Fur Production as a Specialized Activity in a World System: Indians in the North American Fur Trade

Abstract

This paper examines the economic and social impact of the fur trade on Indian cultures, in an effort to illuminate further the nature of Indian-white relations from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries. As such, the paper, which may be of interest to anthropologists, historians, and archeologists, contributes to the literature on culture contact. The Indian role in the fur trade can be described as a craft specialization. Craft specialization is often treated as an indicator of cultural complexity that develops as a response to a variety of influences. In this case, I posit the development of the activities associated with the fur trade into a specialization, resulting from Indian intensification of existing practices but stimulated by economic emoluments offered by the European market. The model for discussing this economic network draws on the work of several scholars. The fur trade can perhaps be best understood as one segment of a world-system. Wallerstein points out that even small-scale economies in remote parts of the world are often tied into international exchange networks; fluctuations in prices, supplies, and demand at the more developed end of the system (i.e., European market economies) will reverberate throughout the system. I