Highlights Archives
Beads and Beavers — the Fur Trade in Wisconsin
On Saturday, November 19, former state archaeologist Bob Birmingham will discuss the role of glass beads in French, English and American fur trade with Native Americans at the Wisconsin Historical Museum on Madison's Capitol Square. Come discover the various types of beads and how they were incorporated into Native American material culture, then go upstairs to see examples of beads and other goods used in the fur trade.
From 1650 to 1850 Wisconsin's economy revolved around beavers in the way that today's revolves around oil. Hats made from water-resistant beaver pelts were the perfect protection from Northern Europe's inclement winter weather and became immensely popular in the 17th century. Anyone who could supply beaver skins to cities in Europe could grow rich. Merchants in Montreal, therefore, imported products that Indian hunters wanted, and demanded beaver skins in return. Imported trade goods included metal knives, awls and kettles, steel flints for starting fires, guns and ammunition, alcohol (which, though officially prohibited, was supplied steadily through the black market), woven woolen blankets, and porcelain beads for jewelry. These would be shipped into the interior for storage in regional warehouses in settlements such as Michilimackinac, on the strait between Lakes Huron and Michigan, and then redistributed to smaller trading posts at Green Bay, Prairie du Chien, and LaPointe on Madeline Island. For two centuries following the first fur traders' arrival, Wisconsin played a central role in this multinational commerce.
The effect on Indian communities was dramatic. Father Louis Hennepin noted in 1680 that Indians he visited in the upper Mississippi region were using clay pots, stone tools, and bows and arrows. Ten years later trader Nicolas Perrot, traveling in the same area, found that these had been entirely replaced by brass kettles, iron axes and firearms. By the early 18th century, most of Wisconsin's Indians tended their cornfields with hoes of iron instead of stone or bone, dressed in cloth garments more often than deer skins, lit fires with steel flints, made jewelry of porcelain, silver, bronze and copper shipped from France, and pursued game with firearms rather than bows and arrows. French missionaries accompanied the traders, but corruption on the fur trade frontier was rampant; most residents and leaders in Indian communities nevertheless maintained their traditional customs and beliefs while simultaneously embracing imported technology to carry out daily tasks.
As the decades passed, British officials and merchants in Montreal replaced French ones, and ultimately American companies took control. By then the fur trade was declining, as the most profitable fur-bearing mammals had been largely excised from the Upper Mississippi region. But also by then, many of our state's modern cities had begun their lives as fur trading posts, including Green Bay, Milwaukee, Portage and Prairie du Chien.
View pictures of fur trade people and places at Wisconsin Historical Images, come hear Bob Birmingham's talk on November 19, and stay to browse the museum's "Era of Exchange" exhibit.
:: Posted November 17, 2005
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