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Women played an integral part in the North American fur trade from its inception. Yet the role of women, especially Native American women, has often been ignored in fur trade history. Contrary to the notion that the fur trade was a male-dominated activity, it actually depended upon the participation and labor of Native women for its very survival and economic success. Native women acted as essential producers in the fur trade of the Canadian and American Plains.
European women have appeared very little in fur trade lore. A few French wives may have ventured west with their trapper husbands, and some Hudson's Bay Company officials brought their wives from Europe. White women Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spaulding acted as observers of the American fur trade when they accompanied a caravan across the Plains and attended the 1836 rendezvous. Two years later, four other white women, Mary Gray, Mary Richardson Walker, Myra Fairbanks Eells, and Sarah Gilbert White Smith, also attended the rendezvous with their missionary husbands. Their detailed journal descriptions of fur trade activities are an important part of the historical record.
Native women were the primary female
participants in the fur trade. Plains Indian
women married French Canadian, British,
American, and Indian employees of the fur
companies. As wives and daughters, Native
women acted in such important fur trade
roles as producers, translators, traders, and
guides. Marriage between white men and Indian
women encouraged political, social, and
economic alliances within the fur trade systems.
Marriage à la façon du pays, or "according
to the custom of the country," served as a
unifying bond between European American
and Canadian fur traders and Native tribes,
with many traders paying a "bride price" for
the daughters of important tribal leaders. For
example, in 1814 the St. Louis trader Manuel
Lisa married Mitain, daughter of an Omaha
chief, and secured an alliance that kept the
Omahas tied to the United States during the
War of 1812 with Britain and also kept their
furs flowing to Lisa's post. In spite of cultural
differences and the economic motivations,
many mixed marriages were stable, loving,
and long-lasting. White traders also married
the Métis, or mixed-blood, daughters of
white-Indian marriages, as a means of improving
their status in the fur trade community.
However, with the arrival of more European
wives in the mid-1800s, Métis wives and
children suffered increased discrimination.
Indian and Métis women were instrumental to fur trade success. Whether at forts or in settled communities, at the rendezvous or on hunts, women were participants in fur operations. They actively promoted and benefited from the trade of woolen blankets, cloth, glass beads, steel knives, awls, needles, and pans. In turn, they contributed to the trade's success through varied support roles and especially through the production of furs. Women were, in fact, the primary producers of the fur trade: they trapped the smaller marten for its fur, and they made the moccasins, snowshoes, canoes, and other equipment necessary for travel on winter hunts. For food they hunted small animals, fished, and made pemmican. Most importantly, Native women prepared, or dressed, the bison robes and the beaver and otter pelts for their ultimate use as hats and clothing. Crow women in particular were renowned for production of fine hides and moccasins. Native women may have traded their dressed skins and furs, too, though it has been argued that their status actually decreased with the fur trade, as market negotiations were taken over by Native American men. Certainly, women's workload went up with fur trade demands: tanning a robe was a three-day job, and Indian women aimed at tanning up to thirty-five over a winter season.
Native women also served as important guides and translators to expeditions, most famously, Sacagawea. The lesser-known Thanadelthur, a Chipewyan woman, guided and interpreted for an early expedition of the Hudson's Bay Company. Without fame or salaries, Native women actively contributed to the success of the North American fur trade.
See also INDUSTRY: Hudson's Bay Company / NATIVE AMERICANS: Métis.