Demythologizing the Fur Trade
The living standards of Cree trappers in the 18thcentury were more European than we think December 2010
The fur trade has long been a cliché of early Canadian history. It lodges in our minds as a romantic but slightly tedious haze of canoes, beads and blankets, beaver hats, carefree voyageurs, stolid Scots traders, untamed Indians and, of course, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. For Canada the fur trade might play the role of the Wild West in American historical…