Among the popular European manufactured goods provided to American Indians by the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century fur traders were cloth items including blankets, yard goods, and clothing. While woven fabrics were not always superior to native materials, they had fairly high status among the Indians. Wool blanketing was popular because it was light and just as warm as a fur mantle. In addition, it dried faster than leather and it came in bright colors. The women found that cloth could quickly be fashioned into clothing without the labor of having to cure and dress animal skins.
As with other trade items, blankets and clothing were rarely used “as is” but were modified to conform with the cultural aesthetic standards of the group. This included adding decorations using beads, painting, feathers, and fur. Blankets were often made into winter coats.
Blankets
Perhaps the iconic trade item was the blanket. The HBC blankets carried (and still carry) a set of small black stripes, known as points, along the edge which represent the number of made beaver pelts needed to purchase it. In his book Empire of the Bay: An Illustrated History of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Peter Newman reports:
“The Hudson’s Bay blanket, the most durable legacy of the Company’s involvement in the fur trade, was developed so that Indians could trade ‘the very furs off their backs’ and still have something warm to wear on their way home.”
Initially, HBC blankets were white: the colorful stripes were a later addition. Peter Newman also reports:
“Hudson’s Bay blankets were often cut into coats and leggings, their snowy color allowing them to blend in with the winter landscape.”
Clothing
An important part of the fur trade was the ceremonial gift-giving which preceded the actual trading. One of the items used by the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) as a gift was “the Captain’s Outfit” which made the trading captains stand out from the rest of the Indian traders. These suits were patterned after European military uniforms. Since the Europeans had a hierarchical form of leadership, the outfits given to the Indians reflected this hierarchical ordering with the finest suits given to the main leaders and inferior suits given to lesser leaders. In his book Indians in the Fur Trade: Their Role as Hunters, Trappers and Middlemen in the Lands Southwest of Hudson Bay, 1660-1870, Arthur Ray reports:
“Once the Indians had accepted these European symbols of political authority and allegiance, the trading companies attempted to use the symbols to manipulate the Indians.”
With regard to clothing as a trade item, historian James Axtell, in his book Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America, writes:
“The only fitted pieces of clothing that sold relatively well were brightly patterned calico shirts, which the men wore open at the neck and flapping in the breeze.”
European clothing was often modified by adding beadwork, painted images, and fringes to shirts and jackets. In addition to glass beads, the fur traders brought in colored ribbons, dyed horsehair, buttons, and other items which were incorporated into clothing decorations. In his book The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities, Colin Calloway writes:
“Indians who donned European clothes often retained traditional hairstyles, slit ears, and facial tattoos. New trade goods were fashioned into traditional motifs or endowed with traditional meanings.”
Indian men found European pants to be uncomfortable and when they used pants they would cut out the crotches, turning the pants into leggings which would then be worn with the more traditional, and comfortable, breechclouts.
Indians 101
Twice each week—on Tuesdays and Thursdays—this series presents American Indian topics. More from this series:
Indians 101: The eighteenth-century fur and hide trade
Indians 101: Guns in the early fur trade
Indians 101: Alcohol in the early fur trade
Indians 101: The fur trade in 1821
Indians 101: The Canadian fur trade 200 years ago, 1821
Indians 101: The Fur Trade in 1816
Indians 101: Nor'westers and Indians in the Columbia Plateau
Indians 101: The Pacific Fur Company