Beavers and Plumes: The History of the Trade and Conflicts Over Beaver Hats and Feathered Hats

Table of contents :
Beavers and Plumes: The History of the Trade and Conflicts Over Beaver Hats and Feathered Hats
About Charles River Editors
Introduction
Nature’s Engineers
The Origins of the North American Fur Trade
Beaver, Inc.
The American Fur Trade Era
Plumes
The Legacy of the Hats
Online Resources
Bibliography
Free Books by Charles River Editors
Discounted Books by Charles River Editors

Citation preview

Beavers and Plumes: The History of the Trade and Conflicts Over Beaver Hats and Feathered Hats By Charles River Editors

Edward Arthur Walton’s The Beaver Hat

About Charles River Editors

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Introduction

A 1909 picture of Emmy Destinn When Queen Elizabeth arrived in Lower Fort Garry, Manitoba in 1970, she was, like many foreign leaders, greeted with a reception and offered tokens by her hosts. What was different about this occasion, however, were the gifts offered: live elk and beaver. In the long-standing tradition of the Hudson’s Bay Company, should the King or Queen arrive in the lands governed by the charter King Charles II granted in 1660, he or she would be presented with two elk and two beavers by Company officials. Only Queen Elizabeth and her father had the opportunity to take advantage of this part of the charter’s clauses, but the royal houses of Britain had benefitted from the Hudson’s Bay Company for hundreds of years beforehand.[1] Britain had grown rich on the profits brought into the country from across the seas in North America, and an incredible amount of

those profits came about from a relatively tiny animal that was abundant across the continents. Though the importance of hats is easy to overlook, it was deadly serious in more ways than one, impacting the beavers and birds used to make fashionable hats, the environment of the region, and the people fighting over the resources. Beaver hats put the Dutch, British, and French in conflict, and later the Americans and Canadians. Plumed women’s hats were considerably less important historically, but they had a huge ecological impact. The beaver is a crucial species that once had an immense impact on the environment around it, while the short era concerning the plume trade for women’s hats drove a number of bird species to nearextinction. Indeed, several species have never recovered their numbers. The end product was fashionable men’s and women’s hats, sold primarily in Europe and the United States, but from raw materials to finished products, these hats linked tribal peoples, traders, hunters, trappers, merchants, and soldiers. Whether it crossed their minds or not, countless men and women in London and Paris were linked to the North American wilderness and all the violence it entailed. Beavers and Plumes: The History of the Trade and Conflicts Over Beaver Hats and Feathered Hats examines the impact of the events that occurred as a result of the supply and demand of the fashionable hats. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about the hats like never before.

Beavers and Plumes: The History of the Trade and Conflicts Over Beaver Hats and Feathered Hats About Charles River Editors Introduction Nature’s Engineers The Origins of the North American Fur Trade Beaver, Inc. The American Fur Trade Era Plumes The Legacy of the Hats Online Resources Bibliography Free Books by Charles River Editors Discounted Books by Charles River Editors

Nature’s Engineers Beavers were of vital importance to the hat trade for centuries. There are two species of beaver: the Eurasian beaver (Castor fibes) and the North American beaver (Castor canadensis). European beavers were scarce in the era with which this book is concerned, and they were driven to extinction in much of Europe by the early hat trade, but populations survived in northern Scandinavia and Russia. What makes the beaver of such importance to the fur trade is not the beaver pelts themselves, but their undercoat. A beaver’s coat consists of long guard hairs and an undercoat of shorter hair, particularly dense in winter and denser in beavers during winter in northern climates. The outer guard hair has to be removed, and the dense undercoat is shaved off. Sometimes called “beaver wool,” this material makes the finest felt, which is then processed into hats. A beaver hat keeps its shape, its warm and sturdy, it repels water, and it can last for many years. Wearing a beaver hat marked social class because they were expensive. Beaver hat styles included floppy hats with plumes worn by Cavaliers, Abraham Lincoln’s stovepipe top hat, and today’s Stetson cowboy hat. Beavers can seem like cartoonish animals with their strange flat tails and huge buck teeth, but in their way, beavers were a keystone species in North America. Before the European intrusions, beavers populated areas from the Rio Grande to the Arctic and over most of the continent, save deserts and marshy areas like Florida. Estimates of the total beaver population range from 40,000,000 to 400,000,000. The key thing about beavers is that they build dams. Millions of beavers meant millions of beaver dams, which quite literally dammed streams. The dams created ponds in which the beavers make sturdy, thick dens that are entered from underwater. They store plenty of sticks and limbs underwater and spend the winter under the ice in the den. These characteristics give beavers a great deal of protection from predators, but not from humans. Beaver dams can be quite large, as can the ponds created by the dams. The longest beaver dam known in recent decades was about 2,800 feet, or a half-mile (Backhouse 14).

The creation of beaver ponds has quite a large ecological impact. Trees trapped in the ponds die, creating habitats for many kinds of birds. The ponds release water slowly, evening out water flow, and many beaver ponds in an area help to regulate groundwater flow to the aquifer. Ponds create habitats for weeds and other vegetation preferred by species such as deer. Abandoned ponds gradually fill in, becoming marshy and then meadows, habitats conducive to grazing species and farming (Backhouse 6). A characteristic of beavers is the scent glands they use to mark their territory that secrete a substance called castoreum. Hunters (and later trappers, when metal traps became available) baited sticks with castoreum. Beavers are quite territorial, and they have an excellent sense of smell, so they would come quickly to investigate the new smell. The substance was also used for medicine, as it was thought to cure or help cure colic, toothaches, deafness, sciatica, liver tumors, trembling, poisoning, and pleurisy. It may actually have helped some of these conditions because it contains salicylic acid, the main ingredient in aspirin (Dolin 325). The European beaver species had a considerable ecological impact as well, but it has not been as widely studied as the North American species. They were nearly wiped out in most of Europe because of the demand for furs, and by the 1600s, they were relegated to Europe and Russia’s far north. Consequently, there were fewer observations about the North American beavers and their impact, though the species was richly chronicled by traders, travelers, and groups such as the French Jesuits. Beaver hats were handmade and still are. Making them requires skill, and the process is complicated, but the basic fact is that a beaver’s undercoat makes a superb felt for hat-making. Beavers have two kinds of hair. The coarse, outer coat is long and called guard hair, and the other hair is short and dense. The difficulty lies in getting rid of the long guard hairs. Beaver hair, like all hair, has a keratin coat. After processing, the hairs mat together to make a superior felt that is better and stronger than felt made from other furs. The outer guard hair coat has to be combed out, which is a laborious process. It is also what made “coat beaver” so valuable. Native Americans wore beaver coats with the fur inside, which exposed it to human sweat and

body oils, softening the fur and making the guard hair easy to remove. Once the undesirable long hair was removed, the dense underfur was shaved from the skin, resulting in a ball of fur called beaver wool or beaver fluff. The fluff then went through a process called “carroting” in which a solution of mercury salts dissolved in nitric acid was applied to the fluff, dissolving some of the keratin on the hair, making it easier to felt and turning the beaver wool to a shade of orange, hence the term “carroting” (Feinstein). Following carroting, the fluff was laid on a table pierced with holes. A skilled worker then used a tool called a Hatter’s bow, looking like a distorted violin bow, which he moved over the fluff while vibrating the string, causing the fluff to mat further together and dirt to drop through the holes in the table. At the end of this process, the loosely felted material is called a “batt.” It took two large batts to make the core of a hat, and two smaller ones for the brim and other features. The two batts were placed on top of one another under a wet cloth or wet leather, and heat was applied, resulting in further felting and some shrinkage (Feinstein). Next came a process called planking in which the batts were put in a bath consisting of wine waste and hot water. The felts were agitated by hand or with stirring planks. When this step was complete, the batts were stretched over wooden molds and shaped into hats of desired sizes. They were shaped by rubbing them with a pumice stone to produce a smooth surface, brimmed, and sent to be dyed. Near the end of the process, a stiffening agent was applied, and steam was used to seal the felt and create the final shape. An unfortunate side effect was that the steam freed traces of mercury used earlier in the process, and the resulting mercury vapor is what seems to have been most responsible for the nerve and brain damage causing Mad Hatter Syndrome (Feinstein). The part of hat-making involving mercury was quite dangerous. Workers exposed to the mercury vapor developed symptoms of mercury poisoning, which can be severe. The phrase “Mad as a Hatter” comes from the severe behavioral and physiological symptoms exhibited by hat makers who were exposed to mercury poisoning (Van Patten). Beaver hats first appeared in Europe in the late Middle Ages. They were made in Flanders, and later, Spain and France. They were very expensive.

The beaver pelts from which the hats were made came from the Eurasian beaver from Scandinavia and Russia. There probably were still some populations of beaver in Central Europe in the later Middle Ages (Chico 47). The first recorded mention of a beaver hat is in a text by no less than Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote of a “Flaundrish bever [sic] hat” in 1386 (Wilcox 115). Beaver pelts were used elsewhere, particularly in China, to make coats and decorate robes and other clothes; there was no Asian equivalent of the European hat trade. Beaver pelts were among the furs traded to China from the northwest coast area, as were seal skins and sea otter pelts. This trade was large, profitable, and lasted many decades, but it did not involve hats. The sea otter trade with China was what kept Russian America (mostly parts of Alaska) financially sustainable. Over the centuries in which beaver hats were popular, there were many styles. Among the more colorful were the floppy-brimmed hats worn by the Cavaliers (during the English Civil War). The style resumed after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, though England under Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell did not approve of the Cavalier style since it was associated with the deposed King Charles I. These hats were often worn with plumes that moved with the breeze and motion of the wearer. The Cavalier style was essentially a wide-brimmed slouch hat with plumes of long ostrich feathers, sometimes called “weeping plumes” (Wilcox 113). The plumes were fastened to the back of the hat or on the left side, which kept them from getting in the way of a sword, if the swordsman were righthanded (Wilcox 114). These floppy hats led to other styles. Tacking the brim at the sides created a distinctive hat often seen in contemporary illustrations of naval officers, and fastening the brim on three sides created the famous tricorn hat worn during the American Revolution and common in the Napoleonic Wars. English and French dandies were not the only groups whose hats featured feathers. An English traveler to the Ottoman lands in the 1500s remarked that the feared and famous Janissaries also wore plumes (Doughty 10). The Janissaries originated as boys given to the Ottoman authorities by Christian families in the Balkans as a kind of tax, who were converted to Islam and

trained as soldiers. Because they were not from powerful Ottoman families, they were loyal only to the Sultan. Plumed hats were a part of their uniform. Other Muslim warrior groups also wore plumes, such as the Mamluks in Egypt, and both Mamluks and Janissaries were feared on the battlefield. Birds in England and Europe did not possess plumes of the necessary size and properties, so fancy plumes were an item of international trade. Ostrich plumes would have come from Africa by one of several trade routes involving Muslim traders. This early plume trade may have driven ostriches in North Africa to extinction. In 1604, the English king allowed London’s felt makers to incorporate, which facilitated the development of hat making in England. The incorporation was intended to build the domestic market and reduce imports from France (Wilcox 113). Protectionism characterized British economic policy, even with hats. In 1732, Parliament passed the Hat Act, which, among other things, restricted the import of hats from the English North American colonies. The colonists used cheaper grades of beaver to make hats and export them to Britain. The restrictions probably hurt, but the colonies were growing rapidly and had a sizable domestic market (Backhouse 70). Quality beaver hats were expensive, but they lasted for years, often passing from father to son. Prices remained high during the entire fur trade period, which meant that beaver hats were generally confined to the prosperous. In the 1600s, a fine beaver hat in England cost three to four pounds sterling, which was two to three months’ pay for an unskilled worker. They were also valuable enough to steal (Carlos and Lewis 23). Their value would have been enough to have a thief hanged, but more than likely, the thief would have been “transported” to the British colonies and sold as an indentured servant for a term of usually seven years. The quality of hats varied, with the lower quality fur hats being cheaper. The felt going into a hat could be beaver wool mixed with muskrat or felt from other furs (Carlos and Lewis 16). There is no information available on hat-makers cheating, but the temptation to mix other materials in with the beaver wool when making a hat and passing it off as pure beaver must have been strong.

The price of a fine beaver hat in London in the 1770s was 21 shillings, more than twice the nine shillings weekly wages of an unskilled laborer. In New York, an 1825 newspaper advertisement depicts men’s beaver hats priced from $5.00 to $8.00, with imitation beaver priced at $4.00. “Roram” hats, made of cheaper felt and coated with beaver fur, ranged from $2.00 to $3.25, and an 1825 fancy beaver hat selling for $8.00 would be priced at over $200.00 today (Holloway). There was even some folklore involving these hats. One belief was that wearing a beaver hat would gradually make the wearer more intelligent. There was even the belief that deafness could be cured by wearing a beaver hat. After about 1790, Britain’s first postal carriers were given uniforms including standard beaver “issue hats” (Chico 47). Beaver hats were also the specified headgear of a number of British military units. Over the centuries, the styles of beaver hats changed, but beaver felt remained the prime material for fine hats on account of its durability and resistance to water. Among the styles over these years were the Wellington (1812), the Paris Beau (1815), the Dorsay (1820), and the Regent (1875). The dominance of the beaver hat as a fashion item only truly began to change in the 1820s when silk hats began to replace them. The silk hats had bodies constructed from cotton, which was wrapped around a form and coated in shellac. Once it hardened, it was covered with silk plush and processed. The resulting hat was cheaper than beaver, and still quite durable and water repellant (Backhouse 94).

The Origins of the North American Fur Trade There was an international fur trade long before the predominance of beaver pelts for hats. The Russian expansion past the Ural Mountains into Siberia was motivated largely by the high value of furs from sable (Martes zibellina). The ermine, another northern fur-bearer (Mustela erminea), was considered royal fur for centuries. Both species come from Central and Northern Europe and Russia and have an especially lush winter coat, like the beaver, but ermine coats turn snowy white in the winter. Sometimes, governments restricted who could wear ermine and sable. In 1750, beaver was the most valuable fur imported into Britain, but in that year, at least 15 different kinds of furs and skins were imported, including bear, bobcat, lynx, fisher, marten, mink, muskrat (then called musquash), otter, and raccoon (Carlos and Lewis 16). Some of these furs were mixed with beaver to create cheaper hats. The trade in furs from North America began long before the organized fur trade in New France and the English colonies. By 1580, there were already some 400 vessels and perhaps 12,000 men involved in whaling, fishing, and sealing around Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence each year, variously Basque, French, Portuguese, and English. Many would have established camps on shore for drying fish and repairing vessels. There was trade between these Europeans and Native people, and one of the things they traded was beaver pelts (Taylor 94). Fishing in the region, including later fishing off of Maine and New England, continued for centuries, and sporadic trading for beaver pelts lasted as long as the fisheries. The fur trade broke beaver pelts into two categories: castor gras and castor sec. Castor gras was also called “coat beaver,” and it was the most valuable. Natives would cut pelts and sew them together to make coats, wearing them fur side in for months, particularly in the winter. Over time, human warmth and sweat wore down the long guard hairs, resulting in a more supple pelt, requiring less extensive preparation. Unworn castor sec was also called “parchment beaver,” the product of stretching the pelt on a circular frame made from branches so it would dry. When it was dry, it would be flat and stiff, resembling parchment. Processing the pelts was

usually women’s work, as was the case in the much later millinery industry that made women’s hats. Doing it correctly required skill—pelts that were not properly prepared could be damaged or even rotten by the time they had reached Europe (Dolin 46). In the later period, American fur traders usually divided pelts into four categories: furs, skins, hides, and robes. Furs included all fur-bearing rodents from beaver to muskrat; skins included deer, bear, moose, and raccoon; hides were almost always buffalo (Clayton 210); and robes referred to winter-killed buffalo, dressed with the fur on. Beaver remained the most valuable, but almost any pelt had a fashion-based or industrial use. Other furs could be mixed with beaver to make cheaper felt, and therefore, cheaper hats. Buffalo robes kept people in sleighs warm, and buffalo hide made durable leather that later proved ideal for industrial drive belts. Early on, processing beaver pelts was a difficult and time-consuming process. The Russians had developed a process for efficiently combing out beaver wool, and a large portion of beaver pelts were sent to Russia for processing and re-exported to Britain and France. The Russians held their process secret until the end of the 1600s when a similar method was devised in France (Backhouse 69). This particular trade was dominated by the Dutch, who would buy beaver pelts in large numbers and sail to Russia, usually north around Scandinavia to the Russian Arctic town of Archangel, but also to the Baltic. Beaver pelts were the most valuable element in this odd trade of the Dutch to the Russian Arctic (Rich 312). They were processed and re-exported in Dutch ships from Archangel to the Netherlands for sale to hatters, who were mostly in Paris and London. One of the most important historical aspects of the beaver fur trade was its impact on Native peoples and interactions between the French, Dutch, and British empires in the struggle for North America (the Spanish regions of North America were far less affected). The continuing demand for beaver pelts for hats shaped the destiny of many of the Native peoples, as well as people in New France and British North America. Over the years, there were dozens of Native groups involved in trade. Aboriginals had always used beaver as a food and the pelts for clothing, but the pressure of hunting on the beavers was light. Upon discovering that

beaver pelts could purchase other desirable goods from fur traders, Natives exploited beaver more intensely. The Natives themselves do not seem to have felt exploited. As one Aboriginal was said to have remarked to French Jesuit Paul Le Jeune, the beaver was hard-working and made many useful items for the Natives, such as hatchets, kettles, knives, and many other things. Natives traded beaver pelts for tools and conveniences that improved their quality of life considerably—a steel hatchet was a quantumlevel technical improvement from a stone hatchet (Dolin 29). Effective beaver traps were not invented until the middle 1700s, and they were heavy—ranging from six to eight pounds—and they broke easily. It was rather late in the beaver trade when lightweight and reliable beaver traps became available. In 1823, Sewell Newhouse, an American, invented an effective and cheap leg-hold trap that was not widely available until 1850, when Newhouse joined a utopian community called the Oneida Community, and he turned his patent over to the community. Unlike most utopian communities, Oneida managed to stay financially stable for decades, producing Sewall’s traps in the tens of thousands yearly; they became known as Oneida traps as a result (Backhouse 43). Prior to the use of effective traps—which was for most of the history of the fur trade—beavers were difficult to hunt. The same characteristics of tough dens and a deep ponds that defended the beavers from predators were obstacles for hunters. One hunting method was to poke holes in beaver pond ice and chop into the den, spearing fleeing beavers as they came up for air. Another was to chop a hole in the dam—beavers would sense the lowering pond level, come out to make repairs, and be speared or shot when they appeared. The European traders did not want the Natives to have guns at first, but the Natives most certainly wanted them, and they were able to play off the Dutch in the Hudson Valley against the French in the St. Lawrence Valley and the English settlers. Obtaining guns made them much more dangerous as enemies and more valuable as allies (Taylor). Each summer for some years, the French held a trade fair at Montreal and a similar one at Three Rivers. Furs were sold to the company holding the fur monopoly (which changed from time to time after the monopoly had

been purchased from the Crown). Furs were traded for goods and for alcohol with an atmosphere of celebration (Ross 277). There were other elements to the trade. The Dutch post at Ft. Orange (Albany, NY) siphoned off a significant portion of beaver, and pilgrims identified the beaver trade as the quickest way to repay the company of adventurers financing them, and they agreed to repay their debt in beaver pelts over a period of years (Rich). One of the richest men in colonial New England was William Pynchon, who dominated the beaver trade in the Connecticut River valley from 1636 to 1652, and eventually, Springfield, Concord, and Hartford all originated as fur trading posts (Muller-Schwarze 183). While the New England colonists were more than willing to make a profit from beaver pelts, they were not as keen on the hats. In 1634, the Massachusetts Bay Colony banned the purchase or wearing of beaver hats as they were seen as symbols of vanity and pride and not proper for a godly community (Dolin 72). Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec in 1603 (Montreal was a later foundation in 1648), and Quebec was a strategic post before French Canada had many settlers, but both places eventually became towns and centers of the fur trade. In 1626, Champlain purchased 22,000 beaver skins, which is an indication of the volume and value of the trade (Muller-Schwartze 181) Early in the fur trade, individual French traders went into the wilderness to buy or trap beavers, but the French-Canadian authorities did not like this kind of independence, and they sometimes confiscated furs when traders arrived back in Montreal. Penalties for going off into the wilderness to obtain furs, at least on paper, were severe and included whipping and branding for the first offense and death or life in the galleys for the second. Life in the galleys meant being a slave the French Navy’s Mediterranean galleys for life. The government of New France tried licensing, but it didn’t work, probably because some New France governors participated in the illegal trade to supplement their official salaries (Ross 277). Despite official discouragement, French traders and trappers—better known as “voyageurs”— penetrated deep into Canada, often marrying Aboriginal women, resulting in a numerous and hardy mixed-race class of trappers and fur dealers who came to be known as the coureurs de bois.

These were the main actors in the French exploration of the Great Lakes, the West, and the Mississippi Valley. French trading posts were the origins of several American cities, including Detroit, Green Bay, Michilimakinac (a strategic point where Great Lakes come together), Kaskaskia, and Vincennes, with other sites being on present-day locations of cities such as Memphis, Erie, and Sandusky. An unsavory element persisted throughout the trade. Natives acquired guns, kettles, knives, blankets, and more, but they were also exposed to brandy. It was known from the start that American Native people had little resistance to alcohol, but it was nevertheless an important aspect of the trade. Selling brandy to Aboriginals often resulted in destructive behaviors, including murder, and some Natives impoverished themselves by selling all of their furs for brandy. The government in New France issued decrees against selling brandy, repealed them, and issued them again, to no avail. Jesuit priests trying to convert tribal people to Christianity condemned the selling of alcohol as a mortal sin, again, to no avail. If the French did not sell brandy, the Natives might sell to the Dutch—who would sell them gin —instead (Ross 279). The consensus is that the fur trade was profitable; however, one prominent Canadian historian claims there was a glut of furs in the late 1600s and that the French were forced to continue the trade simply to maintain good relations with the Natives. Early on, the Native people were far more powerful than they were later on. In an era of small European colonial populations, the Native people were more numerous, and the fur trade had given some groups access to guns. The most significant aspect of this was the “Beaver Wars,” also known as the French and Iroquois Wars, which lasted from 1642-1698. By 1642, the fur trade was large and valuable, with the Dutch settlement at Ft. Orange (Albany) on the Hudson and French Montreal as crucial points. The Iroquois were a confederation of five tribes centered in upstate New York who were highly organized and militarily formidable. Beaver had become scarce in Iroquois territory, so the Iroquois decided to expand

their influence by pushing other groups out of their way, nearly wiping out the Huron and several other groups. By 1650, they had expanded their influence to the Mississippi, where they fought French and Algonquian tribes. The Beaver Wars hugely altered tribal geography in the northeast and Great Lakes country, and shifted much of the beaver trade into the Iroquois system, moving the Shawnee west from Ohio, and pushing the Sioux onto the Great Plains where they would later become the most formidable of the horse-mounted Plains. In 1666, the French sent regular army units to New France to lead a counterattack on the Iroquois. While the Iroquois were not defeated, peace resulted for some years. The wars renewed from 1683 to 1698, during which raids and counter-raids devastated both New France and tribes allied with the French and Iroquois. Around the same time, in 1664, the English conquered New Amsterdam’s Dutch colonies (and renamed the town New York City), including the Hudson Valley settlements, and more critically for the fur trade, Ft. Orange (which was renamed Albany). The English thus took over the fur trade centered in Ft. Orange, retaining the Dutch traders. These wars ended when the French called a large meeting of many tribes and the Iroquois, which resulted in the “Great Peace” of 1701 (“The French and Iroquois Wars”). The upshot of the Beaver Wars is that beaver trade shifted both north and west of the Great Lakes, and the Iroquois became a buffer between New France and the English colonies and were no longer a kind of imperial power unto themselves. The wars continued but not over the beaver trade. War shifted from the Iroquois’ fighting France and French tribal allies in the war between the British and the French, and the ensuing wars shut down the French fur trade at times. The North American phase of European wars between France and Britain included King William’s War (1688-97), Queen Anne’s War (1702-13), King George’s War (1744-48), and the French and Native War (1754-63), which ended in the conquest of New France. The French were ousted from North American in 1763, and Spain took over the administration of New Orleans and Louisiana territory. The fur trade continued, largely involving the same French and mixed-race traders, with New Orleans offering good prices (Ross 279).

For some of the fur trade, French trade goods were of better quality than the British, but a grim aspect is that Native peoples preferred French brandy to whatever alcohol the British traders had available. Both nations’ traders used alcohol to trade for furs. French authorities were quite aware of alcohol’s destructive aspects, but they saw it as necessary for continued trade. An Aboriginal family really did not need much to dramatically improve their standard of life—a gun could last for years as could other tools, kettles, blankets, and other items—so brandy became a major aspect of the exchange of goods for furs. The Dutch post at Ft. Orange continued as Albany when the British conquered the Dutch colonies. Albany was well-positioned for the fur trade, although it was more typical to see traders’ pack-trains of horses than canoes full of furs connecting the Great Lakes and what is now Ontario to Montreal. Much trade coming into Albany was smuggled from Canada rather than brought in by Natives, some by French settlers and much by Christian Natives settled near Montreal. These Christian Natives were independent but strong French allies. Cracking down on the smuggling would have been inadvisable because the Natives were vital scouts and buffers between New France and New England. The fur trade became a tool of rivalry between Britain and France. In 1700, Louis XIV embarked on an expansionist policy in North America when the French wanted to hem in the British colonies and confine them to the eastern seaboard. The French expansion into Great Lakes country and down the Mississippi to the new colony of Louisiana blocked British colonies to the west and north, meaning that the French influence would expand deep into the continent’s interior, seeking Native allies wherever possible, using the fur trade as a means to secure their loyalties. Another little-known chapter relating to both hats and geopolitics is that in 1685, France revoked the Edict of Nantes, which guaranteed French Protestants the right to practice their religion. In 1685, the French hatmaking industry was largely in the hands of these French Protestants, called Huguenots, and the revocation of the Edict resulted in their severe persecution, resulting in about 10,000 French Protestant hat makers

migrating to England, which was a huge number of immigrants at the time, who brought French styles and French methods of processing pelts and making hats with them. Gentlemen in London, Paris, Germany, and other European locales still preferred beaver hats, but few of them had the slightest inkling of how their hats were linked to the destinies of Native peoples on the other side of the Atlantic.

Beaver, Inc. Though new economic ideas were beginning to surface in Europe, it would not be until 1776 that Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations would promote the ideas of free markets as the best route to riches. In 1670, mercantilism still held sway as the surest way for a nation to accumulate and increase its wealth. Thus, both Louis XIV of France and Charles II of England were interested in finding men who could bring the best the New World had to offer to Europe’s shores, as well as those who would promise to work only in the interests of one nation. Charles II, along with his cousin, Prince Rupert, sought to establish these relationships in the formation of trading monopolies assigned to various areas of the world. These companies would be governed by charters, their purposes clearly set, but then set free to make profits as they saw fit. Charles II established the East India Company for this purpose, as well as to defeat the Dutch, who were beginning to dominate in the east. The Royal African Company and Royal Fishery were also formed and given specific economic and political privileges.[2] Though the East India Company would grow to become the most important of the companies founded or given extended power during Charles II’s reign, the Hudson’s Bay Company would be the longest-lasting, as “superiority in shipping enabled the Company to hold its own against the French, and as the greater part of the capital came to be concentrated into few hands, it was possible to maintain a certain continuity and consistency of policy.”[3] The Charter of over 7,000 words, written on sheepskin parchment,[4] first praised the initial investors in the Hudson’s Bay Company as those who, “at their own great Cost and Charges, [have] undertaken an Expedition for Hudson's Bay in the Northwest Part of America, for the Discovery of a new Passage into the South Sea, and for the finding some Trade for Furs, Minerals, and other considerable Commodities.”[5] They were listed as: Prince Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria and Cumberland Christopher, Duke of Albemarle

William, Earl of Craven Henry, Lord Arlington Anthony, Lord Ashley Sir John Robinson Sir Robert Vyner Sir Peter Colleton Sir Edward Hungerford Sir Paul Neele Sir John Griffith Sir Philip Carteret James Hayes John Kirke (Radisson’s father-in-law) Francis Millington William Prettyman John Fenn John Portman[6] The charter gave specific lands, waterways, and rights of commerce to its holders. It was believed that these men would make the best of the investment that they had risked in coming to the New World, and that they would make their king proud. It specifically granted “unto them, and their Successors the sole Trade and Commerce of all those Seas, Streights, Bays, Rivers, Lakes, Creeks, and Sounds, in whatsoever Latitude they shall be, that lie within the entrance of the Streights commonly called Hudson's Streights, together with all the Lands, Countries and Territories, upon the Coasts and Confines of the Seas, Streights, Bays, Lakes, Rivers, Creeks and Sounds, aforesaid, which are not now actually possessed by any of our Subjects, or by the Subjects of any other Christian Prince or State.”[7] The boundaries of the lands given to the Hudson’s Bay Company were defined by both the bay and its drainage basin. In modern terms, this includes “much of present-day Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. The grant also included parts of present day northern Ontario and northeastern Quebec. In 1670 this region was completely unexplored by Europeans. Indeed, given the size of the area, even Native groups were unfamiliar with large parts of it.”[8] Rupert’s Land, as it was called, covered 3.9 million square kilometers and was five times larger than France itself. Both the land

area and the reaches of the charter given to the Hudson’s Bay Company for “Rupert’s Land” are “breathtaking in reach,” perhaps even more by modern standards.[9]

Rupert’s Land Governance of the colony initially fell upon Rupert, the king’s cousin and advocate for the voyage and charter. In fact, the charter itself listed Rupert as governor: “WE HAVE ASSIGNED, nominated, constituted, and made, and by these Presents for Us, our Heirs and Successors, WE DO ASSIGN, nominate, constitute and make, our said Cousin, PRINCE RUPERT, to be the first and present Governor of the said Company, and to continue in the said Office from the Date of these Presents until the 10th November then next following, if he, the said Prince Rupert, shall so long live, and so until a new Governor be chosen by the said Company in Form hereafter expressed.” As the cousin of the king, Charles II could rest assured that his cousin would keep the crown’s interests at the forefront of decision-making. Fortunately for both Charles II and Rupert, the goals were the same: to make a name for England and to obtain great wealth.

The hatting industry attracted much legislative debate and, as the emerging major supplier of the world’s finest furs, the Hudson’s Bay Company was often at the center of discussion. Before the 1690 rechartering, English hatters, who wanted to obtain their raw materials at the lowest prices possible, convinced Parliament to place stricter rules for sales on the Company. The results were that the Company was required to have a public sale of pelts in London between two and four times a year. The sale would take place by auction, and the pelts were required to be sold in relatively small quantities, a requirement requested by the small hat makers who wanted access to the Hudson Bay furs. The pelts were sold at candle auctions, a way of setting the closing of the bids. The highest bidder at the moment a candle, lit at the outset of the auction, went out would win the lot. [10] It is a testament to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s almost immediate and growing importance to the fur trade that the industries of England were so quickly affected. In terms of volume, the Company produced a steady stream of desirable pelts that kept English manufacturers, as well as their competitors, busy. While much can be said about the company’s decisions regarding trade post locations, commitment to quick turnaround times for ships heading to England, and the credit made available to traders who worked to make contact with Native groups, it is the Native groups that came to the trade posts seeking goods that delivered the actual goods that the rest of the world desired. Much of the history concerning early trade relations with the Natives of the region relies on manufacturing records and correspondence since neither the early French traders nor Native groups maintained written histories or records of their transactions.[11] Rather than painting the tribes who traded with the English and French simplistically as victims being cheated or taken advantage of, Carlos and Lewis focused on this correspondence to reveal the Crees, Assiniboine, Dakotas, and Chipewyans[12] as equal players in the supply and demand transactions taking place in both New France and in Rupert’s Land. In 1684, the York Factory post, built at the mouth of the Hayes River, was established. The post, attracting Native traders who could access it by canoe, became a major center of commerce, and therefore, an object of great desire for the French. The post was taken by the French and re-taken

by the English multiple times between the time of its establishment and 1713, when the Peace of Utrecht officially granted the post to the British. The Native populations surrounding the area remained relatively small due to the harsh weather conditions of the north and disease. It can be estimated that about 8,600 Natives, including all active tribes in the region, occupied the lands served by the York Company post.[13] For many decades, the York post functioned as a place of reception, rather than exploration. Each summer Natives arrived in small groups, ready to conduct trade. It was not until 1774, when the Hudson’s Bay Company began to establish its posts in the interior as well as along waterways, that they understood the effect independent traders were having on the fur supply. Though at first the competition was from independent traders that the British called “pedlars,” the company’s greatest competitor was the Northwest Company.[14] Because the Hudson’s Bay outposts initially concentrated efforts on trade and not exploration, it could be said that the Natives exerted greater control over the actual trade process than the Europeans, who were eventually frustrated with the wait and ventured out themselves to create further trade opportunities.

A depiction of trade with Natives at a post Trade was not only an economic exchange, but also a social one. Native groups liked the formality and ceremony of a pre-business gift exchange. Here, the Native trade leader and the governors of the post would meet outside following an announcement by initial Native gunfire and a response of cannon and flag-raising by the fort. The Native leader was often presented with a suit of clothing and his fellow traders with food goods and tobacco. In return the governors would be presented with pelts. After additional ceremony, actual trade took place at the post’s warehouse, where the Native leader would enter for negotiations.[15] The rest of the Native

traders were to remain outside, trading through the post’s windows while they waited for their leader to emerge. The Metis people, later one of the three recognized aboriginal groups in Canada, were an Native group that came from marriages between French traders and Native women, but Scotch and English cultures were also heavy influencers among the Metis. The term comes from a Latin word for “to mix” and originally referred to the children of these relationships. The Metis would grow to become a major intermediary between the governors of Rupert’s Land and the Native traders with the Company, and after 1800, “considered themselves a separate nation, different from other people, including the Natives and the French.”[16]

A Metis trader As trade developed in Rupert’s Land, a medium of exchange became desirable. When officers of the Company or traders met up with Natives

who had furs to trade, a post was not always nearby and the goods desired by the Natives might not be in stock in that post. A system of coinage, then, was developed that would not only allow the Natives to be “paid” for their pelts immediately, but also allow them to spend the money later. The first coins were made of ivory, wood, or shell and were known as Made Beaver coins. The name came from the idea that the value of one coin corresponded with the price of a perfect adult beaver pelt, which simplified trade and relieved the load of goods that traders would need to carry on their person. Now that purchases could be made later, the pelt portion of the transaction could carry on while the Natives saved their money for a convenient time to buy. So widely used were the coins that goods eventually became known as having a value in Made Beaver (MB). Brass and aluminum tokens eventually replaced the wood, shell, and ivory, and eventually, Fox coins came to replace Beaver coins. Not only did the Hudson’s Bay issue coins, but their competitor, the Northwest Company produced its own Made Beaver coins. As with any tool that makes transactions easier and faster, the Made Beaver coins not only regulated the fur trading industry and its prices, it also provided stability for many of the tradesman who had a standard of value when conducting transactions.[17] The fur trade had its tensions, but for many years, traders and Natives worked out their own systems, times, and traditions, allowing many different groups to interact and even compete without issues that led to war. Though Native groups sometimes found themselves in conflicts based on long-standing rivalries or relations with the Europeans, most of the fur traders, the trappers, the Natives, and Company officials lived peaceably. The great amount of distance from one another in this land of millions of miles likely helped to alleviate tensions. When a new vision for the Hudson’s Bay came about, one where settlers, not itinerants, would be responsible for the colony, the rules changed. An investor and philanthropist, Thomas Douglas, the fifth Earl of Selkirk, had traveled the Scottish Highlands and seen the losses of farmers and farmland to the new sheep industry. He embarked on a mission to colonize Canada with these displaced persons, forming colonies in Prince Edward Island and Baldoon in 1803 and 1804. In this endeavor, he considered the work of James Oglethorpe in the settlement of a colony in the Americas:

Georgia.[18] Douglas’ largest project, however, would be the settlement of the Red River Colony, which Selkirk called Assiniboia.[19] As early as 1802, Douglas had begun to lobby the Hudson’s Bay Company to help create a settlement “for the purpose of relieving Irish distress and Highland misery.”[20]

A 19th century depiction of company traders in a canoe

Douglas Convinced that his past success could be repeated at the mouths of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, Lord Selkirk joined with two of his brothersin-law and heavily purchased Hudson’s Bay Company stock. The Company, now dealing with a major stockholder, gave Douglas 116,000 acres of land on which to settle. The land was located at the mouth of the Red River “extending from the height of land in the south to midway up Lake Winnipeg, and from west of Lake Winnipegosis in the west to the Lake of the Woods and the Winnipeg River in the east.”[21]

A Hudson’s Bay Company trading post near Lake Winnipeg Douglas’ vision, unlike the fur-dominated dreams of many, was for Assiniboia, or Red River Settlement, as it was sometimes known, to be an agricultural settlement. The Scot farmers would apply their ingenuity and experience of working under difficult circumstances to the Canadian soil, providing food to the fur traders throughout New France and the British holdings as well as a place for British fur traders to become employed after leaving the fur trade.[22] In 1885, many years after Red River’s establishment, Professor George Bryce described for the Manitoba Historical Society just what Red River represented to many who lived and worked in the Canadian wilderness: “The fur trader on the Mackenzie River looked to it as his probable haven of rest when he should have finished his days of active service and have retired; the half-breed hunter of the plains thought of it as the paradise to which he might make his annual visit, or the place where he might at last settle, while the Kildonan settler boasted that there was no place like his ‘oasis’ in the Northwest wilderness, and that the traveler who had tasted the magical waters of Red River would always return to them again.”[23]

Lord Selkirk was critical of the Dutch, as well as French men who had intermarried with the Natives. He believed that the hard-working Scots would benefit the region with their disciplined approach to life and work. In an 1807 report to the House of Lords, Douglas argued that more British colonies would benefit both the Scot settlers and the British Empire. By this time there were some in Britain who criticized the colonies, believing them to be a drain on resources, a competitor in businesses, and a hopeless endeavor since it was thought the United States would very likely take over the British colonies and reap the benefits for themselves. Lord Selkirk insisted that this last point was avoidable if the colony were well-planned and populated with the right people.[24] In calling for support of Scottish emigration to Canada, he claimed that the best defense against British rivals was not in the military, but “much more from the disposition of the colonists themselves.”[25] He decried the number of Americans that had come to the region and suggested “it is evident what important services may be derived from such a body of settlers as the Highland emigrants would form. It is not merely from their old established principles of loyalty, and from their military character, that they would be a valuable acquisition. It is a point of no small consequence, that their language and manners are so totally different from those of the Americans. This will preserve them from the infection of dangerous principles…they should be concentrated in one national settlement, where particular attention should be bestowed to keep them distinct and separate, and where their peculiar and characteristic manners should be carefully encouraged.” Settlers to the new colony were expected to pay their share, as Thomas Douglas believed strongly that the men to be helped must have ownership in the project. He had warned in his 1807 report of the dangers of granting too much land to each settler, which he said would only cheapen the value of the land in the minds of colonists. They paid 10 pounds sterling for “their transportation, 100 acres of land at 5s. per acre, and one year’s provisions.”[26] The first group of Scots arrived in 1812, having been delayed by the winter of 1811 and forced to stay at the York trading post until the spring. The initial expedition of 100 men was led by Lord Selkirk’s chosen governor, Miles MacDonnel. Some have blamed MacDonnel for a poor start to the Red River colony, claiming that he chose a poor ship with

terrible conditions. This led to a late arrival and not only a season’s delay, but enough sickness to wear down the health of the men. Others claim that representatives of a rival to Hudson’s Bay Company, the Northwest Company, were responsible for “delays caused by lack of ships, shortage of officers and men to man the ships, last minute crew desertions, pettiness on the part of the Customs officials”[27] that plagued the beginning of the journey. Whatever the actual cause of delays, what started as a group of a hundred arrivals had been whittled down to 22 by the spring departure from the York post.[28] The strongest of the group traveled a 1,300 mile stretch to reach the site of the Red River settlement. Isolation, however, was not a negative in the mind of Douglas and MacDonnel; it was the intention of both men to keep the settlement free from the “pollutants” of neighboring peoples. Douglas understood, considering his past two colonial ventures, the tough circumstances that the settlers of a new colony in Western Canada would face. In his Observations, he describes the difficult mental as well as physical demands that were placed on those arriving in the New World: “In every work he has to perform he is unpracticed, and has all the awkwardness of a novice. The settler who begins on new lands has little access to the assistance of professed artificers. He must build his own house, construct his own cart, make almost all his own implements.”[29] For both psychological and physical reasons, Lord Selkirk then argued, successful settlements located sites within a reasonable distance, so that the people of the colony could assist one another. In Selkirk’s colonies “four or five families, and sometimes more…built their houses in a little knot together…Each of them was inhabited by persons nearly related, who sometimes carried on their work in common, or, at least, were always at hand to come to each other’s assistance.”[30]These assistants, according to Douglas, should be fellow settlers, not the locals or the Americans. Therefore, by 1814, three more ships of settlers had arrived from Scotland, bringing with them some Irish, Swiss, and German emigrants as well. The colony now had close to 200 settlers.[31] This also included women and children, the first of which had arrived with a small group in 1812.[32]

MacDonnel described the land they had reached: “On the west side of the river is all plain with a belt of woods on the river’s edge of irregular depth, the east side is well wooded, oak, elm, cottonwood, ash and maple, there is no pine or cedar. The country exceeds any idea I had formed of its goodness, I am only astonished it has lain so long unsettled. With good management buffalo in winter and fish in summer are sufficient to subsist any number of people until more certain supplies are got out of the ground. The river has amply fed us and about 200 people in the neighborhood since the beginning of June. The land is most fertile and the climate most extraordinarily healthy, the fever and ague so prevalent in other parts of America is here unknown.”[33] The success or failure of the Scot’s settlement was at least partially dependent on the Northwest Company, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s rivals in the New World. Since the Northwest Company had begun transporting furs directly to Montreal, the competition between the two companies had grown intense. Part of the reason for the Hudson’s Bay Company’s willingness to grant land to Lord Selkirk was the thought that such a settlement could provide food and supplies to new Hudson Bay outposts that were being placed to compete with the Northwest Company.[34] Thus, the Northwest Company opposed Selkirk’s plan from the outset. They feared Assiniboia’s potential as a rival in trade and believed that the agricultural purpose of the new settlement would disrupt the profits and culture they had established in the area. As the settlement grew, they knew that the lands would become less wild, and feared that their rich beaver trade would diminish. Members of the Northwestern Company took the threat to their way of life seriously: “The Committee of the Hudson's Bay Company is at present a mere machine in the hands of Lord Selkirk who appears to be so much wedded to his scheme of Colonization in the interior of North America that it will require time and I fear cause much expence to us, as well as to himself before he is driven to abandon the project; and yet he must be driven to abandon it, for his success would strike at the very existence of our Trade.”[35] For his part, MacDonnel made clear that he considered the Northwest Company’s trading posts on the property of Hudson’s Bay lands, and

therefore subject to his governance.[36] In an attempt to both isolate his own settlers from the local Metis, and to bring the Northwest Company properties under his control, MacDonnel ended the Pemmican trade between the Metis and the traders of the Northwest Company with his “Pemmican Proclamation” in January of 1814. Pemmican, a high protein food made of dried berries and buffalo meat was the mainstay of traders and hunters during the winters in western Canada. MacDonnel also confiscated many of the Northwest Company’s stores of Pemmican, claiming that it was produced with buffalo from lands that rightly belonged to Selkirk in his grant from Hudson’s’ Bay.[37] Over 400 bags of Pemmican were seized from the Northwest House and more taken from the settlement center at the Forks.[38] The tension between the rivals grew month by month. The Northwest Company sent a Scot, Duncan Cameron, to the new and at times floundering Red River Colony. Bryce describes Cameron as “clever, diplomatic, and rather unscrupulous.” He not only entertained the men of Red River, he told them of an easier and more established life further north in established Canadian cities such as Toronto. By the time Duncan’s visit was ending, only 50 men had decided to remain at Red River, the rest having abandoned their promises to the colony.[39] The remaining settlers must have been glad at the prospect of the arrival of another 100 settlers in 1815. The Northwest Company, however, was determined to destroy the Hudson’s Bay Company’s settlement and be rid of the potential rival. In an article in the Manitoba Pageant, Anne Henderson claims that the number of settlers who were able to sail from Scotland in this third group could have been much higher. Though over 700 had applied, the Northwestern Company had rented any ships that could make the passage; only one was available to those who wanted to travel to Assiniboia.[40] In the meantime, MacDonnel had been accused of theft of the Pemmican and the Northwest Company sought his arrest. MacDonnel agreed to an arrangement with Duncan Cameron. In exchange for Duncan’s leaving the colony and returning to Montreal, MacDonnel agreed to surrender and accompany him to face the charges. Now, during the departure of the colony’s governor and nearly three-quarters of its settlers, the Northwest Company attempted to finish off the Red River settlement for good. The Nor’westers, as they were called, began stepping up attacks on the Red

River Colony. They no longer stopped at simply luring settlers away, but now actively engaged in raiding Hudson’s Bay Company Posts. As the governor and deserters departed for Montreal, Nor’westers attacked Red River, trampling crops and burning buildings. They allowed the 60 settlers, who had decided to remain, safe passage to Norway House, a local post, until the next boat of settlers arrived.[41] The Nor’westers also involved the Metis in their attacks. Although the Metis had been helpful to the settlers of Red River during their first winter, they were now convinced by the Nor’westers that the men of Assiniboia would destroy their way of life if allowed to flourish.[42] In June 1816, a group of Metis and Nor’westers attacked Red River colonists and their acting governor at a point known as Seven Oaks. Cuthbert Grant, a Metis fighter, had carried out several attacks against the Red River Colony and Hudson’s Bay Company’s posts and houses in recent days as the back and forth between the rivals continued. On June 19, Cuthbert and 50 Metis and Nor’westers were moving a supply of much needed Pemmican,[43] but chose an overland route that brought them within a half mile of Fort Douglas of the Red River Colony. When spotted by the Fort Douglas lookout, Cuthbert and his men engaged in a confrontation with the Assiniboians and gunfire broke out. The Coltman report, the result of an investigation into the massacre, describes the Red River settlers’ governor as leaving Fort Douglas to confront Cuthbert without an understanding of how large Cuthbert’s force was. Several men suggested to the governor that he take one of the fort’s “great guns,” but he initially refused. All settler witnesses to the incident state that Assiniboia’s Governor Semple intended only to talk to the Metis. When asked if he was afraid of being killed or captured, he replied, "No I am not afraid, I have a paper which I will go and read to them and afterwards if they choose to kill me they may."[44] Once the Metis force could be seen and evaluated, Semple sent back for the cannon, knowing now that his men were outnumbered by more than two to one and that a few of the Metis men were in war paint. Unfortunately for the men of the Red River Colony, it was too late. Firsthand accounts indicated that Semple approached the Metis leader and, during the discussion, appeared to grab the bridle of his horse, resulting in a

scuffle and shots fired. Twenty-one Red River settlers were killed, including the newly arrived governor, Robert Semple.[45] Cuthbert went on to seize Fort Douglas.[46] The Coltman Report concluded that it appeared neither side intended an attack on the other at the initial meeting of Semple and Boucher (the messenger of the Northwest company), but that both sides had contributed to the tension through their past actions and threats. The Nor’westers and Metis fighters certainly had a natural fighting advantage over the farmer settlers of Red River, the report concludes, and therefore the number of men killed (21 to 1) is not as indicative of purposeful slaughter as it may sound. [47] Nonetheless, the incident became known as a massacre, and many in Hudson’s Bay were outraged and sought revenge against the Nor’westers. The Seven Oaks incident did not end the fighting between Hudson’s Bay and the Northwest Company, but it certainly raised awareness on the part of both companies’ leaders that changes must be made. Rather than continue to exhaust resources in rivalry and retaliation, the companies chose men to begin negotiations for a merger.[48] Hudson’s Bay had obvious and immediate advantages over the Northwest Company. As the holder of the charter to millions of acres of land, the Bay Company had the technical right of control over all the Northwest Company’s trading posts and many of their routes. Without the means to control these lands, however, this could not be counted as their greatest strength. In addition to having greater resources as an organized and chartered corporation with many investors, Hudson’s Bay Company’s best advantage was in the length of her business cycle.[49] The Hudson’s Bay Company took as little as five months to complete the journey from England and into Hudson’s Bay (where goods could be unloaded and furs purchased) and back to London. The profits from fur sales would be back in the New World within another nine months. For the Northwest Company with its interior routes and posts, the business cycle took a full year, and to see profits back at work in the New World might take three.[50] Despite its disadvantages, the Northwest Company must be noted for its innovation and grit. Unlike Hudson’s Bay, the Company had an informal start. When independent traders were denied hunting licenses from the

governor of Quebec during a Great Lakes embargo aimed at preventing American influence, traders from Montreal banded together to create new markets for their pelts. From about 1779-1783, the Northwest Company was simply a year-by-year agreement amongst nine or so small fur companies, but in 1783, it became a permanent entity.[51] The Northwest Company’s greatest asset, and why it became a serious rival despite Hudson’s Bay Company’s clear advantages, was its people. The men who operated the company were mostly Scot traders who understood the fur trade from the inside, rather than the businessman or aristocrats who operated Hudson’s Bay, most of whom had never seen Canada.[52] The Northwest Company was far more decentralized, and as it grew had developed far more interior and expensive trading posts. Despite its strengths, the Hudson’s Bay Company was “a David to the Northwest Company's Goliath, needed only to keep on fighting to have the giant collapse of his own weight.”[53] The merger of the companies was completed in March of 1821. The company would operate under the Hudson’s Bay name. Board positions were given to leading men of both companies, partners of Selkirk, and to traders, most of whom were Nor’westers.[54] In the end, “the Northwest Company lost its name and legal entity, but not before it had forced on its great competitor the mode of operation and the labor force which it had developed and by which it had flourished.”[55] George Simpson, having been associated with the Hudson’s Bay Company since he was a very young man, had served as the governor-inchief of Rupert’s Land since 1820. Now, with the two largest fur companies in the New World merging, a northern and southern governor would be appointed. Simpson was given the position of northern governor while William Williams, the more senior Company man chose the southern half of the fur country.[56]

Simpson Simpson faced a formidable task in governing the newly merged companies. Many of the now 173 trade posts that the Company now claimed had formerly been competitors. There was waste and disorganization as well as remnants of rivalry amongst post operators.[57] Simpson adopted a no-nonsense attitude that eventually developed a great respect for his leadership. First, through his “economy,” he closed unnecessary posts, eliminated poor operators, and began to promote on merit. Simpson even kept a “character notebook” where he would record his thoughts about the nature and work habits of his employees. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s profits increased greatly under his strong but quiet leadership.[58] Simpson would now govern both Rupert’s Land and Rupert’s Land West (the land starting from the Rockies and extending to the Pacific Ocean), which had also been placed under the Hudson’s Bay Company control in the 1821 re-charter. Thus, Simpson would become known as the “Little Emperor” of the North American fur industry.[59] Some have debated this title, arguing that Simpson was always kept under close control of the

London Board and that his power was quite limited. Nonetheless John S. Galbraith makes the point that, like the governors of British India, the distance and communication limitations of the time meant that Simpson was largely free to make his own decisions. He commanded the respect, but also the fear of Company officers, who rightly feared that a show of insubordination to Simpson would land them in a less than desirable location.[60] Simpson held the position of governor until 1863, when the Company was sold and Canada was formed. Until that time, the governor and officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company were responsible for the safety and even foreign policy in Rupert’s Land and Rupert’s Land West.[61] Simpson took advantage of his time to do much exploration and to extend the borders of the company’s dominance. In 1824, Simpson was sent west of the Rockies to the Columbia District, as the Company planned to expand further west. His exploration of the region as he headed to Oregon by canoe was made in record-breaking time. More records were broken in 1828, when he and a party of explorers and traders made the journey to Vancouver, British Columbia in the hopes of establishing a trade route that would prevent competition from the Americans or the Russians.[62] Though Simpson returned to England in 1830 to marry a distant cousin, his new bride found life in the Red River Colony area too difficult and she returned home. Simson’s desire to discourage trade in the region by “petty traders” reflected the Company’s determination that a rivalry like the Northwest Company never again be allowed to develop. In his desire to prevent trade between Native groups and small tradesman that did not work for the Company, Simpson would be frustrated. Some Natives, such as the Iroquois resented the Hudson’s Bay Company’s takeover of Northwest trade posts and preferred to trade with the Company’s small competitors. Others simply avoided the Company posts because the expense was necessarily higher than trading with an independent trader.[63] By the 1840s, the prices for fur pelts were depressed and the Company, to keep some of its posts profitable, found it necessary to sell goods to lumberman who came further west each year. In fact, by the start of the decade, the lumbermen had already moved west of Quebec.[64] Trade with lumberman could not sustain the Company, however, as timber prices were too volatile and the

lumberman came and went with the change in profits. Farmers had also begun to settle in the lands of Canada, a phenomenon Company officers believed was dangerous to both the local Natives with whom they had established relations and to the fur trade itself. The west and north would be, more and more, the direction in which Simpson would focus his furtrading efforts.[65] Though the Company continued to dominate Rupert’s Land, the presence of lumbermen and farmers meant that “the halcyon days of unchallenged monopoly during a wilderness would never return.”[66] At one point, the Company itself sought to discourage the westward movement of lumbermen by entering the timber trade. This resulted only in the destruction of the forests in the lands surrounding their posts near Timiskaming, but financial losses and little discouragement to the lumberman who returned the following year to continue their movement westward.[67] As a company interested in trading goods that would put them at the best advantage, the Hudson’s Bay Company had engaged in trading alcohol with the Natives from early on. The trade in alcohol was profitable, but also damaging to the Natives with whom the Hudson’s Bay Company did business, as well as to the British traders and their posts. Simpson described the Natives as “tormenting us for liquor,” while others described liquor-fueled parties that kept traders awake and at times ended with destructive behavior.[68] The Jesuit priests agreed, describing the effects of drunkenness: “every night is filled with clamours, brawls, and fatal accidents, which the intoxicated cause in their cabins… it is so common here and causes such disorders, that it sometimes seems as if all the people of the village had become insane, so great is the license they allow themselves when they are under the influence of liquor.”[69] It was undeniable, however, that alcohol, first used as a gift and later as an item of trade, had become a greatly desired necessity for the Natives. When they were met with limits placed by Company policy (whether Northwest or Hudson’s Bay), they sometimes took their pelts elsewhere. Brandy and rum as items of trade were so common that they had a fixed price at some posts. In 1744, for example, the Hudson’s Bay Company was willing to part with one gallon of brandy for four beaver pelts. In 1753, the Company traded 864 gallons of brandy for fur pelts![70]

The trade in liquor grew, not slowed, during the years in which Hudson’s Bay Company competed with the Northwest Company.[71] Once the companies were merged, an 1825 regulation issued by the Company stated that the “use of spirituous liquor would be gradually discontinued.” Simpson was said to personally oppose the sale of liquor to the Natives though the company at times certainly still engaged in its sale. Some Natives resisted the measure, though a good amount of alcohol continued to be traded for some time. As Natives sought materials and ingredients to make liquor at home from their trading partners, the effects of alcohol continued to take their toll on the Natives.[72] As one historical observer put it, “They (the Cree) were formerly a powerful and numerous nation…but they have long ceased to be held in any fear…This change is entirely attributed to their intercourse with Europeans; and the vast reductions in their numbers occasioned, I fear, in a considerable degree, by the injudicious introduction amongst them of ardent spirits.”[73] With the decline of the availability of furs and the diminished profits of the Hudson’s Bay came the Company’s increased insistence that their charter to the lands be respected. Their attempts to enforce their monopoly over the fur trade in the Red River area, however, met with major resistance from the Metis. Claiming that the lands had been taken from the rightful ancestral claimants by an illegitimate charter, the Metis challenged the Hudson’s Bay claims regularly and attracted the attention of the Company leadership. Metis leadership was in regular contact with the Americans, and had threatened to leave the area and become a part of the Iowa territory. Their petitions for recognition also reached Queen Victoria herself. At this point, Simpson sought to capitalize on the fears and resentment that many Britons had about the disputed lands in a faraway part of Rupert’s Lands in the Northwest —Oregon country. Claiming that the same principles that applied to that region could be seen at Red River Colony — that the settlement was under threat from American influenced Metis— he called for British troops to be sent to Assiniboia to reinforce the Company’s monopoly and authority. This had the added advantage of increasing business for the trade posts there, which were now surrounded by British fighting men in need of supplies.[74]

A year later, the Company decided that the Metis leader, Pierre-Guillaume Sayer, should be brought to trial for violating the Company’s restrictions by continuing to engage in the fur trade.[75] The charges were considered by a court surrounded by over 100 Metis fighters awaiting the verdict. Though Sayer was found guilty, the court recommended “mercy” and the charges were then dropped, much to the rejoicing of the Metis, who fired their guns into the air in a show of triumph and bravado. With such outward displays of confidence by a once-cowed people, the era of the Hudson’s Bay Company as the unquestioned master of western Canada had come to an end. For the Metis, too, it was a time of change. Though they were more forceful than ever in claiming their traditional and spiritual rights, they found that the Red River area could no longer support their families economically. Neither agriculture nor the fur trade could provide the cash flow that the buffalo economy now promised, and so, the Metis began to abandon Red River for other settlements more conducive to the new way of life.[76]

The American Fur Trade Era Once the US achieved independence, the new nation acted quickly to consolidate control over the area between the Appalachians and the Mississippi Valley, including the Great Lakes. The region south of the Great Lakes and west of the mountains was effectively cleared of beaver in the 1700s, save a few isolated places. The first great American entry into the West was the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803-06. They kept journals, carefully noting what the country had to offer, including potential resources like plenty of beaver and other fur-bearing animals. Among the first people to act on Lewis and Clark’s information was John Jacob Astor (1763-1848), a German immigrant to New York City who quickly became a dominant figure in the American fur trade.

Astor

At the age of 17, John Jacob Astor moved to London to work for his eldest brother, George, a manufacturer of musical instruments. Three years later, he departed for the U.S. to seek his fortune, in possession of a few flutes and $25.00. Arriving at the port of Baltimore, he soon migrated north to New York City to join his brother, Henry. In 1785, he married Sarah Cox Todd, with whom he would raise seven children. In the following year, one decade after the signing of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, Astor established his first fur shop, often going into the wilderness himself to guarantee that it remained well stocked. Within a few years, he found his calling in the larger fur and shipping trades, aptly demonstrating an intent to go well beyond the status of a provincial merchant. “Astute and pragmatic,” the ambitious and at times ruthless Astor owned more than a dozen ships by the turn of the century. Not yet having reached the age of 30, he was already trading in China for tea, opium, and a number of other products not native to the American continent. Astor’s imagination concocted and perfected the vision of a multidirectional flow of trade, with products crossing the continent from New York to Oregon, where he had already purchased property by 1806. The fur products would be sent on to several eastern points. Return trips would bring all manner of exotic Asian products to eastern American and European cities. On the periphery were numerous tribes of the Pacific Northwest, furnishing Astor’s company with furs in return for cheaply obtained blankets and beads. Similarly, an additional source of beaver, otter, and other fur-bearing animals was to come from Russian America (presentday Alaska) through Archangelsk (now the city of Sitka). The Russians greatly preferred American business to that of European enterprises and were particularly hopeful that Britain would be pushed out of the region due to political strife between the two countries. In addition to carefully building his companies, Astor watched the competition with a keen eye and learned a great deal from the establishment of Britain’s trading companies. The personnel of the various fur companies in the New World often kept close company. In the unpopulated wild, they depended on one another as protection against isolation and even collaborated in some circumstances. However, Astor wanted a monopoly on the Pacific Northwest, where all trade with the Natives could be carried out

through one company. To accomplish that, he had to accelerate Jefferson’s thinking and begin the process quickly. Astor had invested in several trading voyages to China in the 1790s. Though there would typically be several investors per voyage, sharing expenses, risks, and profits, he financed voyages himself, as well, as he was already a wealthy man. His main interest in the fur trade was the demand for furs in China, though the furs he sold in London still went into hats. Astor became interested in the potential of fur resources in the Pacific Northwest, partially due to his ambition to sell furs to China, rather than transport them to London. Carrying furs from the Northwest coast to China meant that the pelts would not have to be carried across a continent or transported around Cape Horn. John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company is a main American entry in the fur trade, formed in 1808. Part of his vision was a post in the Pacific Northwest to acquire furs for the China trade, while another part of his plan was to dominate the trade in the Great Lakes region. The upper Great Lakes still held populations of fur-bearers despite the ongoing settlement that saw Ohio becoming a state in 1803. Astor sent a ship, the Tonquin, around Cape Horn to set up an American Fur Company post at the mouth of the Columbia River, named Astoria. He envisioned a kind of triangular trade in which his ships would take beaver, other furs, and ginseng from the Pacific Northwest to China, to trade for silks and spices, and take those to eastern North America for sale, loading up with trinkets, supplies and trade goods for the northwest in a literal global trade (Muller-Schwartze 192). The story of the Tonquin is a saga ending with extreme violence. The ship sailed from New York in 1810, with about two dozen men intended to staff the post at the mouth of the Columbia River. The Tonquin rounded Cape Horn but stopped in Hawai’i for replenishment. While there, they took on board a few “Kanaka” men, the term used for Native Hawai’ian laborers (“Kanakas” often signed on as ship’s crew and some became trappers themselves). They landed about 30 men near the mouth of the Columbia, including the Hawai’ians, and the group set about building the post called Fort Astoria.

While the fort was being built, the Tonquin sailed off to the north to do some trading with Native groups who might have furs available. They reached Vancouver Island and traded with the Tla-o-qui-aht group, but a dispute arose when a chief was disrespected, and the Natives stormed the ship, killing all but four crew members—three escaped, and the fourth was wounded and touched off the ship’s powder magazine, blowing it up with the Native raiders on board and about 100 of the raiders. The escaped sailors were found by the Natives and killed. The only survivor was an interpreter, named Joseachai, who made it back to Fort Astoria (“Tonquin”). This is probably the bloodiest incident related to the fur trade other than the savage Beaver Wars waged by the Iroquois. Fort Astoria was the first American settlement on the Pacific Coast but did not last long. The War of 1812 spelled the end of the Pacific Fur Company, and its assets were bought up by the North West Company of Montreal in 1813. The North West Company was absorbed by the HBC in 1821, which set up Fort Vancouver inland but on the Columbia River. Thereafter, the HBC dominated the fur trade in the Columbia basin (“Fort Astoria”). The American Fur Company set up posts in the Great Lakes Region and set about systematically dominating what remained of the fur trade within the United States, and a subsidiary company, the South West Fur Company, was formed to trade furs in the region. There were several other small, independent trading companies, the most formidable of which operated out of St. Louis, run by French families whose roots went back to French Louisiana days, and who had prospered under Spanish rule (Spain technically administered the Louisiana Territory until the French sold it to the Americans in 1803). The American Fur Company extended its operations and posts into the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, and by the 1820s it played an overwhelmingly dominant role in the American fur trade, bringing out smaller competitors and crushing others. However, the company’s glory days did not last long. Fashion in men’s hats had changed from beaver to silk, and the HBC had won the competition on the Pacific Coast and inland to the Rockies. Astor was alert to changes in fashion, and he left the

company in 1834, went into real estate in New York City, and became the richest man in the world in the process, while the American Fur Company experienced difficulties, split into smaller parts, and declared bankruptcy in 1842. American trappers, some of them equipped with Newhouse’s newly invented leg-hold traps, quickly dominated most of the country in the Plains and the Rockies, but not Oregon Country, coming to be known as “Mountain Men,” although they probably had a variety of names to describe themselves. There was competition in Oregon Country between the Americans and the HBC. In the 1820s, HBC deliberately embarked on an extermination policy to trap out all the beaver in the Oregon and Columbia River Basin region, leaving it a fur trading desert. The idea was to trap out fur-bearers so completely that American trappers would have no reason to penetrate the region (Muller-Schwartze 192). The majority of American trappers were employed by the fur companies, forming units, sometimes called “brigades,” under the supervision of a chief trapper to coordinate their trapping. The group offered some security and protection in the wild environment, where meetings with Aboriginals could prove fatal for both sides. There were free trappers, but even they commonly worked together. The total number of these men has been estimated to about 3,000 during the 1820-1840 period, dwindling sharply thereafter as silk replaced beaver for hats, and the beaver was close to extermination. After the collapse of the fur trade, the men served as army scouts, guides for immigrant wagon trains, and self-sufficient mountain men. The best period for American mountain men and trappers was rather brief, between 1825 and the 1840s. One unusual feature that developed was the “rendezvous” in which trappers from all over the Rockies would get together at an agreed-upon meeting ground, which necessitated a watering hole with good grazing for horses. Sites in the Green River region of what is now Wyoming were frequent. Companies hauled in supplies from bases in Missouri, and after a year’s work, trappers needed replacement traps, gunpowder, clothes, cook wear, and much more. The rendezvous was generally large, made up of hundreds of trappers and others including

Native groups, company employees to haul in trade goods, and travelers, all of whom typically came together with a kind of carnival atmosphere. They were full of friendly and not-so-friendly competitions, storytelling, dancing, music, and copious amounts of alcohol. The merchants traded for furs and skins and hauled them back to Missouri in brief, colorful events taking place from about 1825-1840. The mountain men were noted for their independence and eccentricity. Among the most famous were Kit Carson and Jim Beckwourth. Carson later became a scout for the US Army, and as an officer, led the pacification of the Navajos in 1863 and 1864, including the Navajo Long Walk that incarcerated them in Canyon de Chelly. Beckwourth was the son of a slave woman, freed by his white father, who joined a fur trading company to become a trapper. At various points in his life, he was a trapper, explorer, fur trader, army scout, and by his own account, a chief of the Crow tribe, a people he lived with for several years. Some of his adventures may have been fictional, but he is notable for his 1856 The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, Explorer, Mountaineer, Scout, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Natives. This was one of the first accounts of its kind in a genre that established the legendary West. It is also the only account of its kind by a Black Westerner. In the 1830s, HBC wrecked the American fur trade. Beginning in 1834, company representatives attended the rendezvous, offering better goods in trade for furs, cutting into the number of furs getting into American hands. HBC sent out trapping expeditions from Fort Vancouver on the Columbia, reaching as far south as today’s San Francisco (which was Mexican territory at the time). By the later 1840s, there were few American trappers west of the Rockies. There was a fur trade centered on Taos in New Mexico (also at the time in Mexican territory) briefly, but the beaver and other fur bearers were quickly trapped out. Fur traders were most interested in beaver, but they were also interested in other furs, and companies established a number of trading posts in the trans-Mississippi west, similar to the Hudson’s Bay posts. The most famous was John Jacob Astor’s Astoria in Oregon (1812), but there were others. The firm of William and Charles Bent and St. Vrain set up

Bent’s Fort in 1833 on the Santa Fe Trail, connecting Missouri and New Mexico, which is probably the most famous. Bent’s Fort was located in what is now southeastern Colorado and lasted until 1849. It was literally a fort, but it was not military. It had warehouses for trade goods and for storing furs and buffalo hides and a resident blacksmith. The fort traded with trappers and Natives, resupplying trappers with traps, guns, and gunpowder, and became a place for travelers to find rest and recreation. The firm had other posts, including Ft. St. Vrain (in northern Colorado) and Ft. Adobe (in Texas), all three of which served the same purposes. Ft. Adobe was abandoned due to Comanche hostility. The site later became known as Adobe Walls, and eventually became the site of two spectacular clashes with Natives, both of which are known as the Battle of Adobe Walls. Beaver populations in the Rockies and the Southwest and West were trapped out in a few years. The mountain man era was also brief. Wagon trains with immigrants began heading for Oregon in the early 1840s, and the Hudson’s Bay Company continued in the fur trade, but at a diminished level. The hat trade was eventually done in by silk hats and changes to fashion. In 1869, the US offered $10,000,000 to HBC to buy Rupert’s Land, prompting the British government to reclaim the HBC charter.

Plumes

An early 20th century illustration of different plumes Plumes have been items of luxury in global trade for many centuries, but the plume trade that drove many bird species to the verge of extinction was tied to women’s hats and the period from the 1860s to 1920. Though the “plume trade” is most associated with women’s hat fashions, although using plumes in hats went back centuries. The plumes and feathers

used in women’s hats came from every continent, and it had an impact on bird populations on every continent. The number of birds harvested was quite large. A catalog from a commercial sales agent offering details into the plume trade from 1864 to 1885 lists 356,359 birds from East Asia and 6,828 Birds of Paradise (Patchett). In 1902, a London auction sold 1,608 30-ounce packages of heron plumes. Each ounce represented the plumes of four herons, so each 30-ounce package had the plumes of 120 herons. This one auction represented 192,960 dead herons. The trade in Britain was worth more than 2,000,000 pounds in 1902, equivalent to about $300,000,000 US today (Patchett). Consistently valued most among the plumes were aigrettes, light and showy mating plumes of wading birds, particularly herons that are not stiff like most feathers. The American species most hunted were the great heron and the snowy egret, both of which had showy, pure white aigrettes. Other species hunted included the white ibis, the great and little blue herons, the reddish egret, the white ibis, the roseate spoonbill, and the wood stork, and between 1875 and 1885, Florida’s once huge numbers of these wading birds had almost completely vanished (Benz 227-8). Plume hunting was inherently wasteful. The most desirable plumes were from birds’ breeding plumages. For a number of species, mating and nesting occurred on large rookeries in spots relatively free from predators, such as small offshore islands in regions like Florida’s Tampa Bay, or places in swamps. There might be tens of thousands of nesting pairs of birds in a rookery who were easily shot out, and who did not flee because the nests had eggs and the young. A few hunters could wipe out a large rookery in a single day and harvest the desired feathers. The bodies were left to decompose, and young birds died of starvation or predation. Rookeries that had perhaps been used for centuries were completely destroyed in a matter of hours or a few days at the most (Davis 193). Birds might or not be skinned with the feathers on. Small birds in their might end up on a hat in entirety. In the United States, the devastation of the plume trade wiped out birds in Florida first, and then into the barrier islands and swamps in Louisiana, Texas, and Mexico (Davis 193).

The impending wipeout of many bird species was not hidden. At the time, Florida was sparsely populated but attracted tourism based on fishing, and fishers were quite aware of the consequences of the plume trade, as were what might be called outdoorsmen—affluent people (mostly but not all men) who traveled all over the country to sample natural attractions. One of these was Edward Avery McIlhenny, grandson of the inventor of Tabasco sauce. The family owned an island in Lousiana, called Avery Island, once a plantation that produced salt and sugar that had come into the family’s ownership. Having become concerned at how few herons were left, Edward McIlhenny set up a breeding program on the island and prohibited hunting. The breeding program proved spectacularly successful, and Avery Island became a nature preserve and remains so today. McIlhenny might have saved the snowy egret from extinction (Davis 195-97). Several other areas dedicated to conserving the birds were set up, outraging hunters at the limitation to their livelihood, and at least three wardens hired to patrol these conservation areas were murdered by plume hunters (Davis 208-09). It was not only wading birds that were killed for their feathers, and any bird with especially notable colors might wind up on a fancy hat worn in Paris, Rome, Moscow, Berlin, or Philadelphia. Over time, an estimated 30,000 to 80,000 skins of various species of birds of paradise were exported from New Guinea and the Moluccas (Kirsch). The first available plumes from birds of paradise were not part of a trade, but simply surplus feathers from natural history collections, which milliners preferred because they had been arsenic-cured. Millinery interest in the feathers from these exotic birds dates to 1825, but they were intensely exploited after the 1880s (Swadling) The trade had political complexities. Several governments were concerned after the millinery industry started buying bird of paradise plumes. The birds are native to Australia, New Guinea, and adjoining islands; the western half of New Guinea was a Dutch colony; the northeast section of the island was under German control; and the Southeast portion

was under British/Australian control. The island had little to offer in the way of tax-producing export commodities, so the impulse was to regulate traffic in plumes rather than prohibit it, but under pressure from conservationists, Australia prohibited the trade in 1909. The Dutch established a license and hunting season, allowing only adult males in full plumage to be taken. There are dozens of species of birds of paradise, but the plumes from a few species were most valued, and eventually decimated (Swadling). The peak of the plume trade coincided with the rise of conservation in both Britain and the United States, and the ugly reality of the trade angered a number of activists. Among the consequences of increasingly strident controversy over the trade was the foundation of the American Ornithological Association (AOU) in 1883 and the formation of the Audubon Society. Both the AOU and Audubon featured memberships including ornithologists, conservationists, and a large number of local female activists. Audubon founded a successful and influential magazine whose first issue featured a savage attack on women wearing these kinds of hats (Benz 228). The heyday of ladies’ feathered and plumed hats was quite short when compared to centuries of beaver hats, but it was concentrated from about 1860-1920. The fashion was generally confined to Europe and North America, although it also apparently showed up in Australia and perhaps Japan. Feathers had become popular as an item of a woman’s personal adornment—in hair, but not in the form of hats--in the years before the French Revolution of 1789. Marie Antoinette, the story goes, wore feathers in her hair at a court gala, and received compliments from her husband, Louis XVI, king of France (Swadling). The court quickly developed fashions using feathers, and its influence on fashion saw the use of feathers as adornment spread throughout Europe. The Revolutionary Era moved away from the court as a trend-setter, and trends moved to a simpler style. After Napoleon's defeat and the restoration of the French monarchy, there was a long-term trend to more and more elaborate hats, using primarily ostrich plumes (Doughty 17).

While hats were the main item of fashion, there were other fashions that also used feathers. Earrings were sometimes made from the feathers and the beaks of hummingbirds. Feathers also sometimes decorated muffs (Serratore). Another fashion—the "maribou", a lady's fan—also used feathers, favoring maribou feathers (hence, the name) but also using feathers from peafowl, pheasant, or pigeons, often mounted in tortoiseshell bases (Doughty 18). The most desired plumes were the great white heron's aigrette feathers, breeding season feathers that are typically ten to 18 inches long. They do not have as many barbs as normal feathers (barbs are what keep feathers stiff), so they are supple and move as the bird—or hat—moves (Doughty 10). The feathery hat craze intensified in the 1870s. At first, readily available feathers and plumes were used, including peacock and peasant, but then fashion moved on to more elaborate hats and more exotic feathers. In the 1880s, hats became wider at the brim and were able to support more decoration. In the 1880s and 1890s, hats grew in height and width and became increasingly elaborate. A quite flamboyant style called the "Gainsborough" emerged (Benz 227), inspired by the paintings of Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), who painted portraits of the rich, famous, and powerful and showed women with elaborate hats, full of plumes. In 1886, The American Ornithological Union estimated that 5,000,000 million birds had been killed for their hat feathers (Nichols 288). During the first two decades of the 20th century, women’s hats were frequently decorated with large, sweeping feathers, often dyed in a range of bright colors. Some hats featured entire stuffed birds of paradise. World War One shut down the trade, and fashion was subdued as luxury was seen as indulgent in a time of war. The trade and the manufacture of elaborate hats resumed after the war, but the plumes were largely from farmed ostriches, and fashion soon turned to smaller hats, befitting a decade in which women often opted for short, bobbed hair (Blum 12). Hats included not only feathers but sometimes entire stuffed birds, lizards, and mice. The stuffed birds were sometimes accompanied by real moss,

sticks, and twigs. It is safe to say that during the first years of the 1900s, hats became particularly extravagant (Benz 227). New York hatters copied the latest Parisian fashions, sometimes under license. At least 20 establishments in New York sold facsimile copies of Parisian originals. Amazingly, fake labels of fashionable French brands could be purchased in bolts of 100,000 labels imported from France (Blum 10). Workers in the millinery trade making hats in New York were largely women, particularly Italian immigrant women, who might earn $2.50 per week (Serrafore). The mainstay of the plume trade for much of the era was ostrich plumes from wild African birds, but by the mid-1860s, ostriches were being farmed in South Africa to support the market and the decline in wild populations. Even though other varieties of feathers flooded in, ostrich feathers remained popular, but they faded after the Boer War (1899-1902) destroyed the farms. This put still more pressure on the remaining populations of wild birds (Doughty 18). The millinery industry made (and still makes) hats. The term originated centuries before when some refugees from Milan (in Italy) settled in England to practice their trade. The specialties required both dexterity and skill, and the majority of workers were women. In 1900, there were about 83,000 people in the US—mostly in New York City—involved in the making and decorating of women’s hats, many of them women (Doughty 27). The American millinery trade got much of its material from Paris and London, main centers of plume and feather processing. We often use the expression "light as a feather," but the sheer literal weight of feathers involved in the hat trade is surprising. Between 1870 and 1920—not counting ostrich feathers—the US imported about 20,000 tons of ornamental feathers (Doughty 25). That the plume trade harmed bird populations was evident early on. The writer Harriett Beecher Stowe, famed for the abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published an anti-plume trade book titled Protect the Birds in 1877.

Shortly after that, in 1887, 23-year-old Frank Chapman joined the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Chapman was a widely known, prolific, and influential author and one of the first professional American ornithologists, funding the publication that became Audubon Magazine (Allen). Later in life, he spent two afternoons walking uptown Manhattan on an ornithological observation trip, observing feathers on hats. He counted 542 plumed hats with feathers representing 174 species of birds. Some of those hats had only plumes while some had the entire bird, including the wings, head, feet, and tail, all on a fancy hat (Davis 194). The debate sometimes had a churlish side, condemning women as creatures easily manipulated by the fashions of the day and women’s fashions as frivolous and a waste of money. One approach consciously used would appeal to what was considered a maternal instinct, emphasizing that hunters slaughtered adult birds for their feathers, leaving their chicks to starve and the eggs to rot in the sun. Another male concern was that hunters destroyed bird species for the frivolity of fashion, which gave ammunition to people opposing all hunting (Davis 202-04). The millinery trade fought back. It was an important industry in New York City, Paris, and London, and in the US, the industry claimed that abolishing the plume trade would put 20,000 people out of work (Benz 229). The National Millinery Association argued that feather fashions were legal, that hat making was an honorable profession, and that restricting trade would destroy a multimillion-dollar industry and throw many out of work (Davis 209). The claim was actually true, and perhaps an underestimate. It has a contemporary ring in the argument of environmental regulations versus jobs. In 1900, the US passed the Lacey Act, outlawing interstate commerce in feathers and birds protected in at least one state. In 1913, the US Federal Tariff Act included prohibitions on some types of imported plumes (Blum 14). A decisive event came in 1906, when Queen Alexandra of England declared that she would no longer wear the plumage from wild birds (Blum 14). Her opinion carried a good deal of authority in the world of fashion,

but it hardly ended the trade - she simply lent another powerful voice to the debate. In 1911, New York passed legislation called the Audubon Plumage Bill, which banned the sale of the plumes of native birds (Nichols 291). This hit the New York City millinery industry hard, but it did not eliminate the import of plumes. The debate over the use of plume feathers was fierce. It pitted conservationists, ornithologists, and bird fanciers against feather importers, brokers, and milliners. The debate over the plume trade became sharper from the late 1880s on and involved influencing public opinion and legislators. Ultimately, the trade was ended by a combination of legislation and changes in fashion. The outbreak of war in 1914 is what finally broke the plume trade when warring nations clamped down on luxuries, and fashion became quietly innocuous regarding the pressure to conserve resources for the troops. Hats continued to be worn by the fashionable in American cities, but upon the entry of the US into the war, the same thing happened to American high fashion. Fashion changed following the war. Women still wore hats, but the trend was to simpler headgear that went along with the emerging fashion for shorter women’s hair. Finally, in 1921, Britain passed legislation outlawing the import of plumage, except for ostriches, eider ducks, live birds, and birds “ordinarily items of diet” (Blum 14); the plume trade was as dead as the birds on ladies’ hats. The trade in men’s beaver hats lasted centuries. The trade in women’s plume hats lasted some fifty years. It may be argued that there was some misogyny in the angry campaign against women’s hats.

The Legacy of the Hats The Native peoples have long since been reduced to minority populations in their own homelands, but many groups continue to thrive. In Alaska and the Canadian north, a considerable number of Native families continue to make their living from trapping and the modern market for furs, including beaver. Beaver populations have somewhat rebounded from their decimation during the fur trade, although it is nothing like their pre-trade numbers. The beaver trade for hats in the historic sense has long since passed, save for dedicated reenactors of voyageurs. These days, neither men nor women wear hats all the time. Fancy hats are seldom seen outside of particular ceremonial occasions like Britain’s Ascot and the US Kentucky Derby. Some women still wear fancy hats to church and on formal occasions, such as Royal weddings and formal dinners. Men still sometimes wear formal top hats, and some of them are heirlooms, going back to the time of the beaver trade, but neither the plume trade nor the beaver trade is actually extinct. The absolute all-time high of beaver pelts harvested was in 1981, and the 1980s averaged 660,000 beaver pelts sold per year (Backhouse 94). An online search for "beaver hats" produces thousands of hits. Beaver hats are still being made, although many of those currently offered for sale have beaver fur as a feature, rather than being made of beaver felt. An Internet search for "beaver hats" (done July 17, 2020) shows a large number of sites offering beaver hats for sale. The best beaver hats are expensive, priced in the range of $500 to $1,300. A similar search for “women’s plumed hats” produces a large number of hits, but the hats are inexpensive, feathers largely appear to be dyed poultry feathers, and it suggests that millinery with feathers has indeed vanished into the past. However, some dresses trimmed with feathers remain luxuries, with those by the designer Valentino priced in the range of $8,000 to $9,000. The ecological impact of the beaver and plume trades is still with us. Much of North America’s landscape has been shaped by beaver ponds, but beavers are not generally welcome outside of parks or national forests. Beaver dams do what they have always done, flood the area behind the

dam, which can also flood pasture land and fields, alter the flow of streams, and impact surrounding ecosystems, which is not generally welcomed by farmers, ranchers, and people with rural land. There’s a kind of irony because what makes some of the land currently valuable includes its fertility and flatness, which are both often remnants of beaver activity long ago. The plume trade has had less of a lasting impact, and populations of the exploited shorebirds have gradually recovered. Some species that were exploited still remain uncommon, including the reddish egret. Oddly, the beaver hat trade lasted for centuries but has left little behind in the way of regulations and organizations, although the Hudson’s Bay Company remains as a substantial retailer. The plume trade resulted in the founding of the Audubon Society, a major conservation and nature advocacy group in the United States, as well as legislation that is still in effect, such as the Lacey Act and the 1916 Migratory Bird Treaty. There is, however, another legacy, and it's a troubling one. Danbury, Connecticut, once advertised itself as the hat-making capital of the world, producing 5,000,000 hats a year at its peak. Danbury hat makers, like other hatters, used mercury in the process, and researchers have found high levels of mercury in sediment around the Housatonic and Still Rivers, which flow into Long Island Sound. Samples taken near an old hat factory found 67,000 ppb (parts per billion) of mercury. The levels more usually found in the region are 400 to 600 ppb (Van Patten), though major storms often stir up sediments. The impact is primarily on fish, sea life, and birds, but it could also affect people eating polluted seafood. It is likely that any location where hats were made for a substantial period of time has the same mercury pollution legacy. The once mighty Hudson’s Bay Company was eventually reduced to a retail outlet controlling stores in Canada and the US. In 2012, HBC was bought by an equity firm, though the company still has substance, owning Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord and Taylor ("Hudson's Bay Company"). John Jacob Astor’s family prospered, and generations later, his descendants remain socially prominent. His fur trade profits were invested

in property in New York City, and he achieved he greatest wealth of any American of his time. Canada has long since absorbed Rupert’s Land, but one must wonder what the United States would be like today if the Hudson’s Bay Company had accepted that 1869 American offer to buy Rupert’s Land.

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Bibliography

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Doughty, Robin. Feather Fashion and Bird Preservation: A Study in Nature Protection. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974. Feinstein, Kelly. “Fashionable Felted Fur. The Beaver Hat in 17th Century English Society.” Center for World History, 2018. humup.ucsc/cwh/feinstein/. Accessed 17 June 2020. “Fort Astoria.” Wikipedia, 2020. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Astoria/. Accessed July 18, 2020. Holloway, Tom. “How Much Did a Beaver Hat Cost?” National Park Service. Ft. Vancouver National Historic Site, 2019. nps.gov/articles/beaverhat.htm/. Accessed 3 July 2020. “Hudson’s Bay Company.” Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudsons_Bay_Company. Accessed 17 July 2020. Hudson’s Bay Company History Foundation. “Beaver Hats.” hbcheritage.ca/things/fashion/ beaverhats/. Accessed 2 July 2020. “John Jacob Astor.” Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jacob_Astor/. Accessed 18 July 2020. Kirsch, Stuart. “History and the Birds of Paradise.” Penn Museum, 2006. pennmuseum/sites/ expedition/history-and-the-birds-of-paradise/. Accessed 6 July 2020. “Mountain Man.” Wikipedia, 2020. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_man/. Accessed 15 July 2020. Muller-Schwartze, Dietland. The Beaver, Its Life and Impact. Ithaca: Comstock Publishing, 2003. National Park Foundation. “Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site.” nationalparks.org/explore-parks/ bents-old-fort/. Accessed 15 July 2020. Nichols, Steve. Paradise Found. Nature in America at the Time of Discovery. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2012.

Rich, E.E. “Russia and the Colonia Fur Trade.” The Economic History Review 7 (3), 1955, pp. 307-328. “Rocky Mountain Rendezvous.” Wikipedia, 2020. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_Rendezvous/. Accessed 15 July 2020. Ross, Frank. “The Fur Trade of the Western Great Lakes Region.” Minnesota History 19 (3), September 1938, pp. 271-307. “Rupert’s Land.” Wikipedia, 2020. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruperts_Land/. Accessed 17 July 2020. Serrafore, Angela. “Keeping Feathers Off Hats—And On Birds”. Smithsonian Magazine, 15 May 2018. smithsonianmag.com/history/migratory-bird-act-anniversary/. Accessed 6 July 2020. Swadling, Pamela. Plumes from Paradise. Papua New Guinea: National Museum, 1997. Taylor, Alan. American Colonies. The Settling of North America, New York: Penguin, 2003. “The French and Iroquois Wars 1642-1698.” United States Wars, 2020. https://www.uswars.net/french-iroquois-wars/. Accessed 7 July 2020. “Tonquin (1807, Ship).” Wikipedia, 2020. en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonquin_(1807_ship). Accessed 18 July 2020. Van Patten, Peg. “The Mad Hatter Mercury Mystery.” Wrack Lines, 2(1), 2002. Wilcox, R. Turner. The Mode in Hats and Headresses. Mineola NY: Dover Publications, 2008. Reprint of 1959 edition.

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[1]

Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis, Commerce by a Frozen Sea: Native Americans and the European Fur Trade (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 1. [2] David Ogg, England in the Reign of Charles II, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), 226. [3] Ibid., 228. [4] Warner, n.p. [5] “Charter and supplemental charter of the Hudson's Bay Company.” Hudson's Bay Company. Project Gutenberg. (Accessed 26 November 2016.) [6] Ibid. [7] Ibid. [8] Carlos and Lewis, 39. [9] Shirlee Anne Smith. "Rupert's Land" In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada, 1985–. Accessed 12 Dec., 2016. [10] Carlos and Lewis, 29. [11] Ibid., 69. [12] Ibid., 70 [13] Ibid., 72. [14] “Our History: Acquisitions: Fur Trade: The North West Company.” Hudson’s Bay Company Heritage. Accessed December 19, 2016. [15] Carlos and Lewis, 73. [16] Peter Bakker, A Language of Our Own: The Genesis of Michif, the Mixed Cree-French Language of the Canadian Métis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 28. [17] “HBC Fur Trade Tokens.” Manitoba Government Archives. [18] Thomas Douglas, Observations on the Present State of the Highlands of Scotland: With a View of the Causes and Probable Consequences of Emigration. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1805), 171-172. [19] THE LORD SELKIRK ASSOCIATION OF RUPERT’S LAND. [20] George Bryce, “The Old Settlers of Red River.” Lecture to a Meeting of the Manitoba Historical Society: MHS Transactions, Series 1, No. 19, November 26, 1885. [21] Anne Matheson Henderson, The Lord Selkirk Settlement at Red River, Part 1. Manitoba Pageant, Autumn 1967, Volume 13, Number 1. [22] THE LORD SELKIRK ASSOCIATION OF RUPERT’S LAND. [23] George Bryce. [24] Thomas Douglas, 158-9. [25] Ibid., 160.

[26]

Anne Matheson Henderson. Ibid. [28] “Red River Colony”, Education Scotland: Scots and Canada. Accessed December 17, 2016. [29] Ibid., 183-184. [30] Ibid., 198. [31] George Bryce. [32] Anne Matheson Henderson. [33] Ibid. [34] Michel Hogue, Metis and the Medicine Line: Creating a Border and Dividing a People (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 25. [35] W.B. Coltman Report Transcription. Library and Archives Canada. September 30, 2016, 184-186. [36] “Red river Colony.” [37] Ibid. [38] C. Stuart Houston and Mary I. Houston, “Manitoba History: The Sacking of Peter Fidler’s Brandon House, 1816,” Manitoba History, Number 16, Autumn 1988. [39] George Bryce. [40] Anne Matheson Henderson. [41] C. Stuart Houston and Mary I. Houston. [42] Michel Hogue, 25. [43] Joe Martin, “Conflict at Red River: Collision at Seven Oaks.” Manitoba Historical Society, 1994. [44] W.B. Coltman Report Transcription, 202. [45] Ibid. [46] Robert Coutts and Richard Stuart, ed. The Forks and the Battle of Seven Oaks in Manitoba History. Manitoba Historical Society, 1994. [47] W.B. Coltman Report Transcription, 222. [48] Our History: Acquisitions: Fur Trade: The North West Company. Hudson’s Bay Company Heritage. Accessed December 19, 2016. [49] Ibid. [50] Ibid. [51] Ibid. [52] Ibid. [53] W.L Morton. “The Northwest Company: Pedlars Extraordinary.” Minnesota History, Winter 1966, 164. [54] “Our History: Acquisitions: Fur Trade.” [55] W.L. Morton, 165. [56] “Sir George Simpson.” Hudson’s Bay Company Heritage. Accessed December 19, 2016. [57] Ibid. [58] Ibid. [59] John S. Galbraith, Hudson's Bay Company, 1821-1869, Volume 1. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), 18. [60] Ibid. [61] Ibid., 23. [27]

[62]

“Sir George Simpson.” John S. Galbraith, 24. [64] Ibid., 33. [65] Ibid. [66] Ibid., 35. [67] Ibid., 34. [68] James Burgess Waldram, Ann Herring, T. Kue Young. Aboriginal Health in Canada: Historical, Cultural, and Epidemiological Perspectives. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.), 169. [69] James Burgess Waldram, Ann Herring, T. Kue Young, 170. [70] Ibid., 169. [71] Ibid., 171. [72] Ibid., 172. [73] Ibid., 171. [74] Michael Hogue, 47. [75] Ted D. Regehr, “Pierre-Guillaume Sayer Trial”. Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. University of Nebraska, 2011. [76] Hogue, 48. [63]