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Frio Point 200 B.C. to 600A.D.

Mountains of Stone

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Plainview Atlatl Point
8150-8010 B.C.

There are thirty-three historical articles on this site. The articles cover Pre-historic Indians, Anasazi and Fremont Indians, Lewis and Clark, David Thompson, Mountain Men, Plains Indians Horses, Smallpox, and Alcohol, Oregon and Mormon Trail, Martin Willey Handcart Companies, Western Expansion and Manifest Destiny to the Oregon Country and California, Forest Fires. All of the articles contain Pictures, Maps, and based on Historical Facts.

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Oregon Country Rendezvous Sites Page 1 of 3

History of the North American Fur Trade
by
O. Ned Eddins

The North American Fur Trade article is divided into nine parts:

Explorers of the Fur Trade Oregon Country
River System and Territorial Expansion Rocky Mountain Fur Trade History Trade and Intercourse Acts The Mountain Man Statistical Review of the Mountain Man Mountain Man Rendezvous Sites Battle of Pierre's Hole Fur Trade Goods

Early North America history centers around the European fur trade. North of present day Mexico, the vast territory that would become the United States and Canada was explored, wars were fought, and Indian cultures destroyed in the pursuit of the Mountain Man Indian Fur Trade. Canadian fur traders and Mountain Men in search of beaver were the major explorers of North America. In addition to the economic benefits of the fur trade, the Mountain Man Indian Fur Trade was a major factor in determining the present boundaries of the United States, especially the Pacific Northwest. Fur traders from the Mountain Man-Indian Fur Trade era not only discovered the Oregon trail, they provided the guides for America's western expansion over the Oregon Trail.

North America

Despite the European fur trade encompassing a wide variety of fur bearing animals, mountain men and the mountain man rendezvous are virtually synonymous with beaver. For well over two centuries in Britain and Western Europe the beaver hat defined style. From the early 1600s to the mid-1830s, if it was not a beaver, it was not a hat--but merely something that covered one's head (Neander97).

The glamour of the mountain man rendezvous and the search for beaver pelts by the mountain men of the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Era has obscured the “bread and butter” of the fur trade. The staples of the fur trade were the muskrat, raccoon, fox, deer hides, and later buffalo robes. At a New York fur auction, John Jacob Astor sold upwards of half a million muskrat pelts in one day. Mountaineers, Indians, and the early settlers traded these furs and hides by the millions.

For many colonial settlers, the only source of "cash money” was furs and hides. One of the early frontiersmen was Daniel Boone. Boone was one of the frontiersmen known as the Long Hunters. The principal goal of the Long Hunters was deerskin. The hide of a doe was worth fifty cents or more, depending on its size and quality. The skins of a buck brought a dollar and up hence the term "buck" as slang for currency. Small bands of hunters could bring back "several hundred, sometimes even a thousand, skins in a season. By the end of the War of 1812, the tanning industry was a twelve million dollars business (Lavender).

Mount Moran Reflection - Jackson Lake

Explorers in the Fur Trade:

The topography of Canada and the United States west of Lake Superior and north of the forty-second parallel was basically determined between 1793 and 1812. With the exception of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, fur traders from the American and Canadian fur trading companies did all of the early exploration. These fur traders were either accompanied by Native Americans or Native Americans told them about the major passes and routes through the Rocky Mountains. The fur trade map below has been altered from the original by Mike White...some of the names were removed and others were enlarged.

Fur Trade Route Map

When David Thompson arrived on the shores of Hudson Bay in 1784, the interior of North America was basically unknown. By the time David Thompson, a fur trader and a surveyor for Hudson’s Bay and then the North West Company, left the Northwest country in 1812, he had accurately plotted the main routes of travel and delineated the physical features of approximately 2.3 million square miles of Canada and the northern area of the American territories west of Lake Superior.

In 1789, Alexander Mackenzie, a North West Company partner, explored the Mackenzie River from its source to the Arctic Ocean. Four years later, Mackenzie made the first successful crossing of North America. Accompanied by Alexander McKay, six French Canadians, two Indians, and a Newfoundland dog, Mackenzie left Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca in 1793. The fur traders followed the Peace River to the Parsnip River, and then up the Parsnip to the Continental Divide. After an eight hundred and forty-step portage to a lake, Mackenzie believed that he had reached the headwaters of the Columbia River; actually it was the Frazier River. A couple of hundred miles downriver, cataracts and falls made the waterway impassable.

Carrier Indians told Mackenzie the river could not be traveled by canoe, and when two Carrier Indians offered to serve as guides, the expedition headed cross-country toward the Pacific Ocean. Reaching the Bella Colla River, the expedition followed it to the Pacific. While waiting on Dean’s Inlet for clear weather to determine the longitude and latitude, Mackenzie used vermilion in melted grease to write on the rock.

…Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by Land, the twenty-fecond of July, one thoufand feven hundred and ninety-three.

After his return from the Pacific, Mackenzie suggested to Simon McTavish, head of the North West Company, that if the Hudson’s Bay and North West joined forces they could control all of the fur trade in the Northwest country above Spanish California. Rebuffed by McTavish, Mackenzie went to England to talk with leaders of the Hudson’s Bay Company. While in England, King George III knighted Alexander Mackenzie. Before returning to Canada, Sir Mackenzie wrote a book on his travels titled, Voyages from Montreal on the River St. Laurence. Mackenzie's book was eagerly read by President Jefferson and speeded up the timetable for the Lewis and Clark Voyage of Discovery.

President Jefferson's instructions to Lewis and Clark was to make note of fur-bearing animals, to ascertain the attitudes of the native occupants to the fur trade, and, most fundamentally, to establish the most direct and practicable water communication across the continent, for the purposes of commerce. President Jefferson hoped that this route would serve as a more practical route for the fur trade than any the British could establish to the north.

Many historians and Internet writers refer to John Jacob Astor and his Pacific Fur Company as a dismal failure. In a two- and a half-year period, the Pacific Fur Company lost sixty-one men, the Tonquin, and thousands of dollars on the sell of Fort Astoria in November of 1813 to the North West Company. If this is all that you look at, it was a dismal failure, but in terms of the United States northern boundary, it was a resounding success. Within in a two-year period, the Astorians established trading posts on the Columbia, Willamette, Okanogan, Spokane, and Snake rivers. These fur trading posts, especially Okanogan, were a major factor in the State of Washington being part of the United States. The Pacific Fur Company also had a profound affect on America’s Manifest Destiny. Except for a detour in western Wyoming, the trail Robert Stuart and six Astorians pioneered from Cauldron Linn in Idaho, over South Pass, and on to St. Louis was the basic route Americans used to reach the Oregon Territory. The "dismal failure” of the Astorians provided the Oregon Trail that led to America’s Manifest Destiny for several hundred thousand Oregon and Mormon pioneers, and the California gold seekers.

The North American Fur Trade article was written by O. Ned Eddins of Afton, Wyoming. Permission is given for material from this site to be used for school research papers. Links to the Oregon Country and Rendezvous Sites are at the bottom of the page.

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Mountains of Stone contains an abridged account of the important aspects of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, as well as, some of the major Hudson's Bay and North West Company explorers. The extensive bibliography for Mountains of Stone served as background information on the articles for this website.

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Oregon Country Rendezvous Sites References