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Indians 101: The effect of European metal goods in the early fur trade [1]
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Date: 2022-07-19
Many metal items, particularly knives, hatchets, and kettles, simply replaced or supplemented the indigenous artifacts made of stone and pottery. In a chapter in the Handbook of North American Indians, ethnologist T. J. Brasser reports:
“Copper kettles not only replaced pottery in daily use but were frequently placed upside down over the heads of the deceased in burial. This use of trade goods shows that they were given a traditional function in the native culture.”
Incorporating metal goods into Indian cultures often involved more than simply using them. In his book Cultivating a Landscape of Peace: Iroquois-European Encounters in Seventeenth-Century America, Matthew Dennis explains:
“While Europeans focused on the utilitarian advantages of the goods they provided, Indians viewed traded items in broader terms, considering both the supernatural and material potential of the substances they obtained.”
The European metal goods were not only used “as is,” but they were often recycled for other uses. Thus, iron pot rims were made into wedges; brass kettles were refashioned into tinkling cones; iron frying pans were used in making arrow heads, and so on. Archaeologist George Odell, in his chapter in Stone Tool Traditions in the Contact Era, writes:
“Native Americans were ingenious in their re-employment of scrap metal once it became obvious that European trade goods would not be resupplied.”
Matthew Dennis writes:
“Copper pots, for example, were dismantled for their parts and used as raw material, which could be fashioned into arrowheads, fishhooks, or amulets, rather than used as the Europeans had intended.”
The metal goods brought into the Americas by the European traders also included many small items, often described as trinkets, such as mirrors, bracelets, and rings. James Axtell, in his book Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America, reports:
“As a vehicle of vainglory, the mirror was a necessity, especially for young warriors who now had more income to spend on imported face paints, jewelry, and other finery.”
Initially, the European metal goods were considered exotic and prestige items by the Indians. But soon they became commonplace and an indispensable part of the Indian material cultures.
While the fur trade brought Indians and Europeans into closer contact and into business relationships, it also carried with it the seeds for the destruction of the traditional Indian economies and the spiritual relationship between Indians, the land, and the animals. The fur trade undercut the traditional native economies and made them more and more reliant upon European goods. At the same time, the new economy meant that Indian hunters had to harvest a surplus of deer and other animals to have enough hides for trade. This began to upset the ecology by overhunting. It also violated a spiritual relationship between the people and the animals who had spiritually given themselves to the people since before there was time.
Prior to the European invasion, Indians had viewed themselves and the animal people as equals. With the hunting for the fur trade, a new world view began to emerge: Indian men began to see the world in a hierarchical fashion in which they had dominion over the animals. In addition, this hierarchical view placed men at the top of the human hierarchy and upset the traditional, indigenous balance between men and women.
Indians 101
Twice each week—on Tuesdays and Thursdays—this series presents American Indian topics. Too often the histories of the First Nations are ignored, distorted, and stereotyped. More American Indian histories:
Indians 101: Guns in the early fur trade
Indians 101: Alcohol in the early fur trade
Indians 101: Blankets and cloth in the early fur trade
Indians 101: The eighteenth-century fur and hide trade
Indians 101: The fur trade in Washington
Indians 101: The Fur Trade in Northwestern Montana, 1807-1835
Indians 201: The York Factory and the Canadian First Nations
Indians 101: The Canadian fur trade 200 years ago, 1821
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