Calhoun & Wood 1

Joshua Wood and Jordan Calhoun

Bennett/Martin
Humanities 2: Periods 4-5/AP World: Periods 1-3
19 January 2016
Fur Trade, and the Positive Results on the Native People
Throughout most of history, trade has been a vital economic asset to all major
empires and the fur trade in North America was no exception to this trend. The opinion of
most people who have taken a history course is that the Native Americans in the 1700s
were oppressed by foreign invaders from Europe and, as everyone knows, the Europeans
brought diseases that wiped out the majority of the Native American population. The
Europeans then developed a system of hegemonic control over the remaining Natives.
Wrong; it was the exact opposite. The Native Americans had control of most of the fur
going to European traders, giving them a unique level of control over the foreigners. In
addition, new information has revealed that the foreign diseases brought to the Americas
did lead to the death toll that was previously theorized.
Supposedly, the fur trade brought disease that ravaged the entire Native
population, and thusly made the benefits of the fur trade not worth the loss of life.
However Jeanne Kay, in her article, The Fur Trade and Native American Population
Growth, disproves this. She observes that even comparing the highest post-nadir
estimates of warrior numbers for 1700-1740 with the lowest estimates for the years 18001840 still reveals an increase in the four tribes' populations (Kay 16). There are several
reasons as to why the Native population increased in the 18th century. Until the 19

th

century, there were no mass movement of Native tribes. In addition, there were very little

Calhoun & Wood 2

missionary interactions between the Europeans and the Natives, limiting the actual effect
of foreign disease on tribes. Jeanne Kay also noticed this, and states Furthermore,
accounts of disease epidemics are comparatively infrequent between 1690 and 1830,
suggesting that disease mortality diminished after the initial post-contact depopulation.
(Kay 18). It was only many years after the 1700s that disease had a massive effect on
the total population of Natives, and this was because multiple diseases hit at once! As is
evident through Jeanne Kays findings, the diseases brought to Native groups through the
fur trade did not procure as devastating of a death toll as exaggerated by most modern
historians. suggesting that the consequences of the fur trade werent as negative as first
expected.
So, now that it is established that the interactions between Natives and Europeans
through the fur exchange didnt lead to a massive population decline, the effects of this
economic interaction begin to seem less adverse. Mary C. Wright in her article,
Economic Development and Native American Women in the Early Nineteenth Century,
found that initially, control of provisions gave Native American women a crucial
bargaining power over white traders (Wright 530). The Natives control of goods desired
by Europeans helped develop the Native American hegemony over the European
economy. Without the Natives, the European economy simply would not have been as
stable, and they would have been merely a blip in the massive world economy. Mary C.
Wright agrees, stating that Native American women insured the success of the fur trade
companies (Wright 526). Evidently, the Natives had economic control over the
Europeans, and not the other way around.

Calhoun & Wood 3

To be fair, the consequences of the trade were devastating for Natives in direct
contact with European groups. However, when the whole of the Native American
population is taken into account, it becomes obvious that the effect of the fur trade was
not as drastic as presumed by generations past. The trade gave the Natives control of
Europes major source of income, and this hegemony was unique compared to any other
time in the history of the Native Americans. We urge humanity to view the fur trade not
as an attack against the Native people, but as a way to bring the Natives onto a global
stage, and become an important economic asset to the world.