David A. Bainbridge - Fur War: The Political, Economic, Cultural and Ecological Impacts of the Western Fur Trade 1765–1840

Fur War

The Political, Economic, Cultural
and Ecological Impacts of
the Western Fur Trade
17651840

April 1792 Opitsaht is bombarded and burned by Captain Robert Gray destroying 200 long houses, boats, food and equipment representing thousands of hours of work.

David A. Bainbridge

Fur War: The Political, Economic, Cultural and
Ecological Impacts of the Western Fur Trade 17651840
Copyright 2020 by David A. Bainbridge

ISBN 978-1-735-1492-2-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including copying and recoding, or by any information storage and retrieval system, for commercial uses except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to D. A. Bainbridge Writer/Researcher, 7785 Tyrolean Road, San Diego, CA 92126.

Materials may be reprinted and electronically copied and
transmitted for educational purposes with credit.

Layout and text design: David A. Bainbridge and AuthorImprints
Illustration credits at back of book
Cover image by Mark Myers

Rio Redondo Press Mission: Advancing sustainability accounting and reporting, increasing sustainable management of resources and people, and protecting future generations.

Manufactured in the United States of America First Edition 2020

Contents

The Challenge of History

Working on the history of the fur trade in the West is as challenging as running treacherous rapids with a fully loaded canoe. It is not for the faint-hearted.

Events are rarely well defined or described the same way by different participants, biographers and historians. A researcher often feels that he has fallen into the famous Japanese film, Rashomn, where a violent event of feudal times is revealed through the eyes of the different participants.

Dates are often precise but may disagree by days, years, or decades. Names are very confusing as writers relied on phonetic spelling, alternative translations from foreign languages, conversations (that may have involved considerable use of alcohol); and later, dim memories of events recalled from decades earlier. Most fur trade accounts substituted simpler names for natives and many native workers ended up with four or more. Tribal names were misunderstood, mangled and confused.

The Flatheads for example, have normal head shapes, and the reason for this name is unknown, perhaps related to a hand sign. European and American men favored giving their first male child the same name and the Jr. or Sr. is rarely noted. Native people often passed the name from father to son when the father retired. Forts and outposts often had the same name or multiple names even at the same time. There were, for example, at least five Fort Williamses.

Writing in their journals at the time, the participants edited out their own worst behavior and practices. The rapes, killings, abuse and mistreatment of, and by, their employees and natives were glossed over. Slaves were taken, sold, and abused but rarely mentioned. Massacres and acts of random violence are often downplayed or left out of accounts.

I have done my best to report the most likely version of events. As a scientist I was surprised by the number of errors I have seen in other books, websites, and articles. These are often propagated across the web. In addition, there are exaggerations and embellishments made by those writing up the stories told by others in an effort to make books more salable. Several recent books have added excellent information from newly-found, or translated, original sources. The web has made original information available in ways that would have astonished a historian working just a few years ago.

For example, it is a delight to be able to search the church records of early New Orleans with just a few clicks of the mouse to find marriage information.

Prelude

Before the explorers and fur traders arrived, hundreds of thousands of people lived in the area that would be affected. Some of the highest population densities in North America were found along the coast, just as they are today. In some areas, villages reached more than 1,500 residents. Hundreds of tribes and tribelets thrived along the coast, inlets, and rivers. Life was good for most of these people in these resource-rich ecosystems.

Families could watch their children grow and have children of their own with little expectation of change. Some tribes were allies, others enemies, but most lived stable lives with little strife. Trading took place across hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of miles. Some tribes relied heavily on slaves and slave raiding affected some of the weaker tribes.

Teamwork helped harvest rich marine resources.

300 years ago.

The first visitors to the coast were almost invariably treated well by native people who were curious about these new arrivals. This would not last.

Welcome strangers!

A Cautionary Note on Names and Terminology:

Word choices can be very challenging in discussing cultural history. Most people now consider First Nations to be a better term than Indian tribe, avoiding Columbuss error. A First Nation may include many bands, tribes, tribelets or villages. Languages can be quite complex with considerable variation even within a First Nation. The Haida language was once spoken in more than 30 different dialects, but today only three remain. Much has been lost as the richness within these languages diminished.

Indian, native, aborigine, tribe, and other terms may have different but specific meanings in legislation and legal matters in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. Names and boundaries are problematic at best, and even in the well-studied areas they are often unknowable. (In some cases, only the name is known and nothing else.) Tribes and tribelets often combined after severe population and property losses. In 1857 the U.S. government created the Grand Ronde Reservation as a place for the survivors of 26 tribes and bands in the Northwest.

First Nations people today often choose to use different names than anthropologists or federal bureaucrats. Many early tribal names were determined by European invaders. Some are still used. but many First Nations have reclaimed their original names. The Kumeyaay have done an excellent job of highlighting books that more accurately portray their history (www.kumeyaay.info/books/).

For many tribes little more than the name is known. California, for example, had more than 109 languages spoken. See the map on the previous page for the tribal names we know east of San Francisco Bay. Details of their life before the invasion are often unknown. Many disappeared with hardly a trace.