Material Culture and the Fur Trade

Few people think of the fur trade when they think about Native history, but the fur trade was incredibly important to both Native nations and the Europeans and Americans with whom they interacted. “Fur trade” perhaps leads people to think only furs were exchanged, but many more items were involved. In understanding what was traded, we can better understand the process of the trade network and items' significance.

“Our Bark Canoe”

There had always been established trade networks between different Native nations, and once Europeans arrived on the continent, those networks helped spread European products throughout Indian country. It was not necessary for a Native nation to trade directly with the French, the British, or other Europeans to get goods. It is clear that some Native groups “acquired European trade goods from Native American middlemen years before they encountered Europeans themselves.”¹ These middlemen were other Native nations that did have a direct relationship to European traders or a way to acquire European goods from a group that did. This helped to create cultural amalgamation between certain Native American groups. An example of this can be seen with the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). When European goods became rooted in their culture those “material goods had become increasingly utilized and repurposed to meet the needs of the Iroquois.”² Native groups did not solely use European goods, and some European goods became highly valued without being absolute necessities.

Trade Silver Earbobs

Metallic objects were highly valued to certain Native groups. For example, “[t]he Moravians found the Miami who visited in 1802 ‘ornamented all over with silver; one of them had $80 in silver of various shapes hanging on his person. Circular brooches of various sizes were the most numerous of all the trade silver.’”³ Brooches were one of the goods commonly traded during the fur trade. It is also true that “[h]ighly valued European goods were likely rare and carefully curated, and sparsely deposited through accidental lessor in special ritual circumstances (burials).”⁴ What an individual or culture found important is often apparent when looking at what people were buried with.

There are multiple burial sites throughout what we currently call the Midwest that help us determine items of significance during the fur trade. One of these sites is the Meyers burial site which is believed to have existed between 1770-1816.⁵ There, an individual was buried with bone beads, a ceramic crucifix, ceramic shards, and multiple metallic objects. Two of these objects were brooches and a single bard cross. This cross and brooches help us understand the burial in multiple ways. For example, the maker's marks from these metallic objects helps us determine the time period of the burial. At the same time they show us where some of the materials were made: Montreal. This ties back to the complex trade network that took place during the fur trade. Finally the presence of these European goods represents the cultural impact the fur trade had on multiple Native Nations.

By Alan Gallo

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¹ LaBar-Kidd, Laureen Ann. "Indian Trade Silver as Inter-cultural Document in the Northeast." PhD diss., University of Delaware, 2000.

² Evans, D. Reid, and James T. Bucki. "Cultural Amalgamation and the North American Fur Trade.” Unpublished article. Accessed May 19, 2021. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Reid-Evans/publication/335723681_Cultural_Amalgamation_and_the_North_American_Fur_Trade_Rethinking_Eurocentrism_and_Iroquoian_Material_Culture/links/5d77ab5d92851cacdb2e3972/Cultural-Amalgamation-and-the-North-American-Fur-Trade-Rethinking-Eurocentrism-and-Iroquoian-Material-Culture.pdf.

³ Rob Mann, Archaeological Excavations at the Ehler Site (12-Hu-1022): An Early 19th Century Miami Indian Habitation Site Near the Forks of the Wabash, Huntington County, Indiana, January 1996, 153.

⁴ Hamilton, Scott, and B.A. Nicholson. "The Middleman Fur Trade and Slot Knives: Selective Integration of European Technology at the Mortiach Twin Fawns Site (DiMe-23)." Canadian Journal of Archaeology / Journal Canadien D’Archéologie 31: 3 (2007): 141.

⁵ O'Gorman, Jodie A., and Kenneth B. Farnsworth. "Trade and Tradition: European Trade Goods and Late Historic Mortuary Sites in Illinois." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 30:2 (2011): 109-143.

Illustration: Laurance Oliphant, "Our Bark Canoe," in Minnesota and the Far West. Edinburgh: No Publisher, 1855. 190.

Image: Trade Silver Earbobs, Minnesota Historical Society Collections. http://collections.mnhs.org/cms/display?irn=10333658.