Lecture 3:
Early Relationships and the Fur Trade

 

Lecture Outline

 

Readings:

Morrison, “Newcomers” and “Fur Traders and Missionaries,” in True North, 36-61.

Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History: "Where is Vinland?" http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/vinland/home/aboutthissite/indexen.html.

Katherine L. Reedy-Maschner and Herbert D.G. Maschner, “Marauding Middlemen: Western Expansion and Violent Conflict in the Subarctic,” Ethnohistory 46/4 (1999), 703-743. [J-STOR]

Mary Black-Rogers, “Varieties of ‘Starvation’: Semantics and Survival in the Subarctic Fur Trade, 1750-1850,” Ethnohistory 33/4 (1986), 353-383. [J-STOR]

 

Further Reading:

Early Explorers

Dictionary of Canadian Biography

J.B. Brebner, The Exploration of North America 1492-1806 (1964)

W.P. Cumming et al, The Discovery of North America (1971) and The Exploration of North America 1630-1776  (1974)

S. Milligan and W. Kupsch, Living Explorers of the Canadian Arctic (1987)

S.E. Morison, The European Discovery of America (1971)

T. Oleson, Early Voyages and Northern Approaches, 1000-1632 (1963)

D.B. Quinn, England and the Discovery of America (1973)

Sources on individual explorers can be found in the extensive bibliography on the Pathfinders & Passageways website.

 

The Fur Trade

Abel, Kerry, Drum Songs. Glimpses of Dene History (1993)

Blondin, G., When the World was New.  Stories of the Sahtú Dene (1990)

Browm, J., Strangers in the Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country (1980)

Davies, G.F.K., ed., Letters from Hudson's Bay, 1703-40 (1965)

Douglas, R. and J.N. Wallace, eds., Twenty Years of York Factory 1694-1714 (1926)

Hearne, Samuel,  A Journey to the Northern Ocean, 1769-72, ed. R. Glover (1958)

Helm, J., Handbook of North American Indians, volume 7, Subarctic (1981)

Innis, H.A., The Fur Trade in Canada (1930)

Karamanski, T.J., Fur Trade and Exploration.  Opening the Far Northwest 1821-1852 (1983)

Krech, S. ed., The Subarctic Fur Trade (1984)

McCormack, P., We like this country to be free: Fort Chipewyan and the Shaping of Canadian History, 1788-1920s (2010)

Morantz, T. and D. Francis, Partners in Furs (1981)

Neatby, L.H., "History of Hudson Bay," Ch. 2 in Science, History and Hudson Bay, vol. 1 (1968)

Podruchny, C., Making the Voyageur World: Travellers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade (2006)

Ray, Arthur, Indians in the Fur Trade (1974)

Rich, E.E., The History of the Hudson's Bay Company 1670-1870,  2 vols. (1958-59)

Rich, E.E., The Fur Trade and the Northwest in 1857 (1967)

Sloan, W.A., "The Native Response to the Extension of the European Traders in to the Athabasca and Mackenzie Basin, 1770-1814," Canadian Historical Review, 60 (1979): 281-299

Tyrrell, J.B. ed., Documents Relating to the Early History of Hudson's Bay.

Van Kirk, Sylvia., Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur Trade Society, 1670-1870

Williams, Glyndur, ed., Andrew Graham's Observations on Hudson's Bay, 1767-1791

Yerbury, J. Colin, "The Nahanny Indians and the Fur Trade: 1800-1840," Musk-Ox, 28(1981): 43-57

Yerbury, J. Colin, The Subartic Indians and the Fur Trade, 1680-1860 (1986)

 

Fur Trade and the Dene - A Case Study: the Gwich'in (Kutchin/Loucheux)

Abel, Kerry, "Of Two Minds: Dene Response to the Mackenzie Missions, 1858-1902," in Interpreting Canada's North, ed. K.S. Contes and W.R. Morrison

Acheson, Ann W., "Old Crow, Yukon Territory," in Handbook of North American Indians, volume 6: Subarctic, ed. June Helm (1981), pp. 694-703.

Clark, A.F., ed., Proceedings: Northern Athapaskan Conference 1971, 2 volumes (1975)

Clifford, Wilson, Campbell of the Yukon (1970)

Hardaker, B., Missionary Contact with the Kutchin Indians of the Northern Yukon (1979)

Janes, R.R., "Culture Contact in the 19th century Mackenzie Basin, Canada," Current Anthropology, 17,2 (1976): 344-345

James, R.R. and J.H. Kelley, "Observations in Crisis. Cult Activities in the Mackenzie Basin," in Prehistory of the North American Sub-Arctic, the Athaposkan Question, Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Conference, the Archaeological Association of the University of Calgary, 1977, pp. 153-164.

Karamanski, T., Fur Trade and Exploration. Opening the Far Northwest, 1821-1852 (1983)

Krech, Shepard III, "On the Aboriginal Population of the Kutchin," Arctic Anthropology, 15 (1978): 89-104

Krech, Shepard III, "The Death of Barbue, a Kutchin Trading Chief," Arctic, 35, 3 (Sept. 1982): 429-437

Krech, Shepard III, "The Eastern Kutchin and the Fur Trade, 1800-1869," Ethnohistory (1976)

Krech, Shepard III, "Throwing Bad Medicine: Sorcery, Disease and the Fur Trade Among the Kutchin and other Northern Athapaskans," in S. Krech, III, Indians, Animals and the Fur Trade (1982)

Mishler, Craig, "Missionaries in Collision: Anglicans and Oblates among the Gwich'in, 1861-1865," Arctic, 43, 2 (June 1990):  121-126

Nelson, Richard K., Hunters of the Northern Forest (1973)

Savoie, Donat, ed., The Amerindians of the Canadian North-West in the 19th Century, as seen by Emile Petitot, volume 2: The Loucheux Indians (1971)

Slobodin, Richard, "Eastern Kutchin Warfare," Anthropologria, 2, 1 (1960): 76-94

Slobodin, Richard, Band Organization of the Peel River Kutchin.  Canada.  National Museum of Canada Bulletin, 179 (1962)

Slobodin, Richard, "Kutchin Concepts of Reincarnation," Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology, 2, 1 (1970): 67-79

Slobodin, Richard, "Kutchin," in Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 6: Subarctic, ed. J. Helm, pp. 514-532

Stewart, Ethel, "Kutchin Trade Prior to 1840," The Beaver, 310, 1 (Summer 1979): 54-58.

Ugarenko, Susan E., "The Distribution of the Kutchin and their Spatial Pattern of Trade," M.A. thesis, York University, 1979

Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation and Shirleen Smith, People of the Lakes: Stories of Our Van Tut Gwich'in Elders. 2009

Yerbury, J. Colin, "On Culture Contact in the Mackenzie Basin," Current Anthropology, 18 (1977): 350-352

Yerbury, J. Colin, "Further Notes on the Ethnohistory of the Mackenzie Basin," Current Anthropology, 19 (1978): 458-459