Fur Trade Research Articles

Surveillance and control of SARS-CoV-2 in mustelids: An evolutionary perspective.

The relevance of mustelids in SARS‐CoV‐2 transmission has become increasingly evident. Alongside experimental demonstration of airborne transmission among ferrets, the major animal model for human respiratory diseases, transmission of SARS‐CoV‐2 within‐ and/or between‐commercial mink farms has occurred and continues to occur. The number of mink reared for the luxury fur trade is approximately 60.5 million, across 36 mustelid‐farming countries. By July 2021, SARS‐CoV‐2 outbreaks have been reported in 12 of these countries, at 412 European and 20 North American mink farms. Reverse zoonotic transmission events (from humans to mink) have introduced the virus to farms with subsequent extensive mink‐to‐mink transmission as well as further zoonotic (mink‐to‐human) transmission events generating cases among both farm workers and the broader community. Overcrowded housing conditions inherent within intensive mink farms, often combined with poor sanitation and welfare, both guarantee spread of SARS‐CoV‐2 and facilitate opportunities for viral variants, thereby effectively representing biotic hubs for viral transmission and evolution of virulence. Adequate preventative, surveillance and control measures within the mink industry are imperative both for the control of the current global pandemic and to mitigate against future outbreaks.

Water in the Wilderness: The Group of Seven and the Coastal Identity of Lake Superior

This paper challenges the wilderness ideology with which the Group of Seven’s coastal landscapes of the north shore of Lake Superior are often associated. Focusing my analysis around key works by Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, J.E.H. MacDonald, and Franklin Carmichael, I offer an alternative perspective on commonly-adopted national and wilderness narratives, and instead consider these works in line with an emergent ecocritical consciousness. While a conversation about wilderness in relation to the Group of Seven often ignores the colonial history and Indigenous communities that previously inhabited coastal Lake Superior, this paper identifies these within a discussion of the environmental history of the region. That the environment of the north shore of Lake Superior was a primordial space waiting to be discovered and conquered only seeks to ratify the landscape as a colonial space. Instead, by engaging with the ecological complexities and environmental aesthetics of Lake Superior and its surrounding shoreline, I challenge this colonial and ideological construct of the wilderness, accounting for the prevailing fur trade, fishing, and lumber industries that dominated during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A discussion of environmental history and landscape painting further allows for a consideration of both the exploitation and the preservation of nature over the course of the twentieth century, and looks beyond the theosophical and mystical in relation to the Group’s Lake Superior works. As such, the timeliness of an ecocritical perspective on the Group of Seven’s landscapes represents an opportunity to consider how we might recontextualize these paintings in a time of unprecedented anthropogenic climate change, while recognizing the people and history to whom this land traditionally belongs.

Consuming a Settler Colonial History: Frontier Authenticity and the Collective Memory of the Fort

This paper explores the rhetoric of the Fort restaurant, located in Morrison, Colorado. The Fort conveys a rhetorical phenomenon I refer to as “frontier authenticity rhetoric” and embodies the rhetorical characteristics of a museum to (re)present a historical 1833 fur trading post, the Old Bent Fort. Using components of the frontier myth, authenticity, commodification, and Whiteness theory, I conduct an archival and spatial analysis of memory and material culture of the Fort’s rhetoric. I argue the Fort’s frontier authenticity rhetoric maintains collective memories of settler colonialism through origin seeking, essentialized frontier metaphors of an “ideal” American identity, and flawed senses of multicultural hospitality undercut by Whiteness.

The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology ed. by Karina Vernon

Reviewed by: The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology ed. by Karina Vernon Ludwig Deringer Vernon, Karina, ed. The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2020. Pp. xv + 576 pp index. CDN$44.99 paper-back; CDN$26.99 ebook. It is in the earliest exploration reports of Canada and the United States that the presence of Black people in the North and on the Plains is attested. Thus, an African slave by the name of York contributed to the success of the first transcontinental exploration of the United States, the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–06). A Black- Indigenous man, Pierre Bonga, served as a member of the first expedition to the Arctic Ocean, led by Samuel Hearne (1771) (see Vernon 374–78). Individual attestations such as these are paradigmatic of the picture at large, even to this day: a lack of awareness of Black culture in the North and on the Plains in general, and of its beginnings as early as the eighteenth century in particular. One of Karina Vernon’s main aims in The Black Prairie Archives is to familiarize readers on a wide scale with the rich body of literature by Black authors from the Canadian prairie region, what today are the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Some texts are published in the Anthology for the first time. In her comprehensive introduction (1–35), the editor succinctly addresses the key issues in nuce. Vernon conceptualizes this archive as dynamic and processual, comprising both historical and future works and reflecting their authors’ intellectual, ethnic, linguistic, literary, and cultural networks. To her, in this archive converge “the geographies black prairie writers are connected with, including other parts of Canada, the US, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Africa” (3). By the same logic, it incorporates the authors’ interrelations “with Indigenous peoples, and South Asian, Chinese, and European diasporas” (8). The role of the pertinent languages is preeminent: they include “Arabic, Bantu, Ebonics, Creole, Portuguese, Swahili, and many more” (3). Vernon, a native of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, prefers “the term ‘black’ over ‘African Canadian’ because it suggests that the nation does not function as the dominant point of reference in determining black identities” (11). Each author represented in the Anthology is introduced with essential biographical-critical material, often containing fresh information from the editor’s first-hand correspondence. The human, linguistic, and artistic complexities of one immigrant’s situation are captured in the following sample, a poem in Portuguese, “Na Corrente do rio” (2012), by the bilingual Angolan Albertan author Francisco Alexander Fwallah (born ca. 1980), translated as “In the River Flow” by poet Erin Mouré, with the two texts set in parallel columns: Sou I’m Teu Your Irmão Brother Refugiei-me I took refuge Na In Poesia Poetry (460, lines 12–17) [End Page 422] Vernon divides the historical development into four periods of migration and subsequent literary production as follows: ca. 1790–1900, covering the fur trade and early settlement; 1905–1912, the years of Black Americans’ migration from Oklahoma to Canada; 1960s to early 1970s, the era of international immigration; and 2012 to the present, reflecting “neo-liberal immigration and asylum” (11). This division, however, is not replicated in the volume’s outward arrangement; instead, the authors appear in chronological order by birth date. Vernon’s selections widely vary by author biography, theme, genre, and author intention, featuring historical records, novels (in excerpts), short stories, drama, poetry, creative nonfiction, and expository prose. The most recent pieces in the Archives date from 2017–18. For the first and the second period of Black migration to the prairies, relevant collections of document sources are housed in the North West Company Archives, the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, the three Provincial Archives, and in municipal repositories such as Calgary’s Glenbow Museum and Archives. Significantly, as Vernon points out, the writing of this time span intersects with the literature of the colonial Black Atlantic. In the early periods, “non-textual practices” (16), i.e. oral and gestural ones, predominate over written text types such as the aforementioned fur trade company records, oral histories of individual settlers, pioneer diaries, or the local...

Limited influence of hunting on the activity patterns and habitat use of Pampas fox (Lycalopex gymnocercus) in agroecosystems of central Argentina

The Pampas fox (Lycalopex gymnocercus) has suffered from hunting and human persecution for decades, both for fur trade or due to conflicts with livestock. However, studies assessing the effects of hunting pressure on this canid population ecology are lacking. In this work, we assessed the influence of several hunting-related variables on the daily activity patterns and habitat use of the Pampas fox. In private farms of central Argentina, we performed two camera-trapping surveys: one during the non-hunting season and other during the hunting season, distinguishing between sites with or without access by hunters. The habitat use of Pampas foxes did not vary between seasons, but their detectability was lower during the hunting season in habitats that allow humans to see foxes easily (i.e., habitats with high visibility). Pampas foxes selected dusk and night-time, increasing their activity at dusk hours on sites with hunting and showed differences in activity patterns related with the level of visibility of the habitat and to season. Hunting pressure may interact with anthropogenic habitat modifications and create ecological traps for the Pampas fox in agroecosystems.

Archaeological and Contemporary Evidence Indicates Low Sea Otter Prevalence on the Pacific Northwest Coast During the Late Holocene

The historic extirpation and subsequent recovery of sea otters (Enhydra lutris) have profoundly changed coastal social-ecological systems across the northeastern Pacific. Today, the conservation status of sea otters is informed by estimates of population carrying capacity or growth rates independent of human impacts. However, archaeological and ethnographic evidence suggests that for millennia, complex hunting and management protocols by Indigenous communities limited sea otter abundance near human settlements to reduce the negative impacts of this keystone predator on shared shellfish prey. To assess relative sea otter prevalence in the Holocene, we compared the size structure of ancient California mussels (Mytilus californianus) from six archaeological sites in two regions on the Pacific Northwest Coast, to modern California mussels at locations with and without sea otters. We also quantified modern mussel size distributions from eight locations on the Central Coast of British Columbia, Canada, varying in sea otter occupation time. Comparisons of mussel size spectra revealed that ancient mussel size distributions are consistently more similar to modern size distributions at locations with a prolonged absence of sea otters. This indicates that late Holocene sea otters were maintained well below carrying capacity near human settlements as a result of human intervention. These findings illuminate the conditions under which sea otters and humans persisted over millennia prior to the Pacific maritime fur trade and raise important questions about contemporary conservation objectives for an iconic marine mammal and the social-ecological system in which it is embedded.

Satie on the Seine: Letters to the Heirs of the Fur Trade (Gerald Vizenor)

Satie on the Seine: Letters to the Heirs of the Fur Trade (Gerald Vizenor)

Western Message Petroglyphs indicate historic beaver presence in a San Francisco Bay Area watershed

Recent museum, archaeological, and observer record evidence suggests that North American beaver (Castor canadensis) were historically native to the watersheds of California’s coast, including San Francisco Bay. A wide variety of animals are abundantly represented in Native American petroglyphs and pictographs with their representations fulfilling intentions ranging from the mundane to ceremonial and mythological purposes. However, beaver symbols are poorly represented in California rock art and absent from the San Francisco Bay Area. A novel record, in the form of Western Message Petroglyphs, suggests that a beaver lodge was present in the late nineteenth century in the Alameda Creek watershed, potentially the last evidence of beaver prior to their extirpation in the region by the fur trade.

Robert Silbernagel, The Cadottes: A Fur Trade Family on Lake Superior

Review of: The Cadottes: A Fur Trade Family on Lake Superior, by Robert Silbernagel.

Shepard KRECH III, (ed.), The Subarctic Fur Trade: Native Social and Economic Adaptations, Vancouver, University of British Columbia Press, 1984. 194 pages, $28.95 (cloth)

Shepard KRECH III, (ed.), The Subarctic Fur Trade: Native Social and Economic Adaptations, Vancouver, University of British Columbia Press, 1984. 194 pages, $28.95 (cloth). An article from journal Culture (Volume 5, Number 1, 1985, pp. 3-105), on Érudit.

Translocations maintain genetic diversity and increase connectivity in sea otters, Enhydra lutris

AbstractSea otters, Enhydra lutris, were once abundant along the nearshore areas of the North Pacific. The international maritime fur trade that ended in 1911 left 13 small remnant populations with low genetic diversity. Subsequent translocations into previously occupied habitat resulted in several reintroduced populations along the coast of North America. We sampled sea otters between 2008 and 2011 throughout much of their current range and used 19 nuclear microsatellite markers to evaluate genetic diversity, population structure, and connectivity between remnant and reintroduced populations. Average genetic diversity within populations was similar: observed heterozygosity 0.55 and 0.53, expected heterozygosity 0.56 and 0.52, unbiased expected heterozygosity 0.57 and 0.52, for reintroduced and remnant populations, respectively. Sea otter population structure was greatest between the Northern and Southern sea otters with further structuring in Northern sea otters into Western, Central, and Southeast populations (including the reintroduced populations). Migrant analyses suggest the successful reintroductions and growth of remnant groups have enhanced connectivity and gene flow between populations throughout many of the sampled Northern populations. We recommend that future management actions for the Southern sea otter focus on future reintroductions to fill the gap between the California and Washington populations ultimately restoring gene flow to the isolated California population.

The context of an emerging predation problem: Nenets reindeer herders and Arctic foxes in Yamal

Human-wildlife problems often arise when predators kill livestock. This can develop into serious conflicts between traditional pastoralists and other stakeholders, such as government officials and conservationists. In the Yamal Peninsula (Russia), nearly half of the indigenous Nenets people are reindeer herders. They have recently faced many challenges, such as high mortality of reindeer from pasture icing or disease outbreaks. In addition, predation of arctic fox on reindeer calves is perceived as an increasing problem. Here, we use an interdisciplinary approach to study this emerging predation problem. We present here results from semi-structured interviews with indigenous people, as well as from biological monitoring of fox populations. Our field data were obtained in Erkuta, in the south of Yamal and in Sabetta in the north, close to a newly built industrial settlement. We show how different factors may have come together to create a problematic situation. These factors include the abandonment of the fur trade in the 1990s, the building of huge industrial facilities providing possible resource subsidies and the increasing frequency of abnormal weather events leading to weak reindeer, high reindeer mortality and abundant carcasses as resources for predators. We discuss how each of these factors affects the abundance of predators as well as the understanding of the herders.

The historical and contemporary status of the sea otter Enhydra lutris population on Urup Island, southern Kuril Islands

AbstractWe describe the population of the Еndangered sea otter Enhydra lutris on Urup Island, one of the main wildlife refuges in the southern Kuril Islands of Russia. We reviewed historical and local reports of the sea otter, identified its habitat around the island, and surveyed the coastal waters of the island in 2019. Sea otters were numerous on Urup Island in the past but were hunted excessively and almost exterminated by the 1950s. Since then, sea otter populations have increased, and as the island is almost uninhabited we expected otters to be numerous. This was not the case, and we estimated the total population to be 363 ± SE 126 individuals. Our observation of two skinned carcasses on the shore suggests the low numbers are a result of poaching for the illegal fur trade. The case of Urup Island demonstrates that sea otters require active conservation, as even on a remote island they remain threatened. Establishment of protected areas would be an effective conservation measure for this species, although the suppression of demand for sea otter fur is of the greatest importance.

Steller’s sea cow genome suggests this species began going extinct before the arrival of Paleolithic humans

Anthropogenic activity is the top factor directly related to the extinction of several animal species. The last Steller’s sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas) population on the Commander Islands (Russia) was wiped out in the second half of the 18th century due to sailors and fur traders hunting it for the meat and fat. However, new data suggests that the extinction process of this species began much earlier. Here, we present a nuclear de novo assembled genome of H. gigas with a 25.4× depth coverage. Our results demonstrate that the heterozygosity of the last population of this animal is low and comparable to the last woolly mammoth population that inhabited Wrangel Island 4000 years ago. Besides, as a matter of consideration, our findings also demonstrate that the extinction of this marine mammal starts along the North Pacific coastal line much earlier than the first Paleolithic humans arrived in the Bering sea region.

An Even Stronger Woman: The Substantial Role of Indigenous Women Throughout North American Herstory

Indigenous women have had immense impacts on North American society since before the beginning of the colonization process. Recent historical research has shed light on these influences made by Indigenous women as they begin to unpack the multiple abilities of these strong women. Indigenous women controlled both the private and public spheres by captaining the economic, political, and social roles of society. They had a voice within their communities and used it to obtain change and progress. They were respected mothers, providers, nurturers, and leaders. These women worked endlessly as producers of vast fields of agriculture and as important members of the fur trade to sustain their communities. This paper explores the roles that Indigenous women took on throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and how they broke gender roles and stereotypes that were common in their European counterparts’ societies during this period. This is done by incorporating the perspectives of Indigenous women themselves who haven written about the lives their ancestors lived and everything they accomplished. These new perspectives show that Indigenous women were essential and resilient to the success of their communities. They prove that behind all strong men, there are even stronger woman.

Harold Innis on Peter Pond: Biography, Cultural Memory, and the Continental Fur Trade. William Buxton, ed.

<i>Harold Innis on Peter Pond: Biography, Cultural Memory, and the Continental Fur Trade</i>. William Buxton, ed.

An integrated remote sensing approach to Métis archaeology in the Canadian Prairies

AbstractIndigenous communities are increasingly turning to archaeological remote sensing to help detect and preserve the material remains of their pasts without extensive excavations. For some Indigenous communities, histories of dispossession and mobility have led to a disconnection between them and archaeological sites, leading to challenges with collaborative models emphasizing local engagement. Here, we present a case study where the nearest modern community associated with the site is hundreds of kilometres away but preserving their heritage is important. The Métis, an Indigenous nation, emerged alongside the North American fur trade during the seventeenth century and became a distinct people. During the nineteenth century, the Métis adopted a highly mobile lifestyle, centred around bison hunting, where they would form temporary villages to overwinter on the northern plains. This case study highlights a post‐contact application of remote sensing where the targets are not large colonial structures but more ephemeral and short‐term occupation sites. We applied multiple methods, specifically ground‐penetrating radar (GPR), magnetic gradiometry, multi‐spectral and orthographic UAV imagery, to survey the mid‐nineteenth‐century Métis wintering site of Chimney Coulee (DjOe‐6), near Eastend, Saskatchewan, Canada. Using high‐frequency GPR (900 MHz) and magnetic gradiometry, this survey successfully delineated the wood wall remains and chimney of one cabin, later confirmed through targeted excavation. The survey was then expanded to other higher potential areas of the site to help refine the approach and define other areas of interest. Here, we outline the results of the Chimney Coulee project and our progress in developing an integrated remote sensing approach for Métis sites. We conclude that there are many forms of collaboration to which remote sensing can contribute and that careful survey can provide insights for modern groups' sense of identity, homelands and Indigenous rights.

“To think of your happy fireside”: The Materiality of Home and Belonging in the Letters of James and Letitia Hargrave, 1826–1854

The concept of “home” can refer to a range of things, from a house or a homeland, to family and community, or even a feeling of belonging or exclusion. This paper asks what home meant for employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company and their families by taking HBC employee James Hargrave and his wife Letitia as a case study, examining the different ways they conceived of home in the letters that they wrote to their families in Lower Canada and Britain, and to each other, between 1826 and 1854. Home had multiple meanings for the Hargraves, which changed over time depending on their location and circumstances. The unsettled nature of life in the fur trade, and the uncertain future it held for them, led to a sense of anxiety. The Hargraves found comfort in ideas of home that were grounded in connections to their homeland, their family and community in Scotland and Lower Canada, and eventually the family that they created for themselves. Home also had very material connotations, and was entangled with the memories, experiences, and imaginings of people, places and things, from James Hargrave picturing himself seated by his father’s fireside, to Letitia Hargrave cherishing jars of marmalade sent from Scotland by her mother. Thinking about the materiality of the past when examining the Hargraves’ letters reveals some of the strategies that they employed to reinforce their connections to family and friends, and how these relationships created and maintained a sense of home and belonging.

Trapped?

This article re-evaluates the nature of Indigenous labor at Central California’s New Helvetia colony. The fur trade in Central California was not simply a vehicle for settler exploitation of Indigenous labor but a dynamic trade network shaped by Plains Miwok– and Valley Nisenan–speaking trappers and traders, Mission San José, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and white settlers. Analysis of the financial aspects of trade for the Indigenous trappers and ethnohistorical examination of their motives for engaging in the trade suggest that the fur trade was not a source of degradation and dependency, but a vehicle by which they creatively and purposefully engaged colonial forces and markets. This article orients the histories of Plains Miwok– and Valley Nisenan–speaking communities into the larger story of the North American fur trade and suggests New Helvetia and its fur trade can be better understood as what historian Lisbeth Haas calls “Indigenous colonial” creations.

The Cadottes: A Fur Trade Family on Lake Superior by Robert Silbernagel

Reviewed by: The Cadottes: A Fur Trade Family on Lake Superior by Robert Silbernagel Roger L. Nichols Robert Silbernagel. The Cadottes: A Fur Trade Family on Lake Superior. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2020. Pp. 352. Bibliography. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Paperback: $28.95. In this thoughtful book, the author gives himself a difficult task. Robert Silbernagel wants to follow the lives and activities of the Cadotte family in the international fur trade on the southern shore of Lake Superior. Beginning with the actions of Mathurin Cadot during the 1670s, he traces the roles of family members to the near present. This is a tall order because there are virtually no documents, except for some trade account ledgers, no collections of personal letters, no diaries or family reminiscences to help put "meat on the bones" of this family. Silbernagel recognizes this and describes feeling as though he saw "the Cadottes through a veil." (xiii) If this were the story of a single person, it would be labeled a "life and times" rather than a biography. Yet the lack of personal material has not distracted the author from showing the family's contributions to the history of the region. His central thesis is that prior to late nineteenth century industrialization, the fur trade was the largest and most significant part of the regional economy. Coupled with that, he presents the roles played in the trade by French Canadian and French Indian métis, the Cadottes belonging to both groups, as being essential to the international success of that trade. These people and their Indian trading partners gathered and [End Page 158] transported the furs gathered in northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to Montreal on their way to European markets. While tracing the fur trade, the author ties the Cadottes to the shifting international competition between the British and French in Canada, and later between the British and the Americans effectively. He also depicts the family as competent translators and diplomats who helped keep peace between the Ojibwe and their Dakota neighbors. Family members had two strong motivations. First, several of them married Ojibwe. Second, warfare disrupted the trade, so they saw diplomacy as essential. The narrative highlights the Cadottes' business skills, honesty, and general competence in a dangerous world of frequent challenge and change. The narrative gives most attention to Michel Cadotte and his Ojibwe wife Equaysayway and their lives on Madeline Island. Married into a prominent Indian family, Michel became a successful and respected trader, interpreter, and forest diplomat. The couple fit well into the mixed-race society that the trade fostered, and late in life had a church wedding, probably to protect their land claims and those of their children after the Americans had taken control of the area. Based on extensive research, this book is both readable and informative. While the names of men important in regional history including James Doty, Alexander Ramsey, Henry Dodge, and John Jacob Astor all appear, the Cadottes tie the narrative together. Their actions for nearly two centuries give a framework to the story. Because he lacks much personal or family data, the author fills out the family story by deft use of local details related specifically to the fur trade. He discusses wilderness travel and means of transportation such as snowshoes and the varieties of canoes, illustrates the difficulties of long, exhausting portages, and considers the roles of maple sugar making and wild rice harvesting for local Indians and their trade partners. To help guide the reader through the family history, the book includes a Cadotte family tree as well as a timeline that covers the two hundred years of family history. It has clear and effective maps and photos of people and places being discussed. This is an interesting and careful history that focuses on an era, a business, and people who rarely get much attention. [End Page 159] Roger L. Nichols Emeritus Professor of History and Affiliate in American Indian Studies University of Arizona Copyright © 2021 Historical Society of Michigan