Many former Métis buffalo hunters attempted land claims during treaty negotiations in 1879-1880. Meanwhile, they were reduced to squatting on Native American land and collecting bison bones for $15 to $20 a ton in order to buy supplies for the winter. The reserve system did not guarantee that the Métis were protected and accepted as Indians. To further complicate matters, the Metis had a dubious status as citizens and were often considered incompetent to make statements in court and were denied the right to vote. [106] For many Métis, the end of the bison trade was the end of the fur trade. This meant that they had to restore their identity and adapt to a new economic world. The miner and his role in Western history have been overshadowed by myths. The image of the lone trapper saying goodbye to “civilization” and boldly plunging into the wilderness to encounter grizzly bears, harsh winters, mountain lions and American Indians has captured the imagination of millions of people. Deprived of its romanticism, the fur trade was a difficult activity and its workforce was as overworked, underpaid, and submissive as any other profession of the nineteenth century. Burdened by the strains of their livelihoods, few trappers remained in business beyond the age of forty.
Native Americans traded for centuries along the waterways of present-day Minnesota and across the Great Lakes before europeans arrived in the mid-1600s. Nearly 200 years later, Euro-American traders traded industrial goods with Native Americans for valuable furs. We have much less information about French trade. It is reported that the French traded similar items, although due to their higher transportation costs, the furs received and the goods traded tend to be higher relative to weight. Europeans, it can be noted, did not provide food for trade in the eighteenth century. In fact, the Indians helped supply the posts with fish and poultry. This role as a food supplier increased in the nineteenth century, when groups known as the “Cree of the House Guard” lived around the posts; Pemmican, provided by indigenous peoples, also became an important source of food for Europeans involved in buffalo hunting. The Metis would build an entire economic system around the bison trade. Entire Métis families participated in the production of dresses, which was the driving force behind winter hunting. They also sold pemmican to the posts. [102] Unlike the Indians, the Métis depended on the fur trading system and were subject to the market.
International awards for bison robes have had a direct impact on the well-being of Métis communities. In contrast, local Indians had a more diverse resource base and were less dependent on Americans and Europeans at the time. The North American fur trade, an aspect of the international fur trade, was the acquisition, trade, exchange and sale of animal fur in North America. Aborigines and Indians from different parts of present-day Canada and the United States traded with each other in pre-Columbian times. Europeans have participated in trade since their arrival in the New World, extending the scope of trade to Europe. The French began trading in the 16th century, the English built in the 17th century. At the same time, the Dutch traded in New Netherland. The fur trade in North America reached its peak of economic importance in the 19th century and involved the development of sophisticated trade networks. He has been the subject of various books and films, from James Fenimore Cooper to Irving Pichel`s Hudson`s Bay of 1941, from the popular Canadian musical My Fur Lady (music by Galt MacDermot) of 1957 to documentaries by Nicolas Vanier. Unlike the “narrative of Canada as Hudson`s Land,” which is propagated both in popular culture and in elite circles such as the Beaver Club founded in Montreal in 1785,[83] the often male-centered scientific description of the fur trade does not fully describe history.
Chantal Nadeau, a communications scientist at Concordia University in Montreal, speaks of the “rural women” and “landing shens” between Indian women and European trappers[84] and the Filles du Roy[85] of the 18th century. The rugged terrain has imposed a nomadic or semi-nomadic way of life on the people who live there, as staying in one place for a long time would quickly deplete the food supply. .