 152 40

1,248 267 3,944 177 2 94 1,609 4,123 5,732

1735

11 150 318 10 3,454 346 14 47 29 244 16 18 140 42 123 108 34 182

132 1,996 4,705 6,701

1,514 350 4,543 162

1740

9 64 5

18 296 17 27 168 33 77

59 2

106 134 2 1,510 150 80 28 76 58

102 1,993 2,679 4,672

1,554 337 2,625 54

1750

190 196 23 3,053 328 70 43 28 104

167 3,112 6,184 9,296

2,391 554 5,991 193

1745

61 20 28

14 188 322 9 2,507 158 67 29 31 167 13 26 52 10

300 2,983 3,868 6,851

2,190 493 3,674 194

1755

82 85 21

28

12

16 452 565 13 2,572 213 104 17 50

196 2,937 4,326 7,262

2,296 445 4,234 92

1760

80 38 133 98 25 49

500 272 1 1,845 190 114 21 27 117

1,461 451 3,408 42 1 40 1,952 3,451 5,403

1765

116 33 7

4 31

488 412 5 3,002 258 138 22 212 166 4

99 2,680 4,092 6,772

1,847 734 4,036 56

1770

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4 16 .5-.67

.12-.33 1.5 0.5 2.5 3 0.5 2.5 1

3,599

2,048

2 60 4 2

1 36 4 3 571 26 5,919

447 28 5,079

23 72

67 66 3 142

37

4,321

10 46 338 24

80

91 48 25 244 3 12 64 5 53 148 296 59 64 6,418

106 72 28 226

28 6 65 68 232 140 50 5,577

108 48 6 156

32 2,737

b

a

11 152 118

4

29 5 18 82 4 2 26 1 22 20 124 2 10 4,142

121 23 16 76 12 11 15 2 160 50 2 40 4,641

73 2 18 30 2 24 10 1 56 280 138 12 4,164

10 66

54

20 5,654

26 8 3 88 288

96 16 10 190 12

64.9 8.1 14.6 12.4

50.2 6.7 20.3 22.7

52.3 9.1 19.3 19.2

49.5 10.9 21.0 18.6

40.8 10.4 27.8 21.0

43.3 9.2 24.2 23.2

37.9 10.0 32.6 19.5

36.2 11.9 32.7 19.2

31.9 7.6 37.7 22.8

41.1 8.4 30.8 19.7

34.6 5.6 33.7 26.0

33.9 6.6 32.4 27.0

10,721 7,968 13,831 15,748 8,413 11,974 10,798 5,160 5,783 9,712 5,548 7,096 1,338 1,069 2,414 3,472 2,137 2,540 2,856 1,700 1,378 1,993 898 1,384 2,418 3,223 5,111 6,694 5,732 6,701 9,296 4,672 6,851 7,262 5,403 6,772 2,048 3,599 5,079 5,919 4,321 6,418 5,577 2,737 4,142 4,641 4,164 5,654 16,524 15,858 26,435 31,834 20,603 27,633 28,527 14,269 18,153 23,609 16,013 20,905

400

15 5 48

8 2

196

7 21

26 4

22

Made beaver per unit. Guns: flints, guns, gun worms, powder horns, powder, shot. c Alcohol: brandy, rundlets (barrels), strong water. d Tobacco: tobacco, tobacco boxes, tobacco tongs. e Worsted binding and worsted knit. f Brass collars, earrings, feathers, medals, pumps, and razors. Source: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Post Account Books: York Factory, 1716–70 MG20 B239/d/7–60.

Shares (percentages) Producer Goods Household Goods Alcohol and Tobacco Other Luxuries

Producer Goods Household Goods Alcohol and Tobacco Other Luxuries Grand Total

Rings (three kinds) Sashes Scissors Shirts Shoes (pair) Spoons Stockings Sword blades Thimbles, thread Trunks Vermillion (lb.) Worsted (yd.)e Miscellaneousf Total

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Producer goods (selected items) Flints Guns Hatchets Knives Powder Shot Household goods Alcohol Tobacco Other luxuries (selected items) Baize Beads Cloth Duffel Gartering Hats 4 24

14 16 98

20 8 81

31 189 53 8

55 28 15 16 464 443 27 290 111

1730

30 28 29 9 300 318 21 254 120

1725

115 126 40 25 783 842 94 518 409

1720

18 20

14 12 93

11 20 319 246 7 296 108

31

1735

Table 7. Goods Received as Expenses at York Factory, 1720–1770 (made beaver)

20 28

12 24 123

51 70 11 28 439 379 11 328 198

1740

27 32

30 71 485

80 140 27 56 730 592 187 812 475

1745

133 48

18 8 227

15 45 724 532 57 680 304

64

1750

225 71 948 27 77 136

66 462 5 37 940 678 240 1,918 514

1760

398 24 1,067 164 108 320

560 28 100 840 519 495 2,884 1,128

1770

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743 21 374 212 1,350 55.0 1.6 27.7 15.7

1,985 94 927 233 3,238 61.3 2.9 28.6 7.2

17

56.4 1.4 21.1 21.1

1,072 27 401 401 1,900

21 133

4

60 3 6

48.0 0.5 28.8 22.8

675 7 404 320 1,406

4 14 24

87 5 5 4

51.3 0.6 26.0 22.2

1,037 11 526 449 2,024

16 32

100 8 12 8

a

20 109

80 4 12

40.9 4.5 30.9 23.7

1,705 187 1,287 986 4,165

The totals are for all goods, not just those listed. Source: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Post Account Books: York Factory, 1716–70, MG20 B239/d/7–60.

Lace Rings Sashes Shirts Stockings Trunks Vermillion Worsted binding Totalsa Producer Goods Household Goods Alcohol and Tobacco Other Luxuries Grand Total Shares (percentages) Producer Goods Household Goods Alcohol & Tobacco Other Luxuries 44.4 1.7 29.0 24.9

1,505 57 984 846 3,392

46

24

6

270

29.9 3.1 31.8 35.2

2,289 240 2,432 2,696 7,657

64 64

558 67 45 60 60

22.7 4.7 38.3 34.3

2,377 495 4,012 3,599 10,483

605 72 68 108 126 104 32

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example, duffel had a price of 2mb per yard and 184mb worth of duffel was purchased, which means Indians received 92 yards of duffel.38 Of course, Indians traded for much more than files and duffel. As reported in the last row of Table 6, a total of 15,858mb worth of goods was purchased in 1720. Ten years later, the trade at York Factory was nearly double that amount, or 31,834mb. Rather than simply list all the commodities purchased by native traders alphabetically, which is roughly how they appear in the post account books, we have organized the goods into a few broad categories: producer goods, household goods, alcohol and tobacco, and other luxuries. As is true of any classification procedure, these groupings are arbitrary to some degree, but they do allow us to see the consumption patterns more clearly than would an alphabetical listing. Although there is the potential for overlap, shifting goods to other categories in plausible ways would not affect the overall implications of the trade patterns over this period of more than fifty years. We broadly define producer goods as those commodities that helped native groups acquire subsistence goods, mainly food. Most of the items in this category were metal products. These include files, fish hooks, ice chisels, hatchets, scrapers, and twine, but the category was dominated by guns and related supplies, including flints, gun worms, shot, and powder. Guns and related goods accounted for 70 to 80 percent of the expenditure on producer goods. Guns were the highest-priced item, requiring fourteen prime beaver pelts when traded at the official standard. In 1720, 130 guns were purchased in trade and double that number in 1730. But, despite the importance of guns, they were not used to hunt beaver. No felter, hatter, or furrier wanted a pelt full of shot holes. During the winter when most beaver were hunted, twine and ice chisels were of more use: twine for traps that were set under water, and ice chisels to break open the beaver lodges. Producer goods were an important part of the overall trade. In the years leading up to 1720, they accounted for more than 60 percent of the total value of commodities purchased. However, during the next two decades, the share of producer goods in total trade fell to between 40 and 50 percent. Then, beginning in the early 1740s through to 1770, the share fell further to just 30 percent of native expenditure (Figure 10).39 This decline was one of several significant changes in native purchasing patterns. The household goods category encompasses other goods associated with native subsistence. These were goods used in food preparation and for warmth: kettles and blankets dominated, while awls and fire steels were

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producer goods (percent)

60

16

50 12

40 30

8

20 4 10

household goods (percent)

20

70

0

0 1716 1721 1726 1731 1736 1741 1746 1751 1756 1761 1766 producer goods

household goods

Figure 10. Share of Native Expenditure on Producer and Household Goods: York Factory, 1716–70. Data from Tables 6 and 7.

minor items. One might plausibly put some producer goods in this category. Knives, for example, could be used in food preparation and thus arguably belong in the household category. But knives were not a major trade good, so shifting knives to the household category would not change our main findings. Blankets were certainly a household good and at 7mb per blanket were second only to guns in price. In 1720, 83 blankets with an official value of 581mb were acquired. Ten years later 237 blankets were purchased (official value of 1,659mb), and, in 1745, natives traded for 247 blankets, which had an official value of 1,729mb. Despite the absolute increase after 1720, the share of total expenditure on household goods fell over the period, in this case from about 10 percent to just over 5 percent (see Figure 10). Since the share of native expenditure on both producer and household goods declined, the share of expenditure on the remaining category, luxury goods, must have increased. We have defined everything not in the producer or household category as a luxury item and have subdivided these into three broad product groups: tobacco and related goods; alcohol and related goods; and other luxuries, including beads, cloth, lace, jewelry, and vermillion, among many others. Despite the lack of attention to tobacco in much of the literature, it was the most important luxury good for most of

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percent

20 15 10 5 0 1716

1721

1726

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Alcohol

1746

1751

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1766

Tobacco

Figure 11. Share of Native Expenditure on Alcohol and Tobacco: York Factory, 1716–70. Data from Tables 6 and 7.

the period. Tobacco had an official price of 2mb per pound; and in 1720, traders purchased 1,352 pounds of tobacco with an official value of 2,704mb, the equivalent of 2,704 prime beaver pelts. Ten years later the quantity of tobacco purchased had increased to 2,340 pounds, and in 1745 it was 2,996 pounds. Although there were several large year-to-year fluctuations, for the most part consumption of tobacco as a share of total expenditure remained in the 15 to 20 percent range (Figure 11). The Hudson’s Bay Company shipped two types of tobacco to their posts: Brazilian roll and Virginia roll.40 The Brazilian roll tobacco was of decidedly higher quality. It was produced in South America and shipped to Lisbon. In Lisbon, the company purchased the tobacco through agents who sent it on to London, where it was re-exported on company ships for the final journey to the bay. This single trade item was thus part of a transoceanic transport network that typified global trade in the eighteenth century. The quality of the tobacco offered to the natives was of special concern to the directors. In 1737 they wrote to a supplier stating that ‘‘the last [Brazil] tobacco proved very good and therefore desire this year may be as near that quality and size as you can but not larger twist nor any inferior quality.’’41 In 1738, however, the tobacco sent to the bay was of larger twist and hence inferior, and as a consequence the directors asked that twenty rolls of the previous year’s quality be sent ‘‘in a good English ship.’’42 Obtaining Brazil-

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ian tobacco was sometimes a problem since the long delivery chain could be broken, usually due to war or the loss of a ship in bad weather. In the annual letter of 1730 to Anthony Beale, governor of Fort Churchill from 1727 to 1731, the head office wrote that it had sent everything that he had asked for ‘‘except Brazil tobacco, having not this year been able to procure so much as one roll, therefore have sent a greater quantity of English [Virginia] roll.’’43 Natives, however, regarded this product as inferior.44 The distinction between the Brazil and Virginia roll tobacco was made explicit in the instructions sent out to post factors. In the annual letter of 1715 to James Knight, governor of York Factory, the directors included a price list of those goods that were sold to workers at the post. The letter continued with the directive not to sell Brazil tobacco to company employees unless ‘‘any is so damaged that the Indians wont buy [it].’’45 The general letter sent to Fort Churchill in 1738 also makes clear how important Brazil tobacco was to the trade: ‘‘Wee note that you write about your trade but must observe to you that some of the Indians that usually traded at York Fort being informed of the loss of the ship and the scarcity of brazil tobacco there, came and traded with you which was the main occasion of your increase of trade.’’46 In the list of supplies for Henday’s journey inland in 1754, the York Factory account book says that he had 28lb ‘‘Tobacco VirG Lt’’ and 8lb English Roll for his own use, and 26.5lb ‘‘tobacco Brzl’’ and 16lb of (English) Roll ‘‘to present to foreign Indians &ca.’’47 There is a revealing comment on one aspect of tobacco use in Henday’s journal. On July 5, he wrote: ‘‘Wind W.S.W and moderate weather; Took my departure from fortunate Fall, and paddled 25 Miles WBS &WSW. passed much Shoal water, and twenty-four Islands: there is not a foot of water for a mile. We are greatly fatigued with carrying and hauling the Canoes, and not very well fed but the Natives are continually Smoking, which I already experience Allays hunger.’’48 In contrast to purchases of tobacco, which remained relatively constant after 1725, consumption of alcohol increased markedly, albeit from a very low level. In fact, in the early years of the trade, there were no purchases of alcohol, and even in 1730 alcohol was still a relatively minor item with a share of about 5 percent. However, with the rise in fur prices beginning in the mid-1730s, alcohol expenditures increased, and from 1750 to the end of the period, alcohol equaled or surpassed tobacco in value.49 Nonetheless, as late as the 1740s the natives spent more than twice as much on tobacco

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than on alcohol. The consumption of both tobacco and alcohol mirrored a phenomenon noted by Carole Shammas in her work on European consumption patterns: ‘‘Probably the most striking development in consumer buying during the early modern period was the mass adoption by the English and the colonials of certain non-European groceries,’’ among them tobacco, tea, sugar, and rum.50 The literature on the more southerly trade intimates that vast quantities of alcohol were traded, and even suggests that some natives were addicted to the point of trading furs only for alcohol. Peter Mancall perceptively documents a long history of the destructive effect of alcohol on natives. As he characterizes it, alcohol in the more southerly trade was a ‘‘deadly medicine,’’ often destroying individuals as well as the native social fabric.51 Daniel Usner writes that the ‘‘English government in Pensacola attempted to restrict Indian traders to fifteen gallons every three months, which was considered a necessary amount for their purchase of food from Indian villagers,’’ while in 1772 several Choctaw chiefs complained that rum ‘‘pours in upon our nation like a great Sea from Mobille and from all the Plantations and Settlements round about.’’52 Kathryn Braund and James Axtell also comment on the harm done by alcohol.53 In the absence of more extensive data on the more southerly trade, it is difficult to compare the role of alcohol across regions. Certainly, the accounts and letters of the Hudson’s Bay Company do not address the issue of alcohol consumption in the more southerly trades. They do, however, provide perspective on the place of alcohol in the Hudson Bay hinterland. These records, both qualitative and quantitative, allow us to examine in detail the role of alcohol in the lives of the men working at the company posts and in the lives of the natives who lived in the region. Alcohol, whether brandy, rum, or gin (strong water), was included in the earliest lists of trade goods shipped to the bay, but the London directors seem to have been uncomfortable with the potential consequences.54 The letters from London make clear that the company directors abhorred drunkenness. The general letter of 1714 to the bay posts which the governors were ordered to read to the men gave specific rules of conduct: ‘‘(a) all persons to attend prayers, (b) to live lovingly with one another not to swear or quarrel but to live peacable without drunkenness or Profaneness, (c) no man to meddle, trade or affront any of the Indians, not to concern themselves with women.’’55 Given the living environment at York Factory with its long subarctic winter and limited opportunities for entertainment, it is

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hardly surprising that the men did not fully comply with these rules. In 1727 the head office wrote to Governor Macklish stating that ‘‘whereas, we have reason to believe that the excessive drink brandy hath been the cause of the death of some of our servants to prevent which for the future, we do hereby order you to punish all persons . . . resolved to remove all such persons from our service.’’56 Despite this order, drinking continued to be seen as a problem. The annual letter of 1738 warned the factors that they had to be careful about drink, noting that Moose Factory was burned down on Christmas Day as the result of excessive revelry. In the same year, the directors wrote to Governor Bird of Albany: ‘‘We hope the setting fire to your tent in the Wood was not occasioned by either sottishness or carelessness.’’57 Governor Bird’s death the following year was, in the minds of the company directors, due to his excessive drinking. They told the new governor, Joseph Waggoner, ‘‘We have sent your full indent of trading goods, except Brandy of which we abated 200 Gallons in order to put a stop to the evil.’’58 Drunkenness among the post workers was potentially costly to the company. They could lose buildings, trade goods, and even men. Yet the directors’ dislike of ‘‘sottish’’ behavior and its injurious effects was not limited to its servants alone. After the signing of the 1713 treaty designating the Hudson Bay hinterland as English, the directors wrote to the governors: ‘‘For that the French by the Treaty of Peace [Utrecht] herewith sent you are obliged to quit the whole Bay and Straight of Hudson to the Crown of Great Britain for ever, however, we leave the same to your discretion, but caution you to trade as little brandy as possible to the Indians wee being informed it has destroyed several of them.’’59 The directors also recognized that drunkenness at the posts was anathema to treating the Indians with civility. The point is made in a letter of 1738: ‘‘and that during the time of trade you do not let any of the servants go out of the factory to converse with the Indians and never suffer the Indians to get drunk in the factory and when drunk in their tents in the Plantation that you do not suffer any of the servants to go out to abuse them, but use them very civilly especially the leading Indians, and at all times to trade upon an equal foundation.’’60 The picture of alcohol in these letters is similar to descriptions found in many of the accounts of colonial America: Indians drunk in their tents; factors drunk at the posts. We need, however, to place the rhetoric and admonitions in the context of the company’s post accounts, which give us clear measures of how much alcohol was involved in the trade. Our analysis

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is limited to York Factory, but York Factory served by far the largest hinterland. Moreover, because the Hudson’s Bay Company had a virtual monopoly in the region, at least until 1739, the total quantity of alcohol received by the Indians was much the same as the amount traded at the York Factory post. Even after the French moved into the region, most of the alcohol in trade came from the Hudson’s Bay Company. Alcohol had a low value-toweight ratio relative to other goods. Given the long and costly transportation route from Montreal, the French were at a disadvantage in selling alcohol. Alcohol was used in the gift ceremonies that marked the opening of trade, but for most of the period natives obtained their alcohol largely as part of the actual trading process. Because of the directors’ demand for meticulous accounting, we have very accurate measures of alcohol consumption in each year. In 1720, for example, the post records show that native traders received a total 1,017mb in alcohol; 518mb worth of alcohol received as gifts and 499mb worth of alcohol purchased in trade. With the price of alcohol at 4mb per gallon, a total of 254 gallons were dispersed. In 1740 Indian traders received 494 gallons of alcohol: 412 gallons in trade and 82 gallons in the gift-giving ceremonies. By 1760 the quantity of alcohol had more than doubled, to 1,103 gallons, divided about equally between trade and gifts. These numbers approximate the total amount of alcohol natives had available to them. In 1740 the French were a small presence in the region, and even though by 1760 they had become major competitors, they did not trade much in alcohol. We can, therefore, use the York Factory accounts to inform us on the issue of drunkenness and the importance of alcohol to the trade. What do the numbers from the post accounts tell us about alcohol? In the early years, alcohol made up a very small share of trade, less than 5 percent. Even in 1740, by which time the trade in brandy and strong water had grown to 494 gallons, alcohol still amounted to less than 10 percent of the value of all goods received. In 1750 alcohol represented 15 percent of the trade at York Factory, and its share peaked at 20 percent in 1760. So it was never the case that the Cree and Assiniboin and other native groups were trading furs only or even mainly for alcohol. We can presume, then, that native traders could have purchased more alcohol had they so wished.61 In 1740, as we noted, the French were still an emerging presence in the region and insignificant suppliers of alcohol. Thus, the 494 gallons of alcohol received by native traders at York Factory roughly equaled the total

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alcohol consumption of all Native Americans living in the York Factory hinterland. This quantity, 494 gallons, for approximately 8,600 people, translates to 0.06 gallons per person. Notwithstanding comments about drunken and sottish behavior, the alcohol received by natives was sufficient for at most four two-ounce drinks per person for the entire year. Even if we allow for no consumption on the part of children and reduced to zero the consumption of women as well, the number of drinks per male adult would still be very modest, just fifteen two-ounce drinks over 365 days. Twenty years later, in 1760, the trade in alcohol had roughly doubled. Still, there was only enough alcohol for ten two-ounce drinks per person per year or thirty two-ounce drinks per adult male. So even at its peak, alcohol consumption by Native Americans in the region was low. And this was by choice. The post accounts also tell us about the provisioning for the men and the governor’s table. Despite the fact that the letters to the posts regularly issued warnings about drunkenness among the men, the directors did not take the step of prohibiting alcohol. In the early years of the trade, when the natives were receiving hardly any alcohol, there was considerable drinking by the men at the posts. The provisions list for Fort Albany in 1705 shows that the men, who numbered about forty, received 80 bushels of malt, 360 gallons of strong beer, and 20 gallons of wine, while the invoice for trade goods shows 210 gallons of brandy for the several thousand natives who would have been living in the Fort Albany hinterland. John McCusker’s estimates of annual per capita consumption of alcohol in Europe during the eighteenth century helps put native consumption of alcohol in a contemporary perspective. In the 1740s, when the native population in western subarctic Canada had available less than one-tenth of a gallon per year, English per capita consumption was 1.4 gallons. Alcohol use by the colonists of British North America was even higher. In 1770 they were consuming 4.2 gallons per person, or 279 two-ounce drinks.62 These levels are orders of magnitude (ten to thirty times) greater than the per capita consumption of natives in the York Factory hinterland. In fact, in the 1760s and 1770s, even the patients of St. Bartholomew’s, a London hospital for the poor, were entitled to ale and three pints of beer each day.63 The alcohol consumption of Native Americans in the eighteenth century can also be put in a more modern context. As we noted, the per capita consumption level in 1740 was the equivalent of five two-ounce drinks per year. Even if it is assumed that only 5 percent of the native population was

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involved in the brandy trade, drinking among this very restricted group would have been no more than 100 two-ounce drinks rising to perhaps 200 by 1760.64 In 1925 the Canadian population aged twenty and older consumed, in the form of spirits, beer, and wine, the ethanol equivalent of 160 drinks.65 In 1998 the corresponding amount was 435 drinks. The total quantity of alcohol purchased by Indians could therefore have sustained, by today’s standard, no more than light drinking over the course of a year.66 Despite the emphasis placed by contemporaries and current historians on the role of alcohol in the fur trade, brandy in the York Factory hinterland was not especially important. Indeed, for much of the period, brandy was dwarfed by other goods that have received far less prominence. Until the late 1740s, alcohol accounted for less than 10 percent of the total value of goods received in trade, and in most years the trade in alcohol was less than half the trade in tobacco (see Table 6). In 1740 purchases of blankets and kettles combined exceeded the purchases of alcohol, while the trade in cloth was more than twice that of alcohol. Certainly alcohol was a larger component of the gift-giving ceremonies, but even in these ceremonies it accounted for just 20 to 30 percent (see Table 7). Some historians have suggested that alcohol use by natives was abetted by these gifts. The accounts reveal, however, that when Indian traders received more alcohol in the ceremonies, they reduced their purchases of alcohol in the trading stage by a roughly equal amount.67 Moreover, as we show in the discussion to follow and contrary to some suggestions, gifts of brandy do not appear to have impaired the natives’ ability to bargain once the actual trading began. What is often overlooked is that during the gift-giving ceremonies, the company factors were imbibing as well. Perhaps because so much of the literature has been dominated by discussions of alcohol, not enough attention has been paid to the many other luxury items purchased by the natives. Overall, the share of expenditure on cloth and other luxuries, excluding alcohol and tobacco, increased from about 15 percent in the early years to almost 30 percent by the end of the period (Figure 12). The range of commodities purchased is remarkable. Pistols, trunks, hats, beads, vermillion, and shoes were a few of the higherpriced items. A pistol was the same price as a blanket, but in 1740 only 26 pistols were purchased as compared to 189 blankets. In the same year 56 scissors, 987 yards of cloth, and 346 combs were traded for furs. The variety of luxury items is another telling indication that native communities were participating in the eighteenth-century consumer revolution. Our category

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35 30

percent

25 20 15 10 5 0 1716

1721

1726

1731

1736

1741

1746

1751

1756

1761

1766

Figure 12. Share of Native Expenditure on Other Luxuries: York Factory, 1716–70. Data from Tables 6 and 7.

of ‘‘other luxuries’’ contains many of the same commodities that can be found in the eighteenth-century probate inventories in Europe and in colonial America, among them beads, buttons, handkerchiefs, hats, lace, mirrors, rings, and trunks.68 Of course, given the hunter-gatherer migratory lifestyle, there are some commodities, such as chinaware, that natives did not purchase. The breakdown of goods shown in Table 6 documents a remarkable transformation in what was available to those communities trading directly at York Factory and those communities with ties to the trading groups. The iron pots, awls, and needles must have improved the daily activities of women, while the ice chisels and twine made it easier for the men to hunt beaver. The changes in expenditure patterns evident in the York Factory data also point to a trade that was not merely utilitarian. The many items we have listed in the luxury goods category added variety and provided an avenue for creative work. The York Factory accounts reveal the quantitative dimension of the trade, but other records provide us with a broader perspective. The correspondence between the head office and the managers at the posts provides important information about how choices were made about the types and qualities of goods that were sent to the bay along with the central role natives played in those decisions.

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The Quality Dimension The Hudson’s Bay Company account books document the changing structure of native expenditure at the posts from a basket composed predominantly of producer and household goods to one with considerably more luxury goods.69 While the numbers reveal the shifts in purchasing patterns from 1716 to 1770, the letters sent by the post factors to the London office and those from the directors to the governors at the bay allow us to reconstruct the critical role played by native traders in determining the type and quality of the goods shipped from London. This commercial fur trade in Canada’s hinterlands was based on the voluntary exchange of furs for European goods by sophisticated consumers. Trade had been an integral part of native life prior to the introduction of a commercial trade, and the Hudson’s Bay Company as well as the French quickly became aware that they could not simply provide ‘‘beads and baubles’’ or alcohol and expect the Indians to trade with them. The company letters reveal which commodities were important to the natives and which were not, and even more important, they document the company’s search for commodities that would attract more Indians to its posts. Striking in the letters from the post factors to the head office is the recognition that despite the fact that Indians may have journeyed hundreds of miles to engage in trade, they were not necessarily willing to accept the commodities that the company chose to supply. Because the Hudson’s Bay Company was a late entrant to North American trade, the directors knew in broad terms the goods that Indians wanted most, but they needed specifics. In their letter of 1680, written even before the founding of York Factory, the directors ordered Governor Nixon to: ‘‘Send us home by every return of our Ships all such goods as are either defective or not acceptable to the Natives and to inform us wherein they are deficient And also to direct us exactly as you can of what form, quality & condition every sort of good is demanded there for the best satisfaction of the Indians, And wee will do our utmost that you shall be supplied with every species of Commodity in perfection’’ (emphasis added).70 Thus within the first ten trading cycles, the head office had become aware that trade goods had to meet the Indians’ standards.71 Satisfaction and perfection were to be important operating parameters for the company, where the latter term refers to the level of quality that native traders would accept. From the early years of the trade, the interactions between post manag-

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ers and native traders became the mechanism for supplying commodities that were satisfactory.72 Among the first types of commodities deemed to be less than satisfactory were metal products. There was an extensive correspondence between the directors in London and the factors at the posts on guns, knives, and hatchets that highlights the problems and illustrates the company’s concern, even anxiety, about the quality of its goods. This correspondence describes, as well, the actions that were taken to remedy any shortcomings. Echoing the 1680 general letter, the London directors in 1697 asked its post managers to let them know of ‘‘any failure in any of the guns and whose they were and any other commodity.’’73 Two years later the official letter to the bay expressed the same wish to be informed about the quality of the guns that had been sent out: ‘‘And hope these guns will prove good, or which pray advice, and note the name and make of those that proves otherwise.’’74 In 1717 the directors wrote: ‘‘We take notice what you write as to the guns sent you last year that they were not so good as those you carried with you and are apt to believe what you write too true, but hope those we now send you will prove otherwise for we have taken particular care therein and to encourage the gunsmiths have advanced the price with them 3/- a gun more than we paid them for those you carried with you.’’75 Despite these assurances, the problems continued. In 1724 the head office was still writing: ‘‘We have taken care to send you this year good guns if not better than ever were sent into the country.’’ Nine years later, the official letter to the factories noted: ‘‘[We] have taken the utmost care that all the goods now sent you should be according to your directions and as near the samples as was possible.’’76 In 1738, however, the directors again wrote: ‘‘We observe that the powder, cloth, knives and hatchets proved bad and that the natives are very curious in choosing goods especially the iron work. . . . We shall take care to have all the hatchets viewed and those with any breaks or flaws thrown out.’’77 Although the assurances made by the head office take on a rhetorical bent when seen year after year, there was, in fact, a serious underlying problem that did take the company a long time to understand. Metal products such as guns, hatchets, knives, ice chisels, and scrapers, making up what we call producer goods, were a central part of the trade, especially in the period 1716 to 1740. So the quality of these goods was of particular concern. We now know that the properties of metal in temperate climates and subarctic climates are not the same. Metal products are prone to structural weaknesses during extreme winter conditions, conditions not nor-

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mally experienced in England. Eventually, the company directors came to appreciate this effect of the subarctic climate. A related problem was frost wedging, which occurred when water seeped into cracks in the metal and froze. Once this happened, guns could burst when fired and hatchets break when they were struck. The Indians soon realized that flaws in the metal products of almost any sort would lead to such problems, and they examined these goods meticulously prior to purchase.78 Indeed, while the head office often asked about the type of handles and the color of the wood most preferred on such items as knives, James Knight, governor of York Factory, wrote back in 1716: ‘‘I have never knowd the Indians stand much upon the handles so the blades were but good.’’ And in that same letter Knight continued: ‘‘I very seldom see that there is any manner of notice taken as ye colour of ye [gun]stocks so the lock and barrell is good and well stocked.’’79 Knight went on to stress that it was ‘‘fancy’’ that determined whether some chose ‘‘light colourd [stocks] others . . . Dark.’’ This back-and-forth on metal products continued for many years. Only in 1730 did Governor Macklish lay out the problem succinctly: ‘‘We have sent home samples of several goods as is most taken with the natives . . . and earnestly entreat your honours that all hatchets sent may be clear of cracks and flaws, for the natives will not trade them unless they are necessitated, for whatever crack is in the eye of the hatchet, and come to strike upon the said hatchet in winter time, it surely breaks to pieces and is of no further use to the Indians, for the extremity of the frost tries all ironwork, which we daily find by experience at the factory.’’80 Although the company directors were informed about the problems, it took some time before they understood their cause. It was then that they began pursuing ways of improving the quality of the metal goods they were shipping to the posts. The first strategy was to purchase more expensive guns, as they did in 1717: ‘‘to encourage the gunsmiths [we] have advanced the price with them 3/- a gun more than we paid them for those you carried with you.’’81 However, higher-priced guns were only part of the solution. The directors also had to appreciate the metallurgical issues and then make the vendors understand what was happening to their products in the northern climate. This took time. Given that the problem seemed to lie in the Hudson Bay environment, a second strategy was to send out an armorer to each post. One of his jobs was to examine all guns on arrival to ensure that they met the required specifications and to repair any guns that he could,

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whether new or used. The company also had some of the metal products made at the bay posts. As the daily journal for York Factory notes, one of the activities for the smith during the winter was making scrapers for trade.82 Yet, even here problems arose with the quality of the bar iron sent out. In 1728 Macklish had to ask the company to send out better bar iron so that the smith could make ice chisels and scrapers without cracks or other flaws.83 Given the seeming preoccupation with metal products, it is perhaps not surprising that the company was careful to address any concerns expressed about the other goods that were supplied to the post. The annual letters asked not just if the guns were satisfactory. All trade goods came under scrutiny. In 1739 James Isham, governor at York Factory, responding to the head office letter of the previous year, which had asked him to explain the ‘‘Indians dislike of particular goods, their refusal and the reason for the same, to the best of our knowledge,’’ sent an itemized list: 1. Beads large pearl, the Indians dislikes for the colour, both large and heavy, the shape not being for the use they put them to . . . so being few or none traded . . . according to your honours’ desire I send them home. . . . 2. Kettles they complain of, for their being small for the weight, of a very bad shape, the handles hanging over the side too far, the ears too weak. The kettles they like is of a round high shape, light, strong ears, and the handles to lap just upon the side of the kettle. 4. Powder they complain is of an ashy colour, very weak and foul, and of too large a grain; they finding when they put a little in their hand, it rubs to dust very soon, which is all the reason of dislike I can give for it. 5. Blankets, is only their complaint of being too short by six or nine inches, they answering very well in shape, make and colour. 6. Cloth is their general complaint, of its being too narrow, weak and thin, and of little service. It’s their fashion if it’s an end of cloth, to wear it at bottom, if not to wear the list at the side. 7. Buttons is very weak shanked and quickly breaks; though size, shape and make, answers extraordinary well. 8. Combs also answers for shape and make, there being no complaint, only very weak. 9. Fire steels is very faulty, gives but little fire, and full large.

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10. Gunworms is very unhandy, being short and too wide for a ramrod. . . . 11. Flints French, is noways pleasing to Indians, they being for the most part very unshapeable for a gun. 12. Gloves yarn, are noways pleasing nor serviceable to Indians and none taken up by our men, so lying useless in the factory, I have sent them home. . . . 14. Knives are noways pleasing to the natives, they being [having] very bad blades and worse handles, especially jack knives. 15. Tobacco tongs lies useless in the factory, and few or none traded. . . . The only reason I can give for the Indians dislike is they are of no service to them. . . . 16. Twine is their complaint of being very weak and uneven, being as thick as packthread in some places and as thin as thread in other places, and of a small size. 17. Powder horns they dislike for being so crooked for the most part, and very weak and thin in some places; they like for the most part straight horns. 18. Rings is too wide, the generality of the female sex having small fingers. James Isham went on: ‘‘[I have] sent home samples of the most part which is pleasing to Indians, and most conducive to your honours’ interest.’’84 Although the directors had asked him for this information, the arrival of such a list must have been daunting and a special worry, since it coincided with the beginning of serious penetration of the York Factory hinterland by the French. The French did not become a permanent presence until 1739, but even in 1728 the York Factory governor was writing to London: ‘‘never was any man so upbraided with our Powder, Kettles and Hatchets, than we have been this summer by all the Natives, Especially by those that border near the French.’’85 By the end of the 1730s, French traders had set up trading posts within the hinterland of York Factory, and at that point quality became confounded with issues of competition. In 1737 the directors wrote: ‘‘We are informed that the powder, cloth, knives and hatchets [sent out from England] are not so acceptable to the Indians as the same sort of commodities as are sent from France, and therefore order that you make a strict observation wherein the difference consists between our’s and theirs

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and send us your reasons both from yourselves and what you learn from the Indians why the one is preferable to the other . . . and send samples.’’86 Having been told for many years that their goods were not satisfactory, the directors now had the chance to make an actual comparison with the French goods. What they discovered was reported to the post in their letter of 1739: ‘‘[We] received the two pieces of cloth and the sample of other knives you sent us which you say are French, the worst piece is very course and loose and narrow and not near so good or broad as what we have formerly and do now send, and therefore we do expect you will write us the reasons why the Indians like the French better than ours which you have omitted to do.’’87 Competition brought other changes to the structure of the trade as Indian traders played off English against French and French against English. Indian traders were quick to take advantage of the new situation and, as we discussed in Chapter 2, the company responded by significantly increasing the prices it offered for furs.88 The fur price index at York Factory rose from roughly 70, which was the price generally prevailing up to the mid-1730s, to 115 by the mid-1750s. For native traders, this increase in the price of furs was equivalent to a fall in the price of European trade goods, since each fur could now buy more. On the company side, the rise in the fur price index represented an increased cost of trade. The greater cost translated into more questioning by the head office about the complaints regarding the company’s trade goods. Near the end of the 1740s, in the face of continuing Indian grumbling about firearms, and despite the company’s efforts to raise quality, the directors suggested, for the first time, that perhaps a combination of the harsh climate and improper use was the problem: ‘‘Upon examining strictly into the complaints made of the guns we find it is chiefly the Indians own faults by not putting dry and proper woods in when they charge them and by firing them when the muzzle is stopped with snow which will burst the best gun that can be made, but as to the flaws we have given such strict orders that we hope you will hear no further complaints in that head, but if upon the armourers examining the guns now first any are found so defective as to be unsaleable send them home.’’89 In 1751 the letter from London told the factors that they could not understand why so many guns had been sent home as defective and that they could only find four that had a fault so serious as to make them unfit for trade. The others, ‘‘being altogether marked, wherever there was a fire flaw or scratch as tho made with the point of a pin, which no gun barrel

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ever was or can be made without,’’ should not have been sent home.90 Indeed, the directors went on to say that they did not believe that the factors had even inspected them and had ‘‘just trusted the armorer.’’ Of course the irony here was that the armorer had been sent out specifically to make such judgment calls. The head office’s concern with the quality of the major trade items, such as guns and tobacco, carried over to those goods that made up a smaller fraction of the trade. In the case of jewelry and other luxury items, the issue was not just quality but also variety. Beads, which came in many colors, sizes, and shapes, were the subject of a great deal of correspondence despite being a relatively minor item.91 In 1718 the general letter noted that ‘‘as to ye large purple and small white beads, there are none to be had in England, but hope another year to furnish you with both.’’92 In 1740 the directors wrote that they were viewing the beads before they sent them ‘‘so no wrong ones get mixed in . . . but [they] could not get any 30 number long large red.’’93 The attention to beads extended to buttons, with the company asking if the ‘‘coat and waistcoat buttons, whether solid or hollow, pewter or other metal’’ were in the proper sizes.94 Here too, products that did not meet the required specifications simply could not be sold. In 1724 Governor Macklish wrote that he had ‘‘a good quantity of unsizable white Beads sent 3 years ago by reason your Honours could not procure at that time those that were sizable as I am informed. Be pleased to order them home for they will never be traded here.’’95 Seven years later, he was still commenting on the quality of the beads: ‘‘the small crystalline beads sent this year to match the small blue are not such as we constantly trade at this place, neither will our Indians trade any of them, hoping what is indented for this year will be according to samples sent home now in the Mary Frigate.’’96 The company remained concerned with beads throughout the period. In the 1750s the directors sent out new varieties. Their names are evocative—white barleycorn, red flower, black barleycorn, round white with double flowers in red and green, and new sorts of Chinese beads. Based on their cost in England, which the directors noted ‘‘from their scarcity are at an excessive high price,’’ these beads were assigned an official price of 6mb per pound.97 In comparison, a blanket cost 7mb. As was true of metal products, the presence of French competition led to a questioning of the post traders’ actions and policies. In 1762 the directors sent a letter that mirrored the same change in view that they had about guns:

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the large long beads returned are so triviall a quantity we think it very strange they could not be traded by mixing a very few at a time among the others, which would very speedily have exhausted them, and ought to be the constant practice in trading with the Natives, in order to get rid of every article from which they are about to withdraw their regard, and if not adhered to will from the fickle disposition of the Indians constantly leave a large quantity of various kinds of useless goods in the Factory. One thing certain to be depended on is that as we never buy any goods but what we intend to be the best of their kinds, so neither will we, unless misled, purchase any species, but what shall be most agreeable to the Natives for trade. (emphasis added)98 Thus, by the 1760s the London directors were arguing not only that the goods being sent were improving both in terms of their durability and quality but also that the fault lay with either the natives or the post factors. At the same time, the directors in London continued a policy of trying to find new products that would attract more native consumers and encourage them to return to the company’s posts.

The Search for New Trade Goods As a late entrant into the commercial trade, the Hudson’s Bay Company had the advantage of knowing, if only abstractly, what type of merchandise would sell. So from the company’s early years, Indian traders were able to trade for guns, hatchets, cloth, kettles, knives, twine, and other goods suited to their environment and needs. But with the passage of time, the company sought new products that would attract more Indians and more furs to its posts. This search for new products is revealing in that it not only speaks to the English view of the region and its inhabitants, it also shows that Native Americans were being treated much like eighteenth-century consumers in Europe.99 The quest for these elusive products often began by sending out samples to ‘‘see how the Indians liked them.’’100 The first evidence we have of such an attempt comes from the letter of 1697 in which the directors told post factors ‘‘if you could persuade the Indians to weare our Sheepe Skins drest with the wooll which maybe usefull to keepe them warm Wee could supply you yearely at a reasonable price.’’101 The company wanted the Indians to

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replace beaver pelts with sheep skin and so reduce the amount of coat beaver that was being brought to the posts. Although the prices of coat beaver and parchment at the posts were both 1mb, the relative price of coat beaver in London was declining and so the company was earning higher returns from parchment beaver.102 Two years later the London committee noted their lack of success: ‘‘[We are] sorry the Indians will not approve our Sheepe Skins.’’103 In 1702 factors were told to encourage the Indians to wear cloth, again to lessen the quantity of coat beaver traded. But this effort failed as well. Blankets, however, which the company did not regard as clothing, came to be used as such, although they did not really substitute for coat beaver. Indians began wearing them as shawls over their other garments.104 In 1712 the directors sent out ‘‘brass handcuffs’’ or bracelets, which they would trade only for martens. The official price was four martens per pair. These handcuffs never sold. The problem was not a lack of interest in jewelry; rather, natives found that they could produce their own bracelets using the iron from worn-out kettles. This came to light when the post factors were requested by the London committee to buy back the old kettles. The chief factor at York Factory answered that they could not do so because the Indians ‘‘always converted them into fine handcuffs and pouches which is of greater value with them then twice the price of the kettles.’’105 Despite the failures, the company continued testing new commodities. The letter of 1732 notes: ‘‘You will find by the Invoice a dozen silk handkerchiefs and one doz of trunks which we send you by way of trial to see how Indians like them and would have you rate them . . . the handkerchiefs at one and a half beaver each and the trunks at two beaver each’’ (emphasis added).106 There turned out to be modest demand for trunks and even less demand for handkerchiefs (see Tables 6 and 7). The movement of French traders into the region prompted the directors to increase their attempts to introduce new goods as a way of maintaining the company’s trade. In 1739 the directors wrote: ‘‘Having received great encouragement from York Fort to send them a quantity of brass collars which being represented to us as very pleasing to the Natives and much to our interest by encouraging the Indians to leave the French, from whom they have some of the most inferior sort made of iron, we have thought it necessary to send you a dozen of two sizes finely polished to try and make an experiment how far you can improve the trade in them with the natives to our advantage . . . and have settled the standard at four beaver per collar.’’107

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Brass collars were even less successful than trunks and silk handkerchiefs. They did not sell at all, and so two years later the factors were told: ‘‘Since the brass collars are not esteemed by the Indians according to their value we desire you would dispose of them in the best manner you can.’’108 In 1743 the company sent earrings, which were also left unsold. In the 1750s, though, the company provided new varieties of beads, nearly all of which were traded successfully. One of the varieties, barleycorn, had its origin in mid-eighteenth-century Venice. These were small wound beads in white and black, and they were one of the most popular of the early wound Venetian beads. It would appear, then, that the company recognized that this product, popular in Europe, could also be sold at its trading posts. The reference to barleycorn in the post letters is one of the earliest mentions of beads in the contemporary European records.109 The search for new products met with some success and, despite the failures, increased the range of luxury items that were being offered to native traders. In fact, as the experience with barleycorn beads shows, the market for luxuries in the hinterland of North America resembled to a large degree the market in Europe. The commodities—beads, combs, magnifying glasses, looking glasses or mirrors, sashes, scissors, thimbles, and shoes— mirror the inventories of both European and colonial households. At the same time, the company’s failure to sell brass collars, earrings, bracelets, or sheep skins speaks to the independence of the native consumer. From the start the Hudson’s Bay Company was aware that it was trading in an environment different from that in Europe and that its future depended on being able to breach the cultural divide. The company records give no indication of how luxury commodities were used by native consumers. The directors’ primary interest was that they could be sold. Especially important is the fact that despite the size and increasing reach of the fur trade, the native population was in no way becoming dependent on European goods during this period. No food was traded to the natives at York Factory, and although they did acquire metal products and other producer goods, these only supplemented their traditional tools. In fact, native and modern methods coexisted long after the introduction of European technology. The shift toward luxury items that was occurring also speaks to a lack of dependency. The greater purchases of luxuries, which resulted from higher fur prices at the posts, reflected the ability of natives to make choices both about the goods they would consume and the extent to which they would be involved in the trade.

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The Decline of Beaver Populations

The country about Hudson’s Bay abounds with animals of several kinds. I shall begin with the Beaver. . . . A full grown beaver will weigh twenty-four pounds, is two feet long to two and a half from the nose to the rump, and the tail twelve inches long and six broad, has eight teeth in each jaw, six of which masticate their food. The other two (which are placed in the front and are half an inch long in the lower and three quarters in the upper jaw) sever to cut their trees and sever their food, which consists of the rind of willow and poplar, but they eat nothing of a resinous kind. —Andrew Graham, governor of York Factory, circa 1767

N

ative Americans paid for kettles, guns, blankets, alcohol, tobacco, cloth, and other European goods with furs, mainly beaver pelts. In Chapter 3 we saw that as the price of furs at the posts rose, native consumers purchased more goods, notably luxury items. What we explore here is the extent to which the increased trade was reflected in the number of beaver pelts delivered to the posts, and how that in turn affected the beaver population. This is an important question because the Hudson Bay Company’s long-term profitability as well as the viability of the trade for native peoples depended on the beaver resource. Beaver were a renewable resource that potentially could support a trade indefinitely, but the beaver could also be overhunted. Here we try to determine what happened

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to the stock of beaver in the Hudson’s Bay Company hinterlands in response to the increasing trade. By 1700 the population of European beaver, Castor fiber, had been driven to virtual extinction, and the beaver populations in the eastern parts of the North American continent had also been affected by overharvesting. At the opening of European trade around Hudson Bay, beaver were plentiful in a wide area that stretched from the bay to the Rocky Mountains, just as Pierre Esprit Radisson and Me´dard Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers, had predicted. Over the six decades examined here, spanning 1700 to 1763, native traders sold a total of 2.75 million beaver pelts to the Hudson’s Bay Company. Nearly 1 million were traded at Fort Albany, 1.3 million were traded at York Factory, and just under a half million were traded at Fort Churchill.1 In addition, nearly as many beaver pelts were sold to the French, although our figures for the French trade are much less precise. There is evidence that by 1821, beaver in the Hudson Bay drainage basin had been seriously overhunted, but we know little about the pattern, timing, and magnitude of the decline.2 By exploring the time path of beaver populations in each of three Hudson’s Bay hinterlands in the first six decades of the eighteenth century, we hope to shed light not only on the issue of depletion but also on the question of native labor supply to commercial activities, which we explore further in Chapters 5 and 6. There is, of course, little direct information on the number of beaver that inhabited the Hudson Bay region in the eighteenth century, but a variety of indirect sources can be brought to bear on the question. We know the number of furs traded to the Hudson’s Bay Company from the post records, and for a few years we have estimates of the number of beaver traded to the French. There is also a large contemporary body of research on the ecology of the beaver. Researchers have documented beaver family structure and fertility and mortality rates in the presence and absence of hunting, along with the resulting patterns of population change.3 In addition, there are estimates of beaver densities in the region of Hudson Bay drawn from aerial surveys and returns from trap lines.4 By combining these diverse sources we develop a picture of what was happening to the population of beaver in each of the three major hinterlands of the Hudson’s Bay Company: Fort Albany, York Factory, and Fort Churchill. Although our estimates are speculative in the sense that we do not have actual beaver

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counts, they still reveal much about how the fur trade was practiced by Native Americans and Europeans.

Castor canadensis Without the beaver there would have been no commercial fur trade in the Hudson Bay hinterland. The North American beaver, Castor canadensis, which is a member of the aquatic rodent family, were plentiful in much of the continent prior to the coming of Europeans.5 As is true of all animals valued for their pelts, those inhabiting the more northerly regions are especially prized because the colder the winter, the denser the underfur. Beaver have a preference for running streams and small rivers, but they also inhabit the margins of forest-edged lakes. Unlike other aquatic animals, such as muskrat or otter, beaver transform their habitat by constructing dams that flood an area. They then build lodges where they spend the winter. The average dam is four to five feet high and can be several hundred feet in length. The lodges are dome-shaped islands of sticks that the beaver deeply embed in the river or lake floor and plaster with mud. The interiors of the lodges are as high as six feet. Because beaver alter the environment in this way, their locations are highly visible. Still, they are well protected against predators. The entrance to the lodge lies below the water line, and during the winter the frozen lodge is almost impenetrable to hunters unless they have metal tools. During the spring and summer, beaver leave the lodge and live along the banks of the rivers in dens, which are much less visible. Beaver tend to be nonmigratory, returning to the same lodge each winter. As such, they are central-place foragers, working out from a central location. They eat nearly all kinds of bark and young buds, although their preference is for willow, poplar, birch, and aspen. When foraging, they cut down branches or small trees, which might be eaten in situ or cut into lengths suitable for being dragged or floated back to the lodge. In late summer and fall they prepare for the winter by caching branches in a food locker underwater. In regions where the lakes freeze over, beaver keep one or more tunnels open below the ice so that they can reach their food supply, and they maintain a hole in the ice close to the banks, which allows them to go on land, if necessary. Beaver live in colonies and, as might be expected, the density of beaver in a given area depends on the characteristics of the surroundings. The more food available and the greater the number of running streams, the

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larger will be the beaver population. In regions with few running streams and few wooded areas, beaver densities will be low. A typical lodge has one breeding pair as well as immature animals of varying ages. In the late spring or early summer, the adult female gives birth usually to three kits, who remain in the lodge until the end of their third year. This means that at any one time the lodge typically includes the newborn kits, yearlings, and twoyear-olds. A stable lodge will, therefore, house nine to twelve animals.6 At the end of their third year, the oldest kits leave the lodge. These beaver travel along rivers and streams or overland in search of a mate and a suitable location for a new lodge.7 By the time beaver leave their original lodge, they will have almost attained full length and weight. A mature beaver of four years weighs about 40 pounds, and although weights up to 60 pounds have been recorded, these are exceptional.8 Including the tail, beaver attain a length of roughly 3 feet, 9 inches, and yield a pelt of between 1 1/2 and 13/4 pounds, with reports of exceptional pelts running to two pounds. Not surprisingly, there is a significant size differential between younger beaver and those who have reached maturity. One- to two-year-old beaver weigh only 21 pounds and have smaller pelts with thinner fur.9 For this reason, the Hudson’s Bay Company factors tried to discourage natives from hunting immature animals. In an environment where beaver have no predators, their numbers will increase to the limits of the water and food resources. When beaver move into a new region with suitable habitat, the breeding female can have as many as six kits per year, but once there is pressure on the environment, the litter size falls to the standard of three. The maximum population depends on the environment. In regions with richer habitat, the maximum beaver density will be greater, but, whether the habitat is rich or poor, once the maximum population size is reached the growth in the population will be close to zero, with an annual birth rate of beaver equal to the death rate. This means that nearly all the three-year-old kits who leave the lodge each year will die because they will be unable to find suitable habitat. The impact of hunting on the size of the population depends on how many animals are killed.10 If, for example, hunters trap only the three-yearold kits who otherwise would not have survived, the population will be unaffected. But if hunters trap more animals, the beaver population will decline. And what matters is not just the number of beaver taken, but also the age and gender of the beaver killed. Trapping a pregnant female means the loss not just of that animal but also the kits that would have been

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added to the population. Thus the eighteenth-century beaver population depended on native hunting strategies and on the ability to control the number of beaver taken in each breeding season. Beaver, however, were not easily trapped. In his description of the hunting techniques that pre-dated the fur trade, explorer David Thompson wrote in the 1790s: ‘‘The poor Indian had then only a pointed stick shaped and hardened in the fire, a stone Hatchet, Spear and Arrowheads of the same; thus armed he was weak against the sagacious Beaver who on the banks of a Lake made itself a house of a foot thick or more.’’11 Showing, perhaps, a European prejudice against traditional native life ways, Thompson was still correct that it was almost impossible to break into frozen lodges with traditional tools. European technology greatly improved the natives’ ability to hunt beaver. With twine and ice chisels obtained through trade, the beaver ‘‘could be attacked at any convenient time in all seasons.’’12 Thompson went on to state: ‘‘thus their numbers soon became reduced.’’ Yet some decline in numbers was to be expected from hunting and does not imply necessarily that the beaver population was under threat. Iron traps became available during the eighteenth century, but they were used initially to trap smaller animals such as marten and otter. They were ineffective for beaver due to the lack of suitable bait. Only with the development at the end of the century of a castoreum-based bait made from the gallbladders of beavers did traps enter widespread use in the beaver trade. During the period 1700 to 1763, native hunters had a number of hunting strategies. They might lie in wait until a beaver left its lodge, whereupon they would shoot it with an arrow at close range. Alternatively, a hunting party would partially drain the water surrounding the lodge and place nets over the escape holes. The hunters would then destroy the lodge with ice chisels and hatchets; when the beaver tried to flee they would be caught and killed.13 Trap lines made of twine, set to entrap only mature beaver, might also be laid just outside the lodge exit. Beaver caught in these lines would drown. In the pre-contact period native trappers had neither the tools nor the incentive to deplete the beaver stock. However, European technology, new goods, and a commercial demand for beaver pelts made overharvesting a possibility. Here we estimate the extent to which the beaver were depleted by generating a time path of the beaver population in each of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s hinterlands, those served by Fort Albany, York Factory, and Fort Churchill.

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60

thousands

50 40 30 20 10 0 1700 1705 1710 1715 1720 1725 1730 1735 1740 1745 1750 1755 1760 Fort Albany

York Factory

Fort Churchill

Figure 13. Beaver Pelts Traded at Fort Albany, York Factory, and Fort Churchill, 1700–63. Data from Appendix A.

Beaver Pelts Traded at Hudson’s Bay Company Posts Beginning in 1700 at Fort Albany, and somewhat later at the other posts, we have an uninterrupted annual record of the number of beaver pelts traded.14 Beaver pelts appear under three categories: whole parchment, coat, and half parchment or cub, with the number of each type of pelt reported as well as their value expressed in made beaver. Whole parchment had a price of 1mb, so values and numbers coincide. The same is true of coat beaver, but because coat beaver were pelts that had been worn as clothing, they would have been from animals most likely trapped during the previous year. Half-parchment pelts came from younger animals or animals trapped during the summer when their coat was less dense. They had a price of half a made beaver, so the value of half-parchment furs in made beaver was one-half the number of pelts received. The number of beaver traded in each year at each of the three factories is shown in Figure 13. From 1700 to 1763, 988,308 beaver pelts were delivered to Fort Albany, 1,321,418 to York Factory, and 439,205 to Fort Churchill.15 During the first two decades, roughly 20,000 beaver per year were traded at Fort Albany. There were, at the same time, some large yearto-year fluctuations. For example, only 12,000 beaver were received in 1705 and nearly 30,000 in 1712, but after 1720 the number of pelts settled down to about 15,000 pelts per year. In the second half of the 1740s, however,

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numbers increased, and there was one year when nearly 24,000 pelts were traded. Following these large returns, the trade collapsed as the number of pelts soon fell to 6,000 per year. Despite some increase in the early 1760s, the number of beaver pelts traded remained low. The size of the York Factory hinterland is evident in the much larger returns. Nevertheless, in the early years, 1716 to 1720, few beaver pelts were received, largely because the post had yet to become fully operational following its recapture from the French and the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht. During the next two decades an average of 33,000 pelts per year were traded, falling to about 27,000 in the 1740s. Then, in the 1750s, the trade in beaver collapsed, much as it did at Fort Albany. During that decade an average of just 18,000 pelts was received at the post, and the decline continued into the 1760s. Fort Churchill was the most northerly post, with the smallest trading territory and lowest beaver density. The trade in beaver at Fort Churchill shows a markedly different pattern from the two more centrally located trading posts. Returns were low during the 1720s, while the post was becoming established. About 5,000 beaver pelts were received per year.16 During the 1730s, however, the trade more than doubled, to an average of 11,000 pelts, and there was one exceptional year, 1739, when over 21,000 beaver were delivered. There was a modest decline in the 1750s to about 9,000 per year, but the numbers increased again in the 1760s to the earlier levels. From 1728 to 1763, returns exhibit some variation, but overall there was almost no trend unlike the trade at the other two posts, where after the initial years of growth, beaver numbers trended sharply downward.17 The decline in the number of pelts traded at Fort Albany and York Factory in the 1740s and 1750s was dramatic and could have been due to a variety of factors. There are four possible explanations for the observed patterns. First, the native population could have declined, possibly a result of disease or war. If this happened there would be fewer Indian trappers and so fewer pelts brought to the posts. Second, it could be that the number of trappers stayed the same, but each trapper decided to spend less time in commercial trapping. Third, it might be that the total number of animals trapped remained the same, but due to increased competition from the French, some of the skins that otherwise would have been destined for Fort Albany or York Factory were now traded to the voyageurs. Fourth, there may have been a decline in the beaver population, which would have meant smaller beaver harvests even with the same number of hunters and the

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same intensity of hunting effort. We explore each of these possibilities in turn. European contact brought severe, indeed catastrophic, pandemics to some Native American populations; however, the subarctic environment and the resulting low population densities helped protect natives from the scourge of smallpox and other diseases carried by the Europeans.18 No serious epidemics are reported until late in the eighteenth century. There was a smallpox outbreak in parts of the region in the early 1780s with repeated episodes of the disease in the nineteenth century, but these took place long after the period of our study. So even though the Indians in the region of Hudson Bay were not insulated indefinitely, it appears that during the period 1700 to 1763, the Europeans’ presence and their diseases had little impact on the native population. As E. E. Rich put it: ‘‘It was not smallpox or Indian wars which cut the Company’s trade.’’19 Contrary to the perception that Europeans were indifferent or even encouraged the spread of disease among natives, Hudson’s Bay Company officials were proactive in protecting the natives from disease. Early in the nineteenth century, in an effort to head off a possible outbreak of smallpox, the company shipped cowpox vaccine to its posts. For years the vaccine remained largely unused, but this changed in 1837 in response to a smallpox epidemic that was spreading northward through the Mississippi River basin. Despite the impact of the epidemic further south, the Cree in Saskatchewan were spared, largely due to the response of the company men stationed at Fort Pelly, especially William Todd.20 Upon suspecting that smallpox had broken out, Todd took action. He wrote: ‘‘[I] had all the Indians now here Enter’d in . . . a full explanation with them respecting the reports brought yesterday of the disease at the American establishment which I pointed out to them was likely to be the Small Pox, and the danger they incurred if it once got among them. [I] proposed Vaccination as the only prevention to this. . . . They at once agree, and I immediately Commenced and Vaccinated Sixty persons including Men Women and Children.’’21 William Todd continued to vaccinate all those who came to the post, and when the disease was confirmed, he taught the Indians how to administer inoculations and sent them back to their communities with the vaccine. His actions created a barrier to the spread of the disease. Smallpox was not the only infectious disease. Measles and whooping cough were also a serious

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thousands of made beaver

30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1716

1721

1726

1731

1736

whole parchment

1741

1746

1751

half parchment

1756

1761

coat

Figure 14. Beaver Traded at Fort Albany, 1700–1763 (made beaver). Source: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Post Account Books: Fort Albany, MG 20 B3/d/ 11–78.

problem, and in 1819 there was an epidemic affecting both the Plains and Woodland Cree.22 The beaver returns themselves also indicate that during much of the eighteenth century, this subarctic region was largely unscathed by epidemics. Traders brought both parchment and coat beaver to the posts, and we know how many of each type were traded. At Fort Albany, the constancy of returns from coat beaver is striking during a time when there was a dramatic fall in the overall beaver trade (Figure 14). Nearly all the decline was in whole parchment pelts. Coat beaver had already been worn by the Indians, and so, unlike parchment pelts, they were a joint product, providing clothing to the natives and then trade goods. Since both types of fur had identical prices, natives would first allocate the beaver harvest to clothing and sell the additional harvest as parchment beaver. These coat beaver would then be traded the following year. The constancy of the coat beaver returns indicates a relatively constant demand for beaver as clothing and, by implication, a quite stable native population. It seems, then, that the Indian population and the number of hunters were not falling, but might lower intensity in their trapping effort explain the reduction in the beaver trade? Perhaps native trappers were spending

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less time trapping beaver and bringing fewer pelts to the posts for that reason. During the 1740s fur prices at the posts were increasing as a result of rising prices in Europe and increased competition from French voyageurs. How native hunters responded to these prices has been an important theme in the fur trade literature. We address this issue fully in Chapter 5, where we conclude that higher fur prices induced natives to spend more time in the fur trade, even though they began delivering fewer beaver pelts to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s posts. So neither a decline in native populations nor a decline in the intensity of work effort explains the decline in the number of pelts being traded at company posts. A third possible reason why the posts were receiving fewer furs is that more furs were being traded to the French. We know that from about 1740 the French trade was growing and we know the geographical location of French posts, but quantitative information on the number of furs traded to the French is scarce. In fact, historian Gratien Allaire argues that ‘‘Il est impossible de constituer une se´rie statistique comple`te du volume des entre´es et des sorties du port de Que´bec.’’23 Even though we do not have a complete series, some information is available. Conrad Heidenreich and Franc¸oise Noe¨l estimate that in 1755 the French received about 6,000 beaver pelts from the Albany hinterland.24 This is roughly the same number of pelts that the Hudson’s Bay Company received at the Fort Albany post that year. But from the 1740s to 1755 returns at Fort Albany fell by about 10,000 a year, which is 4,000 pelts more than the total French trade. Thus French competition alone cannot account for the declining returns. Similarly, the French trade in the York Factory region, although increasing after 1740, cannot fully explain the decline in the beaver returns at the York Factory post. The fourth possible reason for the decline in the number of beaver traded is a smaller beaver population. A decline in the beaver stock would have led to reduced harvests even if the level of hunting remained the same. Unlike some smaller animals, such as rabbit, beaver are not subject to predator-prey cycles because they have no significant non-human predators. In addition, there is no indication anywhere in the record of a major outbreak of disease among the beaver populations. Had there been an epizootic event that significantly reduced the beaver numbers, the Indians would have told the post factors, who routinely asked about conditions in the interior. The factors in turn would certainly have passed the information on to London, since they had an incentive to make clear to the company directors when

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poor trade returns were out of their control. It is unlikely, then, that disease in the animal population can explain the decline in the beaver trade. Rather, the exceptionally large number of pelts traded throughout the 1730s and 1740s at Fort Albany and York Factory, combined with the expansion of the French trade, suggest the possibility that the stock of beaver was falling due to overharvesting. At Fort Albany, for example, the trade in 1748 of 23,700 beaver skins was the highest that it had been in thirty years, and York Factory in 1742 received 37,700 beaver pelts, more than in any of the previous ten years. These numbers, moreover, do not include the pelts traded to the French. The view that large harvests jeopardized the health of the beaver population is further supported by the evidence from the trade in other furs. Although beaver was the most important pelt traded in terms of quantity and value, native trappers brought a range of furs to the posts—white and red fox, wolverine, wolf, bear, cat, marten, and muskrat. The most important of these by far was marten whose official price of one-third made beaver remained constant throughout the period. Because the relative price of marten and beaver skins stayed the same, native trappers would have had no incentive to shift their hunting effort from beaver to marten had the animal populations also remained constant. This means that the trade in beaver and marten should have moved together. Instead, as the trade at Fort Albany shows, there was almost no relation between the trade in beaver and the trade in marten, as we can see in Table 8.25 The implication is that the underlying animal populations were changing. The period from 1750 to 1755 is especially revealing. In 1751 the trade in beaver at Fort Albany declined sharply and remained at historically low levels for the next two years. During the same period, by contrast, the number of marten jumped to historic highs. In fact, the marten trade in 1753 was more than double the average from 1740 to 1750. This suggests that during the early 1750s, hunting effort was diverted from trapping beaver to trapping marten, and, since the relative price of beaver and marten at the post was unchanged, a decline in the beaver stock was very likely the cause. After 1753 the marten harvest also fell to low levels, suggesting depletion of that animal. Indeed, the Fort Albany data point to a pattern where overharvesting of one species, the beaver, led to depletion, which in turn induced overharvesting of marten and the decline of that species as well.26 At York Factory, the returns for furs other than beaver similarly indicate depletion of the beaver population. The annual receipts at York Factory of

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Table 8. The Trade in Beaver and Marten at Fort Albany, 1740–63

1740 1741 1742 1743 1744 1745 1746 1747 1748 1749 1750 1751 1752 1753 1754 1755 1756 1757 1758 1759 1760 1761 1762 1763

Beaver Skins

Marten Skins

15,909 13,649 12,836 12,025 19,030 14,703 13,674 18,693 23,690 19,146 12,974 9,223 9,435 8,943 7,956 6,076 6,223 6,368 8,959 9,872 11,559 16,520 14,653 9,881

8,814 6,050 3,942 5,400 8,250 11,265 4,850 3,500 6,742 9,255 6,592 9,723 12,623 13,902 4,650 3,620 2,850 1,850 4,515 9,453 9,722 6,350 5,119 2,233

Source: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Post Account Books: Fort Albany, MG 20 B3/d/ 49–71.

the non-beaver skins valued in made beaver were relatively steady at about 5,000mb from 1716 to the late 1740s, a period when revenue from these skins rarely accounted for as much as 20 percent of the total.27 In the late 1740s, however, as the number of beaver traded declined, returns of nonbeaver skins rose dramatically, peaking at close to 20,000mb.28 This could have happened only if natives were increasing their effort in this area of the trade. Since the price of these skins relative to beaver pelts was not changing, there would have been no incentive for trappers to change their hunting patterns unless beaver stocks were falling. It seems inescapable that a declining beaver population raised the cost to Native Americans of trapping beaver, inducing them to allocate more of their time to other animals.

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The data that we presented on the actual number of different types of pelts being traded strongly suggest that the beaver resource was being depleted, but we would like additional evidence that this was indeed the case. What we do now is combine the information from the Hudson’s Bay Company’s accounts on the numbers of beaver traded with present-day studies of beaver biology and the ecology of the region to develop estimates of the beaver population in the hinterlands of each of the trading posts. Our method does not produce anything approaching a direct count of the eighteenth-century beaver population, but by simulating the stock of beaver, we present a scenario that is fully consistent with all the historical and biological evidence that is available.

Simulated Beaver Populations in the Albany, York, and Churchill Hinterlands We help shed light on the question of depletion with a procedure that describes how the animal population may have changed over time. Our approach is based on a mathematical model of animal harvesting that we outline in Appendix B, but here we describe the framework heuristically. Beaver is a renewable resource, which means that it is capable of regeneration. As with other animals, the change in the beaver population is determined by the natural birth and death rates, as well as the number of animals that are ‘‘harvested’’ (killed by man) each year. When there are only a few animals relative to the environment, and assuming no human predation, the birth rate will exceed the death rate because all beaver will be able to find suitable habitat; and so the population will grow. But as population density increases, food becomes increasingly scarce and the growth rate of the population will slow. Ultimately, when there is no additional food or habitat available, the population stops growing because it will have reached the maximum size supportable by the environment. In a region with less suitable habitat, the maximum beaver density will be smaller than in a region rich in terms of streams and suitable vegetation. But, regardless of the nature of the region, the basic pattern of population change will be the same. We portray this pattern of population growth in Figure 15, which shows the relation between the population stock and the extent to which the population grows over a year. Annual population growth in terms of numbers is small when the population stock is very low, but there is also little popu-

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Population Growth

X

0

X

Population

Figure 15. The Natural Growth Function and the Maximum Sustainable Harvest.

lation growth when the stock is very high because of the lack of available habitat. Between these two extremes, population growth increases and then decreases like the arc of a rainbow, reaching a maximum when the stock is at X. Population, X, is called the maximum-sustained-yield population or biological optimum, because at this level hunters can harvest the net increase every year and the beaver population will not fall. If, however, more beaver than this number are killed, the population will necessarily become depleted, and there will be fewer beaver available for harvesting in the future. So depletion or overexploitation implies a decline in the beaver population below the maximum-sustained-yield population size.29 To generate simulated populations, we have to derive a separate relation between the stock of beaver and the natural growth of beaver for each of the three hinterlands. This relation depends on two key parameters. The first is the maximum percentage growth rate of the beaver population. We conclude from a variety of sources on beaver biology that beaver populations facing no environmental constraints will grow at about 30 percent per

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Figure 16. The Simulated Beaver Population in the Fort Albany Hinterland and an Index of Fur Prices at Fort Albany, 1700–1763. Data from Appendix A.

year.30 We use this value in our simulations. The second parameter is the maximum beaver population that a hinterland can support. This parameter depends on the size of the hinterland and the potential beaver density in the region. Better habitat for beaver imply greater potential densities. The nature of the habitat in the three hinterlands is described in Chapter 2, and in the case of the Fort Albany hinterland, which lies in current-day Ontario, we also have direct beaver counts that were made in the 1980s. Our population numbers are shown in Figures 16–18. Prior to the introduction of a commercial trade, there was limited hunting of beaver, so the impact of Native Americans on the beaver population was minimal. But the commercial trade brought about a greater demand for beaver pelts as well as access to more effective hunting tools, notably ice chisels and twine. It was after the commercial fur trade was introduced that hunting increased and beaver stocks fell.31 In each of the hinterlands, though, the decline was modest, with beaver populations remaining at or above the maximum-sustained-yield level, X. Beginning in the late 1730s, however, something happened in the hinterlands of Fort Albany (Figure 16) and York Factory (Figure 17) to reduce the animal stocks below this biological optimum. By contrast, in the Fort Churchill hinterland (Figure 18), beaver populations remained close to the biological optimum. To help explain

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Figure 17. The Simulated Beaver Population in the York Factory Hinterland and an Index of Fur Prices at York Factory, 1716–1763. Data from Appendix A.

fur price index

Figure 18. The Simulated Beaver Population in the Fort Churchill Hinterland and an Index of Fur Prices at Fort Churchill, 1722–63. Data from Appendix A.

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these patterns, we need to explore the experience in each of the three hinterlands in greater detail. The Fort Albany hinterland had the best beaver habitat, and we estimate that the maximum beaver population supportable by the region was about 345,000, implying a maximum density of 0.6 beaver per square kilometer. This density is similar to that found by contemporary land-use studies for that region of Ontario. Allowing that some beaver were hunted for personal use and there already was a small commercial trade, we set the initial population at 200,000.32 From that level, the beaver stock declined over the period 1700–1720. This is to be expected of a resource that was being further exploited for commercial purposes. By 1720 the population had stabilized at about 170,000, which is roughly consistent with maximumsustained-yield management, and for the next twenty years the beaver population remained at about this level.33 During the 1740s, however, a combination of increased French competition and unabated trading by the Hudson’s Bay Company began to take its toll on the beaver stock. Overharvesting is especially apparent during the period from 1747 to 1749, when Fort Albany received an average of 20,500 pelts per year, a larger trade than in any of the preceding twenty years. Adding in the beaver sold by the natives to the French, the total trade was likely above 40,000 pelts per year. This level of trapping devastated the beaver colonies, reducing the stock from about 160,000 to a low of 85,000, or half the maximum-sustainedyield level. The decline led not only to meager fur returns throughout the 1750s but also to modest harvests in the early 1760s as well. York Factory served the largest region, but the habitat was not quite as suitable for beaver as Fort Albany’s trading area. In our simulation, the maximum beaver population the hinterland could support is set at 460,000, implying a density of just under 0.5 beaver per square kilometer. Yet, the population pattern that we derive is very similar to that experienced in the Fort Albany region. With the reemergence of the commercial trade following the Treaty of Utrecht, the beaver population fell from its starting point of 280,000 in 1716 to just above the maximum-sustained-yield level of 230,000 by the early 1730s. There were some very large harvests during this period, but as was true of our Fort Albany simulation, the pattern does not indicate overharvesting. But after 1738, when French competition intensified, levels of trapping were seen that severely depleted the beaver stocks. In 1740 the trade at York Factory increased to 36,400 beaver pelts; in 1742, 37,700 pelts were received, and in 1743, 33,500. To these numbers must be

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added the beaver pelts that were traded to the French. According to the simulation, the impact of the greater harvests was to reduce the beaver population to about 140,000, which was barely 60 percent of the level consistent with a maximum sustained yield. In the Fort Churchill hinterland, the path of the beaver population that we simulate was quite different from the pattern in the other two hinterlands. The Fort Churchill hinterland, consisting as it did of northern boreal forest and tundra, was both smaller and less suitable for beaver. In our simulation the maximum beaver population is 145,000, implying a potential beaver density of just 0.3 per square kilometer, which is 50 percent lower than in the Fort Albany hinterland.34 Despite the low density, the beaver population was much more stable than in the other two regions. From 1722 to 1742, population fell from about 90,000 to the maximumsustained-yield level of 72,500. After 1742 the beaver population stayed in a narrow band of about 60,000 to 75,000. So, even though the initial pattern was the same, the beaver population did not exhibit the second decline evident in both the Fort Albany and York Factory hinterlands. Why the beaver populations remained close to the biological optimum in the Fort Churchill hinterland but not in the hinterlands served by the other two posts is one of the questions we turn to next.

Beaver Depletion, Overexploitation, and the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Pricing Policies The connection between the size of the beaver stocks and the European trade was based on the prices the Indians were receiving for their furs. The higher were fur prices, the more trade goods natives were receiving per pelt, and hence the greater their earnings for time spent in commercial activities. The fur price index derived in Chapter 2 for each of the three hinterlands is also illustrated in Figures 16–18. What stands out, starting in the decade of the 1730s, is the negative relation between the price of furs and the beaver population in the Fort Albany and York Factory hinterlands. In the earlier decades, the price index remained comparatively stable and the beaver were harvested at rates consistent with the long-run health of the animal stocks. Later, however, when the company was offering higher prices over an extended period, the beaver population declined. At Fort Albany, the fur price index hardly varied from the start of the period to 1732; trade took place almost entirely within the range 60 to 70.

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Over the same period, fur returns at the post remained strong. The simulated beaver population based on those returns indicates that the beaver population in the hinterland was at or above the level consistent with a maximum sustained yield. In 1733, however, the price index jumped to over 80 and continued to increase over subsequent years, reaching 115 in 1755. In response to the better terms, Indians in the Fort Albany hinterland began harvesting more beaver, and for a number of years returns at the post rose quite substantially, despite more active trading by the French in the region. Ultimately, though, these harvests were not sustainable. During the 1740s beaver stocks were seriously depleted, falling to levels far below the biological optimum. As a result, beaver returns in the mid-1750s were among the lowest in the history of the post even though native trappers were being offered exceptionally high prices for their furs. The same negative relation between fur prices and beaver stocks is apparent in the York Factory hinterland. Trade at York Factory resumed only after the 1713 Utrecht agreement, and until 1721 factors were offering close to the official standard to attract natives to the post.35 But once the trade became well established, the price index of furs dropped to about 70 and remained close to that level through to 1738. During this entire period beaver returns were strong and, as the simulation suggests, the beaver population remained high. But after La Ve´rendrye relocated Fort Maurepas to the mouth of the Winnipeg River in 1739, competition increased and York Factory traders responded by raising fur prices. And the price index, although variable, continued to trend strongly upward for the rest of the period, reaching 115 in 1754. Native trappers in the York Factory hinterland responded by increasing their beaver harvests, and York Factory received some very large shipments of pelts. But, just as was the case in the Albany hinterland, the region could not sustain the combination of greater returns at the Hudson’s Bay Company post and the emerging French trade. Beginning in the mid-1740s, according to the simulation, beaver stocks in the York Factory hinterland fell below the biological optimum and remained low through the rest of the period. So in the mid-1750s, even when the price index was above the official standard for the first time, the number of beaver pelts traded at the post was small. At the same time, and to a greater extent than in the Albany region, native trappers were able to shift to trapping other animals, particularly marten and wolf, and so York Factory did not suffer the declines in total made beaver returns that Fort Albany experienced.

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Equally suggestive of a negative relation between fur prices and beaver stocks is the evidence from Fort Churchill. Being so far north and west, the hinterland could not be reached by French traders, so Fort Churchill maintained its monopoly of the trade throughout the period. At Fort Churchill, there was almost no upward trend in fur prices, in contrast to the experience at the other posts.36 The distinct pricing policy coincided with a very different pattern of beaver returns. Most significant, no serious decline in the beaver trade occurred during or after the 1750s. Throughout the years 1722 to 1763, the simulated beaver population was above or close to the biological optimum, implying that natives in the Churchill hinterland were harvesting beaver at rates that were both sustainable and productive of high long-term yields. The preceding discussion has highlighted the role of price in the overexploitation of the beaver. Ultimately, though, it was the presence of the French and the company’s reaction to that presence that determined the extent of harvesting and the resulting stock of the resource.37 The Hudson’s Bay Company’s response to French competition was almost certainly damaging to the beaver population, but their actions must be seen in context. The primary objective of the London directors was the long-term profitability of the company, but the trade in pelts contained within it a tension between short-run and long-run profitability. This tension came to the fore only as French competition became more intense. The effect of French competition on the trade at Fort Albany is well documented in the annual letters sent to London. Beginning in 1716 when the beaver population, according to our simulations, was close to the maximum-sustained-yield level, not only was the price of furs at the post a modest 71.8, but the factors were acting in other ways to help maintain the beaver stocks. For example, in that year, Thomas Macklish, the chief trader at Fort Albany, wrote: ‘‘I have told all the Indians not to bring any summer beaver, neither in coat nor parchment. I likewise burnt 150 coat and parchment before their faces, telling them at the same time that it is of no value with us; upon which all the Indians in general has promised to bring no more summer beaver. I likewise told all the Indians not to make any cub skin coats, which is somewhat impossible for the Indians to perform, unless they were to make coats of summer beaver, for as soon as the winter setts in they are obliged to make use of the first beaver they catch to keep them from freezing.’’38 In taking these actions the chief factor was helping to protect the animal

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population, but the extent to which the company could restrict prices and the sorts of furs they would accept was limited by the level of French competition. In the same letter, Macklish reported: ‘‘It is certain the French began their new settlement up this river last summer and have built two houses in the centre of those Indians that have used this place ever since it was settled by the English.’’39 He knew this not just because the Indians had told him, but also because they came carrying French goods. He felt, though, that the French would not be much of a problem because ‘‘they all in general told me that the French trades hard with them, and that I give twice the value for beaver and all other furs, cats excepted,’’ upon which he raised the rate for cats, ‘‘which has given good satisfaction to the Indians and [they] have promised to come here next summer to trade and bring what cats they kill with them.’’40 Although Macklish wrote that the French would not be a problem, he responded to the French presence by increasing the price of at least one fur. In 1722 Joseph Myatt, who replaced Macklish as chief factor at Fort Albany, reported that returns had declined (they were indeed unusually low that year) because ‘‘we have not had any of the leading Indians down with us to trade that were here last year.’’41 He hoped that some had gone to York Factory, although he knew that the Moose River Indians and the Tibithebe Indians had traded with the French.42 Myatt’s response was to ‘‘make some presents to the two leading Indians of Moose River . . . being in great hopes that will induce them to come here again.’’43 Partly because of the low returns in 1722, which was his first year as chief trader, Myatt was placed under Richard Staunton, the company’s most experienced factor, but at Staunton’s retirement in 1726 Myatt regained command of Fort Albany. His 1726 letter includes the following statement: ‘‘Mr. Staunton tells me, to encourage the Native, he promised them to trade them martens at two per beaver the next year, therefore hopes your honours will not take it amiss if I should trade them so.’’44 Thus, from a policy in 1716 whereby company traders were burning furs to discourage trapping of inferior animals, by the mid-1720s the factors had shifted their position and were increasing the price of marten. In the 1730s, the post began raising the price of the most important fur, beaver, and the result was a marked increase in the overall fur price index. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s response to French competition was almost certainly damaging to the resource, but the post factors had very little choice if they wished to maintain close trading relationships with the various Indian tribes. They may have been willing to

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burn summer furs during periods when they faced little competition, but they were unwilling ‘‘to disgust the Indians’’ by such policies or to refuse poorer quality skins once the French became a threat. The objectives of the company were laid out to Joseph Isbister when he took over command of Fort Churchill: ‘‘We have nothing more at Heart than the Preservation of our Factorys, the Security of our People and the Encrease of our Trade.’’45 Although maintaining the resource base was central to those objectives, it was difficult when the French were active in an area. During periods of competition, a manager who refused to trade for small or summer furs, or offered low prices for furs could find his returns falling as the Indians took advantage of their opportunities to trade with the French. Such strategies were risky for a post governor, because, in the face of falling returns, the head office might find it difficult to distinguish between a manager who was operating in the long-term interest of the company and one who was just incompetent or behaving opportunistically. Although company traders were concerned about the beaver resource, how apparent to them would a decline in the beaver population be? In one sense, the evidence available to the men at the posts was the same as the evidence now available to us. We use the actual numbers of furs traded at each of the three posts to indicate the population trends. Still, it is clear from Figure 13 that returns were highly variable. The downward trend is evident only from the end of the period looking back. Moreover, we have applied modern ecological studies of the beaver to generate estimates of the animal population. This sort of evidence certainly was not available to the company. The head office did, however, have two other sources of information. They had the statements of the native traders and reports from their own employees. In addition to being chief trader at York Factory and then at Fort Churchill, James Isham was a well-respected British naturalist. Writing about the beaver stock in the early 1740s, he observed: ‘‘I’tts a Little strange the Breed of these beaver Does not Diminish greatly considereing the many thousands that is Killd of a Year.’’46 Later in his description of the number of young born, he reported ‘‘some having five and six at a time.’’47 We know now from the ecology literature that it is only when the population is threatened that beaver give birth to that number of kits. In a stable environment, the number is around three. Isham’s intuition that the beaver stock should have been declining in the York hinterland is correct and is borne out by our simulations, but the precipitous drop occurred only after Isham made these comments.

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The Indians were another potential source of information on the state of the animal population. However, here the issue is clouded by the fact that beaver was not the only animal traded. As pointed out earlier, when the trade in beaver declined, the trade in marten and other furs often increased. Thus native trappers could, to some degree, substitute one fur for another, which reduced their incentive to conserve any one resource and inform the company about potential problems. In fact, even if the Indians told the traders about the true state of the animal stocks, that information might be downplayed if not completely ignored. At issue here is the role of communication in the bargaining process. As James Isham wrote in his Observations: ‘‘The worst property that attends these Natives is their false information, for if you put a Question to them, as I have Done oft’s, they will anser to what I Desir’s, at the same time neither her’d see, or new any thing of the matter, so by severall other cases, by which they are not to be Really’s on unless all points upon the same Subject, as the proverb is, what all say’s is true, but I found the Contrary by these Natives.’’48 The uncertainty may have made it difficult for the Hudson’s Bay Company to appreciate the seriousness of the depletion and respond to it. In fact, it was not until 1821 when the resource base was exhausted and the company merged with its main rival that it put in place policies to address overexploitation.49 The theme of competition and depletion of biological resources has been played out in other contexts and the plots have a familiar ring. A previously unexploited or underexploited resource is opened to a new harvesting technology or new markets. As long as the exploiter can control access, harvesting is at an appropriate level. But once this control is lost, the resource becomes degraded. This is our story of the beaver in the region of Hudson Bay during the middle years of the eighteenth century. When the Hudson’s Bay Company had a monopoly of the trade or when fur prices in Europe were relatively low, the company pursued a pricing strategy at its trading posts that was consistent with beaver stocks at, or above, the biological optimum. But once the French moved into a hinterland and fur prices in Europe rose, the company was faced with a difficult situation. It could maintain its prices and protect the animal stock but lose market share to the French, or it could protect its share of the trade at the cost of the underlying animal base.50 The company chose to raise the price they paid to Indians for furs, and the Indians responded with greater hunting effort and, in the short run, larger harvests. Over the longer term, however, the

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beaver populations at these levels of harvest were not sustainable, and ultimately both the populations and the harvests declined. Only in the Fort Churchill hinterland, where the Hudson’s Bay Company’s post was protected by distance from competition, did the beaver stocks remain high. As a long-term player in the European fur market, the Hudson’s Bay Company had little choice when faced with French competition. The increasing prices for pelts in Europe allowed independent French traders from Quebec to travel further inland and increase the prices they paid for pelts. Once this happened, the Hudson’s Bay Company had to respond. Native trappers, however, did not have to react as they did. The Cree, Assiniboin, Chipewyan, and other native groups were the primary agents in the trade. They were the ones who harvested the animals. In the first instance, then, it was their response to the higher fur prices that led to the depletion of the beaver populations, and in Chapter 5 we explore the factors that determined their response.

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Industrious Indians

[An] improvident and lazy people, having no concern but the subsistence of the present day. —Joseph Robson, Hudson’s Bay Company mason, 1752

H

undreds of canoes from communities across the woodlands and plains made their way downriver to Hudson’s Bay Company posts each year. Natives came to take advantage of the opportunity, as James Axtell puts it, to ‘‘acquire new tastes, to form new aesthetic preferences.’’1 But forming and satisfying new preferences, whether for Venetian beads, Brazilian roll tobacco, or other luxury goods, required furs. Each canoe that went down the Nelson or Hayes River to York Factory or down the Albany or Churchill River was packed with skins that included beaver, marten, muskrat, otter, lynx, bobcat, fox, and wolf. A cycle of hunting and trading had, of course, existed prior to the coming of the Europeans and prior to the development of a commercial fur trade. Archaeological remains tell us of a pre-Columbian trading network that stretched the length of the entire continent. Stone, shell, and mineral trade goods have been found hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles from their source. Siliceous stone is the most common trade material found at the archaeological sites.2 Trading, therefore, was not a creation of the contact era. What was new was the range of goods that were now available and the need to purchase these goods with furs. So even though the commercial fur trade can be seen as an extension of activities that had been part of the native economy, the number of pelts traded, as we discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, was far more

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than had previously been used for subsistence or trade among native groups. Acquiring furs for the commercial trade meant committing labor to this new sector of the native economy. Where before a native might have spent time as leisure, now his choices included trapping more furs and traveling downriver to the bayside posts to exchange them for European goods. Some native groups chose to participate even more heavily in commercial activity. The ‘‘home guard’’ Indians, for example, eventually lived year-round in the general vicinity of the posts and specialized in providing food. The majority, however, spent a small part of their time in the commercial fur trade, allocating most of their time to traditional activities. The question that we explore in this chapter relates to the supply of labor to the fur trade and, in particular, to what happened to the level of native participation in commercial trapping activity as the prices paid for furs by both English and French increased. Rising fur prices, measured by our fur price index, represent declining prices for the European goods that were purchased with these furs. Rising fur prices also affected the return for time spent in the trade because higher fur prices meant more European goods were received for every hour spent hunting, trapping, and transporting furs. A higher price index thus implied higher prices for furs, lower prices for European goods, and a higher wage to natives for the time they spent in the fur trade. The fur price index can be seen therefore as one indicator of a number of economic factors that were part of the commercial trade. Drawing on his exhaustive study of the Hudson’s Bay Company records, E. E. Rich, the preeminent historian of the company and its records, came to believe that in matters related to their labor supply, Indians behaved differently from Europeans. He wrote: ‘‘English economic rules did not apply to the Indian trade. On the contrary, all who had any knowledge of the trade were convinced that a rise in prices would lead to the Indians bringing down less furs.’’3 This interpretation of native behavior was embraced by economic historian Abraham Rotstein, who was persuaded by Rich’s view of the native reaction to price: ‘‘Indian behaviour in trade was entirely unconventional; they could not be induced to bring more furs (or more of any particular kind of fur) by an offer of higher prices, ie. more European goods.’’4 Both claimed that Indians wanted only a given quantity of goods from the commercial trade, which meant that in a market where fur prices were rising, wants could be satisfied with fewer furs, which

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would lead, in turn, to less native effort in commercial activities and fewer pelts delivered to the posts. The path-breaking work of a new generation of scholars has led to more nuanced interpretations of native culture and native cultural adaptations to a European presence.5 Much of this work, while arguing that Indians were not so unlike many Europeans and most American colonists in their approach to economic decisions, nevertheless continues to hold to the view of E. E. Rich and Abraham Rotstein that in the dimension of labor supply Native Americans differed markedly from non-natives of the period. Conrad Heindenreich and Arthur Ray give what is perhaps the most succinct statement of the generally accepted Rich-Rotstein view: ‘‘The Indians brought only enough furs to the fort to obtain these [European] goods. By giving him increasingly favorable terms of trade, the trader often obtained fewer furs because the Indians could bring fewer pelts to obtain the same goods.’’6 Citing Ray, Shepard Krech makes a similar point in The Ecological Indian: ‘‘Even when traders signaled a greater demand for furs in the prices (in goods) they were willing to pay, Indians did not respond by increasing the supply. Instead they brought the same number or sometimes less.’’7 This perception of Indian reaction to rising prices is not unique to those writing on native communities. Similar comments can be found in the older descriptions of European peasant behavior in the face of rising wages; for example: ‘‘The labor of the poor is . . . scarce to be had at all (so licentious are they who labor only to eat, or rather to drink)’’; ‘‘The poor in the manufacturing counties will never work any more time than is necessary to live and support their weekly debauches.’’8 The perception of the indolent, drunken peasant has undergone significant revision. Historian Jan de Vries and others describe a fundamental change in consumer and worker behavior during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that they capture in the term ‘‘industrious society.’’9 At the heart of the industrious society lies the fact that as a result of increasing long-distance trade in the seventeenth century, households were able to purchase a much increased variety of goods previously unavailable to the ordinary person, goods such as cotton textiles, chinaware, tea, tobacco, sugar, and spices. De Vries and others argue persuasively that Europeans responded to these new choices by reorganizing their households, spending less time in leisure and more in income-generating activities. In effect, they worked more in order to get the income to buy the new goods. In addition, peasants began specializing in activities that had higher market returns. So

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they might now, for example, allocate more land to hops or cereal for the market. And rather than exhibiting backward-sloping supply curves of labor as they might have in earlier times, where an increase in the wage resulted in less labor being supplied, these industrious households responded by supplying more labor. That is, their supply curve of labor was upward-sloping. Jan de Vries argues that the emergence of this more industrious society was neither sudden nor limited geographically to England. Such changes in household behavior were also seen in Dutch and French peasant households as well as in colonial America. Historians, however, have continued to see Native American behavior, at least in regard to labor decisions, as being in sharp contrast to de Vries’s description of the industrious worker. This is despite the fact that the commodities available to European and colonial American households were the very ones being traded to Native Americans. Statements about how Indians reacted to price draw in part from the writings of contemporaries, some of whom saw natives as indolent, with little interest in other than their immediate needs. Post factor Joseph Robson described Indians, at a time when prices for furs were high, as an ‘‘improvident and lazy people, having no concern but the subsistence of the present day.’’10 The implication of such a statement is that natives made no attempt to raise their living standards by taking more beaver pelts when fur prices rose. But such claims by contemporaries are not always easy to interpret. As Mary Black-Rogers has so eloquently demonstrated in her work ‘‘Varieties of ‘Starving,’ ’’ the words used by Indians to describe events and the understanding of those terms by the European traders can lead to misinterpretation.11 She argues, in the case of the word root starv (starved, starving, starvation), that there are contextual and cultural meanings that have been lost in the translation from Algonquian to English. ‘‘Starving’’ could have a literal, a technical, or a manipulative meaning depending on the context in which it was used. ‘‘Starving’’ used in a technical sense was generally related to the number of furs brought to the posts for trade. ‘‘The Indians were starving and brought little’’ is an example.12 What is meant here is that the Indians made a decision to hunt for food rather than furs. Mary Black-Rogers points out that when starving is used in a technical sense it is often used in relation to the term lazy, with its synonyms ‘‘indolent,’’ ‘‘indifferent,’’ or ‘‘indisposed to hunt.’’ She argues that in the fur traders’ world, lazy did not mean indolent; rather, it meant ‘‘not hunting for furs.’’13 Thus, in considering eighteenth-century descriptions of Indian

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behavior, we need to be careful about how we interpret the term used and not just assume a modern connotation. Joseph Robson’s characterization of Indians as lazy implied that higher fur prices would lead to fewer furs brought to the posts, but elsewhere in his writings Robson condemned low fur prices as ‘‘big with inequity.’’ He wrote: ‘‘[A low price] is no less inconsistent with the Company’s true interest than it is injurious to the natives, who become more and more alienated from us, and are either discouraged from hunting at all, or inclined to carry all their furs to the French’’ (emphasis added).14 In this passage, Robson appears to be suggesting that lower prices reduced native effort in the commercial trade by making it no longer worth their time to trap and trade.15 Thus, as exemplified by Robson’s writings, the contemporary reports that underpin much of the historical view of Indians as nonindustrious are themselves ambiguous about how native trapping effort and consumption were affected by pricing at Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts.

Native Labor Supply and the Royal Commission Report of 1749 It is not certain to whom we should ascribe the axiom that Native Americans involved in the fur trade wanted only a certain quantity of goods and so had downward-sloping labor supply curves, but certainly E. E. Rich, writing in the mid-twentieth century, espoused this view. His lifelong study led to a classic history of the Hudson’s Bay Company in two superb volumes. His was a history written very much from the perspective of the company, and he put a great deal of weight on what its officials were claiming. Yet what must be understood and appreciated in any reading or interpretation of the written records is that in the first part of the eighteenth century perhaps the most important single objective of the head office was ensuring that the ‘‘Company of Adventurers’’ maintain its monopoly in the hinterland of Hudson Bay, at least in regard to the English trade. The French had been a presence in the hinterland of Fort Albany even before the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht, and, by mid-century, French voyageurs from Montreal had penetrated as far west as the head waters of Lake Winnipeg, where they were in a position to intercept native traders making their way up the Nelson River to York Factory. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the company’s dominance was also being threatened by various groups in England who wanted to open up the market to more

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competition, even to the extent of chartering a second company that would be permitted to trade in the region.16 Although the monopoly charter of the company had been disputed as early as the 1690s, the increasing price of furs in London gave added incentive to English merchants, hatters, and furriers to seek ways of expanding the volume of furs on the market. As often happened when such disputes arose, the parties took their case to Parliament. In 1749 a Parliamentary committee was appointed to ‘‘inquire into the State and Condition of the Countries adjoining to Hudson’s Bay, and of the Trade carried on there; . . . and also to inquire into the Right the Company of Adventurers trading to Hudson’s Bay pretend [claim] to have, by Charter, to the Property of Lands, and exclusive Trade to those Countries.’’17 Of special concern to those who had convinced Parliament to hold this inquiry was how the volume of furs coming into England might be increased. More furs could help reduce prices and thus the costs of those involved in the processing of furs. It was taken as given that hunting and trapping were activities conducted by the Indian communities, and so the inquiry committee heard at length how native traders might be persuaded to increase the number of furs they brought to the English posts. Central to that question was the nature of native labor supply. Threatened with the loss of its monopoly, company officials naturally tried to make the strongest possible case against opening access to other British traders. The company argued that moving to a more competitive market was in fact contrary to the objectives laid out by the Parliamentary committee including, most important, the objective of expanding the trade. Certainly Rich was persuaded by the company’s position on how natives responded to fur prices: ‘‘As the evidence accumulated (not all of it printed in the official report) there was no escaping the conclusion that in trade with the Indians the price mechanism did not work.’’18 This view of Indian behavior was central to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s claim to the inquiry committee that opening the market to competition would be counterproductive to the objective of increasing the volume of trade. More competition would result in higher prices paid to the Indians, but because natives were, according to company officials, ‘‘un-European’’ in their reaction to better prices, they would bring fewer furs to the posts, not more. In his discussion of the inquiry, E. E. Rich writes that those witnesses who made statements to the 1749 committee consistent with this interpretation made sound arguments, and correspondingly he is almost dismissive

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of those whose views differed.19 Thus chief trader James Isham was ‘‘an acute observer . . . [and] forthright.’’ Isham claimed that ‘‘giving Indians a larger Price would occasion the Decrease of the Trade.’’ Captain Spurrell, another company employee, was ‘‘equally emphatic.’’ Rich reports his testimony: ‘‘ ‘Suppose there were two Markets would not the Indians raise the Price of their Furs?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Would they kill more?’ ‘No, less.’ ’’20 While neither man’s testimony became part of the committee’s final report, their words can be interpreted either in light of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s desire to preserve its monopoly or as the disinterested judgments of seasoned observers who were simply representing the true state of the market. The latter was clearly Rich’s view, and it was his interpretation that set the stage for the subsequent historiography. The official committee report summarized the testimony of nineteen witnesses, most of whom were former employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company, including thirteen who had direct experience at the bay. Five of the remaining witnesses were English merchants, and the Provost of Glasgow spoke for the Glasgow merchants.21 In contrast to E. E. Rich’s description of the inquiry, the committee report presents a more complete survey of the witness responses on the relationship between fur prices and fur returns. Not all the witnesses commented on the volume of trade, but where reference was made, the witnesses, in nearly every case, either stated directly that raising price to the natives would bring in more furs or made statements that implied such an effect. The first such statement in the committee report came from Joseph Robson, a longtime company employee, who elsewhere, as we noted, had described the natives as improvident and lazy. But to the committee he said: ‘‘If the Standard of Trade was more advantageous to the Indians, a Greater quantity of Furs and Pelts would be brought.’’22 Richard White, who had been at the bay for nearly twenty years, first as a clerk at Fort Albany and then ten years as second in command at Fort Churchill, said much the same: ‘‘He [White] thinks he ought to follow his Directions, and not to lower the Standard [of trade] . . . as [not lowering] it would encourage the natives to bring more skins down, who bring their Commodities from a great distance.’’23 At the end of his testimony, White said that he did ‘‘know’’ this to be true, but from the summary of his testimony in the report this was clearly his opinion. Furthermore, White also indicated, as did other witnesses, that locating posts in the interior would raise the volume of trade. Since locating posts in the interior would reduce the Indians’ transport costs, it would by implication raise the net

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price they received for their furs and hence must be considered as having an effect similar to an increase in the price at the post. Matthew Sergeant, another former employee of the company at the bay, also testified that raising fur prices would increase trade volumes. His emphasis was on increasing the price through gifts. Providing suits of clothes and increasing the gifts of brandy would, in his view, ‘‘inlarge the trade.’’24 Rich, perhaps surprisingly, appears to agree with Sergeant on this point. Gift-giving was part of the ceremonial nature of the trade dictated by Indian custom, and Rich made a distinction between attracting trade through ‘‘enticement’’ and through higher prices.25 To see gifts and trade goods as separate in this way fails to appreciate that what ultimately mattered to the native traders was the total volume of European goods they received for their furs, not whether the goods were obtained during the gift-giving ceremonies or during the actual trading process. Some of the other witnesses spoke about the way the trade was conducted. John Hayter, who had been a carpenter for ten years at the bay, was not asked specifically about prices, but he commented that the trade had been hurt because: ‘‘the Old leading Indian had been used ill by the Governor.’’26 Edward Thompson, who had been a surgeon at Moose Factory for three years, suggested a number of ways of increasing the trade, including building a post inland. As we noted, this would have increased the net price that native traders would receive for their furs. Thompson also commented directly on the treatment of Indians and on pricing policy: ‘‘that he has seen the Governors use the Indians ill, not only in advancing them above the Standard, but beating and abusing them.’’27 The term ‘‘advancing them above the Standard’’ meant charging more than the official standard for European trade goods. Christopher Bannister, an armorer and gunsmith, said much the same: ‘‘If the Indians were better used, the Company might have more Trade, for the Factors don’t give them sufficient Price, and they growl and grumble.’’28 Robert Griffin, a silversmith, did not mention the effect of price directly, but he said that building posts closer to the Indians would increase the trade, again reflecting the effect of an increase in the net price. Alexander Browne, who was a surgeon at the bay for six years, reported ‘‘that the Company buy all the Goods that are brought, the Indians having no other Market; but that if they allowed them a better Price, they would certainly bring down more.’’29 Thomas Mitchell, captain of a company sloop, did not comment on the effect of price other than to say: ‘‘The Trade at Albany and Moose River . . . is carried on to

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the best Advantage, and incapable of further improvement or extension.’’30 However, when Mitchell, as a new employee, had questioned the standard used in the purchase of pelts, he had ‘‘called down a torrent of abuse upon his head’’ from the company.31 It seems clear, then, that those witnesses who had worked for the company but were no longer in their employ took the position that increasing the price of furs directly, or taking actions that would raise the net price to native traders, would increase the number of furs brought to the posts. Much less weight can be placed on the testimony of the merchants who gave evidence before the committee. Any knowledge they had of conditions at the bay would have been secondhand, and they may very well have based their opinion on how they believed workers in England reacted to price. Given those caveats, nearly all the merchants who expressed an opinion supported increasing the price of furs at the bay as a way of expanding the trade. Of course, these were merchants who wished to see the market opened up. An exception was Henry Spurling, who was a merchant but also a proprietor of the Hudson’s Bay Company with share holdings worth £330 book value. His testimony was very similar to that of the current company employees. He told the inquiry committee that ‘‘for the Indians who kill Beasts are not industrious, but only do it for Subsistence and absolute Necessaries; and they won’t make a Toil for a Pleasure for any Consideration.’’32 The witnesses who testified as part of the 1749 inquiry were obviously more diverse in their views of how natives reacted to price than portrayed in Rich’s more selective interpretation, an interpretation that has become the standard in the literature. From a reading of all the testimony to the Parliamentary inquiry committee, there is reason to believe that natives were behaving more like their English and colonial cousins in terms of their response to higher fur prices and their greater access to goods. In the end, though, the recommendation of the Parliamentary committee was that the Hudson’s Bay Company be allowed to keep its monopoly, indicating perhaps that the committee was persuaded by the company’s arguments. Conversely, the final decision may have been due to considerations other than their view of native behavior. Granting the English and Scottish merchants greater access to the hinterland of Hudson Bay might have been approved had there not been a greater threat. This was a period of mounting tension between England and France, and maintaining the Hudson’s Bay Company

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as a bulwark against the French may have been the government’s overriding consideration. So in the end, the company prevailed. In addition to the evidence presented to the inquiry committee by the company’s employees, Rich was impressed by the views of Andrew Graham, who worked at Hudson Bay from 1749 to 1774, and from 1761 was second in command at York Factory. He described Graham as ‘‘unequaled among the Bay-Governors of the eighteenth century as a writer of closely reasoned memoranda in which accurate observation was mingled with shrewd reasoning.’’33 Graham was one of the outstanding naturalists of his age. His Observations on Hudson’s Bay provide not only descriptions of the flora and fauna of the region but detailed accounts of natives and the native communities with whom he had contact. By the time Andrew Graham became acting chief at York Factory in the 1760s, the company was no longer under threat of losing its charter. So in this regard, Graham’s observations can be taken as a good reflection of what he believed. He argued on the basis of a transport constraint that beyond some level, higher prices would not, or indeed could not, attract more furs. He illustrated his point, taking the case of an Indian who brought 100mb in furs and skins to the post. According to Graham, such an Indian could satisfy all his wants with 70mb in goods that he would transport back. The remaining 30mb would be consumed at the post, and given the limited time he had available, this was all he could spend. Thus, Graham argued, raising prices would reduce the quantity of furs traded.34 At the time Andrew Graham made this observation, however, and throughout his tenure at York Factory, fur prices were considerably higher than when those who testified to the 1749 inquiry committee had been at the bay. In the five years leading up to 1775, the fur price index at York Factory averaged 110, or 60 percent higher than the level of the 1730s. Tellingly, even though Graham suggested that raising prices beyond the levels of the early 1770s would reduce the trade, he did not argue that lowering the price below those levels would increase the numbers of furs brought to the post. Evaluating the native response to higher prices solely from the evidence presented to the inquiry committee and the comments of current and former company employees is to give greater significance to some statements than others, as E. E. Rich in fact did. Clearly the statements show a greater range of opinion than has been acknowledged in the historiography. Rather than debating the relative merit of the contradictory sets of statements, we answer the question of whether the native labor supply went up or down

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in response to fur prices by looking at the actual trade at the York Factory post.

The Evidence from York Factory The Cree, Assiniboin, and other natives who came to York Factory purchased a wide variety of goods that related to most aspects of native economic life. In Chapter 3, we grouped these goods into four broad categories: producer goods, household goods, alcohol and tobacco, and other luxuries. These commodity groupings can inform us about the way natives allocated their income. In particular, how their expenditures changed over time can tell us whether natives behaved more like the image of the traditional European peasant, who did not try to raise living standards, or more like the industrious households described by Jan de Vries. In the 1730s the price of furs at York Factory began increasing. Equivalently, since furs were exchanged for European goods, the price of European goods was falling. As many scholars have recognized, these price changes allowed natives to purchase the same quantity of goods with fewer furs. But rising fur prices also increased the potential incomes of those natives who participated in the trade. Time spent in the commercial fur trade became worth more in terms of what it could buy. In the early years of the trade at York Factory, the most important items were firearms and related products: guns, gunpowder, powder horns, flints, and shot. Guns replaced the bow and arrow, and the spear, especially for small game and waterfowl, although traditional weapons continued to be effective, sometimes more so, in hunting large game. The shorter, threeand-a-half-foot gun was particularly useful for hunting geese and other game where accuracy was not paramount. The shorter gun was also the weapon of choice in more heavily forested areas where animals could be shot at close range. One of the phrases that James Isham included in his Cree dictionary, used by company traders, was ‘‘I will trade a Long gun small and handy.’’35 For hunting in more open areas, the four-foot gun was preferred. The longer guns were also more effective in warfare, although it is not clear the extent to which Indians purchased them for that purpose.36 Guns, as we have noted, were not used to hunt animals that had potentially valuable pelts. Figure 19 shows the trade pattern in firearms at York Factory to 1770. There were some large purchases in the early years, but over the period

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Figure 19. Trade in Firearms at York Factory, 1716–70. Source: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Post Account Books: York Factory, MG 20 B 239/d/8–60.

there was little trend in the number of guns traded. Meanwhile, the sales of gun-related goods like shot and gunpowder actually trended downward. It could be that guns were being used less, but we also have to consider the increasing role of the French in the trade.37 The French began competing in a modest way in the York Factory hinterland in the early 1730s, but their level of activity intensified at the end of the decade and further increased through to the 1750s. The French presence led to a widening gap between the total value of European goods received by natives and the goods acquired at York Factory. There was, moreover, considerable variation across commodities, as we noted in Chapter 2. Unlike the English traders whose supplies came to the bayside posts by ship, French voyageurs had to canoe from Montreal, portaging across the various heights of land to get to the environs of Lake Winnipeg. As a result of this river and overland transportation route and the limited capacity of the canoes, the French tended to specialize in high value-to-weight items. Guns were typically not part of French exchange, both because they were cumbersome and because they required considerable maintenance and support. Goods like shot and powder could be traded more profitably, although in the case of gunpowder the French were at somewhat of a disadvantage in that keeping the powder dry was more difficult for them.38 Thus, while the York Factory trade in gun-related goods

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Figure 20. Trade in Kettles and Blankets at York Factory, 1716–70. Source: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Post Account Books: York Factory, MG 20 B 239/ d/8–60.

likely understates the total trade in the hinterland after the 1730s, the trade in guns alone would not. If we make an appropriate adjustment for the increasing French presence, the overall downward trend in gun-related goods seen in the York Factory trade disappears.39 It appears then that Native Americans in the York Factory hinterland were purchasing a roughly constant supply of guns and gun-related products throughout the period, and this was despite significant increases in the price of the furs. Such behavior seems fully in keeping with the view of most historians of the trade that Indians demanded a given quantity of European goods. Kettles and blankets were the main ‘‘household goods’’ purchased. The trade in these items exhibits a pattern similar to that of firearms (Figure 20). There was no trend in the number of blankets received at York Factory, while the number of kettles drifted slightly downward. It is unlikely that adding the French trade would greatly affect the profile because these were not the sort of goods that the French were trading, as both kettles and blankets were relatively low value-to-weight items. The roughly constant purchases of both kettles and blankets, in the presence of rising fur prices, is again indicative of a given native demand for these goods. Thus, like natives’ purchases of firearms and other producer goods, their expenditures

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Figure 21. Trade in Tobacco and Alcohol at York Factory, 1716–70. Source: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Post Account Books: York Factory, MG 20 B 239/ d/8–60.

on household goods seem fully in accord with the consensus view that natives had as their objective a level of consumption that did not vary with market conditions. Overall, the trade in producer and household goods appears to support the characterization of natives as consumption satisficers. The consumption pattern for luxury items was altogether different. Tobacco and alcohol were two of the more important luxury goods. Consumption of alcohol increased dramatically, especially during years when fur prices were rising (Figure 21). The volume of alcohol received in trade grew at an annual rate of more than 4 percent, or by a factor of eight over the entire period. The high rate of increase is explained in part by the fact that so little alcohol was traded in the early years. In fact, as we pointed out in Chapter 3, alcohol was not the most important trade item even at the end of the period. Nonetheless, alcohol purchases did become significant as fur prices rose. In contrast to the pattern for alcohol, there was almost no trend in the tobacco trade at the York Factory post. Tobacco, however, was likely a major trade item for French voyageurs, because unlike alcohol it had a high value-to-weight ratio. Given the greater presence of the French and the fact that by the mid-1750s they were accounting for about 40 per-

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Figure 22. Trade in Other Luxuries at York Factory, 1716–70. Source: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Post Account Books: York Factory, MG 20 B 239/d/8–60.

cent of the trade in the York Factory hinterland, total consumption of tobacco by natives must have been increasing as well.40 The greater purchases of these two luxury items in response to rising fur prices reflects behavior not of consumers who were simply trying to achieve a minimal living standard, but rather of industrious workers who were taking advantage of better terms of trade by consuming more of those goods that satisfied other than their basic needs.41 The consumption of other luxury goods, especially the various kinds of cloth, had a profile similar to those of alcohol and tobacco (Figure 22). Native traders increasingly purchased colored cloth, duffel, gartering and lace, as well as beads and jewelry, over the course of the decades examined here, and they did so especially when fur prices started to increase. Cloth, which made up the bulk of the luxury goods classification, increased at a rate of 2 percent per year, nearly tripling over the entire period. Over the first ten years, 1716 to 1725, natives purchased on average 2,264mb in cloth at York Factory each year, and by the last ten years the trade in cloth had increased to 4,991mb per year. Even these values likely understate the full growth in consumption, since cloth was increasingly being traded by the French. The French were also selling more jewelry and other high-valued goods as they became more active in the trade of the region. When one

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combines the evidence on these luxuries with the evidence on tobacco and alcohol, the overall picture is one of native consumers and producers who responded to the incentive of higher fur prices by purchasing more of the luxury goods that could raise their living standards. The picture of a Native American whose yearly objective was a fixed supply of European goods is clearly inconsistent with these trade data. Less obvious is whether higher fur prices led to greater harvesting and trading effort. On the one hand, a higher price of furs greatly increased the quantity of luxury goods purchased, but on the other hand, purchases of producer and household goods were relatively constant, implying that fewer furs had to be exchanged. The question is: which effect was greater? We know from the post records the quantities of furs traded at York Factory, and in fact, the total volume of furs traded exhibits little trend over the entire period, including the years after 1738 when the price of furs was generally rising. This lack of trend could suggest that higher prices had little effect on effort. But we also know that the French were becoming increasingly active in the region and, by the mid-1750s, were receiving about 40 percent of the beaver pelts. What we have to consider, then, is the total trade of the hinterland. Once the French trade is included, it is clear that the total trade in the York Factory region was rising. The full extent of the increase, though, is somewhat uncertain because of the limited evidence on the French trade in beaver and other skins.42 The direct evidence on the Hudson’s Bay Company trade along with the estimated French trade suggests that natives responded to higher fur prices by increasing effort. But the French trade involves some speculation on our part; moreover, we have so far made no allowance for the fact that the beaver was being depleted in the York Factory hinterland, as we describe in Chapter 4. With a smaller beaver population, native trappers needed to increase effort simply to maintain the same fur harvest. Rather than relying solely on the trade totals to infer native effort, which can be confounded both by the uncertain share of the trade going to the French and by the depletion of the animal stock, we examine the trade shares of the different categories of goods received by native traders at York Factory. This method avoids much of the uncertainty about the number of pelts taken by the French, and it allows us to better consider the depletion of the beaver stocks. In the detailed discussion of the trade data we divided trade goods into four broad categories, but for the sake of simplicity we can think of all the

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120

70

110 100

60

90 50 80 40

70

30

60

20

50

fur price index (official standard = 100)

luxury good share (percent)

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1716 1721 1726 1731 1736 1741 1746 1751 1756 1761 1766 luxury good share

fur price index

Figure 23. The Price of Furs and the Share of Expenditure on Luxury Goods: York Factory, 1716–70. Source: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Post Account Books: York Factory, MG 20 B 239/d/8–60. Data from Appendix A.

goods purchased by native traders as belonging to one of two groupings: necessities and luxuries. Necessities are the producer goods, mainly firearms, and the household goods, mainly kettles and blankets, that provided for subsistence. Luxuries are everything else. Given the evidence that native populations were relatively stable at this time, the demand for necessities can be treated as roughly constant. Certainly demand would not have been decreasing in the face of falling prices for these goods. If the value of necessities was constant, it follows that any increase in the value of luxury goods would mean a larger share of the trade in luxuries as well as more trade in total. What this means is that with necessities constant, we can infer changes in the total trade from changes in the share of the trade in luxuries. Over the period 1716 to 1770 luxury goods were composing a larger and larger share of the trade (Figure 23). And it was especially after the 1730s, when the price of furs was rising, that purchases of luxuries were increasing the most. Over the period 1737/41 to 1766/70 the share of expenditure on luxuries rose from 0.44 to 0.66 or, equivalently, the share of expenditure on necessities fell from 0.56 to 0.34.43 If natives were maintaining their consumption of necessities at the same level, it follows that the total value of trade goods must have increased by 62.5 percent.44 Over the same period fur prices at York Factory went up by just over 40 percent.45

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Since the total value of trade goods went up by more than the price of furs, it follows that natives were supplying more furs to the trade. We estimate an increase of 14 percent.46 In order to harvest and transport this greater number of furs, natives would have had to spend more time in the commercial trade, but how much more time depends on the assumed relationship between effort and the size of the harvest. Our analysis of beaver trapping indicates that for a given beaver population, a 6.6 percent increase in the harvest required a 10 percent increase in effort.47 Since we calculate that the harvest went up by 14 percent it follows that effort in the trade must have increased by 21 percent.48 And even this increase in labor input may understate the actual change. According to our simulation in Chapter 4, beaver populations in the York Factory hinterland were falling during this period. With lower beaver densities it would have taken longer to hunt the animals, which means that even more effort would have been needed to generate the larger harvests. Our simulation suggests the animal stocks declined by 20 percent.49 If this decline approximated the true change, then native effort in the trade would have had to rise by 36 percent rather than 21 percent.50 Thus, depending on how much the beaver population fell, the increase in fur prices led to between a 21 percent and a 36 percent increase in the input of native labor to the trade. The result that higher fur prices led to more native labor in the fur trade is completely contrary to the historiography which claims that higher fur prices reduced native effort. Another way of expressing the natives’ response to economic incentives is through their elasticity of supply of labor, which is a measure of how much their labor input was affected by changes in the return to working in the commercial sector. In Table 9 we present elasticities showing the effect on labor input of fur prices and the implied wage rate of natives. The derived elasticities depend on whether the end periods or the trends are the basis of the calculation, but in all cases the essential message is the same. Indians increased their effort in the fur trade in response to higher fur prices and thus higher wages. The elasticities for fur prices range from 0.55 to 1.29, implying that a 10 percent increase in fur prices led to a 5.5 to 12.9 percent increase in effort. The labor supply of natives was even more sensitive to their wage in the fur trade, with elasticities ranging from 0.7 to 3.9. This means that a 10 percent increase in the wage led to between a 7 percent and a 39 percent increase in labor input. These are very elastic responses. It should be remembered, though, that because natives spent only part of

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Table 9. The Effect of the Price of Furs and the Return to Effort on Native Labor Supply: York Factory, 1737–70 Elasticity of Native Labor Supply with Respect to: Price of Furs

1737/41 to 1766/70 1737 to 1770 (trend values)

Return to Effort

A

B

Aa

Ba

0.55 0.92

0.86 1.29

0.67 1.33

1.71 3.92

a

a

A: constant animal population; B: animal population declines by 20 percent. Note: The harvest function is assumed to be of the form: H  E 2/3 X 1/3, where E is harvesting effort and X is the beaver population. See Carlos and Lewis, ‘‘Indians, the Beaver, and the Bay,’’ p. 492. Where 1737/41 and 1766/70 values are used, the increase in the size of the harvest is 13.88 percent and the increase in price is 42.74 percent (see text). The implied increase in effort is 21.53 percent assuming a constant beaver stock, X, and an increase of 35.87 percent if the stock declines by 20 percent. The elasticity is derived from the equation: E  e⬘ p d, where e⬘ is a constant, d is the elasticity, and p is the price of furs. Thus, for 1n 1.2153 . example: 0.55  1n 1.4274 pH The return to effort, r, is derived from: r  . The increase in r is 33.75 percent if the E beaver population, X, is constant, and 19.64 percent if the population falls by 20 percent. Labor supply is given by: E  er ␦, where e is a constant and ␦ is the elasticity. For example, 1n 1.3587 . 1.71  1n 1.1964 a

their time in fur trade activity, some of the increased time in the fur trade was likely offset by reductions in the time spent in other non-leisure activities. Thus their overall labor elasticity would have been less, but they still would have been working more as the prices of pelts and hence wages increased.51 That the evidence points to a positive labor supply response is contrary to much that has been written about the market behavior of Native Americans. It nevertheless seems unlikely that plausible assumptions could reverse the conclusion that rising fur prices gave rise to greater trapping and trading effort. As fur prices rose during the first half of the eighteenth century, the post accounts show that Indians began spending much more on luxury goods while maintaining their purchases of producer and household goods. It follows that the total income from the trade must have been rising. The increase in trade volumes, moreover, was so great that time

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spent in the fur trade must have gone up as well. This conclusion is entirely consistent with the nature of many of the goods natives were buying. They were luxuries, which are the types of goods that are typically sensitive to income and price. By combining the testimony given to the 1749 inquiry committee, the observations of Andrew Graham, and the pattern of trade goods purchased at York Factory, we can present a consistent picture of native reaction to price. Prior to the 1750s, when Indians were receiving less than the official standard for their furs, they had a positively sloped supply of labor to the fur trade. That is, as prices and wage rates went up, they spent more time in the trade. Only when the price of furs was set far above the official standard, as it was briefly in the 1750s and then in the 1770s, when Graham made his observations, might raising fur prices even higher have reduced effort. But until the 1770s, natives were reacting in much the same way as the industrious workers of Europe and colonial America. Native consumers were forming and exercising new aesthetic preferences, and they were doing so in part by increasing their effort in the commercial trade. Ultimately, though, the increased harvesting led to depletion of the animal stocks. In Chapter 6, we explore why native communities allowed the beaver populations to be depleted. A simple answer is they wanted to buy more luxury goods, but a more complete explanation requires that we examine the institutional rules that governed how native groups made use of their natural resources.

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Property Rights, Depletion, and Survival

We are part of the earth and the earth is part of us. The earth is not his [white man’s] brother, but his enemy—and when he has conquered it, he moves on. Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which coursed through the trees carries the memories of the red man. —Ted Perry, 1972, falsely attributed by many to Chief Seattle

T

he phrases ‘‘the earth is part of us’’ and ‘‘the earth is sacred’’ are powerful and emotive. These extracts from a speech widely believed to have been delivered by Chief Seattle in 1854 as his people were moving off their ancestral homeland were in fact written in the 1970s by Professor Ted Perry of the University of Texas as part of a film script.1 The producers of the film credited the words to Chief Seattle, and the text came to symbolize how Native Americans and Europeans treat the environment: the first being part of the earth and the other a conqueror of the earth. As Vine Deloria, Jr., expressed the contrast: ‘‘The Indian lived with his land. . . . The white destroyed his land. He destroyed the planet earth.’’2 Shepard Krech has explored the history of what has been called the ‘‘ecological Indian,’’ tracing the origin of the view that aboriginal peoples in North America were better guardians of the land than the European

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settlers.3 He illustrates through a series of examples that not only Europeans but aboriginals as well could degrade their environment and decimate animal populations. Jared Diamond in his book Collapse describes how aboriginal societies, from the Anazasi and Mayans to those on Easter Island, virtually disappeared.4 Changes in weather and environment, increases in population, as well as warfare and trade played different but interrelated roles in their destruction. And, in each case, growth and collapse occurred prior to any European contact. As both Krech and Diamond demonstrate, environmental degradation and the extinction of animal populations were not due solely to the actions of Europeans. Environmental historian William Cronon, in his major work Changes in the Land, describes the complex set of relationships that governed the way native peoples treated their surroundings. He shows how natives altered the environment in ways that promoted different types of wildlife and affected crop growth. One widely used method was burning undergrowth to open up forest areas. This practice also promoted grasses, which in turn led to greater populations of large game, such as deer, which were a major source of calories and protein. Expanding the area of meadow land is one example of how aboriginals increased their food supply by altering their environment. And so, as William Cronon illustrates, natives changed the land, and changed it purposefully. The juxtaposition of native peoples as stewards of the land with the evidence we presented in Chapter 4 showing that Native Americans in the hinterlands of Hudson Bay depleted the beaver is further indication that a more nuanced interpretation of aboriginal behavior is needed. The depletion of the beaver is also inconsistent with the view of many historians that native consumers were satisficers in that they were content with a modest level of consumption. The rising prices of beaver pelts in the eighteenth century meant that fewer pelts were needed to get the same quantity of goods. If demands by native groups had been limited in this way, the beaver populations should have been maintained rather than depleted. Calvin Martin in Keepers of the Game began his explanation of why natives overexploited the beaver by dismissing economic factors.5 Depletion, according to Martin, was not due to economic incentives; rather, it could be traced to aspects of native cultural and spiritual life.6 He claimed that ‘‘the mutually courteous relationship between man and animal’’ had broken as a result of the various epidemics that had assaulted native communities after they came in contact with Europeans.7 The measles, influ-

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enza, and smallpox epidemics that devastated native communities led to profound readjustments, including the depletion of their resources. Shepard Krech and other ethnohistorians have disputed Martin’s interpretation and analysis.8 Thus the question remains: why in the thirty years ending in 1763 were the beaver populations in the hinterlands of Fort Albany and York Factory depleted? In this chapter we explore the property rights regime in native communities as it affected both the beaver and the largegame animal populations, showing that the native system property rights played a central role in how natives exploited these resources.

Conservation and Depletion Conserving a resource implies that a decision has been made to postpone the exploitation of the resource to a future time. In order for someone to conserve they must therefore believe that the resource will be available to them or their descendants in the future. To understand why beaver were depleted in some regions, or equivalently, why some beaver populations were driven to levels below the biological optimum, we need to consider the rules Native American communities had developed governing who could trap and trade beaver. We also need to consider the broader issue of property rights within native society because such rights provided the mechanism through which resources might be conserved. The commercial fur trade changed native life. Whether Indians traded directly with the Hudson’s Bay Company or the French, or indirectly through their own internal networks, trade with the Europeans brought them new technologies and new consumer goods. Decisions about the extent to which they availed themselves of the opportunities were made by units ranging from the family to larger groups, even to the level of the tribe. At one end of the spectrum were the ‘‘home guard’’ Indians, who shifted from a seasonal migratory pattern to living year round near the Hudson Bay coast, providing food and services to the English working at the posts. At the other extreme were groups such as the Archithinue (Blackfoot), who, when asked by Henday to come to York Factory to trade, told him that ‘‘it was far off, and they could not live without buffaloes flesh and that they never would leave their horses and many more obstacles.’’9 But for most Indians living in the Hudson Bay drainage basin, the commercial trade was a supplement, albeit an important one, to their traditional way of life. It was the Indians who hunted the beaver and other fur-bearing ani-

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mals, and so it was they who directly determined the rate at which the fur resources were harvested. As we showed in Chapters 4 and 5, natives in the hinterlands of York Factory and Fort Albany responded to the higher prices offered for pelts by increasing their trapping effort, which in turn led to lower beaver stocks. Thus, despite what appears to have been in their longterm interest, some native groups overharvested the animals on which the commercial trade was based. Why did they not conserve the beaver and other fur-bearing animals? To answer this question we explore the role played by property rights, as they related both to the commercial trade and to traditional native society. We argue that the traditional rules, vital for native survival, were antithetical to the sort of private property rights that would have helped conserve beaver. This tension between ensuring survival and promoting a commercial trade goes a long way in explaining the failure of the Cree, Assiniboin, and other native groups to protect the fur-bearers. Their society had features that influenced not just the choices they made over the broad range of European goods that became available, but also their harvesting strategies, strategies that affected the viability of those animal populations that were the source of the European goods. Unlike nonrenewable resources, such as oil, which become depleted when they are extracted, renewable resources, which include fur-bearing animals, are able to regenerate. This ability, however, is limited. If the animals are exploited at too high a rate, the population, or biomass, will fall to a point where not only might there be little to harvest, but there might be too few animals to create a mating pair and thus ensure the future survival of the species. Whether this happens will depend on the decisions of the hunters: how many animals to take each season, and of what age and gender. As we showed in Chapter 4, by the 1740s too many beaver were being trapped in both the Fort Albany and York Factory hinterlands to maintain what is termed the biological optimum population.10 The failure of native trappers in the region to conserve the beaver was due, in part, to the rising prices for pelts, but it was also related to their degree of control over particular areas. In order to conserve—that is, postpone exploitation of the fur resource—a trapper had to be assured that animals not harvested today would be available to his family in the future. For this reason the nature of property rights to beaver was central to whether or not depletion would occur. Discussions of depletion and conservation are often framed starkly in terms of open access (common property) versus private property, where

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open access is typically said to lead to overexploitation, sometimes referred to as the ‘‘tragedy of the commons,’’ and private property to optimal management. This dichotomy oversimplifies the alternatives. Property rights structures often lie between these two extremes, and this was true of the principles governing native behavior. Native Americans developed rules that limited outside access to resources but fell short of conferring private ownership. In fact, native groups did not ‘‘own’’ their resources in the sense of having full and exclusive control. Rather, they abided by communal rules. Common-pool resources—namely, those resources that are freely available—share two characteristics that make them vulnerable to overexploitation. The first is an inability by potential exploiters to control access. In the case of beaver, one native group may have been unable to prevent another from trapping animals in a particular pond. The second characteristic has been termed subtractability.11 Where beaver populations are subject to subtractability, animals taken in one year reduce the number of animals available in future years. When the commercial fur trade was introduced into the Hudson Bay region, exploitation was at such a low level and the beaver population so large that hunting had little impact on future returns. So there was little reason to limit access to the beaver ponds. But once the price paid per pelt began to rise and native trappers responded by harvesting more beaver, subtractability became a serious problem that also changed the balance of the costs and benefits of different property rights structures. With rising fur prices and smaller beaver populations, the value of protecting the beaver increased. Had the property rights regime shifted to more controlled access, individual trappers could have postponed hunting, knowing that the animals would be available to them in the future, but as long as there was open access to the beaver, natives had little incentive to limit their trapping. Economist Harold Demsetz, in a now-famous paper, argued that because the commercial fur trade opened up new opportunities, native groups had a greater incentive to introduce formal property rights to the animals that were the basis of this trade, but as he also pointed out, whether or not such property rights were established depended to a large degree on the associated costs and benefits.12 Demsetz cited examples from the anthropological work of Eleanor Leacock, who demonstrated that some Indian groups did indeed establish well-defined property rights, and those institutional arrangements helped them control harvesting in some areas.13

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Her focus was on the Naskapi and Montagnais tribes of Labrador, who were among the first of the natives to participate in the fur trade. The Montagnais introduced land tenure arrangements in response to changes in the value of the fur resources, whereas the Naskapi did not.14 The fact that native communities, such as the Naskapi and the Montagnais, responded differently has reinforced the view that some, but not all, Indian communities were behaving in economically rational ways. The difference in behavior has also led some researchers to seek explanations for depletion in the non-economic realm.15 This is in contrast to the approach taken by Harold Demsetz, which is based solely on economic incentives. But Demsetz may have gone too far in downplaying the role of culture and traditional norms in native societies. To understand native property rights, we need to broaden our perspective. As we describe in this chapter, the rules that governed how natives exploited their resources were designed not primarily to protect the beaver, but rather to ensure the survival of the large game that was the basis of the native food supply. We will show, moreover, that the social norms that were indeed effective in protecting the large game tended to encourage overharvesting of the animals of the commercial fur trade.

Territoriality and Trespass The ability to control access to resources by an individual or community is closely related to the concepts of territoriality and trespass. For anthropologists, who have long been concerned with Native American societies, a central question is whether territoriality is an aboriginal construct.16 In the precontact period, did individuals or groups within the community have the right to restrict access to a hunting ground (that is, prevent trespass), or did this right come about in response to the commercial trade? If territoriality is aboriginal in origin, it would suggest that even prior to trade with Europeans, native groups realized there were benefits to establishing property rights. These rights could then have been carried over to the post-contact period. And even if rules against trespass were not in place in the precontact period, they might have been introduced later to help conserve the fur-bearing populations. In his examination of territoriality among northeastern Algonquian, Charles Bishop documents the extent to which native groups could control trespass.17 He illustrates the rules governing trespass with a wonderful

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description, taken from the Jesuit Relations, of an attempt by some Abenaki to reach Trois-Rivie`res in 1637.18 The Abenaki wished to proceed downriver through land occupied by the Montagnais. The passage reads: ‘‘These barbarians have a very remarkable custom. When other nations arrive in their country, they would not dare pass beyond without permission from the Captain of the place; if they did, their canoes would be broken to pieces. This permission to pass on is asked for with presents in hand; if these presents are not accepted by the Chief, not being minded to let them pass, he tells them he has stopped the way, and that they can go no further. At these words they have to turn back, or run the risks of war.’’19 Other Europeans noted the existence of group territories. They make reference to the land of the Montagnais, the land of the Cree, of the Huron, of the Iroquois, and of subgroups among these. In fact, there were twenty to twenty-five identifiable groups exploiting the resources on or near the main water route between Quebec and the eastern tip of Lake Superior.20 Tying the concept of trespass to ownership, Bishop cites Chre´tien Le Clercq’s seventeenth-century description of property rights among the Attikamek, who were boreal Algonquians: ‘‘It is the right of the head of the nation . . . to distribute the places of hunting to each individual. It is not permitted to any Indian to overstep the bounds and limits of the region which shall have been assigned to him in the assemblies of the elders. These are held in autumn and in spring expressly to make this assignment.’’21 Fur trader Joseph Chadwick has left us with an eighteenth-century example. He described in 1764 how Maine Indians divided their land into heritable family hunting territories: ‘‘Their hunting ground and streams were parceled out to certain families, time out of mind [in the distant past].’’22 Thus within the historical record there are examples of territoriality and a concept of trespass. These were institutional arrangements that could have controlled extraction of the commercial fur stocks. That they did not only deepens the question of why the beaver were depleted. From her work on the Cree of eastern James Bay, anthropologist Toby Morantz also concludes that components of territoriality were present, including rules governing trespass.23 She cites the Hudson’s Bay Company’s district chief at Rupert’s House, who wrote in 1823: ‘‘It appears to me that the coast Indians and the majority of the inland Indians who visit Ruperts House are tenacious of their property in their lands and are not pleased when other Indians encroach on them.’’24 Such attitudes toward individual and group property rights were not, however, universal and did not appear

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to have spread to the western Cree. Writing at roughly the same time about Indian groups in the western hinterlands of Hudson Bay, Governor George Simpson included in a letter to London: ‘‘We are endeavouring to confine the natives throughout the country now by families to separate and distinct hunting grounds, this system seems to take among them by degrees and in a few years I hope, it will become general but it is a very difficult matter to change the habits of Indians.’’25 Indians were not hostile to establishing family hunting territories, but there were regional differences. In the eighteenth century, the western Cree and Assiniboin appear to have opposed such a system, but later some within these groups shifted position. John Milloy found that those who split off from the Woodland Cree, becoming known as Plains Cree, ‘‘modified those rules, rituals and practices’’ that had governed their woodland life.26 The Plains Cree, then, did adjust to the commercial trade and their new environment. And their change in behavior carried over to the nineteenth century. Milloy documents that to protect the seriously depleted bison, the Plains Cree imposed access controls over the remaining animals.27 They tried to keep out not just white hunters but other Indian nations as well. Unfortunately, these attempts came too late to save the herds.28 Animal populations tend to be preserved where there is the ability to stop outsiders from hunting on one’s property. Natives understood the concepts of trespass and territoriality, yet they still depleted the beaver. Such behavior, which appears counter to how Native Americans were described by ‘‘Chief Seattle,’’ needs to be considered in light of the fact that the commercial trade was just one aspect of the native economy. Native social and cultural practices were designed to address a range of economic constraints, and so questions pertaining, for example, to family hunting territories or communal property rights should be framed within that broader context. We next focus on the social and political forces that made private hunting territories in beaver so difficult to establish, and then show how the rules concerning access to large game animals compromised efforts to preserve the beaver stocks.

Property Rights to Beaver The ability of native groups to protect the beaver was dependent on their rights to the resource, but for hunter-gatherer societies, providing an ade-

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quate supply of food was the main concern. To that end, each society developed rules and strategies to improve food-gathering capacity. Behavior that helped meet this objective was not, however, necessarily consistent with the competing objective of protecting beaver stocks. In subarctic Canada, groups moved with the seasons in order to be in the most productive hunting location.29 Their movements were dictated to a large degree by the migratory patterns of big game. Migration per se did not prevent the claiming of property rights to beaver, because beaver are nonmigratory. Each breeding pair lived in the same lodges and occupied the same ponds year after year. To the extent, then, that a native group went back to the same hunting grounds each year, the establishment of property rights should not have been difficult. Individual beaver lodges could be defined as belonging to particular families, and those families could decide on the rate at which the beaver would be harvested. Families, however, were not continuously present in an area, which made it difficult to enforce these rights, thus reducing the benefit of conserving the beaver. Related to the annual cycle of migration was the changing pattern of territorial control.30 From the end of the seventeenth century until well into the eighteenth century, the western Woodland Cree were moving west and north. During this period those Cree who became known as the Plains Cree broke off and moved west and south. Meanwhile, the Chipewyan tribes, who lived north of Cree territory, and for whom the Fort Churchill factory had been established, shifted southeasterly, and there was a concomitant move south of the Inuit. As well, the Ojibwa, who lived along the southern borders of the Cree and Assinboin territory, moved into land on the northern edge of Lake Superior. With each migration, new information about the environment had to be gathered and processed, especially on the abundance of game and other resources. In terms of participating in the commercial trade, natives had to learn the locations of beaver ponds and get an idea of how many beaver lived within the area defined by the river system. Allocating property rights depended on such information, and so the movement of populations would have slowed the establishment of such rights.31 In Changing Military Patterns of the Great Plains Indians, Frank Secoy argued that territorial shifts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were related to the introduction of firearms, since tribes with guns had a considerable advantage over those who did not.32 Guns may have played a role in migratory patterns in the Hudson Bay region early on, but the years after 1720 were generally peaceful, as intertribal trading patterns had

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become well established by then.33 Still, war or the threat of war, with its attendant population shifts, would certainly have reduced the incentive to conserve.34 At the same time it is important to recognize that the tribes and smaller groups from the St. Lawrence River basin westward had been changing territory even prior to the introduction of guns and the commercial trade.35 A commercial trade was, therefore, superimposed on these already existing patterns of movement. Although trade could have exacerbated tensions between tribes, making future conflict more likely, the letters of the post factors to London and from the company directors to their servants at the bay stress how counterproductive war between native groups would be to the trade, for both Europeans and natives.36 European-introduced disease was yet another factor that might have contributed to weak property rights. There was the potential that those tribes who were especially hard hit by disease would be vulnerable to those groups who were relatively unscathed, the result being a shift in the balance of power and a reassignment of property rights. Such epidemics could be devastating not just because of the mortality but also because of the social dislocation. There is evidence of epidemics in the St. Lawrence–Great Lakes region in the seventeenth century, and although mortality was lower than farther south, it may have reached 50 percent, which would certainly have broken down many of the existing social structures.37 The result of this dislocation was a reordering of groups, bands, and families. The shifts in power contributed to a weakening of the previously existing property rights assignments and hindered the ability to establish new secure relationships. The subarctic region of western Hudson Bay, however, does not appear to have been nearly as affected by disease as the regions further south and east. It was not until 1780 that there was a serious outbreak of smallpox, this among the Cree and Assiniboin in present-day western Manitoba, and there was not another significant outbreak of disease until the nineteenth century.38 In addition to migration, war, and disease, other forces could also have hindered the establishment of secure rights to the beaver resource. In this high-fertility, high-mortality, and highly mobile society, family sizes fluctuated, and depending on the influence of a chief, kin members could move from one family grouping to another. When a chief died, family members would typically merge with other family groups, and the result was a transfer of rights to those beaver left unharvested from the previous cycle.39 As Andrew Graham observed, more northerly groups did not have patrilineal

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clans, making it difficult for a chief to transmit high-status attributes to his heirs.40 In such circumstances, the ability to provide for the group along with personal status were the key determinants of who would become the new chief. As we discuss below, status and beaver depletion may have been connected, since obtaining large quantities of European goods, possibly through overharvesting beaver, was one way an individual, seeking to become chief, could enhance his prestige. In subarctic Canada, perhaps the most important characteristic of native society, in terms of ensuring survival, was what has been referred to by economic historian John McManus as the ‘‘good Samaritan’’ principle.41 This principle allowed an outsider to kill any potential food-source animal, including beaver, for personal use, but they were not permitted to sell the pelt.42 As McManus points out, the good Samaritan rule limited the range of privilege of any native group to their land and ultimately affected not just the ownership of the animal resources but also the degree to which they were exploited. The principle, in effect, reduced the ability of any one group or family to conserve. In a bad hunting season, anyone’s beaver became a source of food and clothing for others. In the event of consecutive poor seasons, it might well have been possible that the conservation efforts of one family would be offered up to the greater necessity of the tribe. Clearly, in the rigorous subarctic environment, this was as it should be. Even though there are numerous references to beaver providing meat, it is important to place beaver in the context of big game, fowl, and other food sources.43 Natives did eat beaver; indeed, the meat from the tail was considered a delicacy. There is, however, a difference between a food that is eaten mainly at special gatherings and one that provides daily sustenance. Andrew Graham’s observations for the latter part of the eighteenth century suggest that prior to the fur trade, beaver was not an important resource. Indeed, quoting a contemporary observer, he notes that Indians regarded the white men as ‘‘fools, who leave their homes in small parties, risk their lives on the great waters, among strange natives who will take them for enemies, all for the sake of a small animal whose pelt made poor clothing and was too small to be used for tipi covers or other practical purposes’’ (emphasis added).44 Although the reference here is to the pelt rather than the flesh of the beaver, the implication is that the beaver provided little in terms of basic needs. The Hudson’s Bay Company trade data allow us to infer the importance of beaver to the native diet. Suppose that all the beaver traded at York

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Factory also provided meat to the natives living in the hinterland served by the post. This is almost certainly an overstatement of the true consumption of beaver flesh. Both fur traders and natives reported that beaver and other small game were less desirable because of their low fat content. Small game tended to be eaten when large game was in short supply. From 1732 to 1738, which is prior to there being a significant French presence, the number of pelts received at York Factory averaged about 30,000, with small fluctuations. An adult beaver weighs roughly forty pounds, potentially providing ten pounds of edible flesh.45 Half-parchment beaver, which included immature in addition to summer beaver, averaged less, but assuming generously that all beaver provided 10 pounds of meat, the native population in the York Factory hinterland would have had 300,000 pounds of beaver meat available to them. The total native population of the region was about 8,600.46 This implies the annual per capita beaver meat consumption was at most 35 pounds. Allocating less meat to women and children would suggest adult male consumption of about 50 pounds. This compares to the total meat requirement of an adult male over the course of a year of more than 1,000 pounds.47 During the eighteenth century Indians did not trade for food with the Hudson’s Bay Company, which means that beaver flesh could have accounted for no more than a small part of meat and fish consumption, 5 percent at most.48 But, even though beaver was not an important food, it was a source of last resort and for this reason was vulnerable to overharvesting. Another feature of aboriginal society that affected the ability of families or groups to conserve the beaver was an ‘‘ethic of generosity.’’ Like the good Samaritan rule, the basis for this ethic was the unpredictable natural environment. Under this social norm, any visitor to an encampment was to be supplied with food and shelter. Such actions were reciprocal and, in the subarctic world, were an insurance mechanism against the elements. Insurance and property rights are not incompatible, but the informal nature of this aboriginal form of insurance led to a serious moral hazard problem. Those who chose to conserve would in the long run be providing more insurance than those who did not. The result, as is typical of such markets, was less conservation and ultimately less insurance than there should have been. The ethic of generosity operated on a second level that also reduced the incentive to conserve the beaver populations. Gift-giving was a source of prestige. As Charles Bishop explains it: ‘‘chiefly offices . . . required valida-

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tion.’’49 Chiefs or trading captains might take office simply as a result of lineage and kin relations, but to maintain their position, they had to show themselves worthy. The standing of a chief was enhanced if he provided more goods to the group. These items might come through victory in war with its attendant spoils, but by the eighteenth century they were obtained mainly through the commercial fur trade. The prestige would lie with the chief or trading captain, who distributed the goods across the group, often at a potlatch or mortuary feast.50 This validation of office through gift-giving was central to the society, perhaps partly because in a traditional economy with a limited ability to store surpluses or make investments, the opportunity cost of giving was relatively low.51 Thus, even though sharing was an integral part of many aboriginal communities, it did not necessarily reflect the innate generosity of the individuals themselves. Rather, sharing was a product of their society. Anthropologists have documented how the commercial trade changed the scale if not the nature of Indian relations with regard to the ethic of generosity. Charles Bishop points to the greatly increased size of feasts that came to include many different groups and involved large expenditures on food and other goods. These feasts, like mid-nineteenth-century potlatches, were a way for chiefs to demonstrate their power.52 Even from the earliest days of contact, this relationship between the commercial trade and generosity is evident, as illustrated by a feast in 1641 hosted by the Nipissing, described in the Jesuit Relations: ‘‘When the Nations are assembled, and divided, each in his own seats, Beaver Robes, skins of Otter, of Caribou, of wild Cats, and of Moose; Hatchets, Kettles, Porcelain Beads, and all things that are precious in this Country, are exhibited. Each Chief of a Nation presents his own gift to those who hold the Feast, giving to each present some name that seems best suited to it.’’53 In a world where the distribution of resources was not equal, sumptuary feasts often involving large redistributions promoted equality and were thus a key survival mechanism in the natives’ subsistence economy. Generosity in itself was not necessarily inconsistent with private property rights. Law and economics professor Bruce Johnsen points out, for example, that the potlatch among the Kwakiutl Indians of the Pacific coast allowed for a stable allocation of rights over differentially productive fishing sites.54 The beaver, however, was much more broadly and equally dispersed, so that variations in output were more a reflection of differences in labor input and previous efforts at conservation. Feasts were a means of equaliz-

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ing consumption, but the commercial fur trade and the rising price of furs increased the incentive problems regarding how the beaver resource was to be exploited. Each beaver now bought more European goods and thus had the potential to further advance an individual’s standing in society. Indeed, it was this standing that the Hudson’s Bay Company sought to enhance through its use of trading chief status and the greater number of presents that it gave to a chief. By not harvesting beaver in a particular year, a chief could put that standing at risk. Despite all these factors, property rights to beaver, or controls over access to particular beaver ponds, still might have been established, but for this to have happened, some of the rules governing native society needed to change, particularly those concerned with good Samaritan behavior. Why did this not occur?

Property Rights to Large Game Of fundamental concern to hunter-gatherers, including those who occupied the Hudson Bay hinterland, was the viability of the food supply. Given the severity of the subarctic climate, a sufficient number of large game was vital. In response to this need, rules were developed to increase harvesting capacity over both the short and longer run. Edward Rogers and James Smith estimate that native men needed 4,500 to 5,000 calories per day in winter to meet the nutritional demands of their level of physical activity and the low temperatures.55 Fewer calories were required in the summer, but, still, consumption of meat flesh over the course of a year would have averaged as much as four pounds per adult male per day.56 Most of this requirement had to be met by meat from big game, supplemented during periods of scarcity by smaller animals, often hare. For the western Woodland Cree and Assiniboin the main, indeed essential, food source was moose and to a lesser degree woodland caribou.57 Moose and caribou were hunted mainly in the spring, March and April, and in the autumn, September and October. Geese and other wildfowl were available during their seasonal migrations, and there was fishing during the summer months.58 Taking into account the meat from small game, fish, and other sources, the consumption by adult males of moose, caribou, and other large game likely averaged at least three pounds per day.59 Families and larger groups adapted to the climate and the yearly animal migrations by moving with the seasons. They spent much of the spring and summer in the woodland areas hunting and fishing. It was also during the

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spring and summer when traders made their trips to the Hudson’s Bay Company posts. From late August to October, moose and some caribou were hunted in the wooded areas adjacent to the prairies. Winter was spent to the south in the Parkland Belt, where there was some big game hunting, depending on the weather. March to May was a period of trapping, fishing, and hunting wildfowl in the tundra and northern boreal forest near Hudson Bay. Later in the year, wild berries and grains were collected. These hunting and gathering strategies and the types of food resources in the Hudson Bay region allowed Native Americans a level of calorie and protein intake well above that of most Europeans of the day, a point we develop in Chapter 7.60 Their diet promoted better health, and it almost certainly contributed to greater stature. It is hardly surprising, then, that Richard Steckel and Joseph Prince found, in their comparisons of heights across different populations, that the Indians of the American Great Plains and those living further north were among the ‘‘tallest in the world.’’61 The rules on the hunting of large game were an important element in the natives’ nutritional success. The good Samaritan rule and the ethic of generosity made a clear distinction between the property rights to resources that were a direct source of subsistence goods—namely, food, clothing, and shelter—and resources associated with the luxuries obtained through trade with the Europeans. Large game was essentially a common property resource: all natives had unfettered access to the herds. In contrast, beaver and other nonmigratory fur-bearing animals were private property resources, at least to the degree that their use was limited to the European fur trade and the private right could be secured. Beaver were depleted in many areas both because beaver had uses other than in the fur trade and because natives had limited success in enforcing what rights nominally existed. Property rights to large game, however, were even weaker. Nevertheless, the large game on which natives depended for their high-calorie and high-protein diet remained plentiful into the nineteenth century, long after the introduction of the firearms and other goods that altered the way natives hunted. Why this was so is a question for which there are several possible explanations. It may have been that game were so abundant that even the improved hunting technology had little effect on the stocks. That is, in terms of the earlier discussion, subtractability was not an issue, perhaps because of the small native population. This implies, however, that something other than a resource constraint was limiting that population.62 Alter-

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natively, it has been suggested that guns, although widely used, did not greatly improve the Indians’ ability to hunt these animals. The quality of the guns in relation to the alternative technology of bows and arrows does suggest that guns might not have been best in each hunting circumstance. Finally, and perhaps most important, there remains the possibility that Indians both before and after European contact were hunting in a way that promoted conservation of large game, or at least prevented severe depletion. Charles Bishop among others is skeptical of such deliberate attempts by Indians to control the animal stocks. He has argued that ‘‘given a lack of understanding of biomass systematics,’’ natives would not have known how their hunting strategies were affecting the number of game animals.63 Yet no group was closer to the herds. Indeed, anthropologist Adrian Tanner has argued that the Mastassini hunters in the region of James Bay learned the habits of the animal species in the region and were sensitive to changes in their population.64 Their hunting strategy included avoiding areas where the stocks appeared to be threatened. It remains an open question whether Indians preserved the game in the region of Hudson Bay through deliberate calculation or whether the moose and caribou remained numerous despite unrestrained hunting practices. Still, a case can be made that such social norms as the good Samaritan rule and the ethic of generosity, which may have been inimical to the protection of beaver stocks, actually promoted an environment that encouraged conservation of large game animals. One factor was the nature of the resource itself. As distinguished from beaver, which through trade could provide a variety of luxury goods, large game supplied food and skins, which were needed for subsistence.65 The demand by a household for large game was thus highly inelastic in that once needs were met, there was little incentive on the part of individual family units to hunt more. Variations in the overall harvest depended, instead, on the size of the native population in the region. In Appendix C, we show formally that the aboriginal policy of open access to large game animals not only promoted human survival but also helped protect the animal populations.66 In particular, we demonstrate that in a situation where two native groups compete for the same animals, the long-run stock of animals is smaller and hunting more intense than in a regime where a single native group has exclusive rights to the resource.67 Consider the case where tribe A tries to maximize its own return from the animal biomass, not caring about the impact of its actions on tribe B. Part

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of any increase in tribe A’s harvest due to greater hunting will be offset by a fall in tribe B’s harvest because of the resulting decline in the animal stock. And if tribe B behaves the same way, the end result will be worse for both groups. In essence, a world of our caribou rather than my caribou was superior and worked to protect the caribou population. Because all had access to large game, which, unlike beaver, migrated long distances, it was in the interest of individual tribes to harvest at rates consistent with overall sole ownership. The good Samaritan rule was a social norm that had the effect of shifting property rights over big game in this direction. The result was a much larger game population, a somewhat larger harvest, and a much reduced level of hunting effort than would have been the case if the various groups had competed for the animals.68 Overall, the policy of open access to large game not only reduced the risk of starvation by equalizing the availability of the game, it also helped protect the animal resources. The anthropological record leaves little doubt that natives in Canada in the eighteenth century understood the concepts of territoriality, trespass, and property, and that by the nineteenth century, the property rights to animals, which had a commercial value, were well articulated. This articulation, however, came too late for the beaver, because at the heart of the questions of property, conservation, and extraction were the imperatives of survival and subsistence, and it was these imperatives that dictated the rules governing native life. The norms that helped protect the large game animals tended, by contrast, to encourage overharvesting of the beaver, as occurred when the prices offered by the Hudson’s Bay Company for beaver began to rise. The commercial fur trade may have been central to the Europeans involved in the trade, but it was only an ancillary part of native economic life. The demands of the hunter-gatherer society superseded those of the fur trade.

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Indians and the Fur Trade: A Golden Age?

The Indians in general exceed the middling stature of Europeans; are straight well made people, large boned, but not corpulent; their features regular and agreeable . . . the teeth white and even. . . . Their constitution is strong and healthy; their disorders few. —Andrew Graham, governor of York Factory, circa 1767

T

he fur trade gave natives access to goods they could not produce themselves—goods that had a great impact on native life. Now, rather than relying exclusively on implements of stone, bone, and wood, they could substitute guns, knives, ice chisels, kettles, and other metal products. And the European technology embodied in these goods made daily activities easier. Iron kettles, knives, awls, and needles all improved the daily round of women’s work. Cooking was easier in kettles, especially since, as we saw in Chapter 3, women were able to specify the characteristics of the kettles that were sent over, and knives made food easier to prepare.1 But perhaps for the women awls and needles were even more exciting. Awls allowed women to punch holes in leather that was being used for clothing, and metal needles were a big improvement over bone or animal quills. Beads, that sometimes disparaged trade item, allowed for greater creative expression. The Cree had always decorated their clothing. Dyed porcupine quills, for example, adorned moccasins, but beads allowed greater color, variety, and texture. Knives, ice chisels, twine, nets, hatchets, and firearms raised men’s pro-

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ductivity in hunting and other activities. Ice chisels allowed them to break into the beaver lodges in winter, and with twine nets it was easier to capture the beaver as they tried to escape underwater. Firearms greatly increased the catch during the bird migrations and were increasingly used to hunt large game animals. Hatchets helped the Indians gather firewood. The trade also provided cloth, lace, and other textiles, which changed the material culture of native society, and European jewelry further enhanced the quality of native life.2 In the 1730s, when a strong market in Europe led to higher fur prices at the trading posts, natives began purchasing many more luxury items. Tobacco and alcohol, especially, became an increasing part of the social and spiritual life of native communities. At the same time, and despite the greater use of alcohol, the Cree and other natives living in the region remained moderate drinkers. Contrasting with a view of Indian traders who asked for ‘‘good measure’’ in the manner of a supplicant, the records of the Hudson’s Bay Company describe a trade where the volumes, qualities, and varieties of luxury goods were strongly influenced by the Indians themselves.3 Letters to the posts from company headquarters are filled with inquires about how natives were reacting to the nature and quality of the goods they were sending out. These letters along with the company’s trade accounts reveal the Cree, Assiniboin, and Chipewyan to have been part of a rise in material culture that was taking place in much of Europe. For just as English, French, and other European consumers were enjoying the increased range of products made possible by long-distance trade, so too were these huntergatherers living in the interior of North America. Native Americans did not purchase the same mix of goods as the Europeans. No tea services, silverware, or milk jugs were sent to Hudson Bay, but natives did obtain a wide variety of other luxury items. More than forty types of luxury goods were traded by the Hudson’s Bay Company, among them combs, mirrors, rings, vermillion, and Venetian and Chinese beads. There seems little doubt that the producer and household goods enumerated in Chapter 3 allowed natives to meet their subsistence needs more effectively, while the luxury goods, including alcohol and high-quality Brazil tobacco, were greatly valued, as they were by Europeans. But to what extent did the fur trade allow natives a material condition of life equivalent to that of Europeans? In this chapter, we address this issue of comparative living standards. By combining the goods produced in the traditional native economy with the new goods that the fur trade made available to them, we

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compare the standards of living of Native Americans and Europeans, using as our basis of comparison the low-wage English worker of the mid-eighteenth century. One way of comparing living standards is to express wages in the local currency and apply exchange rates to arrive at comparable real wages. Such an approach, however, is not possible when dealing with the huntergatherer economy of the native groups in the Hudson Bay region, since no currency was used. Their standard of living, nevertheless, can still be explored by measuring not what individuals in the society earned as wages, but rather what they consumed. We take this approach in relating the living standards of Cree, Assiniboin, and other native groups to the living standards of low-wage workers in England. Consumption is compared over four commodity groupings: food, clothing, shelter, and luxuries. On the native side, our estimates of food, clothing, and shelter—basically, those goods that provided for subsistence—are drawn from anthropologists’ and historians’ descriptions of traditional native life.4 The consumption of luxuries is based on the trade goods purchased by natives at York Factory. English workers’ consumption is drawn from the work of economic historians, who have studied income and consumption patterns during the eighteenth century.5 English working-class families and Native Americans faced very different prices and consumed different types and amounts of goods. To deal with these differences, we adopt a method that produces a range of real income measures, some biased in favor of Native Americans, others in favor of the English.6

Food We begin with diet. Indians spent far more time hunting and in food preparation than in any other work activity, as did others in pre-modern society. Similarly, English workers allocated most of their budget to food. In Chapter 6 we reported food consumption of the natives living in the region of Hudson Bay based on studies of aboriginal diets. These studies, summarized in the Handbook of American Indians,7 draw mainly from firsthand reports of subarctic hunter-gatherer life ways. Important to our study, these accounts include nutritional, especially caloric, needs as well as the availability of different foods types in the Hudson Bay region. The diet of the Cree, Assiniboin, and Chipewyan was predominantly meat, mainly from large game. Although fish was often disparaged by these

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Indian groups, it was an important part of the diet at certain times of the year.8 In addition to being eaten fresh, both meat and fish were preserved through smoking and drying. Dried meat would be stored in skins full of oil. Pemmican, a cake of dried meat mixed with melted fat and berries for flavouring, was part of the diet when fresh meat was not available.9 With its light weight and high nutritional content, pemmican also became a staple for European fur traders. In some areas, wild rice supplemented the native diet, especially during the winter. Berries, including cranberries and blueberries, were eaten fresh or dried and stored, and in the spring, tree sap was a source of sugar.10 In total, though, vegetal products made up a very small part of the overall diet. Anthropologists have not only formed a good picture of the main food types of Native Americans, but they have also determined the quantities within a fairly narrow range. Edward Rogers and James Smith estimate that adult males in the subarctic consumed 4,500 to 5,000 calories per day in winter, somewhat less during the summer.11 In the York Factory hinterland, this requirement was met largely by red meat from big game such as moose and woodland caribou. Allowing for the smaller summer diet, consumption of meat flesh over the course of a year must have averaged at least two kilograms per day.12 But not all meat was from large game. During periods of scarcity, natives supplemented their diet with hare and other small animals. In addition, geese and other wildfowl were available during their seasonal migrations, and there was fishing during the summer.13 Allowing for the consumption of small game, fish, and waterfowl, as well as energy from other sources, the average daily consumption of moose, caribou, and other large game by adult males was likely about 1.5 kilograms.14 How to value food depends on one’s perspective. If the question is how much would have been needed in England to purchase the native consumption basket, British prices are appropriate. In the mid-eighteenth century the less expensive cuts of beef, mutton, and pork were 0.38 shillings per pound.15 Applying this price to the meat Indians were consuming implies an extraordinary level of expenditure. At English prices, the annual cost of 1.5 kilograms of meat per day was £23. Assuming women ate 25 percent less than men and children 50 percent less, the annual cost for a family of five would have been £65. To appreciate the magnitude of this expenditure, consider that in 1755 the total annual earnings of non-farm English common laborers was just £21.16 In other words, the native diet would have cost the low-wage English worker more than three times his annual income.

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In fact the cost of the native diet would have far exceeded that of the bestpaid workers in England, who at the time were solicitors and barristers.17 We would not argue that natives in the region of Hudson Bay had higher overall living standards than solicitors and barristers, but nevertheless the comparison does point to the importance of food in assessing the relative incomes of Europeans and Native Americans. There has been a great deal of study of food consumption in Britain, and there is ample evidence that the nature of the diet depended on income. Households with higher incomes allocated a larger share of their food expenditure to meat and less to grain-based foods and potatoes.18 In 1688, for example, households in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution in England and Wales allocated 12 percent of their food expenditure to meat, whereas households in the top fifth of the income distribution spent 55 percent of their food budget on meat. Historian Carole Shammas estimates that in 1790 the caloric intake of adult male workers in England averaged between 2,500 and 2,700, with consumption somewhat lower in the south than the north. She also has estimated the expenditure on different types of foods. Excluding sugar, beer, tea, and some minor grocery items, lower-wage families in the south allocated 80 percent of their food budget to cereals, potatoes, and vegetables, 6 percent to dairy products and eggs, and just 14 percent to meat.19 Economic historian Charles Feinstein has also estimated expenditure shares. By combining his and Shammas’s estimates, we can obtain a rough picture of the caloric composition of the English diet (Table 10). In 1790 English working-class families were allocating 14 percent of their food budget to beef, mutton, and pork, but because the price per calorie was much greater for meat than other foods, just 5 percent of total calories was meat based. Meanwhile, close to 90 percent of calories was obtained from grains and potatoes. In contrast, natives would have received at least 70 percent of their calories from the meat of large game, and consumption of all meat flesh, including small game, waterfowl, and fish, would have accounted for more than 90 percent of total calories. The much higher quality of the Native American diet is suggested by both its protein content and its cost per calorie. The English diet provided about one hundred grams of protein per day, or .04 grams of protein per calorie. The protein content of the native diet was nearly five hundred grams, and the amount of protein per calorie was .14 grams, or more than three times the English level. In England, foods with a high protein content

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22.2 30.0 14.4 5.6 3.3 3.3 7.8 5.6 4.4 3.3 100

0.34 0.33 0.22 0.19 1 1 1 0.43 0.59 0.59 0.34

Price per calorie meat1 555 775 572 249 29 29 67 110 65 49 2,500

Calories 22 32 19 5 4 4 5 6 0 6 103

Protein grams Big game Other meat and fish Vegetal products

3,500

2,500 750 250

Calories

Native Americans

475

375 100

Protein grams

Sources: Charles Feinstein, ‘‘Pessimism Perpetuated,’’ p. 635; Carole Shammas, Pre-Industrial Consumer, p. 137; U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Research Service, Nutrient Data Library, www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp.

Bread Wheat flour Oatmeal Potatoes Beef Mutton Pork Milk Butter Cheese Total

Budget share percent

English Workers

Table 10. Calorie and Protein Content of the Eighteenth-Century Diet of English Workers and Native Americans (Adult Males)

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cost much more per calorie. In fact, had the English shifted to a diet that was comparable to the native diet in terms of meat and protein content, the cost per calorie would have more than doubled.20 Not only did natives in the Hudson Bay region consume perhaps 50 percent more calories than English workers, but they consumed those calories in a form that was of much higher quality, as reflected by their protein content. Moreover, because the relative cost of meat was so much lower for natives, their diet in terms of meat content and protein compared favorably to the diets of the very wealthiest in England.

Clothing The value of clothing can be approached in different ways, but here we interpret it as the cost of material and labor.21 In the case of native clothing, however, we bias our estimates downward in that only the value of the material is included. Given the skill of Cree women, the tailoring of native dress likely compared favorably to that of English middle-class clothing. Men hunted the animals, and women worked with the skins using thread, usually of moose hair, and needles originally made from porcupine or bird quills. The common hides were moose and caribou with beaver and rabbit fur used for lining and edging.22 Shirts and dresses were semi-tailored with fitted sleeves or sleeves attached at the shoulder with leather thongs. During the winter, the Cree wore trousers rather than the breechcloth that was more common farther south. The fact that skins rather than cloth were used did not prevent the Cree from fashioning elaborate garments. Embroidery was common. Indeed, the high level of decoration of Cree clothing itself is indicative of relatively high living standards. It shows also that the Cree had the time for such creative endeavors.23 Explorer Alexander Mackenzie, who traveled through Cree territory in the early 1790s, described their clothing as follows: Their dress is at once simple and commodious. It consists of tight leggings, reaching near the hip: a strip of cloth or leather, called assian, about a foot wide, and five feet long, whose ends are drawn inwards and hang behind and before, over a belt tied to the former garment, and cinctured with a broad strip of parchment fastened with thongs behind; and a cap for the head, consisting of a piece of fur, or small skin, with the brush of the animal as a suspended

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ornament. . . . The female dress is formed of the same materials . . . but of a different make and arrangement. Their shoes are commonly plain, and their leggings gartered beneath the knee. The coat, or body covering, falls down to the middle of the leg, and is fastened over the shoulders with cords, a flap or cape turning down about eight inches, both before and behind, and agreeably ornamented with quill-work and fringe; the bottom is also fringed, and fancifully painted as high as the knee.24 Our knowledge of the number of skins needed to clothe a Cree adult is based on several sources. Ethnographer Lucien Turner’s nineteenth-century account provides information about the Nenenot (Naskapi), who lived in the Ungava Bay basin of Labrador and northern Quebec.25 Similar to the Cree, the Nenenot were one of the hunting tribes of the subarctic and likely would have had similar dress. According to Turner, who lived with the Nenenot from 1884 to 1886, each adult male went through fifteen to twenty-five pairs of moccasins annually due to the intensity of their trapping and hunting.26 One deerskin provided enough leather for five to seven pairs of moccasins. So an adult male would have needed, for footwear alone, at least three deerskins per year or the equivalent. The amount of material needed for garments was dependent on the severity of the winter. Diamond Jenness estimates that the ‘‘Eskimos’’ (Inuit) used at least seven caribou hides for a single outfit. Native Americans living in eastern Canada could get by with three moose skins. The Cree inhabited forest where conditions were less harsh than those faced by the Inuit, but their region, partly north of the Canadian Shield, was colder than the forested lakes area of the Iroquois or Huron. Five moose skins seems a reasonable estimate of what was worn over the course of a year. Two sets of clothing were needed, but summer clothing was often winter clothing that had been de-haired with use.27 Based on these descriptions, we assume that the Cree living in the Hudson Bay region used five moose skins annually, or their equivalent, for garments, and three deerskins, or their equivalent, for moccasins. The price of a moose or deerskin at the Hudson’s Bay Company trading post was 2mb, implying a total value for all skins of 16mb. A prime beaver pelt sold at the post for 1mb and at auction in England for between 5 and 12 shillings, depending on the year. In 1740, the year we use for our comparison, parchment beaver was selling for 8 shillings and coat beaver at close to 7 shillings;

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however, at the time the official standard was established beaver pelts had been selling for about 5 shillings. We take this lower price as the basis for our comparison.28 At a conversion rate of 1mb to 5 shillings, the material in native clothing was £4 for a male adult and £13 for a family of five.29 Although in England 1mb worth of skins was equivalent to at least 5 shillings, the conversion rate at York Factory was closer to 1mb to 1 shilling because of the high trading costs.30 At this much lower rate, the implied cost of clothing for a native family would be one-fifth of £13, or £2.6. Using either conversion rate, spending by English workers on clothing was much less. In the late eighteenth century working-class families allocated 6 percent of their budgets to clothing, and so a low-wage worker in 1755, earning £21, spent about £1.2 annually.31 If the material in native clothing is assigned English prices, giving it a value of £13, the expenditure by low-income English households on clothing was less than one-tenth that of Native Americans. Even if York Factory prices are used, implying a value of £2.6, low-wage English households were still spending less than half as much as natives. Middle- and upper-income households in England spent much more on clothing than low-income households. Workers in the seventy-fifth percentile of the English wage distribution, whom Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson term the ‘‘labor aristocracy,’’ earned about £50 per year and allocated about 25 percent of their budgets to clothing.32 The value of their clothing would, therefore, have been similar to that of native families, assuming the valuation is at English prices.33 In the mid-eighteenth century the king’s watermen had a clothing allowance of four and a quarter yards of cloth and four yards of serge. At 1740 prices, the allowance was worth £2.6, which is equal to our minimum cost of native clothing.34 Assigning British prices to animal skins may overstate the relative quality of native garments, but even if trading post prices are used, the cost of native dress is still more than double that of the low-income English family. Thus, Native Americans in the Hudson Bay hinterlands must be regarded as having been very well clothed by English standards.

Shelter Although Indians in the subarctic were semi-nomadic, spending much of their time outdoors, shelter was an important determinant of their living standards. Still, native housing in the Hudson Bay hinterland served a much

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more limited purpose than did European dwellings. The Cree used different forms of shelter depending on the time of year. In the winter they lived in units of three to four families, totaling about fifteen people, and occupied dome- or conically shaped wigwams, which were normally constructed within two hours of breaking camp.35 The typical wigwam was ten to eighteen feet in diameter and ten to fifteen feet high.36 The frame was covered with combinations of animal skins, bark, and rush carpets that were transported between sites. Eight to twelve large skins, usually of inferior grade, were used. These had to be replaced regularly due to the harsh winter conditions.37 Assuming that hides were replaced once each winter and ten caribou or moose skins were needed for a wigwam, the material cost can be put at £5, or £0.33 per person for a group of fifteen.38 Cree winter dwellings with a diameter of twelve feet had an area of 113 square feet, which for a group of fifteen allowed for 7.5 square feet per person. During the summer, natives congregated in longhouses that accommodated much larger groups. The size of these log structures depended on the number of families. Longhouses of one hundred feet by twenty feet were typically occupied by twelve families with sixty members. The living area was therefore thirty-three square feet per person.39 Often, these longhouses were part of a cluster. One such site comprised thirty-two small structures housing some three hundred people.40 Although the lodge has been described as temporary accommodation for a ‘‘regional band meeting,’’ the fact that natives might occupy a lodge for months at a time suggests that its primary function was summer housing. To a much greater extent than was true of European living conditions, Cree living conditions were dependent on the outside environment rather than the interior of their dwellings. One way of evaluating the quality of native dwellings is by comparing them with the houses of early nineteenth-century settlers in Upper Canada (Ontario), a province with a similar, if somewhat milder, climate than the Hudson Bay hinterland. The basic timber one-story house was perhaps closest in value to the longhouse. Based on the property assessment of the time, it had a value of about $120, which converts to £25 sterling in the mid-eighteenth century.41 Assuming that the longhouse, which was much larger but of lower quality than the basic timber house, was also worth £25, the value of housing per native was £0.4. The quality of shelter in England was heavily dependent on income. Lower-income households in the late eighteenth century were allocating about 10 percent of their income to rent. Since low-wage non-farm workers

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earned £21 per year, annual rent would have been just over £2.42 Capitalizing this amount over twenty years at 6 percent gives a dwelling value of roughly £20, or £4 per person for a family of five.43 Thus, Native American housing, at £0.33 to £0.4, was worth perhaps one-tenth the housing of lowwage households in England. The main reason for the higher quality of English dwellings was their permanence. Although the Cree did return to particular locations year after year and some material from the wigwams could be reused, theirs were no more than temporary structures. The English houses, in contrast, lasted many years, so English families could amortize the cost of their homes over a long period. This gave them the incentive to invest more, and the result was much higher-quality housing. Our valuations of housing are in line with Diamond Jenness’s view that native shelter could not compare even with medieval European dwellings. Because Cree longhouses had no floor, four-foot-high benches were used for sleeping, and food was stored on planks, suspended from ropes. The absence of a chimney also affected the state of the indoor environment.44 Cree housing was likely similar to the housing of other semi-nomadic native groups. The Montagnais, for example, who occupied the territory just east of the James Bay Cree, seldom stayed in one location for more than a few weeks and also had relatively primitive structures.45 It should be recognized, though, that the poor state of native housing may have been offset by the benefits of greater outdoor living space. Low population densities of roughly one person per one hundred square kilometers not only affected the quality of native life directly but also could have contributed, like their diet, to improved health.46 By contrast, English cities, with their high densities and associated problems of waste and unclean water, were much less healthy places to live in. We are not factoring these differences into our estimates of housing values. Accounting for them would certainly improve the relative position of Native Americans.

Luxuries Food, clothing, and shelter satisfied the basic needs of Native Americans and Europeans, but with the advent of long-distance trade originating in the Far East and the commercial trade in North America, luxury goods became increasingly important. In Chapters 3 and 5 we outlined the patterns of expenditure at York Factory on the main luxury goods: cloth, tobacco, alcohol, and jewelry. Here again we focus on York Factory and

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consider the trade in 1740. The commercial trade did not provide all the luxury goods that were consumed by natives. Some items, especially those used in ceremonies dictated by custom, were native-produced. Nevertheless, for the purpose of comparing living standards between Native Americans and Europeans, we limit native consumption of luxuries mainly to goods obtained through the fur trade. The York Factory records show that in 1740 the total trade at York Factory was 29,657mb, with the luxury goods accounting for 14,094mb. Thus, luxury items made up 47.4 percent of native purchases, with alcohol and tobacco accounting for roughly half the cost of luxuries.47 In 1740 there was only a limited French presence in the region, so the French likely accounted for perhaps one-tenth of the total trade. The French, however, traded in high value-to-weight goods, and such goods tended to be the luxury items. Assuming all the French trade was in the luxury category, native consumers in 1740 received the equivalent of 17,000mb in luxury goods, or roughly 2mb per person.48 In order to compare the use of luxuries by natives in the Hudson Bay hinterlands and low-wage workers in England, we have to convert the made beaver expenditure of natives into sterling. Our conversion is based on the prices of luxury goods at York Factory in terms of made beaver and the prices of those same goods in England. The cost to the Hudson’s Bay Company in England of 1mb in trade goods was about 0.7 shillings.49 But as a large purchaser, the company would have been paying close to the wholesale rather than the retail price for its trade goods. The wholesale price was perhaps one-third to one-half less than the retail price faced by an English consumer. This suggests one made beaver in luxury goods cost the English consumer between 1 and 1.5 shillings.50 By this calculation, the 2mb per capita consumption of luxury goods by natives converts to between 2 and 3 shillings. The consumption of a family of five was, therefore, between 10 and 15 shillings. This includes the trade in brandy. It is not clear how much alcohol made its way back into the hinterland. Some of the alcohol would have been consumed at the post and on the return journey to the interior.51 If alcohol is not included, native families were consuming 8 to 13 shillings’ worth of luxury goods in 1740. Charles Feinstein has studied English household budgets, and we can use his work to compare native purchases of luxuries with the expenditure of English workers. Although he does not include a category for luxury items per se, he does estimate that tea, coffee, sugar, and treacle accounted

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for 6.9 percent of workers’ expenditures.52 In addition, a further 10 percent of the budget went to ‘‘drink.’’ Excluding alcohol and assuming that the other items accounted for nearly all luxury expenditures, the family of a low-wage worker was spending 28 shillings on luxuries.53 This is two to three-and-a-half times the expenditure of a native household. If alcohol is included in luxuries, the consumption by English households relative to native households is much greater. Natives’ alcohol consumption averaged just 1.5 to 2 shillings per family as compared with 40 shillings for English households.54 We can also compare the purchases of other luxury goods. In 1740 native traders received 2,370 pounds of tobacco from the Hudson’s Bay Company—perhaps 2,800 pounds if the French trade is included. This quantity of tobacco would have allowed yearly consumption of one-third of a pound per person or 1.3 pounds per adult male. According to Carole Shammas, this rate of use would have made tobacco a ‘‘mass-consumed’’ item. By Shammas’s definition, a grocery was considered to be mass consumed if 25 percent of the adult population consumed it at least once daily.55 In the region of York Factory, enough tobacco was imported to provide 25 percent of the adults about 2.5 pounds per year, a half-pound more than the amount needed for a pipeful a day. Thus, Native Americans in the region were well beyond the point where this luxury item was mass consumed. In England consumption of tobacco was higher, 1.6 pounds per person, or about 6 pounds per male adult, but low-wage English households would certainly have been using less than the average. In addition, native traders purchased Brazil roll tobacco, which was of higher quality than the Virginia tobacco typically used by the English. So even though native consumption of tobacco was just one-fifth the average English level, their use of tobacco may have been comparable to that of low-wage English workers, especially considering its quality.56

The Relative Living Standards of Native Americans and English Workers Any comparison of real incomes across such dissimilar populations as the Cree of the Hudson Bay region and low-wage households in England is complicated by differences in prices and the mix of goods they consumed. Still, our findings on food, clothing, shelter, and luxury goods allow us to estimate a range of relative living standards for the two groups. In food,

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Native Americans had a distinct advantage. Indeed, by European standards they were extraordinarily well fed. Theirs was a predominantly meat diet, where at least 70 percent of that meat was from large game (see Table 10). By contrast, low-income English households allocated more than 70 percent of their food expenditure to grains and potatoes,57 from which they obtained 85 percent of their calories.58 Even the highest-income workers in England consumed half their calories in grain and potatoes, suggesting that the English wanted their diet to include these foods, but because lowincome households consumed much more than 50 percent of their calories as grain and potatoes, their diet must be regarded as far inferior to the diets of both high-income English households and Native Americans. This difference is important to our standard-of-living comparisons.59 Not only did natives have a superior diet, they also wore higher-quality clothing. Based on the price of skins at the York Factory post expressed in made beaver and the conversion in England at five shillings per made beaver, native families were consuming £13 per year, while low-wage English households consumed just £1.2. Even if skins are valued at the rate of exchange at the post, the implied value of native clothing, at £2.6, was roughly twice the English worker’s expenditure. The high quality of native clothing was dictated to a large degree by the severe climate and the nature of natives’ shelter, but even so, any measure of real income must consider this item as having favored Native Americans. If Indians were very well fed and clothed by English standards, the reverse was true of housing. The reason was less their expenditure on housing than the semi-nomadic nature of native life. Natives may have spent as much on housing as low-wage English workers, but the cost of a house to the sedentary English worker could be amortized over many years, which meant that the annual cost was very much less than the value of the building. By contrast, native housing fully or almost fully depreciated each year. Largely because of the permanence of their dwellings, the English invested much more in them. Native housing, as a result, was worth just one-tenth the housing of even low-wage English workers. Part of the cost of shelter, however, included fuel, and since natives consumed at least as much fuel as the English, the cost ratio for shelter was greater than one to ten. In England the cost of fuel was 40 percent of rent.60 Assuming the fuel consumed by natives was equivalent raises the overall value of natives’ shelter to one-third that of English workers. In fact, given their easy access to firewood and the harsher climate, natives likely used more fuel than the

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English. We therefore include a standard-of-living comparison where native shelter is assumed to be one-half the English level. But whatever reasonable assumptions are made, the English were certainly housed much better than Native Americans. Intriguing are our findings on luxury goods. Until the coming of the Europeans, only native-produced luxuries were available. But, once a commercial trade was introduced, natives began consuming a wide range of products that were regarded by European consumers as luxuries and would certainly have been treated as such by the aboriginal population. Excluding alcohol, natives’ expenditure on luxuries was one-third to one-half the expenditure of low-wage English workers. There were some luxuries, though, for which consumption may have been greater. Per capita use of tobacco, although only a fifth of the English average, may have been similar to that of low-income households, especially considering the higher quality of the Brazil tobacco the natives were purchasing. Indeed, for Native Americans, tobacco fell well within Carole Shammas’s definition of a massconsumed good. English workers spent much more on alcohol, however, consuming it in the form of beer and cider rather than as (English) brandy or rum as did Native Americans. This finding is significant given the historical emphasis on alcohol use by Indians. With alcohol included, the consumption of luxuries by English workers was close to six times that of natives.61 This comparison, however, includes only luxuries purchased from the Europeans. If we allow that perhaps a third of luxuries were native produced, a ratio of four to one may be more reasonable. Table 11 presents estimates of the relative real incomes of English workers and Native Americans based on these comparisons. As we have noted, the cost of most goods at Hudson Bay and in the interior was very different from their cost in England. In addition, while we have reasonably good budget studies for English households in the mid-eighteenth century, our estimates of Native American consumption are less secure. For these reasons, we report a range of relative consumption values, some biased in favor of Native Americans, the ‘‘high’’ estimates, and some favoring English households, the ‘‘low’’ estimates. In addition, we use two sets of weights: one corresponding to the pattern of consumption of natives and the other corresponding to the budgets of the English workers. Where the comparison is based on native weights, the question being addressed is: from the natives’ perspective, how did they compare to low-wage English households in terms of real income? Accordingly, the ‘‘high’’ estimate of 1.22 says that

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Table 11. Consumption and Real Income of Native American and Low-Income English Households (Native American / English) Food High Estimates Native weights English weights

1.18 1.08

Low Estimates Native weights English weights

1.18 1.08

Clothing 10 10

2.2 2.2

Shelter

Luxuries

Real Income

.5 .5

.25 .25

1.22 0.90

.33 .33

.18 .18

1.08 0.76

Note: The ratio for food and the real income comparison is derived from a utility-based model described in Appendix D. The other consumption ratios are discussed in the text.

the native households saw themselves as having real incomes 22 percent above English households. The ‘‘low’’ estimate gives an 8 percent differential. The implication is that given the choice, Native Americans in the region of Hudson Bay would not have adopted the low-wage English budget pattern. The much better quality of their food and clothing more than offset their lower consumption of shelter and luxuries. The comparison of real income based on English weights asks how large a change in English household income would be equivalent to their adopting the native consumption bundle. According to our real income measures, English households considered natives materially worse off, because the English placed less weight on meat and considered housing and luxuries to be relatively more important. Based on English weights, the ‘‘high’’ estimate implies a loss to English households equivalent to a 10 percent decline in their income; the ‘‘low’’ estimate implies a loss of 24 percent. Moving to the Native American diet and having higher-quality clothing would not have compensated low-wage English families for their better housing and greater consumption of alcohol and other luxuries. On the other hand, Native Americans would not have chosen the greater consumption of housing and luxury goods enjoyed by the English if, at the same time, they were forced to reduce their consumption of food and clothing to English levels. This result, possibly not surprising, points to the potential importance of tastes in determining which society people will choose. More important, we find that whatever assumptions and weights are used, the real incomes of Native Americans and low-income English families were not very different. The estimates fall in a range of plus or minus 25 percent.

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Natives certainly lived frugally by later standards, as did most people in the mid-eighteenth century. Still, the introduction of European goods into the life of these hunter-gatherers did allow them a higher standard of living, perhaps the equal of most English workers and above that of most Europeans. Moreover, their ‘‘biological’’ standard of living was especially high because of their meat consumption and generally healthy environment.62 By such a measure, which was reflected in their stature, Native Americans in the first seven decades of the eighteenth century might very well have been living in a golden age. Unfortunately, that golden age was short lived. The commercial trade initially provided benefits to native communities, but it did not promote long-run economic growth. This failure was largely due to the nature of the fur trade itself, which was based on an animal that was limited in scope by its habitat. As such the trade could offer no more than the constraints dictated by that habitat.

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The Fur Trade and Economic Development

A

fter the defeat of the French in the Seven Years’ War, English and Scottish merchants operating out of Montreal replaced the Compagnie des Indes. By 1800 the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Montreal traders had established settlements farther inland, and new sources of beaver supply were opened up as the trade expanded to the Lake Athabasca region and areas farther west.1 For native communities living in the Hudson Bay region the increased fur trading activity only worsened the already fragile state of the animal stocks. Up to the early 1760s natives in the hinterlands of Fort Albany and York Factory had been able to maintain their total returns by shifting from beaver to other animals. By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, maintaining this level of trade was no longer possible. Beaver in some regions were near extinction, and the less valuable furs, mainly marten and muskrat, had also been depleted. More serious was what later happened to the large game so essential to the natives’ survival. Early in the nineteenth century, moose and deer were reported to have declined, especially in the more easterly hinterlands of Fort Albany and York Factory, where there was a greater native and European presence.2 Thus natives were faced with a diminishing supply of European goods because of declining populations of beaver and other fur-bearing animals, and they were also being put at risk by the loss of the resources that were the foundation of their traditional economy. Aggravating the problem of a declining resource base were European diseases that through the mid-eighteenth century had largely spared the natives living in the northern and isolated region of Hudson Bay. In 1780–81 a smallpox epidemic reduced populations in the more southerly part of the hinterland,

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and there was an epidemic of measles and whooping cough in 1819, although this epidemic was mainly felt farther west.3 The Native Americans’ continued dependence on a renewable natural resource base composed of large game animals and fur-bearers ruled out the long-term economic growth characteristic of modern economies. Native Americans were able to adopt European technology as it became available, and the new methods allowed them to hunt and trap more effectively. Ultimately, though, both the trade in beaver and other furs, and the harvest of large game, were constrained by the rate at which these resources could be replenished. So, despite its initial benefits, the fur trade, by its nature, placed a ceiling on incomes. The size of the animal population was limited, and even the best management could provide only a modest income by nineteenth-century standards. Moreover, once the beaver and other fur-bearers became depleted, even the returns of the mid-eighteenth century could not be sustained. By contrast, technological change in English husbandry and arable farming increased labor productivity just as the introduction of firearms and metal implements had raised the labor productivity of Native Americans. It also meant more agricultural output could be produced on a given amount of land and more land could be brought into production. The increased farm output allowed for population growth and made available a workforce for the growing industrial sector. And the dramatic improvements in manufacturing productivity associated with the Industrial Revolution first in England and then in continental Europe further increased the gap between Europeans and Native Americans.4 The experience of Native Americans was also very different from those Europeans who were colonizing the North American continent. The activities of two New Englanders, John May and Samuel Lane, highlight the contrasting paths. John May, who was born in Massachusetts in 1696, had progressed by the early 1730s from day laborer to ‘‘prosperous farmerartisan,’’ owning a tannery in addition to his farm.5 In the 1740s, Lane, of Stratham, New Hampshire, also had a tannery as well as a shoemaking business.6 Thus, both men, notably with help of capital from their fathers, were able to start small businesses, each finding a niche in their local communities. Were there such niches in native society? Native trappers prepared the skins and pelts before they were traded to the Hudson’s Bay Company or the French, and the next step would have been combing these pelts to separate out the beaver wool, an activity that might have been

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undertaken in North America. Initially, the Hudson’s Bay Company had shipped the pelts to Archangel to be combed and then reimported the beaver wool to England. Once combing techniques became more widely known, the company chose to process the furs in England rather than at the bay.7 The natives had direct access to the resource, but still they did not progress beyond the primary stage of the production process. It might be noted that English laws inhibited the growth of a hatting industry in the American colonies, even though the colonists too were close to the fur supplies. Parliament instead tried to restrict beaver hat production to England.8 In colonial New England, providing goods and services to a local market was an important means of promoting economic growth. The scale of production may have been small, but the specialized nature of businesses allowed colonial entrepreneurs to cater to the specific demands of the local consumers and thus compete with the more standardized imports. Native society, with its limited range of largely subsistence goods, could not support such activity. To the extent that there was retailing it was conducted by the Europeans. There was, however, one native group that did occupy an important niche in the fur trade. By the end of our period, the ‘‘home guard’’ Indians were living in the vicinity of the bay throughout much of the year and acquired European goods by provisioning the Hudson’s Bay Company posts, mainly with large game and waterfowl. Although these were the groups who may have benefitted most from the fur trade, they also were more dependent on Europeans. Natives had long developed a society that allowed them to meet their subsistence needs, and with the fur trade to supplement their traditional activities, they achieved by the mid-eighteenth century a standard of living that was likely superior to that of most Europeans. Unfortunately, the natives’ reliance on hunting meant that their economy was incapable of much further development. In that sense natives were destined to a largely unchanging way of life. The niche markets that were so important to the rising income levels in colonial New England and the technological changes of the agricultural and industrial revolutions in Europe could not take hold. In their society there was little demand for the sorts of the goods that would have led to a local production sector, such as the chairs, tables, and leather goods produced by John May and Samuel Lane. And so, from a mideighteenth-century base, when native communities and the lower tier of

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English society were roughly on a par, there grew a widening gap in both per capita income and population. Adam Smith’s insight that the degree of specialization is limited by the extent of the market is at the crux of the dramatically different experiences. In Europe and in colonial America, as local markets grew and foreign markets became more accessible, individuals specialized to an increasing extent in those commodities where they had an advantage, and the specialization itself promoted higher productivity. Not only was there an advantage in terms of agricultural output, specialization also promoted a change in the nature of consumption, whereby the output of clothing and other household goods shifted from home to commercial manufacture. As each group started to do what each did best, small businesses arose, furthering the growth of a market economy. Drawing on the experience of New England, Gloria Main has aptly described these interactions: ‘‘Perhaps just as important as [the greater efficiencies in farm production] was the availability of new consumer goods that encouraged families to expand their indoor tasks and work ‘smarter.’ The continuing strong growth of the rural economy made bootstrapping such as John May’s possible for subsequent generations.’’9 The diaries of John May and Samuel Lane tell the story of what she calls the ‘‘quintessential New England/American way: work hard, borrow when you have to, pay it back promptly, live frugally, put what you don’t spend into something productive, and think big.’’10 It was to be many years before Native Americans were able to shift from the traditional activities that, along with the fur trade, had been the basis of their relative prosperity in the eighteenth century to activities that could meet the challenges of an industrializing economy. During the nineteenth century, with the virtual disappearance of the moose and caribou, and later the buffalo, the Cree and other native groups became increasingly dependent on the Hudson’s Bay Company as their traditional foods gave way to a more European diet. They began, in fact, to trade furs for food. The greater scarcity also led to war among tribes. There was a major conflict between the Cree and the Blackfoot in the late 1860s, and, although the fighting was over by 1871, the violence, along with two epidemics at about the same time, seriously affected the two populations.11 War and the threat of war gave the impetus to establish a more stable relationship among natives, but, more important, the new Dominion of Canada wanted agricultural land for the settlers who were beginning to occupy the prairies. In the 1870s, the government entered into negotiations

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with the main native groups, and the result was a series of treaties.12 The Indians ceded rights to large areas and in return received designated reserves and other considerations.13 The main treaties were completed in the 1870s, and in 1876 the first Indian Act was passed. That act and later revisions provided for limited self-government on the reserves but left the Canadian government substantial control over many aspects of native life. It was only in the 1970s and 1980s that power began to shift back to the natives themselves. During the nineteenth century, native populations stagnated, but in the twentieth century a more reliable food supply, access to modern medicine, and other factors resulted in one of the fastest rates of population growth in North America. Despite the fact that incomes rose as well, many natives, especially those who remained on reserves, lagged badly in terms of education, health, and other measures of living standards. The Hudson’s Bay Company, meanwhile, was transformed. The company was greatly enlarged in 1821 when it merged with the North West Company, but more significant was what happened later in the century. With the Canadian Confederation of 1867, it became clear that the company would have to surrender its charter and give up its claim to the Hudson Bay region. So in 1870 the Hudson’s Bay Company relinquished proprietorship of Rupert’s Land to the Dominion of Canada, receiving in compensation £300,000 and one-twentieth of some of the best agricultural land on the prairies.14 More significant was the fact that the company refocused its business from trading with native peoples to selling goods mainly to non-natives. In 1881 the company opened a retail store in Winnipeg, Manitoba, that it greatly expanded in 1900 and then again in 1911.15 By 1920 the Hudson’s Bay Company had department stores in cities throughout the prairies and British Columbia, making it the largest retailer in western Canada. After World War II, ‘‘The Bay’’ expanded throughout Canada. Furs, though, became a smaller and smaller part of the company’s operation. By 1991 the transformation was complete. A few years earlier, the Hudson’s Bay Company had divested itself of the last of its fur auction houses, and in 1991 its stores stopped selling all fur products.

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Skins Traded

15,605 14,427 19,084 15,895 16,303 12,122 18,793 15,980

Year

1700 1701 1702 1703 1704 1705 1706 1707

206 209 213 210 212 213 220 217

Population

84.0 62.5 65.9 73.1 73.6 58.9 73.8 71.4

Price

1722 1723 1724 1725 1726 1727 1728 1729

Year

Population

11,374 20,198 19,618 14,234 10,022 12,475 17,425 15,466

165 174 170 166 170 180 186 183

Fort Albany

Skins Traded

69.9 71.4 71.8 72.8 70.1 73.2 71.4 69.6

Price

1744 1745 1746 1747 1748 1749 1750 1751

Year

19,030 14,703 13,674 18,693 23,690 19,145 12,993 9,223

Skins Traded

161 148 144 142 130 107 90 84

Population

83.5 83.5 97.0 89.0 82.7 85.7 87.9 92.3

Price

Table A.1. Fur Prices, Beaver Skins Traded, and the Simulated Beaver Population: Fort Albany, York Factory, and Fort Churchill, 1700–1763

at Fort Albany, York Factory, and Fort Churchill, 1700–1763

Fur Prices, Beaver Skins Traded, and the Simulated Beaver Population

Appendix A

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16,558 14,870 20,201 29,557 14,940 40,625

16,759 27,584 16,396 19,017 29,645 19,420 17,478 20,018 19,936 27,960 19,782 17,977 14,474 18,442

1708 1709 1710 1711 1712 1713 1714 1715 1716 1717 1718 1719 1720 1721

1716 1717 1718 1719 1720 1721

Skins Traded

Year

277 296 307 309 324 313

218 218 203 204 202 185 183 183 180 178 163 161 161 166

Population

Table A.1. (Continued)

89.3 78.9 78.3 79.6 99.2 92.7

58.8 67.6 62.6 72.6 67.2 68.3 66.9 71.9 71.8 69.3 63.7 68.6 71.6 67.0

Price

1732 1733 1734 1735 1736 1737

1730 1731 1732 1733 1734 1735 1736 1737 1738 1739 1740 1741 1742 1743

Year

Population

184 185 178 174 171 170 177 176 177 174 167 161 159 159

36,335 29,197 31,720 30,412 28,887 30,456

233 237 238 240 243 244

York Factory

14,708 19,110 17,293 16,503 15,062 10,433 14,296 13,261 14,666 16,918 15,909 13,649 12,836 12,024

Fort Albany

Skins Traded

73.0 69.9 68.1 67.8 68.0 66.5

70.5 66.3 71.4 81.0 82.6 83.9 79.5 80.5 85.6 83.9 80.6 78.6 84.3 91.5

Price

1748 1749 1750 1751 1752 1753

1752 1753 1754 1755 1756 1757 1758 1759 1760 1761 1762 1763

Year

27,086 23,273 16,686 21,869 18,302 18,089

9,435 8,943 7,956 6,076 6,360 6,368 8,959 9,872 11,558 16,520 14,652 9,881

Skins Traded

157 149 152 146 145 145

85 85 87 90 98 107 116 121 125 126 117 110

Population

88.4 73.1 90.9 92.6 97.5 97.2

102.6 102.6 106.6 115.4 128.3 122.8 110.8 103.0 100.6 87.3 80.0 105.1

Price

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11,523 6,012 5,028 4,753 5,704 6,062 9,053 11,017 8,846 8,179 15,148 11,215 9,077 8,944

1722 1723 1724 1725 1726 1727 1728 1729 1730 1731 1732 1733 1734 1735

87 86 90 96 101 104 107 106 104 104 104 98 96 97

312 307 306 296 294 295 282 288 266 237

83.0 116.8 109.0 115.2 121.6 118.2 85.9 72.4 75.8 76.3 80.2 83.1 98.9 96.6

83.6 69.9 72.0 68.6 68.2 69.7 65.3 70.9 70.8 69.6

1736 1737 1738 1739 1740 1741 1742 1743 1744 1745 1746 1747 1748 1749

1738 1739 1740 1741 1742 1743 1744 1745 1746 1747

243 239 229 230 214 202 195 180 178 170

8,846 16,144 12,090 21,624 11,509 11,316 18,582 14,090 12,821 8,656 8,892 15,961 9,949 12,240

98 98 92 90 78 78 77 69 66 64 66 68 63 64

Fort Churchill

30,826 31,916 36,415 26,185 37,727 33,515 28,544 32,321 21,704 24,768

99.2 80.7 91.8 80.8 86.8 81.8 82.3 84.9 94.6 113.9 113.9 85.8 85.9 85.1

68.0 75.3 76.7 74.4 78.9 79.0 86.5 83.8 85.7 87.3

1750 1751 1752 1753 1754 1755 1756 1757 1758 1759 1760 1761 1762 1763

1754 1755 1756 1757 1758 1759 1760 1761 1762 1763

11901 10502 7859 10382 8808 11734 10983 9034 8551 6777 8777 7739 12028 10849

16,101 19,616 20,929 22,278 15,504 14,358 17,219 19,677 16,403 14,397

62 61 61 64 64 66 65 65 67 69 73 75 78 77

148 146 141 133 136 140 141 138 139 144

81.4 85.5 121.2 88.0 101.2 90.5 97.2 101.1 115.7 96.8 101.7 93.5 89.6 93.1

115.1 105.6 102.7 106.7 102.9 89.8 92.9 86.1 94.6 88.6

Notes: The derivation of the simulated population, which is expressed in thousands of animals, is given in Appendix B. Price is expressed as an index as described in Chapter 2. Source: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Post Account Books.

31,308 34,761 32,739 41,117 33,484 30,692 45,200 27,280 54,100 61,361

1722 1723 1724 1725 1726 1727 1728 1729 1730 1731

Appendix B

Simulating the Beaver Population

T

he relation between the annual harvest and population is based on the Lotka-Volterra logistic, commonly used in natural resource models to relate the natural growth of a biomass to the underlying animal population: F(X)aXbX 2,

a,b⬎0

(B.1)

where X is the animal population, a is the maximum proportional growth rate of the population, and ba / X, where X is the upper limit to population size. The population dynamics of the species exploited will depend on the harvest each period: •

XaXbX 2H,

(B.2)

•

where H is the harvest and X is the annual change in the population. Adding time subscripts, we can determine the beaver population in any year from the beaver population the previous year and the size of the harvest in that year. Thus: 2 Ht1, XtaXt1bXt1

(B.3)

where Xt , Ht are the beaver population and harvest at time t. The choice of parameter a and maximum population, X, from which we derive parameter b, are key to the simulations. By selecting an initial value, X0 , we can derive a complete population series. To illustrate:

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Simulating the Beaver Population

193

X1X0aX0bX02H0 X2X1aX1bX 21H1 , and so on. Parameter a, the maximum proportional growth rate, is set at 0.3. This value is roughly consistent with Payne’s beaver life tables and estimates of rapidly growing beaver populations.1 It also seems to reflect beaver population growth in one small area of the region in the twentieth century, where the beaver recovered from virtual extinction.2 Parameter b depends on the region, and we begin with Fort Albany. The French were competing in the Fort Albany region, and so the total harvest, H, includes an estimate of the number of furs received by French traders. It is assumed that the French share of the total beaver harvest was 30 percent until 1720 and increased by 1 percent each year to 50 percent in 1740, after which it remained constant. The value of the maximum possible beaver population, X, in the Fort Albany hinterland is chosen so that it leads to a plausible time series of the beaver population. The population at the simulation starting point in 1700 is somewhat arbitrarily put at 60 percent of this maximum population.3 Values of X that are too low imply an extinction path and so are rejected. Values that are too high lead to unreasonably large beaver populations in the 1750s and 1760s when, as outlined in Chapter 4, the evidence for depletion is compelling. The maximum beaver population, X, in the Fort Albany hinterland has been set at 344,000.4 As a final check that our procedure has generated reasonable results, we have compared the beaver density implied by our choice of X with twentieth-century Ontario Ministry estimates of beaver densities in the region.5 The maximum density implied by our choice is 0.6 beaver/km2. In the 1980s the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources surveyed the province and, as part of its land use plan, included estimates of the potential beaver harvest, which they set at 30 percent of the stock. The beaver density in the Fort Albany hinterland implied by their study is 0.5 beaver/km2. Given that beaver were not being heavily exploited at that time, an observed density roughly 80 percent of the maximum seems plausible.6 The values of X for the York Factory and Fort Churchill hinterlands are also chosen so that the simulations produce plausible population series. In the York Factory hinterland the French were competing during part of the period, but unlike Fort Albany, which faced competition earlier in the eighteenth century, York Factory was protected by distance until the 1730s. In

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194

Appendix B

1732 the French established Fort St. Charles on Lake of the Woods and in 1734 built Fort Maurepas at the mouth of the Red River. These posts, both located near the southeastern limit of the York Factory hinterland, provided some competition, but it was not until 1738 that larger numbers of furs began to be diverted to Montreal. By 1755 the French were accounting for 40 percent of the region’s trade.7 Based on this evidence on the French presence in the region, the French share of the total harvest is set at zero until 1729, is assumed to increase at .0125 per year to .10 in 1737, and by .03 per year to .40 in 1747, after which it is assumed to remain constant. The maximum beaver population in the York Factory hinterland is put at 460,000, and the number of beaver at the start of the period, 1716, is set at 60 percent of that level. Although we do not have an estimate of beaver densities, the implied maximum density of 0.5 beaver/km2 is consistent with the type of environment—boreal forest—that dominates the region. Fort Churchill faced virtually no competition from the French, and so the trade at Fort Churchill is assumed to equal the total harvest. A maximum beaver population, X, of 140,000 generates a plausible simulation. Also, the implied beaver density of 0.3 beaver/km2 is consistent with the nature of the terrain—tundra and boreal forest.

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Appendix C

A Model of Harvesting Large Game: Joint Ownership Versus Competition

B

y treating game as a resource that was commonly and widely owned, native hunters could harvest at closer to optimal levels. The form of the natural growth function for large game is assumed to be the same as for beaver, as we described in equation (B.1) and Figure 15. F(X)aXbX 2,

(C.1)

where X is the game population.1 The harvest function is assumed to take a simple form common in fisheries models: HEX,

(C.2)

where H is the harvest and E the level of harvesting effort. A more realistic harvesting function for game would assume that the elasticities of the harvest with respect to both E and X are less than one.2 Suppose a single group wishes to maximize the harvest on a sustainable basis, and hence its own population. They will choose harvests that lead to an animal population where F(X) is the greatest. This population is onehalf its maximum—namely, 1/2 X. At this point the animal population, the harvest, and the level of harvesting effort are given by: a a2 a X s , H s , and E s , 2b 4b 2

(C.3)

where superscript s indicates there is a single group hunting the animals. Suppose, for example, the maximum game population, X, is 4 million and

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196

Appendix C

the maximum growth rate, a, is 5 percent.3 The animal population would be 2 million, the harvest 50,000, and the effort level .025. Next consider two groups, A and B, each with a well-defined hunting territory, and assume each group tries to maximize its own population. Each group will still maximize its own harvest on a sustained basis, but will also take into account the harvest of the other group, which is hunting from the same common pool. The sustainable harvest of each group is the difference between the natural growth of the animals and the harvest of the other group: H AaXbX2E BX,

(C.4)

where H A is the sustainable harvest of group A and E B is the effort level of group B (note that E B X is the harvest of group B). Assuming group A takes the level of effort of group B as given, the effort level of group A that gives rise to its maximum sustainable harvest is: E A

aE B . 2

(C.5)

This equation is derived by maximizing equation (C.4) with respect to X. Suppose the groups are of equal size and group B acts symmetrically. Each will choose an effort level of a/3, and the outcome for the animal population, the total harvest, and total effort will be: a 2a2 2a X C , H C(H AH B) , and E C(EAEB) , 3b 9b 3

(C.6)

where X C, H C, and E C are the total animal population, harvest, and effort where the two groups compete for the animals. Equations (C.3) and (C.6) highlight why common access to game may have been a better arrangement than one with well-defined and exclusive hunting territories. Where the groups compete, the animal stock is one-third lower, the total harvest is one-ninth lower, and effort is one-third greater. For the case where the game again has a maximum population of 4 million and a maximum growth rate of 5 percent, the animal population where the groups compete would be 1.3 million rather than 2 million if they do not compete, the

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197

harvest is 44,400 rather than 50,000, and the effort level is .033 instead of .025. Competition for the resource thus leads to a lower total native population than if both groups act in their common interest. This result highlights the advantage of the aboriginal approach to game hunting and its superiority over a system in which hunting territories are exclusive.

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Appendix D

Food and the Relative Incomes of Native Americans and English Workers

O

ur approach to relative incomes is based on the view that food affects the welfare of households in two ways. First, food provides the energy and nutrients needed for survival. The idea here is that regardless of the mix of foods, individuals must achieve a given level of nutrition. This constraint includes more than energy, but for the purpose of the analysis here, we assume that there is a calorie constraint alone.1 Second, although all people consume their calorie constraint, individuals are better off if they reach their nutritional constraint with a diet that is preferred. The diet is assumed to be made up of two types of food: meat (high quality) and grain (low quality). The calorie (nutritional) constraint is normalized to one, and meat or grain is defined in terms of those normalized calorie units. Thus the nutrition constraint can be expressed as: 1gm,

(D.1)

where g is grain consumption and m is meat consumption, both expressed in normalized calories. The utility function is assumed to be Cobb-Douglas in food and other goods, where the food component allows for a diminishing marginal rate of substitution between grain and meat: n

u(gam␣) 冲 ci␤i ,

(D.2)

i1

where ci is consumption of (non-food) good i, and a, ␣, and ␤i are utility parameters. Substituting the calorie constraint (D.1), the utility function becomes:

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Food Consumption and Relative Incomes

199

n

u(1mam␣) 冲 ci␤i .

(D.3)

i1

Assigning grain a price of one, as the numeraire good, and substituting equation (D.1), the income constraint is given by:

冘p c , n

Y1(pm1)m

(D.4)

i i

i1

where pm is the price of meat and pi is the price of non-food good i. The optimization problem is:

冘 p c ].

n

max U(1mama) 冲 ci␤i␭[Y1(pm1) i1

m,ci

n

i i

(D.5)

i1

The first order conditions give rise to the following relation: a␣m␣11 ␤k(pm1)  . k1,......., n 1mam␣ pkck

(D.6)

Assuming the price of meat is no less than the price of grain (i.e., pmⱖ1), 1 it follows that the consumption of meat is between zero and (a␣)1␣. Over this range the left-hand side of equation (D.6) is decreasing in m. It follows that an increase in the price of meat, pm , leads to a decline in meat consumption, and an increase in expenditure on any of the non-food goods implies an increase in the consumption of meat as well.2 Finally, an increase in income leads to an increase in expenditure on all goods other than grain. The utility function provides a way of comparing the real income levels of Native Americans and Europeans, two groups that were consuming two very different baskets of goods. The ratio of the utility of Native Americans to English workers is given by:

冉

冊冉 冊 冉 冊 冉 冊

1mIamI␣ UI  UE 1mEamE␣

c1I c1E

␤1

c2I c2E

␤2

c3I c3E

␤3

,

(D.7)

where I refers to Native Americans and E to English workers. The relative real income levels of Native Americans and English workers is derived by

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200

Appendix D

substituting their relative consumption of food (grain and meat), housing, clothing, and luxuries into equation (D.7). The results turn out not to be sensitive to the parameter values chosen (Table D.1). It is assumed for the purpose of the comparison in which English weights are used that Native Americans consume the optimal English diet.3 The results are given in Table D.2. Table D.1. Parameters of the Utility Function (␣  0.5)

a ␤1b ␤2b ␤3b a

English Parameters

Native American Parameters

1.41 0.135 0.054 0.152

1.79 0.077 0.125 0.048

Based on the utility function, where optimal consumption of calories in the form of meat (m) is assumed to be .8 for Native Americans and .5 for Europeans. This is the solution to 1 m(a␣)1␣. Excluding sugar and alcohol, m  .5 was roughly the consumption of the top 5 percent of English households in 1688. See Philip Hoffman et al., ‘‘Real Inequality in Europe,’’ p. 326. b English workers: Treating coffee, tea, sugar, and alcohol as luxuries rather than food, the percentage consumption shares derived by Charles Feinstein (‘‘Pessimism Perpetuated,’’ p. 635) for English workers in 1788 are: food, 62.1, of which 72 percent is grain based; housing, 15; clothing, 6; and luxuries, 16.9. For purposes of estimation, ‘‘meat’’ is assumed to include beef, mutton, pork, milk, butter, and cheese; ‘‘grain’’ includes bread, flour, oatmeal, and potatoes. Of total calories, 13.9 percent were from meat and 86.1 from grain, and the price per calorie of meat was 2.38 times the price per calorie of grain (see Table 10). Substituting m  .139 and pm  2.38 into equation (D.6), we solve for ␤k/pk ck to be 0.468. It follows that ␤k  .468  pk ck  .468  sk  Y, where sk is the share of income spent on good k. Total expenditure on food, in terms of the normalization, was g  pmm  .861  2.38  .139  1.192. Since 62.1 percent of the budget was allocated to food, it follows that Y  1.920 and ␤k  .899  sk. Native Americans: For pm  1, which is the case for natives, the elasticity parameters, ␤k, correspond simply to the factor shares of each of the goods. In computing factor shares we use the made beaver values rather than sterling prices, which involves choosing the appropriate conversion rate. We put the value of housing at £2 per family or 8mb at the conversion rate of 5 shillings per made beaver. Adding the cost of fuel would likely double this estimate (for the English worker the cost of fuel was 40 percent of the total housing costs). We also estimated clothing at 16mb for an adult male and 52mb for a family. This value almost certainly overstates the relative value of clothing since part of the price at the trading post reflected the cost to native traders of transporting moose and deer skins, which had a relatively low valueto-weight ratio. We take 26mb as a better reflection of the cost to those who used the skins directly. Finally, the 17,000mb in luxury goods received by natives in the region converts to 10mb per family. Assuming that 25 percent of the budget went to goods other than food, the implied expenditure shares are: housing, .077; clothing, .125; luxuries, .048. a

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Table D.2. Utility and Real Income: Native Americans/English Workers

‘‘High’’ estimates Native weights English weights ‘‘Low’’ estimates Native weights English weights

Utilitya

Real Incomeb

1.39 0.90

1.22 0.90

1.10 0.75

1.08 0.76

Based on equation (D.7), the parameters in Table D.1, and the consumption comparisons in Table 11. b Derived from equations (D.5) and (D.6). a

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Notes

Introduction Note to epigraph: Hudson’s Bay Company Heritage, Our History, ‘‘Paying Up: The Rent Ceremony,’’ www.hbc.com/hbcheritage/history/business/fur. 1. Hudson’s Bay Company Heritage, Our History, ‘‘Paying Up: The Rent Ceremony.’’ The two beaver were subsequently donated to the Winnipeg Zoo. 2. Hudson’s Bay Company Heritage, Corporate Collections, ‘‘The Royal Charter of the Hudson’s Bay Company,’’ www.hbc.com/hbcheritage/collections/archival/charter. 3. With the move of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s head office from London to Winnipeg in the 1970s, the company asked that the clauses relating to the rental payments be removed from its charter. Thus the rent ceremony in 1970 was the last. 4. For an excellent discussion of how European traders were able to live in the northerly interior of the continent, see Sylvia Van Kirk, Many Tender Ties. She describes how first Indian women and then Me´tis women as wives of European traders provided the technology and expertise to allow them to survive the northern winter. 5. The absence of a colonial agent, the lack of agricultural land, and the nature of trading at Hudson Bay meant that many of the forces at work in the thirteen colonies were not present. One must be wary, then, of interpreting the region in terms of the literature on what happened further south. The discussions in Fred Anderson, Crucible of War; Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire; Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground; and Richard White, The Middle Ground, may not apply or apply in a much more muted fashion. 6. The story might have been different if the French and English could have used the inherent hostility between the Cree, Assiniboin, and the even more northerly Chipewyan. However, prior to the Seven Years’ Wars, the region of the Churchill River had not been reached by French voyageurs from Montreal. 7. For a detailed online map of the drainage of Hudson Bay, including the river system, see Canada, Natural Resources Canada, The National Atlas of Canada, 5th ed., ‘‘Drainage Basins, 1985,’’ http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/archives/5thedition. 8. Royal charters were not unusual. The East India Company received its charter in 1600; the Royal Adventurers into Africa, chartered in 1660, later became the Royal African Company, chartered in 1672.

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Notes to Pages 5–12

9. As well, many of the pelts from British North America were shipped to Amsterdam, where they were processed, or even shipped to Archangel, as we discuss in Chapter 1. 10. The Hudson’s Bay Company records are housed in its head office archives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. There is also microfilm copy of the collection in the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa. 11. E. E. Rich’s two-volume Hudson’s Bay Company, 1670–1870, was copyrighted by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1958. The first trade edition appeared in 1960 in three volumes. Another classic book on the fur trade is Harold Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada. 12. While literature on the French trade is limited, there is the important work of W. J. Eccles and the analysis of Thomas Wien. See W. J. Eccles, ‘‘Fur Trade and Eighteenth-Century Imperialism,’’ and Thomas Wien, ‘‘Selling Beaver Skins’’ and ‘‘Castor, Peaux, et Pelleteries.’’ Discussions of the fur trade are of course included in eighteenth-century histories of New France, but for special focus on the trade see also Gratien Allaire, ‘‘Le Commerce des Fourrures a` Montre´al.’’ 13. Arthur Ray has produced many important works, but his Indians in the Fur Trade and his work with Donald Freeman, ‘‘Give Us Good Measure,’’ are watersheds in fur trade history. 14. Kerry Abel and Jean Freisen, eds., Aboriginal Resource Use in Canada. 15. Charles Bishop (The Northern Ojibwa) and Toby Morantz (‘‘Historical Perspectives’’) have written extensively on the eastern James Bay region. 16. The high cost of travel by canoe from Quebec meant that the French were relatively uncompetitive in these goods. 17. Arthur Ray was the first to clearly document the effectiveness of natives as bargainers. See his Indians in the Fur Trade and Arthur Ray and Donald Freeman, ‘‘Give Us Good Measure.’’ Note that an increase in the price that native traders received for furs or pelts was equivalent to a reduction in the price of European trade goods. A higher price per pelt meant that a native trader could buy more European goods with a pelt; equivalently a European trade item could be purchased with fewer pelts. 18. Trading posts received one ship from England each year, although depending on the trade and concern about the French, that three-masted ship might be accompanied by a smaller sloop. 19. Thomas Wien has compiled evidence on fur prices in France that he compares with prices in England, but his series, although very useful, are less complete. See Wien, ‘‘Selling Beaver Skins.’’ 20. Arthur Ray was one of the first to document the impact of a subarctic climate on metal goods. See Ray, ‘‘Indians as Consumers.’’ 21. E. E. Rich, ‘‘Trade Habits and Economic Motivation among the Indians,’’ p. 47. 22. On the effects of alcohol farther to the south, see Kathryn Braund, Deerskins and Duffels and Peter Mancall, Deadly Medicine. 23. Even after this time, the company was the primary source, because the French

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Notes to Pages 13–22

205

traded little alcohol due its low value-to-weight ratio. See, in contrast to these findings for the Hudson Bay hinterland, Daniel Usner, ‘‘Frontier Exchange Economy’’ and Peter Mancall, Deadly Medicine, on the role of alcohol in other parts of the continent. 24. Charles Bishop, ‘‘Emergence of Hunting Territories’’; Toby Morantz, ‘‘Historical Perspectives on Family Hunting Territories.’’ 25. We are not implying that Native Americans necessarily used these commodities in the same way as Europeans. What we do know is that natives chose some products over others, as we show in Chapter 3; and, more important, they chose to spend time in the fur trade in order to acquire the European goods. 26. The Seven Years’ War, sometimes called the French and Indian War, although the dates are slightly different, was more important to other parts of North America. For a recent synthesis of how the wars influenced the course of events, see Fred Anderson’s War That Made America. Chapter 1. Hats and the European Fur Market Note to epigraph: Quoted in David Corner, ‘‘The Tyranny of Fashion,’’ p. 154. 1. Madeleine Ginsburg, The Hat, pp. 45–54. 2. Fiona Clark, Hats, ch. 1; Madeleine Ginsburg, The Hat, p. 46. 3. Even within the highest class of hat, ‘‘beaver,’’ there could be wide variation in quality. 4. Murray Lawson, Fur, pp. 87–93. 5. As is true of most textiles, the timing of this diffusion is imprecise. John Crean, ‘‘Hats,’’ pp. 373–77. 6. Murray Lawson suggests that the Huguenots’ secrets were ‘‘now to be lost to France until about the middle of the eighteenth century.’’ Lawson, Fur, p. 8. 7. It was incorporated as one of the livery companies of London, which descended from the medieval guilds. Murray Lawson, ‘‘The Beaver Hat,’’ p. 29. 8. Ibid., p. 29. 9. The official value was used for assigning tariffs, but by the middle of the eighteenth century it could bear little relationship to the market price. 10. Abbe´ Nollet, L’Art de faire des chapeaux; translated in John Crean, ‘‘Hats,’’ p. 381. 11. See John Crean, ‘‘Hats,’’ p. 376. 12. Ibid., p. 376. 13. Carroting gave the felt an orange tinge. Ibid., p. 380. 14. Quoted in John Crean, ‘‘Hats,’’ p. 381. Translated from Abbe´ Nollet, L’Art, p. 14. 15. Madeleine Ginsburg, The Hat, pp. 68–69; David Corner, ‘‘The Tyranny of Fashion,’’ p. 158; and John Crean, ‘‘Hats,’’ p. 380. 16. Madeleine Ginsburg, The Hat, p. 44. 17. Ibid., p. 44.

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Notes to Pages 22–27

18. Fiona Clark, Hats, p. 10. 19. Quoted in Madeleine Ginsburg, The Hat, p. 44. 20. Gregory Clark, ‘‘The Condition of the Working Class,’’ p. 1324. 21. Great Britain, House of Commons, Report upon the Petitions, pp. 7, 9, 11; Michael Harrison, History of the Hat, p. 124. A beaver hat priced at £3 in 1700 would cost about £365 in current pounds. See Lawrence Officer, ‘‘Purchasing Power of British Pounds,’’ www.measuringworth.com/ppoweruk, accessed October 29, 2008. 22. Old Bailey Proceedings, August 1688, John Averye (t16880831–15), www.old baileyonline.org, accessed October 29, 2008. 23. Ibid., July 1688, George Stockwell (t16880711–30). 24. Ibid., December 1710, John Sturt ( t17101206–12). 25. N. B. Harte, ‘‘Economics of Clothing,’’ p. 277. On the accuracy of King’s estimates, also see Margaret Spufford, ‘‘Cost of Apparel.’’ 26. E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, Population History of England, p. 529. 27. Bongraces, at this time, were flat, square caps often with a short flap of velvet on each side. 28. N. B. Harte, ‘‘Economics of Clothing,’’ pp. 278, 293; and David Corner, ‘‘Tyranny,’’ p. 153. 29. Unlike James I, few people had more than one beaver hat. 30. Sales to England’s American colonies may provide an indication of the size of the English domestic market. Although there was considerable variation in annual beaver hat sales, the total averaged about 5 percent of the white colonial population. If English per capita purchases of beaver hats were of similar magnitude, domestic sales would have been on the order of 250,000 to 300,000. See Elizabeth Schumpeter, English Overseas Trade Statistics, p. 66; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics, series Z1; E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, Population History of England, p. 529. 31. Murray Lawson, Fur, Appendix G, pp. 110–23. In addition, 284,000 felt hats were exported in 1750. 32. H. E. S. Fisher, The Portugal Trade, p. 48; and David Corner, ‘‘Tyranny,’’ p. 163. 33. Murray Lawson, Fur, p. 34. 34. We discuss the French trade in the Hudson Bay region in later chapters. 35. Great Britain, Inspector-General of Imports and Exports, Ledgers of Imports and Exports. Thomas Wien suggests that because of the drawback provisions there was an incentive on the part of the Hudson’s Bay Company and other sellers to exaggerate re-exports, but it is unlikely that possible misreporting affects the observed trends since duties did not change over the relevant period. Wien, ‘‘Selling Beaver Skins.’’ 36. Murray Lawson, Fur, p. 17. 37. Ibid., p. 18. The specific legislation was 8 Geo. I, C. 15, s. 13, 14, 24. 38. The duty on pelts was specific rather than an ad valorem, meaning that the duty was the same on each skin, regardless of its value. The result was that the percentage tax on low-quality pelts could be very high. In its letter to Fort Albany in May

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1697, the head office tried to circumvent the problem, stating that as the ‘‘small skins pay the same duty as largest’’ and as the sale price is low, the factors were to cut the small skins into pieces and send them to London in a cask by themselves. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/3, 1697. 39. Murray Lawson, Fur, p. 35. 40. The legislation was 5 Geo. II, C. 22. 41. Murray Lawson, Fur, pp. 13–14. 42. We have a complete series from 1735. For the earlier years we also make use of the Grand Journal, which has less detail. 43. Despite shifts in the relative price of parchment and coat beaver in the London market, native traders received the same price for coat and parchment pelts throughout the period. 44. During the period 1740 to 1753, one livre tournois was worth 10.5d sterling. See John McCusker, Money and Exchange, pp. 96–97. 45. John Crean, ‘‘Hats,’’ p. 383. Assuming the average parchment pelt weighed 1.4 pounds, or 1.3 livres, the price per parchment pelt increased from 4.6 shillings in 1739 to 6.25 shillings in 1740 and to 9.1 shillings in 1753. With the exception of 1739, Paris prices appear to have been about 20 percent less than London prices. Note, though, that the pelts arriving in London from Hudson Bay were almost certainly of higher quality. 46. Thomas Wien, ‘‘Selling Beaver Skins,’’ p. 306; Ann Carlos and Frank Lewis, ‘‘Property Rights,’’ p. 712. 47. Fitted trend lines imply a somewhat greater rate of price increase in France, 3.0 percent per year as compared to 2.1 percent in England. 48. Great Britain, House of Commons, Some Considerations, p.1. 49. The number of apprentices could be adjusted fairly easily, but there would have been a considerable lag before these changes would be reflected in the number of journeymen and, even more so, master hatters. 50. Murray Lawson, Fur, pp. 87, 93, 134. We do not have estimates of domestic purchases of beaver hats, but the contemporary accounts indicate that this was mainly an export market. 51. Great Britain, House of Commons, Report upon the Petitions, p. 4. 52. Hatter Richard Crafton also expressed concern about the high price of beaver: ‘‘That the Manufacturers here mix Beaver with other Materials, upon account of the Fineness of the Goods, as well as the Colour; and the excessive Price of Beaver has obliged them to put less of it in the Hats, and consequently make them worse.’’ Ibid., pp. 5–6. 53. Great Britain, House of Commons, Some Considerations, p. 1. 54. Although re-exports of pelts increased as well, the supply available to English hatters rose dramatically, from 24,000 to 81,000 pelts. 55. Murray Lawson, Fur, p. 28.

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56. Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson, ‘‘English Workers’ Living Standards,’’ p. 12. 57. In 1777, when the hatters of London again petitioned Parliament, they referred specifically to ‘‘the great scarcity of journeymen.’’ In response, Parliament enacted legislation that repealed the Tudor and Stuart hat acts, which restricted the number of journeymen and apprentices. Murray Lawson, Fur, p. 29. Chapter 2. The Hudson’s Bay Company and the Organization of the Fur Trade Note to epigraph: Quoted in E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, p. 24. Rich suggests the author was in fact George Cartwright. ‘‘George Carr’’ appears to be a mixture of the names of Cartwright and Sir Robert Carr, English commissioners sent to America to settle, among other things, the boundaries of the British possessions. 1. E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, pp. 23–24. 2. For a map showing Sieur de Groseilliers’s route, see Canadian Museum of Civilization, Virtual Museum of New France, www.civilization.ca/cmc/index_e.aspx? DetailID4157, accessed November 4, 2008. 3. Coureurs de bois is the name given to the French fur traders who journeyed west and north from Quebec. The literal translation is ‘‘wood runners.’’ They were also called voyageurs. 4. The French livre was 1.077 pounds. 5. E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, p. 28. For a more complete discussion of these and subsequent events, see chs. 2 and 3. 6. Ibid., p. 29. In England, their case was advanced by Sir George Carteret, whose positions included Treasurer of the Royal Navy. 7. Ibid., p. 38. 8. Ibid., p. 53. 9. For a sense of this debate, see Ann Carlos and Stephen Nicholas, ‘‘Giants of an Earlier Capitalism’’; ‘‘Agency Problems’’; ‘‘Managing the Manager’’; and ‘‘Theory and History’’; also see S. H. R. Jones and Simon Ville, ‘‘Efficient Transactors’’ and ‘‘Theory and Evidence.’’ 10. Stock was sold in units of £100 book value, although one could buy part of a share. However, one needed £100 book value to vote. To be elected to the Court of Assistants a shareholder had to have a minimum £400 book value of stock. The amount required to be elected governor or deputy governor was higher. By 1720 the minimum book value of stock required was £1,800 and £900, respectively. William Scott, Constitution and Finance, vol. 2, pp. 228–36. 11. As noted in the Introduction, a smaller sister ship might accompany the main ship from London, but posts could not expect more that one visit per year. 12. For a fuller discussion of the role played by these information sources, see Ann Carlos and Santhi Hejeebu, ‘‘The Timing and Quality of Information.’’ 13. On June 19, 2007, it was announced that the Hudson’s Bay Company archive records spanning the first two hundred and fifty years of its history, 1670 to 1920,

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have been included in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Memory of the World registry. For a complete description of these archives, see ‘‘Hudson’s Bay Company Archives,’’ www.gov.mb.ca/chc/archives/hbca. 14. We take our demarcation of the hinterlands from the work of Arthur Ray, ‘‘Bayside Trade.’’ 15. E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, p. 81. 16. Throughout the book distances are reported in kilometers. Note that 1 kilometer  .621 miles; 1 square kilometer  .386 square miles. 17. Beginning in 1733 the returns from Moose Factory were reported in a separate account. Because Fort Albany and Moose Factory served a common region, the returns from both posts, from 1733, are combined under the heading ‘‘Fort Albany.’’ Fort Albany was by far the larger of the two posts. Throughout, references to Fort Albany should be understood to include Moose Factory. Fort Severn, down the coast from York Factory, received small numbers of furs that were included in the returns from York Factory. 18. These estimates are based mainly on aerial surveys of beaver colonies and reports from trap lines. See Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Land Use Guidelines. According to the land use plans for districts within the Fort Albany hinterland, excluding the district of Moosonee, the average beaver density in the early 1980s was 0.67 beaver/km2. In the Moosonee district, however, the density was only 0.10 beaver/ km2 according to information supplied to us by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. The relevant area of the Moosonee district makes up about 30 percent of what was the Fort Albany hinterland, implying that the average beaver density in that hinterland during the early 1980s was about 0.50 beaver/km2. The maximum potential density would have been somewhat greater, although by the 1980s there was very little trapping of beaver. 19. The post was originally named Port Nelson. 20. A second, much smaller, post was built two hundred and fifty kilometers down the coast at about the same time. New Severn (also called Fort Churchill—not to be confused with the post later built on the Churchill River) was located on the Severn River and acted more as a branch of York Factory. Returns from Severn were included in the York Factory accounts. 21. Some of the trading posts were named for figures associated with the company; for example, Fort Charles (Charles II), York Factory (James, Duke of York), and Fort Churchill (John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough). 22. K. G. Davies, ed., Letters from Hudson Bay, p. 111. 23. See Arthur Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, ch. 3. 24. K. G. Davies, ed., Letters from Hudson Bay, p. xiv. Joseph Robson published his Six Years in Hudson Bay in 1752 as an anti-company tract. He had lived at York Factory and Fort Churchill from 1733 to 1736 and 1744 to 1747. 25. K. G. Davies, ed., Letters from Hudson Bay, pp. xiv–xv.

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26. See Glyndwr Williams, ed., Hudson’s Bay Miscellany, Introduction, for more description of the standard of housing at the bay posts. 27. Thirty-six to fifty was the full complement of men at York Factory, although the actual number in any year could be less. It was possible to include spices in the provisions only because of the long-distance trade of the East India Company, which dramatically reduced their price. Glyndwr Williams, ed., Hudson’s Bay Miscellany, p. 70. 28. Glyndwr Williams, ed., Andrew Graham’s Observations, p. 299. 29. Quoted in Barbara Belyea, ed., A Year Inland, p. 231. 30. The Hudson Strait runs so far north that the magnetic pole does not approximate true north. The accurate measurement of longitude was another century away. 31. The Prince Rupert, a frigate lost late in 1682 near the site of York Factory, was the first. The Eastmain was lost in 1714 and the Hudson’s Bay in 1736. Although the Mary ran aground in 1724, it was able to return to Fort Albany. E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, pp. 137, 437, 459, 534. 32. This was the normal route, up the English Channel to the Orkneys and then across the Atlantic to Hudson Strait. Joseph Robson, An Account of Six Years Residence, p. 9. 33. To guard against the nonarrival of a ship, enough provisions were kept at the post to carry the men over an additional year or even two. 34. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward—Official, MG 20 A6/1, 1679–1694. 35. Ibid., MG 20 B239/a/22, August 2, 1740 to August 13, 1741. 36. As we discuss in Chapter 3, having goods made and repaired on site was a response to some of the problems experienced with metal products manufactured in Europe. 37. A sloop was normally a single-masted ship with a mainsail and jib rigged fore and aft, a term derived from the Dutch sloep. 38. Glyndwr Williams, ed., Andrew Graham’s Observations, p. 334. 39. Ibid., pp. 345–46. 40. Ibid. 41. The unit of account might have been Britain’s currency, the pound sterling, but, because it was less practical for the posts to use currency, this alternative measure was devised. 42. Given that the made beaver might seem an awkward unit of account, one could conceptually change the mb to a dollar sign. Thus a prime beaver pelt would be worth $1 and yard of cloth $2. 43. On the agency problems of long-distance joint stock companies, see Ann Carlos and Stephen Nicholas, ‘‘Agency Problems in Early Joint Stock Companies,’’ and ‘‘Managing the Manager.’’

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44. Arthur Ray and Donald Freeman, ‘‘Give Us Good Measure,’’ p. 262. Richard Staunton’s rate of exchange on marten was closer to the official standard. The official price of marten was 1/3mb, and in 1716 he was exchanging four marten for one pound of Brazil tobacco (rather than three marten for one pound, which was the official rate). 45. The difference between the official standard and the actual trade resulted in European goods being ‘‘freed up’’ in the sense that if trade had taken place at the official standard, native traders would have received more European trade goods. These goods were not merely kept by the company traders but used for the ceremonial parts of the trade. Thus the price Indian traders received for any fur comprises what was obtained in actual trade and what was received in the ceremonial gift exchanges. 46. E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, p. 75. 47. Andrew Graham described a ceremony at York Factory, one that included the smoking of the calumet and much ritual. Glyndwr Williams, ed., Andrew Graham’s Observations, pp. 317–21. 48. Letting 100 represent the official standard, the price of furs can be represented by official value of goods received in trade and gifts the following index: price index of furs  official value of furs  100. Over the summer of 1716 the native traders at Fort Albany received, on average, 13,810928  100). a price for their furs, based on this index, of 71.6 (71.6  20,583 49. The board of directors, or Court of Assistants, was composed of elected shareholders. Shareholders were required to hold a certain amount of stock in order to be eligible to vote and in order to hold office. See Chapter 2, note 10. 50. The level of the tariff set on fur and hat imports and on the re-export trade is discussed in Chapter 1. What made the tariff particularly problematic for the Hudson’s Bay Company and, indeed, all other fur importers was the fact that the tariff was levied as a specific rather than as an ad valorem tariff. A specific tariff is levied on a per-unit basis—i.e., so much per pelt—whereas an ad valorem tariff is levied on the value of the good. Because the tariff was specific the percentage tax on low-value furs was greater. 51. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/3. 52. This is just an average price because the range of beads was quite extensive, as we discuss in Chapter 3. 53. A comparison of the made beaver price of a gun to its purchase price does not reflect the costs to the company of the many guns returned to London from Hudson Bay. For the first fifty years of the trade, metal products were a cause of much concern. These quality issues are discussed in Chapter 3. 54. Michael Wagner, ‘‘Managing the Empire for Cash.’’ 55. Ibid., chapter 5, p. 1.

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Notes to Pages 58–66

56. The company also had to pay interest on its outstanding debt as well as dividends to its shareholders. 57. The differential on tobacco might have been greater had the French better access to the Brazil tobacco favored by the natives. See Arthur Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, p. 85. 58. The relation between the value-to-weight ratio and the price differential was by no means perfect. Ice chisels, a low-value item, sold for much less at Fort Albany, and some of the luxury items sold for the same price at the two posts. 59. Weighting the prices by trade in another year, or making the comparison between Fort Albany and Fort Churchill, would give similar results. 60. Natives, just as the ships into Hudson Bay, were constrained by the thawing and freezing of the waterways. The extra time involved in traveling to Fort Albany could mean that they would not get back to the Great Plains before the rivers began to freeze. 61. Coat beaver and parchment beaver both had an official price at the bay of one made beaver. At these particular auctions, however, coat pelts sold for 35 percent less than parchment pelts, likely a result of the carroting technology. By 1763, though, the prices of coat and parchment beaver had returned close to parity (see Table 2). 62. The fitted (exponential) trend line is 4.90e0.0206(t-1713), R2  0.86 (t is the year). 63. The implied total increase in price is 180 percent. 64. The fitted trend line is 63.6e0.01(t-1713), R2  0.74. 65. E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, p. 515. 66. Ibid. The trader’s full name was Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de la Ve´rendrye. 67. Ibid., p. 517. 68. In Ann Carlos and Frank Lewis, ‘‘Property Rights, Competition and Depletion,’’ we present a formal model in which the objective of the company is to maximize profits over the long run. Raising fur prices at the post in response to rising prices in Europe increases profits in the short run by attracting more furs. But in the longer run returns are adversely affected by the overharvesting of beaver. The optimum longrun strategy then is to keep down the post prices. But where the French are competing the optimum strategy is to increase fur prices despite the implication for beaver depletion, because, otherwise, the company would lose too much of the trade. 69. The range was 65.3 in 1728 to 73.0 in 1732. 70. During this period the London price rose by 2.9 percent per year. The trend line for the London price is 7.0e0.029(t-1738), R2  0.85. The trend line at the post is 75.4e0.012(t-1738), R2  0.49. 71. The fitted trend line is 79.3e0.0056(t-1728), R2  0.25. Although the trend in price was less, the level of prices received by native traders at Fort Churchill, at least until 1739, averaged about 15 percent above the prices at York Factory. Neither post faced competition during this earlier period, but it appears that, because of the much lower

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beaver densities in the Churchill hinterland, better terms had to be offered to the natives. 72. E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, p. 551. 73. The destruction was both the result of anger by a small group of home guard Cree and ineptness on the part of the post factors. The issue revolved around the fact that the men at Henley had Indian women as wives. When the home guard Cree claimed their share of hospitality at the post, they were denied. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, pp. 610–14. 74. E. E. Rich, ed., James Isham’s Observations, p. 323. 75. E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, pp. 585–86. 76. Barbara Belyea, ed., A Year Inland, p. 107. 77. Karl Polanyi, ‘‘The Economy as Instituted Process’’ and ‘‘Ports of Trade in Early Societies’’; Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy and Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy. 78. Karl Polanyi, ‘‘Ports of Trade in Early Societies,’’ p. 31. Chapter 3. Indians as Consumers Note to epigraph: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/5, 1735, p. 192. 1. Ibid., MG 20 A6/3, 1715, p. 260. 2. E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company; Karl Polanyi, ‘‘Economy as Instituted Process’’; Arthur Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade; Calvin Martin, Keepers of the Game; see also James Axtell, Natives and Newcomers; Shepard Krech, Ecological Indian; Arthur Ray and Donald Freeman, ‘‘Give Us Good Measure.’’ 3. Calvin Martin, Keepers of the Game. 4. Abraham Rotstein, ‘‘Trade and Politics,’’ p. 1, and ‘‘Innis,’’ pp. 11–17. 5. Shepard Krech, Ecological Indian; James Axtell, Natives and Newcomers, pp. 133–34. 6. See R. Cole Harris, ed., Historical Atlas of Canada, vol. 1, plates 35, 40, and 65. 7. Arthur Ray, ‘‘Bayside Trade.’’ 8. H. F. Dobyns, Their Number Become Thinned; Richard Steckel and Jerome Rose, Backbone of History; D. H. Ubelaker, ‘‘North American Indian Population Size.’’ 9. There was a serious smallpox outbreak in 1780–81. See Arthur Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, pp. 105–6. 10. D. H. Ubelaker’s population estimate for the whole subarctic region at contact is 103,330, which implies a density of one person per twenty square miles. See his ‘‘North American Indian Population Size,’’ p. 172, and Edward Rogers and James Smith, ‘‘Environmental Culture.’’ 11. Arthur Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, pp. 105, 111. 12. For the first half of the eighteenth century, we have, for example, E. E. Rich, ed., James Isham’s Observations on Hudsons Bay, 1743, and in 1754, Anthony Henday’s journal of his year inland (Barbara Belyea, ed., A Year Inland). From roughly twenty

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Notes to Pages 73–77

years later we have Andrew Graham’s writings (Glyndwr Williams, ed., Andrew Graham’s Observations on Hudson’s Bay, 1767–91). An example from the turn of the nineteenth century is Alexander Mackenzie’s Journals and Letters of Sir Alexander Mackenzie. 13. Glyndwr Williams, ed., Andrew Graham’s Observations, pp. 317–19; also described in Arthur Ray and Donald Freeman, ‘‘Give Us Good Measure,’’ pp. 54–59. In his letter to London in 1728, Governor Macklish said that the prunes were a great disappointment ‘‘because nothing obliged the natives more for they all in General expect as a due Debt at first coming a Bisket, some Pruans [prunes], a pipe and a piece of Tobacco.’’ He makes no mention here of any alcohol. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Inward, MG 20 A11/114, 1728. 14. Arthur Ray and Donald Freeman, ‘‘Give Us Good Measure,’’ p. 58. Having trade take place through a window was done to reduce theft and perhaps also to keep some order in the process. Each group’s trading captain made the others aware of what was available and also acted as a monitor. 15. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/4, 1711. 16. Ibid., MG 20 A6/3, 1721. 17. Ibid., MG 20 A6/5, 1739. 18. In fact, the post factors were ordering goods for the subsequent year’s trading season. The boat arrived from London at the end of the current summer’s trade (for example, the summer of 1740). On board were the trade goods for the following summer (1741). As well, the boat had to carry back to London the indent for trade goods for the summer two years in the future (1742). 19. K. C. Davies, ed., Letters from Hudson Bay, p. 255. 20. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/4, 1721, p. 94. 21. Ibid., MG 20 A6/5, 1727. 22. While the details are not known, E. E. Rich argues that what happened at Henley House was ‘‘a tragedy of over-familiarity, and laxness combined with exploitation.’’ There apparently was a dispute over access to Henley House by native men while native women were living there. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, pp. 610–13. 23. Steven Pinker points out that the study of Native American languages has complications not seen in English. See his Language Instinct, p. 120. 24. Over the course of the eighteenth century many of the company’s chief factors and other senior workers came from this group of apprentice managers. Ann Carlos and Stephen Nicholas, ‘‘Agency Problems,’’ p. 873. 25. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/3, 1710, p. 199. 26. E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, pp. 373–74.

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27. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/3, 1710, p. 199. 28. E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, p. 390. 29. Ibid., p. 585. 30. Ibid., p. 523. 31. E. E. Rich, ed., James Isham’s Observations, pp. 49–54. The book also contains other dialogues such as ‘‘Observations on an Englishman and Indian A Going Goose Hunting,’’ p. 54n. 32. Glyndwr Williams, ed., Andrew Graham’s Observations. 33. A Cherokee syllabary was created in 1821, which is much the same time as Evans was working on his Ojibwa syllabary. However, the Cherokee syllabary was a Latin-based script. For the Cree syllabary, see ‘‘Omniglot: A Guide to Writing Systems,’’ www.omniglot.com/writing/cree.htm, accessed November 4, 2008. 34. Kathryn Braund, Deerskins and Duffels, p. 130. 35. See Table 6. The commodities listed in the table can be compared with those itemized by Kathryn Braund, Deerskins and Duffels, p. 130, for the southern Creek trade. 36. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/3, 1708, pp. 174–77. 37. The company archives hold a complete set of annual post accounts covering the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In addition to listing the sales of all items, the accounts report the trade goods remaining in inventory at the posts. The head office used the accounts of trade and the inventories to check on the post invoices of goods for the following year’s trade. 38. Equivalent information is available for every trade item. An annual series is available from the authors. 39. The share of producer goods is a ratio. Thus we are not saying that fewer producer goods in absolute terms were necessarily purchased during the years from 1720 to 1770—rather, that more of other types of goods were bought. 40. Linda Wimmer, ‘‘ ‘To Encourage a Trade,’ ’’ fully recognizes the importance of tobacco. 41. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/6, September 1737, Letter to Lisbon to Messrs. Mawman, Bearie and Macie. 42. Ibid., MG 20 A6/6, 1738. 43. Ibid., MG 20 A6/5, 1730. 44. In terms of the analysis conducted here, non-shipment of Brazil tobacco or shipping only small amounts would turn up in the post records as no or little trade in that item. Such lack of trade did not necessarily reflect declining native demand. Tobacco sales at Hudson’s Bay Company posts could also be affected by the extent of French trade in tobacco. 45. The tobacco available to the servants was English (Virginia) roll tobacco.

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Notes to Pages 89–93

Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/3, 1715, pp. 244–49. 46. Ibid., MG 20 A6/6, 1738, p. 4. 47. Barbara Belyea, ed., A Year Inland, pp. 225–26. 48. Ibid., p. 49. 49. An increase in alcohol consumption is also identified by Arthur Ray and Donald Freeman, ‘‘Give Us Good Measure.’’ 50. Carole Shammas, ‘‘Changes in English and Anglo-American Consumption,’’ p. 178. 51. Peter Mancall, Deadly Medicine and his ‘‘ ‘Bewitching Tyranny of Custom,’ ’’ p. 194. 52. Daniel Usner, ‘‘Frontier Exchange,’’ p. 178. See also Peter Mancall, Deadly Medicine. 53. Kathryn Braund, Deerskins and Duffels, ch. 7; James Axtell, Natives and Newcomers, ch. 5. 54. E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, chs. 3–9, refers to the early shipments of brandy. As brandy was imported from France, the vagaries of war meant it was not always available. Rum or gin was used instead, and in the case of gin, the factors were also sent a tincture with which to color the alcohol. In 1737 James Isham wrote back to London: ‘‘The tincture which we received two years ago, we have tried according to your honour’s directions, and answers very well, but do not find but that the mixing of a small quantity of molasses when we open a cask does as effectually and as much to the Native’s satisfaction.’’ Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Inward, MG 20A11/114, 1737, par. 9. 55. Harold Innis, Fur Trade in Canada, p. 135. 56. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/5, 1727. 57. Ibid., MG 20 A6/6, 1738, p. 17. 58. It may well have been that the directors would have preferred to send out no alcohol to the bay, but they always shipped enough brandy and beer so that the governors would be able to maintain a ‘‘proper table.’’ 59. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/3, 1714, p. 241. 60. Ibid., MG 20 A6/6, 1738, p. 25. 61. It is true that the Hudson’s Bay Company could sell only the brandy that it had available; but as with other goods the company made sure that supplies were sufficient to meet the demands of the native traders. Thus, as native demand for alcohol increased, the company shipped more to the posts. The company stocked goods to guard against the nonarrival of a ship, which also helped ensure that supplies were adequate. 62. John McCusker, ‘‘The Business of Distilling,’’ p. 202. A gallon is taken to be 133 ounces.

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63. Liza Picard, Restoration London, p. 157. 64. For a more extended discussion of alcohol consumption in this region, see Michela Paludetto, ‘‘Native Alcoholism.’’ 65. Matthew Segal, ‘‘Analysis of the Beer Industry,’’ pp. 28–29. 66. It seems likely that most drinking was concentrated over the summer months, which would have allowed perhaps twenty drinks per week over a ten-week interval. 67. An important insight of consumer theory is that rational consumers will base decisions on the relative prices of goods at the margin. According to this principle, native consumption of brandy depended solely on the cost of brandy in trade (4mb per gallon at the official rate) and was unaffected by the quantity received as gifts. Inspection of the company accounts suggests that native behavior in fact conformed to this notion of rationality. Note, for example, that from 1720 to 1725 alcohol received as gifts fell 50 percent, from 518mb to 254mb, whereas total alcohol consumption increased slightly from 1,017mb to 1,041mb (Tables 6 and 7; alcohol includes brandy and strong water). Thus natives compensated for the smaller volume in gifts by exchanging more furs for brandy in the trading stage. 68. How important alcohol and the other European goods were relative to total native consumption is necessarily a matter of speculation, but we can suggest orders of magnitude. In western Europe, prior to 1700, typical households allocated about 80 percent of their income to food, and in late eighteenth-century Philadelphia the minimal maintenance of indentured servants was roughly 80 percent of their total compensation. See Carlo Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution, p. 30; Farley Grubb, ‘‘Auction of Redemptioner Servants,’’ p. 588. Assuming that at least this share of native income went to supplying subsistence, European luxury goods could have accounted for no more than 20 percent of consumption, and likely less since natives produced some luxuries directly. Since at its peak, alcohol was about 25 percent of European luxury good consumption, alcohol could have composed no more than 5 percent of the total native consumption basket, and for most of the period its share was much less than this. Tobacco’s share might have been 5 percent throughout the period, while estimates for other luxury goods are: cloth and gartering, 2 to 3 percent; beads, 0.2 percent; vermillion, 0.2 percent, and other items less. 69. The acquisition of luxury goods is also discussed in James Axtell, Natives and Newcomers. 70. Quoted in Arthur Ray, ‘‘Indians as Consumers,’’ p. 258. 71. It must be remembered that the Hudson’s Bay Company, as a latecomer to the trade, would have been able to get intelligence on this point. What is evident is that the company internalized this requirement. Giving satisfaction became a familiar exhortation in letters sent to the bay. 72. A related issue, but one not addressed here, is the use of this information by the London directors to impose quality controls over its suppliers. 73. The correspondence for any given year was carried on the annual vessel to Hudson Bay, and the post correspondence to London and all the post accounts went

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Notes to Pages 97–102

back on the returning vessel. The company, therefore, had a year in which to improve or change the commodities for the following year’s shipment. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/3, 1697, p. 55. 74. Ibid., MG 20 A6/3, 1699, p. 63. 75. Ibid., MG 20 A6/4, 1717, p. 18. 76. Ibid., MG 20 A6/4, 1724, p. 167; MG 20 A6/5, 1733, p. 116. 77. Ibid., MG 20 A6/6, 1738, p. 17. 78. Arthur Ray was one of the first to document the implications of using metal products that were intended for a temperate region in an arctic or subarctic environment. Ray, ‘‘Indians as Consumers.’’ 79. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Inward, MG 20 A11/114, 1716, pp. 13–19. 80. Ibid., 1730, pp. 57–59. 81. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/4, 1717, p. 18. 82. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Post Journals: York Factory, MG 20 B239/a/ 24, 1742. 83. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Inward, MG20 A11/114, 1728. 84. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/6, 1739; K.G. Davies, ed., Letters from Hudson Bay, p. 278. 85. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Inward, MG20 A11/114, 1728. 86. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/5, 1737, pp. 118–19. 87. Ibid., 1739, pp. 61–62. 88. The ability of the natives to exploit the competition between the English and French traders is documented admirably in Arthur Ray and Donald Freeman, ‘‘Give Us Good Measure.’’ See especially chs. 11 and 12. 89. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/5, 1749. 90. Ibid., MG 20 A6/8, 1751. 91. The fact that so much of the company’s correspondence is about beads may help explain why this minor trade good plays such a disproportionate role in some of the historical literature dealing with natives and the fur trade. 92. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/4, 1718, p. 44. 93. Ibid., MG 20 A6/6, 1740, p. 147. 94. Ibid., 1740, p. 82. 95. Ibid., 1724, pp. 161–62. 96. Ibid., 1731. 97. Ibid., MG 20 A6/8, 1752, pp. 187–92. Most beads were 2mb per pound.

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98. Ibid., MG 20 A6/10, 1762, p. 57. 99. See Arthur Ray and Donald Freeman, ‘‘Give Us Good Measure,’’ pp. 225–28. 100. In its letter to Fort Albany, the directors wrote to Governor Joseph Adams: ‘‘You will find by the Invoice a dozen silk handkerchiefs and one doz trunks which we send you by way of a trial to see how the Indians like them’’ (emphasis added). Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/5, 1732. 101. Ibid., MG 20 A6/3, 1697, p. 57. 102. See Table 2 and the related discussion. 103. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/3, 1699, p. 63. 104. For a set of contemporary drawings showing post-trade native costume, see James Axtell, Natives and Newcomers, pp. 129–34. 105. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Inward, MG 20 A11/114, 1728. 106. General Letter to Governor Joseph Adams, Fort Albany. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Correspondence Outward, MG 20 A6/5, 1732, pp. 115–18. 107. Ibid., MG 20 A6/6, 1739, p. 66. 108. Ibid., 1741, p. 192. 109. The term is derived from its size. In the old English system three barleycorns made one inch (2.5 centimeters). These average about eight millimeters long. Their earliest use is unknown, but quite early. Karlis Karklins, Glass Beads, p. 169, cites a source using the term in 1765. Their origin is Venice and their distinctive trait is that they are small, wound beads in white, black, and more rarely blue. See Peter Francis, Jr., ‘‘Barleycorn,’’ Center for Bead Research Web site, www.thebeadsite.com/BRNBRCR.htm, accessed November 5, 2008. Chapter 4. The Decline of Beaver Populations Note to epigraph: Glyndwr Williams, ed., Andrew Graham’s Observations, p. 8. 1. The York Factory returns start in 1716, the Fort Churchill returns in 1722. 2. In 1821, after years of intense competition, the Hudson’s Bay and North West companies merged. By that year, however, many of the western fur-bearing regions had been seriously depleted. The new company, by closing many of its posts and refusing to buy furs, allowed the animal population to regenerate. See, Ann Carlos and Elizabeth Hoffman, ‘‘The North American Fur Trade.’’ 3. See Neil Payne, ‘‘Mortality Rates’’; Arthur Bergerud and Donald Miller, ‘‘Population Dynamics’’; Mark Boyce, ‘‘Beaver Life-History Responses’’; Dale Henry and Theodore Bookhout, ‘‘Productivity’’; Stephen Jenkins and Peter Busher, ‘‘Castor Canadensis’’; and Nicholas Novakowski, ‘‘Population Dynamics.’’ 4. Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Land Use Guidelines. 5. Much of the information in this section comes from Stephen Jenkins and Peter Busher, ‘‘Castor canadensis.’’

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6. If the breeding female in a lodge dies or is killed, her place is taken by the next oldest female. 7. Beaver have been seen one hundred kilometers upstream from the originating lodge, and on a different watercourse as far as thirty kilometers away. Once a breeding area has been chosen, beaver become nonmigratory, remaining at the chosen site for many years. Nicholas Novakowski, ‘‘Population Dynamics,’’ p. 93. 8. Andrew Graham’s description of the beaver, reported at the start of this chapter, was accurate in most dimensions, although the weight of twenty-four pounds that he reports must have been for a beaver that had reached close to full length but was younger than four years. Glyndwr Williams, ed., Andrew Graham’s Observations, p. 8. 9. Ibid., p. 79. 10. Humans were the beavers’ main predator in North America. Beaver cubs, but not healthy mature beaver, might be eaten by wolves or foxes. 11. Quoted in Harold Innis, Fur Trade, p. 5. David Thompson was one of those boys apprenticed to the company from the charity school, Christ’s Hospital. In preparation for life as a midshipman in the Royal Navy, he studied algebra, trigonometry, geography, and navigation using ‘‘practical astronomy.’’ However, in May 1784, at the age of fourteen, he set sail for Hudson Bay aboard the Prince Rupert and never returned to England. Three years later, David Thompson journeyed inland along the North Saskatchewan River, and in 1787 he traveled across country to spend the winter with a band of Peigans encamped along the Bow River in the Calgary area, returning to Manchester House in the spring of 1788. Thompson has been described as one of the great land geographers, and although he came to Hudson Bay after the main period of our study, his is one of the best accounts of the early years of European contact. For a summary of his life, see J. Gottfred and A. Gottfred, ‘‘The Life of David Thompson,’’ Northwest Journal Web site, http://northwestjournal.ca/V1.htm, accessed November 11, 2008. 12. Harold Innis, Fur Trade, p. 6. For a time, the native technology of bows and arrows remained superior to guns for hunting some game animals. 13. Guns were not effective in hunting beaver or any animal whose pelt was intended for trade. A pelt with gunshot holes had little value. Even with the help of iron implements, destroying a beaver lodge was difficult. 14. The trade in furs other than beaver was also recorded. In addition, there are notations in the post accounts indicating when pelts that had been delivered in a particular year were credited to an adjacent year. 15. The returns from Fort Albany and Moose Factory are combined. These posts were in close proximity and clearly served the same hinterland. Note that the York Factory series begins in 1716 and the returns from Fort Churchill in 1722. 16. The inexperience of chief factor Richard Norton almost certainly played a role. After he was replaced in 1727, returns increased sharply. In its letter announcing the removal of Richard Norton from his position as chief trader, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s London committee stressed that the disappointing returns were due not

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to opportunism on his part but rather to lack of experience. He was demoted and sent to York Factory, but after several years he returned to Fort Churchill as chief trader. See Ann Carlos and Stephen Nicholas, ‘‘Agency Problems,’’ p. 871. 17. The estimated trend line from 1728 to 1763 is: y  10,651e–.0053(t–1728), R2  .036, where y is beaver returns. The estimated trend from 1722 to 1763 is slightly positive and, as true of the 1728–63 trend, insignificant. Although the choice of starting point is somewhat arbitrary, we take 1720 to represent the beginning of the adjustment period at Fort Albany. There the trend in returns to 1763 is described by: y  15,489e –.0128(t–1720), R2  .226. The trend in the York Factory returns beginning in 1733 is given by: y  33,669e–.0282(t–1733), R2  .646. 18. Estimates of the decline in population vary, depending as they do on what is assumed about the size of pre-contact native populations, about which we have only a rough idea. We do have reports from European explorers on the size of populations in the regions where they traveled, but their observations were limited and may not reflect pre-contact size because disease vectors could move ahead of the Europeans. 19. E. E. Rich, Hudson Bay Company, vol. 1, p. 528. 20. For a more complete discussion of these events, see Arthur Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, pp. 188–92. He provides a map of the spread of the 1837 smallpox epidemic and the areas where natives were vaccinated. 21. Quoted in Arthur Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, pp. 188–89. 22. Ibid., pp. 105–13. 23. ‘‘It is impossible to compile a complete series on the volume of goods entering and leaving the port of Quebec.’’ Gratien Allaire, ‘‘Le Commerce,’’ p. 95. The quantitative problems associated with generating a trade volume series are discussed in detail in Thomas Wien, ‘‘Castor, Peaux, et Pelleteries.’’ 24. In their plate for the Historical Atlas, Conrad Heidenreich, a geographer, and Franc¸oise Noe¨l, a historian, estimated the number of ‘‘packs’’ of furs traded at Fort Albany and Moose Factory to be 200 (each pack was 80–100 pounds). Their estimate of the French trade from the same region is 210 packs. French returns include Kaministiquia, Nipigon, and Michipicton. Heidenreich and Noe¨l, ‘‘France Secures the Interior.’’ 25. The correlation between the two series is low at .16, with one indicating exact correlation and zero no correlation. 26. The year-to-year pattern of the returns at Fort Albany is further indication of a declining beaver population. During the early years, the number of pelts traded exhibits a pronounced saw-toothed pattern, but later the short-run variation is noticeably dampened (see Figure 13). This difference in harvest pattern was also observed in Ontario during the twentieth century, when we have actual estimates of the beaver population. In Ontario the beaver population did not fully recover from the serious depletion of the 1930s until the 1960s. Throughout the years of decline and recovery from the 1930s, the harvests exhibit very small year-to-year fluctuations, but beginning in the 1960s, there is a pronounced change in the pattern. It becomes saw-toothed and

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very reminiscent of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s experience during the early eighteenth century. Milan Novak, ‘‘Beaver,’’ p. 291, attributed the saw-toothed pattern in part to climatic factors that affected trappers. 27. For much of the period, as noted, beaver accounted for more than 80 percent of the trade, but a variety of other skins are included in the company accounts, among them cat (bobcat), marten, fox (red and white), wolf, moose, and bear. As a result of bargaining, the actual prices of furs might differ from the official prices, but the official prices sent an important signal to post factors about the relative values of the different types of furs. 28. Marten, the main fur other than beaver brought to Fort Albany, was of less importance at York Factory. Although marten receipts were not insignificant, bear, cat, moose, and, most important toward the end of the period, wolf made up a large part of the post’s returns. 29. Note that a decline in the beaver population from its maximum level does not imply depletion or overexploitation of the natural resource. Depletion means something more precise. 30. Dale Henry and Theodore Bookhout analyzed a rapidly growing beaver population in Ohio during the mid-1960s. They estimated that exclusive of adult mortality, the population was growing at 49 percent per year. Since the adult population was 60 percent of the total, allowing a 30 percent mortality rate among adults gives a net annual rate of population growth of roughly 30 percent. See Henry and Bookhout, ‘‘Productivity,’’ pp. 931–32; and Neil Payne, ‘‘Mortality Rates,’’ pp. 119, 124. Other evidence supporting a 30 percent rate is given in Ann Carlos and Frank Lewis, ‘‘Indians, the Beaver, and the Bay,’’ p. 478. 31. There was some beaver trade prior to the period of our study, but it was very limited. 32. We put the initial beaver population in the Fort Albany hinterland, and in the other two hinterlands, at 60 percent of the maximum level. We explored other initial values and found that our simulations are not sensitive to this particular starting point. 33. A maximum sustained yield from the beaver resource was not necessarily the profit-maximizing policy for the Hudson’s Bay Company, but it is a useful benchmark with which to compare the actual harvests. See Carlos and Lewis, ‘‘Property Rights, Competition and Depletion.’’ 34. The Fort Churchill hinterland was 500,000 square kilometers. 35. Because York Factory’s official standard prices for European trade goods were higher than Fort Albany’s (see Table 4), but the fur price index was also higher, native traders, during these early years, were being offered similar terms at the two posts. 36. The large year-to-year fluctuations in fur prices evident in Figure 18 were likely due to the small volume of trade at Fort Churchill and hence the thin market. 37. The initial response of the governor and head office to French competition had been a political one. They tried, but failed, to get the French to honor the preliminaries to the Treaty of Utrecht and leave their posts in the region.

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38. K. G. Davies, ed., Letters from Hudson Bay, p. 41. 39. Ibid., p. 42. 40. Ibid., p. 43. 41. Ibid., p. 82. 42. The Tibithebe lived south of James Bay near Lake Abitibi, in an area that straddles what is now the Quebec-Ontario border. Joseph Myatt’s speculation about York Factory notwithstanding, it does not appear that the Hudson’s Bay Company posts competed among themselves for the Indian trade. Such behavior was, of course, not in the overall interest of the company; moreover, we find little evidence of it in the fur returns. In 1722, for example, when returns at Fort Albany dipped, they did so at York Factory as well. Moreover, fur prices in that year were somewhat higher at Fort Albany than York Factory, so it is unlikely that Indians in the Albany hinterland would have incurred the extra travel cost. 43. K. G. Davies, ed., Letters from Hudson Bay, p. 82. 44. E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, p. 492. 45. E. E. Rich, ed., James Isham’s Observations, p. xxx. 46. Ibid., p. 143. 47. Ibid., p. 147. 48. Ibid., p. 92. 49. Ann Carlos and Elizabeth Hoffman, ‘‘North American Fur Trade.’’ 50. Although the primary objective of the company was long-run profitability rather than market share per se, there was a close connection between them. See Ann Carlos and Frank Lewis, ‘‘Property Rights, Competition and Depletion.’’ Chapter 5. Industrious Indians Note to epigraph: Joseph Robson, An Account of Six Years Residence, p. 29. 1. James Axtell, Natives and Newcomers, pp. 133–34. 2. See J. V. Wright, ‘‘Cultural Sequences,’’ plates 7, 8, and 9. 3. E. E. Rich, ‘‘Trade Habits and Economic Motivation,’’ p. 47. 4. Abraham Rotstein, ‘‘Innis,’’ p. 12. This is the same argument made by Calvin Martin in Keepers of the Game. 5. Arthur Ray and Donald Freeman, ‘‘Give Us Good Measure’’; Conrad Heidenreich and Arthur Ray, Early Fur Trade; Kathryn Braund, Deerskins and Duffels; James Axtell, Natives and Newcomers; and Shepard Krech, Ecological Indian. The work of Richard White in The Middle Ground has been central to the revisionist perspective of native involvement with Europeans. Wright was concerned, however, with political rather than economic arrangements. 6. Conrad Heindenreich and Arthur Ray, Early Fur Trade, p. 48. 7. Shepard Krech, Ecological Indian, p. 184. In Indians (p. 68), Arthur Ray had argued that: ‘‘One of the inherent weaknesses in the fur-trading system . . . related to the fact that . . . they [Indian traders] did not react in the same manner as did the Europeans. . . . With demand levels relatively fixed, a drop in the effective price for

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Notes to Pages 132–137

goods meant that the Indians could bring in fewer furs to obtain what they wanted. Their potential free time was thereby increased and they could spend it at the posts drinking and smoking.’’ 8. Quoted in Jan de Vries, ‘‘Between Purchasing Power,’’ p. 112. 9. Ibid. 10. Joseph Robson, An Account of Six Years Residence, p. 29. 11. Mary Black-Rogers, ‘‘Varieties of ‘Starving.’ ’’ 12. Ibid., p. 362. 13. Ibid., p. 364. 14. Joseph Robson, An Account of Six Years Residence, p. 39. 15. The sensitivity of natives to price differences between French and English traders, mentioned by Joseph Robson, has long been recognized by Arthur Ray and others. See Arthur Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade; Arthur Ray and Donald Freeman, ‘‘Give Us Good Measure’’; and Thomas Wien, ‘‘Selling Beaver Skins.’’ On the whole, the Hudson’s Bay Company offered better terms than the French traders, but unlike the French, the company forced native traders to make the long journey to the bay to do their trading. Although concerned with a very different region and with deer rather than beaver, Kathryn Braund’s study of the Creek Indians in the southern United States includes an extensive discussion of native reaction to price, in this case the deerskin price, and to deviations between the Creek Indians’ price and the price received by other groups such as the Cherokee. Kathryn Braund, Deerskins, pp. 81– 102. 16. A leader in this effort was an Irishman, Arthur Dobbs, who had claimed that he could find a northwest passage to the Far East. See E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, pp. 556–86. 17. Great Britain, House of Commons, Papers Presented to the Committee, p. 215. 18. E. E. Rich, ‘‘Trade Habits,’’ p. 49. 19. In his biography of Arthur Dobbs, Desmond Clarke includes a brief discussion of the Parliamentary inquiry of 1749, but it is Rich’s assessment of the inquiry that has formed the basis for much of the subsequent literature on the subject of native effort in the fur trade. Clarke, Arthur Dobbs, Esquire, pp. 79–81. 20. E. E. Rich, ‘‘Trade Habits,’’ p. 49. 21. Great Britain, House of Commons, Papers Presented to the Committee. A brief reference was also made to Arthur Dobbs’s testimony. 22. Ibid., p. 216. 23. Ibid., p. 218. 24. Ibid., p. 220. 25. In deriving the fur price index in Chapter 2, no distinction is made between goods that natives received in trade and goods received as gifts. This is entirely appropriate. In fact, one can show that the distribution of trade goods between gifts and formal exchange has no logical effect on either the composition of trade goods or the overall volume of trade. It is, therefore, inconsistent to argue that increasing the vol-

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ume of gifts would attract more furs, whereas increasing the price of furs received in exchange would not. 26. Great Britain, House of Commons, Papers Presented to the Committee, p. 221. 27. Ibid., p. 223. 28. Ibid., p. 225. 29. Ibid., p. 226. 30. Ibid., p. 227. 31. E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, p. 597. 32. Great Britain, House of Commons, Papers Presented to the Committee, p. 230. 33. E. E. Rich, ‘‘Trade Habits,’’ p. 53. 34. Ibid.; Glyndwr Williams, ed., Andrew Graham’s Observations. 35. As quoted in Chapter 3; E. E. Rich, ed., James Isham’s Observations, p. 50. 36. Arthur Ray, Indians, pp. 72–73. 37. From 1732 the annual trend in gun purchases was –0.45 percent, whereas the made beaver value of gun-related goods trended downward at 2.52 percent. 38. E. E. Rich reports instances where French traders in the region had no powder to trade. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, p. 644. 39. The adjustment for trade with the French is based on the French shares applied in Chapter 4. The trend in the total trade for the hinterland is very slightly upward, 0.23 percent. 40. The vicissitudes of war may have dampened the trade in tobacco somewhat, since in some years the Hudson’s Bay Company was unable to obtain the Brazil tobacco so favored by the natives. 41. It should be noted that tobacco and alcohol played very different roles than they do today. They were indeed luxury items, and the amounts consumed were far below the levels that could have led to addiction. 42. If it is assumed that the English-French trade proportions for beaver were the same as for other furs, there is a clear pattern of increasing total trade in response to higher fur prices. A regression of the value of trade on the fur price index for the years 1723 to 1770 yields: ln V  4.886 (.747)  1.264 (.169) ln P, adjusted R2  .539; standard errors in parentheses, where V is the value of trade and P is the price of furs. The very early years, when the post was being established, are omitted. A coefficient on ln P greater than one indicates that higher fur prices led to an increased volume of furs and greater native effort in the trade. 43. These are average values for the periods 1737–1741 and 1766–70. 44. The relationship between the total volume of trade and the luxury good share, Q 1s0 , where Qt  where the volume of non-luxuries is held constant, is given by 1 Q0 1s1 total trade at time t, and st is the share of luxury goods at time t. Thus 1.625  (1.444)/(1.658). 45. The fur price index at York Factory, based on the official standard, increased from 70.9 to 101.2, or by 42.7 percent.

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H1 Q1/Q0 1.625 1.1388.   H0 p1/p0 1.427 47. The harvest function that we derive is: HE2/3 X1/3, where H is the harvest, E is effort, and X is the beaver stock. See Ann Carlos and Frank Lewis, ‘‘Indians, the Beaver and the Bay,’’ p. 492. Thus 1.066  (1.10)2/3. 48. From the harvest function in note 47, it follows that EX1/2 H3/2. Holding the stock of beaver constant, it follows that an increase of 14 percent in the harvest implies a 21.5 percent increase in effort [1.215  (1.1388)3/2]. 49. According to the simulation of the beaver population in Chapter 4, the beaver population fell by nearly 40 percent from 1737 to 1750. Natives in the region, however, shifted from harvesting beaver to other animals, notably marten and wolf, species that likely declined less. Assuming a 20 percent decline in the overall resource stock seems plausible, if not conservative. 50. Applying the function in note 48, the relation is given by: 1.359  (.8) / (1.139)3/2. 51. Suppose that 25 percent of natives’ working time was spent in the fur trade and changes in the return to effort in the trade had no effect on time spent in other working activities. It follows that the overall elasticity of labor input would be onequarter the elasticities derived in Table 9. To the extent that some of the increase in fur trade activity was due to a diversion of effort, the overall labor elasticity would be still lower. 46. The change is given by:

1

2

Chapter 6. Property Rights, Depletion, and Survival Note to epigraph: Rudolf Kaiser, ‘‘Chief Seattle’s Speech(es),’’ pp. 525–30; also ‘‘Chief Seattle Speech, Version 3,’’ Washington State Library Web site, www.synaptic. bc.ca/ejournal/wslibrry.htm, accessed November 12, 2008. 1. Rudolf Kaiser, ‘‘Chief Seattle’s Speech(es),’’ pp. 512–15. 2. Quoted in Shepard Krech, Ecological Indian, p. 22 (italics in original). 3. Ibid., Introduction. 4. Jared Diamond, Collapse. For discussions of these particular societies, see chs. 2, 4, and 5. 5. See Calvin Martin, Keepers of the Game. 6. E. E. Rich, ‘‘Trade Habits,’’ and Abraham Rotstein, ‘‘Trade and Politics,’’ make this argument. 7. Calvin Martin, Keepers of the Game, p. 19. 8. See the many papers in Shepard Krech, ed., Indians, Animals, and the Fur Trade. 9. Barbara Belyea, ed., A Year Inland, p. 106. Anthony Henday left York Factory on June 26. He finally met the Archithinue leaders on October 15, 1754. He said there were two hundred tents in two rows (p. 104). 10. This is the population that can generate the greatest harvest on a sustainable basis.

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11. See David Feeny et al., ‘‘Tragedy of the Commons,’’ for a more complete discussion. 12. Robert Ellickson’s wide-ranging discussion of property rights in land takes Demsetz as its point of departure. Numerous illustrations are given, including some drawn from the Native American experience. Yoram Barzel’s classic statement of the property rights model includes contemporary as well as historical examples of Demsetz’s argument. See especially his chapter 6. Harold Demsetz, ‘‘Toward a Theory of Property Rights’’; Robert Ellickson, ‘‘Property in Land’’; Yoram Barzel, Economic Analysis of Property Rights. 13. Eleanor Leacock, ‘‘Montagnais ‘Hunting Territory.’ ’’ 14. The Montagnais lived in southern Labrador, and the Naskapi in the northern reaches of the region. Eleanor Leacock, ‘‘Status Among the Montagnais-Naskapi,’’ p. 20. 15. For example, Calvin Martin, Keepers of the Game; Shepard Krech, Ecological Indian. 16. See the special issue of Anthropologica in 1986 on this subject. 17. Charles Bishop, ‘‘Territoriality Among the Northeastern Algonquians,’’ in the special issue of Anthropologica. 18. Trois-Rivie`res is located on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River about half way between Montreal and Quebec City. 19. Charles Bishop, ‘‘Territoriality Among the Northeastern Algonquians,’’ p. 47. 20. Ibid., p. 46. 21. Ibid. p. 57. Chre´tien Le Clercq was a Jesuit who spent a twelve-year ministry (1675–87) among the Micmac of the Gaspe´ region of New France. His journals form part of the Jesuit Relations, a set of documents on the travels and explorations of the Jesuit missionaries in New France, 1610–1791. 22. Quoted in William Cronon, Changes in the Land, p. 105. 23. See Toby Morantz, ‘‘Historical Perspectives.’’ 24. Ibid., p. 74. 25. Ibid. 26. John Milloy, ‘‘ ‘Our Country,’ ’’ p. 59. 27. Ibid., pp. 51–70. 28. For a new interpretation of the decimation of the bison, see Scott Taylor, ‘‘Buffalo Hunt,’’ which argues that international demand for buffalo leather was the critical factor leading to the near extinction of the herds. 29. The inability to store surpluses reinforced the migratory nature of these groups. Native groups in the eighteenth century did trade food to both the Hudson’s Bay Company and the French, supplying fresh meat to the European trading posts. 30. See Arthur Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, ch. 1, and Arthur Ray and Donald Freeman, ‘‘Give Us Good Measure,’’ p. 16. 31. Depletion of the beaver farther east might well have contributed to the westward migration. The suggestion here is that depletion in one region contributed to

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migration and weakened property rights in another, the result being depletion in both regions. 32. When Secoy wrote this work in the early 1950s, he did not have access to the Hudson’s Bay Company archives. 33. The Cree were the first in the region to get good access to guns, and this undoubtedly played a role in the expansion of their territory in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Arthur Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, p. 23. 34. To the extent that one tribal group became dominant, as did the Cree, war could lead to more secure property rights. Arthur Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, pp. 12–23, suggests that by 1720 the Cree had consolidated their territory, but only after that date do we see serious beaver depletion. This suggests that even in the Cree sphere of influence, property rights to beaver were not secure. Another possibility is that outside that sphere, but within the Hudson’s Bay trading hinterland, the property rights of other tribes, such as the Assiniboin, Ojibwa, and Sioux, were weak. 35. As Daniel Richter points out, ‘‘Indian country had its own historical dynamics, its own patterns of population movements, conquests, and political and cultural change that had been going on for centuries.’’ Richter, Facing East from Indian Country, p. 39. 36. See Arthur Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, ch. 10. The Hudson’s Bay Company records note that the main area of Cree aggression was toward the Chipewyan to the north. To help reduce these tensions, the company opened Fort Churchill in the early eighteenth century so that Cree and Chipewyan were not trading together at York Factory. In Frank Secoy’s terms, these actions helped equilibrate the balance of military power. Secoy, Changing Military Patterns. 37. Conrad Heidenreich, ‘‘The Great Lakes Basin, 1600–1653.’’ 38. It was not until 1819 that there was another severe disease outbreak in the region, this time of measles and whooping cough, with their attendant high levels of mortality. Much later, in 1837–38, as discussed in Chapter 4, the Hudson’s Bay Company successfully vaccinated the Cree after hearing of smallpox south of the border. See Arthur Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, pp. 106–110, and 188–92; also Marshall Hurlich, ‘‘Demography.’’ 39. Jane Helm, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 6, p. 259. 40. Glyndwr Williams, ed., Andrew Graham’s Observations, pp. 169–70. See also the discussion in Arthur Ray and Donald Freeman, ‘‘Give Us Good Measure,’’ pp. 67–68. 41. John McManus, ‘‘An Economic Analysis,’’ pp. 48–51. 42. Beaver had long been a source of food and clothing for natives, but it was only with the arrival of the Europeans that they became a trade good as well. 43. Because of the variability of large game, the threat of starvation was rarely far off. See E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 1, pp. 383, 439, 495, 505, 598, 603, 633. 44. Glyndwr Williams, ed., Andrew Graham’s Observations, p. 97.

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45. Adrian Tanner, Bringing Animals Home, p. 53. 46. See Chapter 3, p. 72. 47. This seemingly extraordinary level of meat consumption was dictated by the energy demanded by the subarctic environment and the fact that energy requirements had to be met mainly by calories from large game. See note 57. 48. An adult male would have consumed on average at least 3 pounds of meat per day, or about 1,000 pounds over a year. See Edward Rogers and James Smith, ‘‘Environmental Culture,’’ p. 135, and the related discussion below. Weighting women at .75 and children at .5, meat consumption of a five-person household would have totaled 3,250 pounds, of which 175 pounds (5  35) could have been beaver meat. 49. Charles Bishop, ‘‘Territoriality,’’ p. 52. 50. As argued by Bruce Johnsen, the potlatch could be used to reduce the tension over unequal division of property rights. Using the example of the Kwakiutl Indians in the Pacific Northwest where, in the case of salmon fisheries, different sites were differentially productive, the potlatch allowed groups to maintain control over better sites by reallocating a share of the catch. Johnsen, ‘‘Formation and Protection of Property Rights.’’ 51. See Thra´in Eggertsson, Economic Behaviour, p. 304. 52. See Charles Bishop, ‘‘Territoriality,’’ pp. 51–52. 53. Jesuit Relations (1632–1773) are the annual communications of the Jesuit mission in Quebec to the superior in Paris. They are made up of various written reports and letters that reflect the work in the field. They contain information about the missionaries’ travels, studies of the peoples they met, and geographical details of the terrain covered, and are a superb resource for the study of French Canada and Native Americans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. See Reuben Thwaites, Jesuit Relations. The quotation is from Charles Bishop, ‘‘Territoriality,’’ p. 22. 54. See Bruce Johnsen, ‘‘Formation and Protection,’’ for a discussion of potlatch ceremonies as redistributive devices. 55. Edward Rogers and James Smith, ‘‘Environmental Culture,’’ p. 135. These estimates are for the shield of the McKenzie borderlands, which is a region west of the Hudson’s Bay basin and includes a more northerly portion. Caloric requirement in the fur-trading area of Hudson Bay may therefore have been somewhat less. 56. This estimate is based on the energy requirements of adult males and the caloric content of the meat and other types of foods that they were consuming. 57. The energy content of moose is about 100 calories (kilocalories) per 100 grams. For caribou the energy content is about 130 calories per 100 grams. This energy content applies to the raw meat. In this northern climate the higher fat content of the moose and caribou may have provided more energy than this. At 130 calories per 100 grams and an average daily requirement of 4,000 calories, an exclusively large game diet would have consisted of three kilograms of meat per day. See U.S. Department of Agriculture, ‘‘USDA National Nutrient Database,’’ www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp, accessed November 12, 2008.

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Notes to Pages 163–169

58. Theodore Steegmann, ‘‘Boreal Forest Hazards,’’ p. 223. 59. Average-dressed weight would run about 400 pounds for a moose and 125 pounds for a caribou. Edward Rogers, The Hunting Group, p. 35. Treating a family of five as equivalent to 3.25 male adults, where an adult male consumed daily 1.5 kilograms of meat from large game, a native family would have consumed annually either ten moose, thirty caribou, or some combination of these animals. The density of moose in the Hudson Bay hinterland was much greater than for caribou, and so moose made up a much larger share of the native diet. Hare and other small game, while potentially more abundant, were much less important. Ibid., pp. 32–40; Bruce Winterhalder, ‘‘History and Ecology,’’ pp. 42–44. 60. In Chapter 7 we compare aboriginal and European diets. 61. Richard Steckel and Jerome Prince, ‘‘Tallest in the World.’’ 62. As we noted, although the aboriginal population in some areas was devastated by European diseases, epidemics seem to have been much less of a factor in the northern part of the continent. 63. Charles Bishop, ‘‘Territoriality,’’ p. 54. 64. Adrian Tanner, Bringing Animals Home, p. 44. 65. Moose skins were occasionally traded, but the number was small. 66. See also Ann Carlos and Frank Lewis, ‘‘Survival Through Generosity,’’ pp. 331–34. 67. Given that large game migrated long distances, assigning tribes exclusive property rights to more narrowly defined hunting territories not only was ineffective, it would have encouraged destructive competition. 68. The different outcomes are described in Appendix C. Chapter 7. Indians and the Fur Trade Note to epigraph: Glyndwr Williams, ed., Andrew Graham’s Observations, p. 143. 1. This is very reminiscent of Regina Blaszczyk’s description of the role of women users in the development of Pyrex cooking products. Imagining Consumers, ch. 6. 2. As we discussed in Chapter 3, we are in no way suggesting that native societies used these commodities in a manner similar to Europeans, only that they did purchase them. 3. ‘‘Give Us Good Measure,’’ the title of Ray and Freeman’s book on the fur trade, is drawn from ‘‘an Indian captain’s ‘harangue’ ’’ to James Isham and then Andrew Graham, both governors of York Factory. As is clear from the speech, the captain was making not just a plea, but also a demand. Arthur Ray and Donald Freeman, ‘‘Give Us Good Measure,’’ p. 66. 4. A detailed summary of much of this evidence is contained in Jane Helm, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 6. Other important works include: Daniel Francis and Toby Morantz, Partners in Fur; Diamond Jenness, Indians of Canada; Edward Rogers, The Hunting Group; Theodore Steegmann, ed., Boreal Forest Adapta-

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tions; Lucien Turner, Ethnology of the Ungava District; and Bruce Winterhalder and Eric Smith, Hunter-Gatherer Foraging Strategies. 5. These include Charles Feinstein, ‘‘Pessimism Perpetuated’’; Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson, ‘‘English Workers’ Living Standards’’; and Carole Shammas, PreIndustrial Consumer. 6. The theoretical analysis is presented in Appendix D. 7. Jane Helm, ed., Handbook of American Indians, vol. 6. 8. See in particular the work of Brian Smith, ‘‘Historical and Archaeological Evidence’’; and Tim Holzkamm et al., ‘‘Rainy River Sturgeon.’’ 9. Fats were a quicker energy source than proteins. There is evidence that Native Americans ‘‘may be able to absorb them [fats] more efficiently than can other peoples.’’ Theodore Steegmann, ‘‘Boreal Forest Hazards,’’ p. 253. 10. Meat lost two-thirds of its weight through drying, making it easier to transport in addition to preserving it. In a good harvest, more than thirty bushels of wild rice a day could be collected by one canoe. They would be husked, dried, and stored. Oil and fruits, both of nutritional value, were preserved. Berries were a source of vitamins A, B complex, and C, which prevented scurvy and other health problems. Ibid., pp. 252–53. 11. Edward Rogers and James Smith, ‘‘Environmental Culture,’’ p. 135. 12. See Chapter 6, note 57. 13. Theodore Steegmann, ‘‘Boreal Forest Hazards,’’ p. 223; Brian Smith, ‘‘Historical and Archaeological Evidence.’’ 14. See Chapter 6, note 59. 15. In 1740 the prices of the beef, mutton, and pork were all close to three shillings per stone (eight pounds at that time). William Beveridge, Prices and Wages in England, p. lix and insert. 16. Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson, ‘‘English Workers’ Living Standards,’’ p. 4. 17. The annual earnings of solicitors and barristers was £231, and they would have allocated less than 30 percent to food. Philip Hoffman et al., ‘‘Real Inequality in Europe,’’ p. 326; Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson, ‘‘English Workers’ Living Standards,’’ p. 4. 18. Philip Hoffman et al., ‘‘Real Inequality in Europe,’’ pp. 326–27. 19. Carole Shammas, Pre-Industrial Consumer, p. 135. 20. This result is based on assigning big game the price of meat in England, and assuming the price of other native foods was one-third that level. 21. We thank Alexander MacDonald for collecting some of the material in this and the following section. 22. Canada, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Indian and Eskimo Clothing. 23. Possibly an indication of higher living standards is evidence that the Cree were the only Algonquian-speaking people to practice tattooing.

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24. Diamond Jenness, Indians of Canada, pp. 72–73. 25. Lucien Turner, Ethnology of the Ungava District. 26. Ibid., p. 285. 27. It was this de-hairing process from wear that made coat beaver valuable, especially during the early decades of the bayside trade. 28. Applying the higher prices would increase our estimates of the relative standard of living of Native Americans. 29. The cost for a family is based on weights of .75 for women and .5 for children. 30. In Chapter 2 we derived a conversion rate, based on English wholesale prices, of .7 shillings to 1mb. Since English consumers would have been paying retail prices, which would have been 50 to 100 percent higher, a conversion rate of 1 shilling to 1mb is conservative. 31. Charles Feinstein, ‘‘Pessimism Perpetuated,’’ p. 635; Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson, ‘‘English Workers’ Living Standards,’’ p. 4. 32. Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson, ‘‘English Workers’ Living Standards,’’ pp. 3, 4, 7. Philip Hoffman et al., ‘‘Real Inequality in Europe,’’ p. 326. 33. The implied expenditure of £12.5 compares to our estimate for Native Americans of £13. 34. William Beveridge, Prices and Wages in England, p. 448, insert. 35. Diamond Jenness, Indians, p. 88; Jane Helm and Eleanor Leacock, ‘‘Hunting Tribes of Subarctic Canada,’’ p. 365. 36. The tipi, typical of the plains, was similar to conically shaped wigwams. 37. Lucien Turner, Ethnology, p. 299, put Nenenot lodges at ten to eighteen feet in diameter and ten to fifteen feet high, while Diamond Jenness, Indians, p. 89, reports diameters of ten to twelve feet and heights of eight to ten feet. 38. Because of their inferior quality, skins are assigned a value of 1mb, and 1mb is treated as equivalent to 5 shillings. 39. Daniel Francis and Toby Morantz, Partners in Fur, note the varied sizes of pre-contact Cree dwellings based on archaeological evidence. Their lodges were comparable to the Huron longhouses, described by Diamond Jenness, Indians, p. 88, as being fifty to sixty yards by twelve yards and housing twenty-four families. 40. Daniel Francis and Toby Morantz, Partners in Fur, p. 14. 41. In 1826 only one-third of residences were assessed. The one-story timber houses were of higher quality than the log houses that were occupied by most of the population. In addition to a planked floor and other amenities, the feature that may have contributed most to the higher quality of colonial homes was a chimney. Frank Lewis and M. C. Urquhart, ‘‘Growth and the Standard of Living,’’ pp. 164–65. 42. Charles Feinstein, ‘‘Pessimism Perpetuated,’’ p. 635; Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson, ‘‘English Workers’ Living Standards,’’ p. 4. 43. Carole Shammas, Pre-Industrial Consumer, p. 160, reports that an eighteenthcentury ‘‘mud and stud cottage’’ could be built for £20 to £30.

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44. Diamond Jenness, Indians, p. 99, describes native houses even in the highincome tribes of British Columbia as ‘‘squalid and often filthy. Rotting meat and fish strewed the floors and the ground outside; dogs, mice, and parasites of every kind shared the interior with its human inmates . . . ventilation was inadequate, smoke pervaded every corner.’’ 45. Paul Le Jeune, a Jesuit missionary who wintered with Montagnais, observed that from November 1633 to April 1634 the group broke camp twenty-three times. See Eleanor Leacock, Montagnais ‘‘Hunting Territory,’’ p. 190. 46. Another input affecting the overall consumption of housing was fuel. The cost of fuel was much less to Native Americans than to Europeans, and consumption would have been at least as great. Including fuel in the housing component, therefore, reduces the implied ratio of European to native consumption of shelter. 47. Derived from Tables 6 and 7. 48. As in Chapter 3, the native population in the York Factory hinterland is put at 8,600. 49. See Table 4. 50. One-third less than 1 shilling, and one-half less than 1.5 shillings, is close to the .7 shillings that the company paid for 1mb in luxury goods. 51. In some years native traders received a substantial share of their alcohol as gifts in the ceremonies that preceded the actual trading. Much of this alcohol would likely have been consumed at the post. 52. Charles Feinstein, ‘‘Pessimism Perpetuated,’’ p. 635. 53. The annual earnings of low-wage English workers was £21. 54. Of course, those who came to the post would have consumed much more than the overall native average. 55. Carole Shammas, Pre-Industrial Consumer, pp. 78–79. 56. Although tobacco was a ‘‘mass-consumed’’ item, consumption was still at such a low level that the good could hardly have become addictive. As we have noted, the same was true of alcohol. 57. This comparison excludes alcohol and sugar, which contributed little to calorie intake. See Charles Feinstein, ‘‘Pessimism Perpetuated,’’ p. 635. On food shares, also see Carole Shammas, Pre-Industrial Consumer, p. 136. 58. Of the remaining 15 percent of calories, 5 percent was in meat and 10 percent in dairy. In 1794–95 the cost per calorie of meat was four times that of oatmeal, five times that of potatoes, twice that of milk, and one and a half times that of butter or cheese. See Carole Shammas, Pre-Industrial Consumer, p. 137. We estimate the ratio of the cost per calorie for bread and wheat flour to meat at one-third. See U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Research Service, Nutrient Data Library, www.nal .usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp; William Beveridge, Prices and Wages, p. 291. Expenditure shares are from Charles Feinstein, ‘‘Pessimism Perpetuated,’’ p. 635. 59. As noted in Chapter 6, diet composition may very well account for Richard

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Notes to Pages 180–188

Steckel and Jerome Prince’s finding that Native Americans were much taller than Europeans. Steckel and Prince, ‘‘Tallest in the World.’’ 60. Charles Feinstein, ‘‘Pessimism Perpetuated,’’ p. 635. 61. The value of European luxuries consumed by a native family was between 10 and 15 shillings, depending on the conversion rate used for made beaver. Including ‘‘drink,’’ English households were spending 68 shillings on luxuries. Taking the midpoint of the range for natives, native consumption of luxuries would have been 18 percent of the consumption of low-wage English workers. Allowing for nativeproduced luxury goods increases their consumption to 25 percent of the English level. 62. The ‘‘biological’’ standard of living emphasizes health comparisons, as reflected in such factors as adult heights, mortality, and morbidity. See John Komlos, Biological Standard of Living. Epilogue. The Fur Trade and Economic Development 1. The Lake Athabasca region lies in the Arctic drainage basin and as such was not covered under the terms of the Hudson’s Bay Company charter. This was to be a region of intense competition between bay and Montreal traders by the turn of the nineteenth century. See Ann Carlos and Elizabeth Hoffman, ‘‘North American Fur Trade.’’ 2. On the decline of the big game, see Arthur Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, ch. 12. 3. The lack of good population estimates makes it impossible to determine the extent of the loss from the smallpox epidemic. Some contemporary reports were clearly exaggerated. For example, the estimates of Alexander Henry the Elder in 1776 and Henry the Younger in 1809 imply a quadrupling of the Assiniboin population. The early estimate, clearly too low, was made prior to the epidemic, suggesting that the population decline may not have been too severe. Arthur Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, pp. 105–7. 4. There is debate about the timing of the increase, especially of working class wages, but there is no question that the real incomes of all workers ultimately grew. See Charles Feinstein, ‘‘Pessimism Perpetuated’’; Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson, ‘‘English Workers’ Living Standards.’’ 5. Gloria Main, Peoples of a Spacious Land, pp. 203–8. 6. Ibid., pp. 211–15. 7. The nature of the workshops needed for combing pelts must also be taken into account. 8. The influence of the English hatters in the British Parliament may have played some role in limiting the growth of a colonial industry, as we discuss in Chapter 1. Differential tariffs on pelts and beaver wool would also have to be considered. 9. Ibid., p. 211. 10. Ibid., p. 214. 11. Gerald Friesen, Canadian Prairies, ch. 7. 12. Much has been written about whether these were true negotiations, or whether the terms of the treaties were largely imposed on the native groups.

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13. Treaty 1, concerning the Red River Indians, included an immediate payment of three dollars to each person and an annuity of fifteen dollars per family of five. A family of five also received 160 acres. Gerald Friesen, Canadian Prairies, ch. 7. 14. Michael Bliss, Northern Enterprise, p. 208. 15. William Schooling, The Hudson’s Bay Company, pp. 84–85. Appendix B. Simulating the Beaver Population 1. See Chapter 4, note 30. Beaver populations have also been studied by Arthur Bergerud and Donald Miller, ‘‘Population Dynamics’’; Mark Boyce, ‘‘Beaver Life-History Responses;’’ Stephen Jenkins and Peter Busher, ‘‘Castor Canadensis’’; and Nicholas Novakowski, ‘‘Population Dynamics.’’ 2. Milan Novak, ‘‘Beaver,’’ reports that in an area of southern Ontario where the beaver recovered from virtual extinction, the number of beaver families increased from zero in 1937 to 18 in 1948 and 254 in 1959. Assuming there was one beaver family in 1937 gives rise to an annual growth rate of 30 percent from 1918 to 1937. The rate from 1948 to 1959 was 27.2 percent. 3. The results are not sensitive to this assumption. 4. Simulations were tried using a range of values. Values lower than 344,000 give rise to an extinction path and are therefore rejected. Greater values lead to simulations with unusually large beaver populations in the 1750s, when, as already indicated, the evidence that the beaver had been depleted is strong. 5. These estimates are based mainly on aerial surveys of beaver colonies and reports on trap lines. See Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Land Use Guidelines. 6. See Ann Carlos and Frank Lewis, ‘‘Indians, the Beaver, and the Bay,’’ p. 179. 7. Harold Innis, Fur Trade, pp. 91–94. Conrad Heidenreich and Franc¸oise Noe¨l estimated the York Factory trade in 1755 at 500 packs and the French trade from the same region (Mer de l’ouest) at 350 packs. Heidenreich and Noe¨l, ‘‘France Secures the Interior.’’ Appendix C. A Model of Harvesting Large Game 1. In the case of large game, particularly, there would be a point below which the population would be on an extinction path, even in the absence of harvesting, in which case the growth function might be represented by F(X)  a(X–Xm) –b(X–Xm)2, where Xm is that minimum population. 2. In Ann Carlos and Frank Lewis, ‘‘Indians,’’ p. 486, which applied a harvest function for beaver, the elasticities with respect to effort and population were put at .67 and .5, respectively. 3. These values may have approximated the parameters of the natural growth function of the caribou. G. R. Parker, Biology of the Kaminuriak Population and Ann Carlos and Frank Lewis, ‘‘Survival Through Generosity,’’ p. 340.

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Notes to Pages 198–200

Appendix D. Food and the Relative Incomes of Native Americans and English Workers 1. The calorie constraint varied, of course, with climate and lifestyle. Subarctic Native Americans had to meet a much higher constraint than did most western Europeans. Carole Shammas, Preindustrial Consumer, p. 135, puts the eighteenth-century calorie requirement in England at 2,500 to 2,700 in adult male equivalents. This compares to a (subarctic) Native American requirement of perhaps 3,500 to 4,000. Treating calorie consumption as independent of income and prices must be regarded as an approximation. Logan, ‘‘Nutrition and Well-Being,’’ finds a positive relation between income and calories in late nineteenth-century Britain and the United States, with the elasticity declining with income. Logan, ‘‘Transformation of Hunger,’’ finds much smaller income elasticities of demand for calories in developing countries. Even in the late nineteenth century, despite the 20 percent lower price of calories in the United States than in Britain, the higher income, and the possibly more active lifestyle, per capita calorie consumption was just 13 percent greater. 2. It has been suggested by John Komlos, Biological Standard of Living, II, p. 101, that industrialization may have contributed to lower nutrition (and shorter stature) by inducing substitution away from food and toward those luxury goods whose prices fell. Under the specification of a unitary elasticity of substitution between food and non-foods, changes in non-food prices have no effect on nutrition. In fact, assuming perhaps more plausibly that the elasticity of substitution between these goods was less than one, lower non-food prices would lead to greater meat consumption and, by implication, to improved nutrition; and, as Komlos suggests, higher meat prices would lead to poorer nutrition. 3. Natives consumed more than half their calories in the form of meat, but this reflected their preferences. Contemporaries reported that natives refused to eat grain (e.g., porridge) whatever the price.

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Index

Abel, Kerry, 7 Abenaki (Indian group), 156 Abititi River, 41 aboriginals. See Indians Albany River, 41, 130 Alberta (province), 4, 39, 67 alcoholism, 91–94 alcohol (trade good), 8, 11–13, 73, 86–87, 89–94, 106, 140, 143–145, 168, 177 Algonquian (languages), 4, 71, 76–77, 133, 155 Allaire, Gratien, 115 Amsterdam (city), 19, 56, 204n9 Anasazi (Indian group), 151 Archangel (port), 19, 186 Archithinue (Indian group), 67, 152, 187 armorers, 10, 45–46, 98 Assiniboin (Indian group): alcoholism in, 92; conflicts of, with other groups, 43, 74–75; diet of, 163, 169; diseases among, 159; geographic area of, 3–4, 72; incentivization of, 129, 153; language of, 71; material culture of, 168–169; population of, 72; primacy of, in trading furs, 70; property norms of, 13, 157–158 Athapaskan (language), 4, 71 Attikamek (Indian group), 156 auctions, 6, 9, 29, 62 Averye, John, 23 awls (trade good), 13, 80, 86, 95, 167 Axtell, James, 71, 90, 130 Bannister, Christopher, 137 Bayly, Charles, 41 beads (trade good), 8, 10, 87, 94–95, 102–103, 105, 130, 144, 168, 217n68 Beale, Anthony, 56, 89 bear (pelt), 116 beaver (animal): abundance of, in North

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America, 5, 12; attempts at conservation of, 125–126; decline of, in North America, 12–13, 106–129, 145–147, 153–155, 184, 212n68, 221n18, 221n26; decline of, in Russia, 12; ecology of, 108–109, 118–120, 122, 127, 209n18; habitat and range of, 42, 107–129; methods of harvesting, by natives, 89, 109–110; population of, according to mathematical modeling, 118, 192–194; as resource to which one may have rights, 157–164; species of, 19 beaver (pelts): coat, 20–21, 30–32, 114; demand for, by hatters, 33–35, 62; halfparchment (cub), 29, 73, 111, 161; parchment, 20–21, 29–32, 114, 161; pricing of, 12, 28–33, 94, 106, 115–117, 174; quality of, by hunting method, 86; quality of, by region, 25, 28; superiority of, in terms of hatting, 15–16, 26; tariffs on, 19, 27; taxation of, 18–19. See also fur trade; Indians; made beaver ‘‘beavers’’ (high-quality hats), 16, 18, 22 Bird, Louis, 74, 91 Bishop, Charles, 155–156, 161–162, 165 Blackfoot (Indian group). See Archithinue Black-Rogers, Mary, 133 blankets (trade good), 8–9, 80, 86–87, 94, 102, 104, 106, 142, 146 bobcat (pelt), 16, 116, 130 bracelets (‘‘brass handcuffs’’), 104 brandy (trade good), 11, 93–94, 178, 216n54, 216n61, 217n67 Braund, Kathryn, 80, 90 Brazil, 25 Brazilian roll (tobacco variety), 53, 88–89, 130, 168, 179, 181 Britain: felting industry in, 18; fur demand of, 6; international relations of, 36, 43;

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Index

Britain (continued ) living standards in, 171–183, 185, 198–201, 233n58; mercantilist policies of, 5, 19, 26–28, 38; sovereignty of, over Hudson Bay hinterland, 3, 36–37; trade policies of, 27, 53, 56. See also fur trade; Hudson’s Bay Company; Parliament; Seven Years’ War; specific industries and legislation Browne, Alexander, 137 buttons (trade good), 48, 95, 102 Canada. See specific provinces, regions, and cities caribou (animal), 163–164, 170, 174, 187, 229n57, 230n59 Carr, Sir Robert, 36–37 carroting (aspect of felting process), 21–22 Carteret, Sir George, 208n6 Cartwright, George, 37 ‘‘castors’’ (hat variety), 16, 22 Chadwick, Joseph, 156 Charles I (king), 18 Charles II (king), 1, 38 Chief Seattle 150, 157 Chipewyans (Indian group): conflicts of, with other groups, 43, 71, 74–75; geographical area of, 4; incentivization of, 129; primacy of, in trading furs, 70; relationship of, to Europeans, 3 Choctaw (Indian group), 90 Christ’s Hospital, 76–77, 220n11 Churchill River, 71, 130 Churchill (ship), 50 cloth (trade good), 9, 13, 52, 87, 94, 97, 100, 106, 144, 168, 177, 217n68 coat beaver, 20–21, 30–32, 104, 111, 114 combs (trade good), 105, 168 Compagnie des Indes, 7, 14, 184 Company of Adventurers Trading into Hudson Bay. See Hudson’s Bay Company Cree (Indian group): clothing decoration of, 167; clothing of, 173–174; conflicts of, with English traders, 66, 71, 75; conflicts of, with other groups, 43, 74–75; diet of, 163, 169, 187; diseases among, 113–114, 159, 228n38; drinking habits of, 92, 168; geographic territory of, 4, 71–72, 156; housing of, 175–177; incentivization of, 129, 153; as informants for voyageurs, 37;

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living standards of, 179; material culture of, 168–169; population of, 72; primacy of, in trading furs, 70; property norms of, 13, 157–158, 228n34; war of, with Blackfoot, 187 Cree (language), 76–78, 79, 140 Cronon, William, 151 Dakota (Indian group), 4, 70 Defoe, Daniel, 15, 22 Deloria, Vine, 150 Demsetz, Harold, 154–155 depletion. See beaver, decline of de Vries, Jan, 132, 140 Diamond, Jared, 151 diet: of British, 171–183, 185, 198–201, 233n58; of Indians, 13, 161–165, 169–173, 180, 187, 229n47, 229n57 disease (European-borne), 72, 113, 151–152, 159, 184–185, 228n38, 234n3. See also specific ailments drunkenness. See alcoholism duffel (trade good), 86, 144 Eaglet (ship), 38 earrings (trade good), 105 East India Company, 39 Eastmain River, 71 Edict of Nantes, 18 Elizabeth II (queen), 1–2 England. See Britain Estcutt, William, 34 Europe. See specific nations, cities, ports, and markets Evans, James, 78 Feinstein, Charles, 171, 178 felting industry. See hatting and felting industry Feltmakers, Company of, 18 ‘‘felts’’ (hat variety), 16 files (trade good), 86 firearms. See guns fire steels (trade good), 86 Fisher, H. E. S., 25 fish hooks (trade good), 86 Flamborough House, 67, 77 flints (trade goods), 86, 140 Fort Albany: as beaver habitat, 122–123; beaver, quantities of, 107, 111, 115–116,

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Index 120, 126, 193; building of, 41; domain of, 41–42, 59; living conditions at, 43, 91; personnel at, 53–54; price list of, 52, 59, 62–63, 124, 189–190; as trading center, 130. See also Hudson’s Bay Company; voyageurs Fort Charles, 40–41 Fort Churchill: as beaver habitat, 123; beaver, quantities of, 107, 111, 120, 123; domain of, 42; isolation of, from French traders, 8, 64–65, 112, 125, 129, 194; living conditions at, 43; personnel at, 50; price list of, 59, 65–66, 78, 191; as trading center, 130 Fort Dauphin, 64 Fort Maurepas, 64, 124 Fort Pelly, 113 Fort St. Charles, 64, 194 Fort Severn, 42 fox (fur), 8, 16, 116, 130 France: felting industry in, 18; fur demand of, 6, 25–26, 31–32; hatters in, 33–34; international relations of, 43; role of, in the fur trade, 5, 7, 59. See also Seven Years’ War; voyageurs French River, 37, 59 Friesen, Jean, 7 Fullartine, John, 80 fur price index, 9, 55, 62–66, 211n48 furs. See specific fur varieties fur trade: anthropological studies of, 7–8; auctions and, 6, 9, 29, 62; currency and pricing in, 51–58; effect of, upon Indian lifeways, 168–183; ethnographic studies of, 7–8; European markets and, 6, 9, 15, 23–26, 31–32, 206n30; European offerings in, 78–80, 86; European rivalries within, 5, 28–35; French structuring of, 63; giftgiving and, 2, 9, 53–54, 73, 80, 92, 137, 161–162; global reach of, 19, 25, 88; importing/exporting in, 23–28, 33–34, 37, 186, 206n35; language barriers and, 75–78; logistics of, 6, 65; negative effects of, on Indians, 185; origins of, 2–3; process of, in North American, 73–74. See also hatting industry; Hudson’s Bay Company; made beaver (pricing unit); official standard (pricing measure); voyageurs; specific Indian groups; specific pelts gartering (trade good), 144, 217n68 geese (food source), 44, 47–49, 140, 163, 170

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generosity. See Indians: social structure of George V (king), 2 George VI (king), 2 Georgian Bay, 37 Germany, 26 gift-giving, 2, 9, 53–54, 73, 80, 92, 137, 161–162 Ginsburg, Madeleine, 22 Glorious Revolution, 16 Glover, Thomas, 56 ‘‘good Samaritan’’ rule, 13, 160, 165 Graham, Andrew, 44, 50–51, 78, 106, 139, 149, 159–160, 167 Grand Portage, 65 Griffin, Robert, 137 Groseilliers, Me´dard Chouart, Sieur de, 37–38, 58, 107 guns (trade good): Indian uses of, 13, 86, 140–142, 158, 165; prices of, 9, 52, 57–58, 60, 81, 84, 86; quality of, 10, 97–99, 101–102 gun worms (trade good), 86 half-parchment (cub) beaver, 29, 73, 111, 161 handkerchiefs (trade good), 95, 104 hatchets (trade good), 86, 97, 100, 167–168 hats: ‘‘beavers,’’ 16, 18, 22; ‘‘castors,’’ 16, 22; European demand for, 9, 15, 23–24, 206n30; ‘‘felts,’’ 16; prices of, 3, 22–23; quality of, 33–34; ‘‘shovel,’’ 16; ‘‘slouch,’’ 16; ‘‘sugar loaf,’’ 16; taxation of, 18; threecornered, 16. See also fur trade hats (trade good), 94–95 hatting and felting industry: competition with, from furriers, 33; hazards of, 22; history of, 15–16, 19, 23; labor costs of, 34–35; lobbying of, for price protections, 18–19, 27–28, 32–35; processes of, 19–22, 30, 185; responses of, to declining beaver supply, 33–34; use by, of beaver wool, 3, 6, 13, 17. Hayes River, 42, 130 Hayter, John, 137 Heidenreich, Conrad, 115, 132 Henday, Anthony, 67, 89, 152 Henley House, 66, 75 Holland, 26, 36 Holmes, John, 23

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Index

household goods (trade category), 86–87, 95–96, 140, 146, 148 Hudson Bay (region): drainage area of, 2, 5, 39, 69, 188; exploration of, 37–38; geographic overview of, 4, 38–39; isolation of, 3; political affiliations of, 25. See also Fort Albany; Fort Churchill; York Factory Hudson’s Bay Company: accounting practices of, 54–55, 74; adaptations of, to trade conditions, 9–10, 54, 69, 76, 97–102; archives of, 5–6, 14, 40, 45–50, 80, 91, 96; auctions of, 29; behavioral edicts of, 90–91; competition with, by the French, 5, 53, 66, 98–99, 134–135; efforts of, to appeal to Indian traders, 69; exit of, from the fur trade, 187–188; founding of, 1, 5, 29, 38, 40, 184; market share of, 28–29; operational costs of, 56; organizational structure of, 9, 39, 54, 67; pressure of, on beaver populations, 106–129; pricing policies of, 8, 51–53, 55–58, 62, 65–66, 100–101, 123–124, 128, 137–138, 166; response of, to overharvesting of beaver, 128; responsiveness of, to Native consumer demand, 96–105; responsiveness of, to Native trading norms, 54; shipping schedule of, 40, 45, 186; ‘‘sleep by the frozen sea’’ of, 7; trading posts of, 40–56, 58–68; transatlantic communication problems of, 39–40, 44–45, 54–56, 59, 95. See also Britain; Cree; official standard; voyageurs; specific forts and factories; specific trade goods Hudson Strait, 6, 45 Huron (Indian group), 37, 156, 174 ice chisels (trade good), 86, 95, 97, 99, 120, 167–168, 212n58 incentivization (of Native trappers), 110, 115, 124, 129–131, 135–140, 152–155 Indian Act, 187–188 Indians: alcohol and, 11–12, 89–93, 179, 214n13; beaver hunting methods of, 109–110; complaints of, regarding quality of metal trade goods, 97–98; consumer behavior of, 10–11, 13, 69–105, 140–148, 169, 181, 217n67, 224n15; diet of, 13, 161–165, 169–173, 180, 187, 229n47, 229n57, 230n59, 231n9, 231n10; diseases and, 113, 151–152, 159, 184; economic

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relationship of, to Europeans, 2, 15, 64; as exploiters of British-French rivalry, 11, 62; gift-giving and, 53–54; historical trading practices of, 130; ‘‘home guard,’’ 47, 66, 131, 152, 186; hunting methods of, 80, 163–165, 184, 186; incentivization of, 110, 115, 124, 129–131, 135–140, 152–155; as informants on beaver population, 128; labor supply of, 11–12, 131–132, 134–139, 146–147, 149, 224n15, 226n51; life changes of, as a result of fur trade, 168–183; living standards of, 13–14, 71, 95, 168–177, 179, 181–184, 188, 198–201; market power of, 53, 55, 63–64, 71; new technologies and, 80, 110; population of, 72, 114; private property norms of, 13, 152–163, 166; purchasing patterns of, 96–103; scholarly interpretations of, 8, 70–71, 131; similarities of, to European consumers, 103–105, 132–133; social structure of, 73, 152, 160–161; stereotypes of, 11–12, 70–71, 131–134, 150–151; wars among, 74–75. See also specific groups; specific wars Industrial Revolution, 185 Innis, Harold, 7 Inuit (Indian group), 174 Iroquois (Indian group), 37, 156, 174 Isbister, Joseph, 66, 127 Isham, James, 43, 45, 47–51, 64, 77, 99–100, 128, 136, 140 James I (king), 22 James Bay, 40, 44, 59, 156, 165 Jenness, Diamond, 174, 177 jewelry (trade good), 9, 13, 87, 102, 144, 177 Johnsen, Bruce, 162 joint-stock companies, 39 Kelsey, Henry, 77 keratin (protein), 19–21 Keswick, William, 1 kettles (trade good), 8, 13, 78–80, 86, 94, 95, 100, 106, 142, 146, 167 King, Gregory, 23 Knight, James, 56, 70, 89 knives (trade good), 13, 80, 87, 97, 167 Krech, Shepard, 8, 71, 132, 150–152 Kwakiutl (Indian group), 162

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Index labor market (in fur harvesting), 11–12, 131–139, 146–149, 224n15, 226n51 Labrador (region), 155, 174 lace (trade good), 8, 87, 95, 144, 168 Lake Athabasca, 4, 39, 72, 184 Lake Huron, 37 Lake Nipissing, 37 Lake of the Woods, 64, 194 Lake Superior, 42, 71, 77 Lake Winnipeg, 4, 7, 71, 78, 134, 141 Lane, Samuel, 185–187 La Rochelle (city), 6, 37 La Ve´rendrye, Pierre Gauliter de Varennes, Sieur de, 63–64, 124 Leacock, Eleanor, 154 Le Clerq, Chre´tien, 156 Lindert, Peter, 175 living standards: in Britain, 171–185, 198–201, 233n58; in North America, 14, 43–51, 71, 95, 168–185, 198–201 longhouses, 176–177 Lotka-Volterra logistic, 192 Lower Fort Garry, 1–2 luxuries (trade category), 86–87, 94–95, 102, 105, 130, 140, 143, 145–146, 148–149, 177–178, 217n68 lynx (fur), 8, 130 Mackenzie, Alexander, 173 Macklish, Thomas, 91, 125–126 made beaver (pricing unit), 8, 51–54, 58–62, 80, 104 Maine (Indian group), 156 Mancall, Peter, 90 Manitoba (province), 1, 4, 39–42, 188 Marten, Humphrey, 50 marten (fur), 8, 16, 52, 104, 116, 126, 128, 130 Martin, Calvin, 8, 70, 151–152 Mastassini (Indian group), 165 May, John, 185–187 Mayans (Indian group), 151 McCusker, John, 93 McManus, John, 160 measles, 113, 151, 185 Milloy, John, 157 mink (pelt), 16 mirrors (trade good), 95, 105, 168 Missininabi River, 41 Mississippi River, 5

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Mitchell, Thomas, 137–138 Montagnais (Indian group), 155–156, 177 Montreal, 6, 37, 59, 134, 141 moose (food source), 163–164, 170, 187, 229n57, 230n59 Moose Factory: building of, 41; design of, 43; destruction of, by revelry, 91; domain of, 41–42, 59; impact upon, of voyageurs, 8; prices at, 59 Morantz, Toby, 156 muskrat (pelt), 16, 116, 130 musquash. See muskrat Myatt, Joseph, 126, 223n42 Naskapi (Indian group), 155, 174 Native Americans. See Indians Navigation Acts (legislation), 27 needles (trade good), 13, 95, 167, 173 Nelson River, 42, 130, 134 Nenenot (Indian group), 174 nets (trade good), 13, 110, 167–168 New Amsterdam, 36 New Brunswick (province), 36 new economic history (methodology), 14 New France. See Quebec New York City, 36 Nipissing (Indian group), 162 Nixon, John, 96 Noe¨l, Franc¸oise, 115 Nollet, Abbe´, 21 Nonsuch (ship), 38 North America. See specific colonial powers, states, regions, wars, peoples, species North Saskatchewan River, 4, 71 North West Company, 12, 188 the northwest passage, 38 Norton, Richard, 42, 48, 66 Norway House, 78 official standard (pricing measure), 9, 51, 55–62, 67–68, 74, 211n45 Ojibwa (Indian group), 71–72, 158 Ojibwa (language), 78 Ontario (province), 39, 41–42, 120, 122, 193 Ottawa River, 37, 58–59, 71 otter (pelt), 16, 130 overharvesting, 106–129 overplus (accounting term), 54–55, 62 parchment beaver, 20–21, 62, 104, 111, 114, 161

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Index

Parliament (British): 1752 committee of, 33–34; 1749 inquiry of, 11, 135–136, 139, 149; 1722 legislation of, 29 pemmican, 170 Pepys, Samuel, 22 Perry, Ted, 150 pistols (trade good), 94 Plymouth (city), 38 Polanyi, Karl, 67, 70 Portugal, 25, 34 pots. See kettles powder horns (trade good), 140 powder (trade good), 86, 97, 100, 140–141 prices. See fur trade; Hudson’s Bay Company; Indians; official standard; specific trade goods and furs Prince, Joseph, 164 Prince Edward Island (province), 36 Prince of Wales Fort. See Fort Churchill producer goods (trade category), 86, 95–97, 140, 146, 148 property rights, 7, 13, 152–166 Quebec (region), 3, 25, 34, 39, 41 Quebec City, 6–7, 37 rabbit (pelts), 16, 115 raccoon (pelt), 16 Radisson, Pierre Esprit, 37, 58–59, 107 Ray, Arthur, 7, 10, 41, 70, 72, 132 Restoration (English epoch), 16, 18 Rich, E. E.: preeminence of, among scholars on Hudson’s Bay Company, 6, 11, 37, 63, 70, 77, 132, 134; research limitations of, 11, 131, 135–139, 146–147; theses of, 10, 113 rings (trade good), 95, 168 Robson, Joseph, 43, 45, 130, 133–134, 136 Rogers, Edward, 163, 170 Rosseter, James, 34 Rotstein, Abraham, 70, 131–132 Royal African Company, 39 Rupert River, 41 Rupert’s House (trading post), 156 Rupert’s Land. See Hudson Bay: drainage area of Russia, 5, 12, 16 St. Lawrence River, 37, 58 sashes (trade good), 73, 105

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Saskatchewan (province), 4, 39, 42, 77, 113 ‘‘satisficers’’ (economic term), 71 Schumpeter, Elizabeth, 24 scissors (trade good), 105 scrapers (trade good), 86, 97, 99 Secoy, Frank, 158 Sergeant, Matthew, 137 Seven Years’ War, 14, 34, 42, 62, 71, 184, 205n26 Shammas, Carole, 90, 171, 179, 181 shoes (trade good), 94, 105 shot (trade good), 140–141 Simpson, George, 157 Siouan (languages), 71 Skrimshire, Samuel, 67, 77 ‘‘sleep by the frozen sea.’’ See Hudson’s Bay Company smallpox, 113, 152, 159, 184, 228n38, 234n3 Smith, Adam, 187 Smith, James, 163, 170 South Saskatchewan River, 4, 71 Spain, 25, 34 Spurling, Henry, 138 Spurrell, George, 50, 136 Staunton, Richard, 53–54, 126 standard of living. See living standards Steckel, Richard, 164 Stockwell, George, 23 Stuarts (royal family), 16 Sturt, John, 23 ‘‘subtractability,’’ 154, 164 Surinam, 36 Tanner, Adrian, 165 thimbles (trade good), 105 Thompson, David, 110, 220n11 Thompson, Edward, 137 Tibithebe (Indian group), 126, 223n42 tobacco (trade good): as gift-giving item, 73; as living standard measure, 177–179, 181, 217n68; Brazilian roll, 53, 88–89, 130, 168, 179, 181; Native expenditures on, 86–94, 130, 140, 143–145, 168; price of, 13, 52–59, 61, 82, 88; quality of, 102; varieties of, 88–89; Virginia roll, 88–89, 130, 179 Todd, William, 113 trade goods. See specific trade goods ‘‘tragedy of the commons,’’ 154 Treaty of Breda, 36 Treaty of Paris, 34

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Index Treaty of Utrecht, 5, 26–29, 71, 74 trunks (trade good), 94, 104 Turner, Lucien, 174 twine (trade good), 80, 86, 95, 120, 167–168 Umfreville, Edward, 44 Upper Ottawa River, 71 Usner, Daniel, 90 van der Donck, Adriaan, 20 vermillion (trade good), 87, 94, 168, 217n68 Virginia roll (tobacco variety), 88–89, 130, 179 voyageurs: effect of, on beaver populations, 107, 122–129; geographical range of, 25–26, 37, 43, 58–59, 77, 184, 193–194; impact of, on British fur trade, 8–9, 55–56, 58–70, 92, 100–104, 112, 115, 134–135, 138, 141, 145, 193; practices of, 6, 59, 63; trade goods of, 143, 178 wage rate, of Indians (implicit), 55, 131, 133, 147–149. See also labor market Waggoner, Joseph, 91 Wagner, Michael, 58 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 67

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Walpole (administration), 27 war, impact on trade: 4–5, 14, 25, 43, 64, 159, 187, 203n6, 225n40. See also specific wars War of Spanish Succession, 26–27 White, Richard, 136 Whitlock, James, 23 whooping cough, 113, 185 Williamson, Jeffrey, 175 Winnipeg, 40, 188 Winnipeg River, 64, 124 wolf (fur), 8, 116, 130 wolverine (fur), 116 York Factory: annual schedule of, 47–49; area of, 112; assignment to, of Indian trappers, 43; as beaver habitat, 122–123; beaver quantities of, 107, 111, 116, 126; French competition within, hinterland, 64, 67, 115; isolation of, from French traders, 8, 47; living conditions of, 43–45, 47–51; personnel of, 45–47, 50, 210n27; preeminence of, among trading posts, 11, 42, 71, 92; price lists of, 59, 124, 139–140, 175, 190–191; relationship of, with the Cree, 72; as trading center, 70, 130, 134, 141–142, 149. See also fur trade; Hudson’s Bay Company; voyageurs

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Acknowledgments

W

e are deeply grateful to the many who have advised, encouraged, and supported us in our effort to interpret the eighteenth-century fur trade in a way that recognizes more fully the role of the Cree, Assiniboin, and other native groups. We also have benefited immensely from the comments of participants at the many workshops and conferences where we presented our work. The list, by no means exhaustive, includes: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Northwestern University, Universidad Carlos III, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, University College Dublin, University of British Columbia, University of California–Los Angeles, University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana), University of Laval, and the University of Montreal. We also have presented at conferences of the Canadian Economics Association, Canadian Network of Economic History, Economic History Association, the Cliometric Society, and the Business History Conference. We thank them all. There are a number of individuals to whom we owe a particular debt of gratitude. There are those who kept asking, as time went by, ‘‘where is the book?’’ Their encouragement kept us going. Stanley Engerman, Pamela Laird, and two anonymous referees read the entire manuscript, pointed us to sources, and otherwise gave us comments that improved the argument throughout. Others also gave us suggestions that sharpened our analysis, caused us to rethink some of our conclusions, and always improved our presentation of the issues. We would like to especially acknowledge: Bruce Benson, Steven Epstein, Peter George, Alan Green, Martha Hanna, Ian Keay, Donna Lounsbury, Marvin McInnis, Gloria Main, James Markusen, Joel Mokyr, Arthur Ray, and Angela Redish. Christine Laporte collected much of the Hudson’s Bay Company trading post data that are central to Chapters 3 and 5.

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Acknowledgments

For the entire time we have been working on the fur trade, our research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We also wish to acknowledge Robert Lockhart’s help and advice, and the support of the University of Pennsylvania Press.

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