In the introduction and chapter one of Many Tender Ties, the author discusses the relationship between the European fur trappers and traders and Native American women during the time of the early fur trade. Sylvia Van Kirk highlights the importance of these women to the success of the industry while also describing how different factors affected how they were treated and viewed in this new society.
The two main trading companies, the Hudson Bay Company and the North West Company, had very different policies in regards to the Indians. However, in spite of policy, the traders from both companies ended up spending time socially with the Native Americans as well as lending assistance to those in need. The trading posts became places where starving and injured native women could find help. This pity could be attributed to the attitude they felt about how the women were being cared for. The trappers held on to the European idea that the women were being treated as slaves and being over worked by their male partners. They were also shocked by how they viewed childbirth as a completely natural everyday occurrence and how strong and hearty these women were.
Some feel that the women who married the traders were “passive victims” (7). However, Sylvia Van Kirk, suggests that it was common for the Indian women to make the first move towards becoming the wife of a trader. While the men in these marriages viewed women as having a lower position, a lot of times it is thought that the women viewed the marriage as gaining status. The social and economic interaction between the two could be over-simplified if too much focus is put on the “concept of victimization” (7).
After reading the introduction and chapter one of many tender ties, I was surprised by the amount of social exchange that occurred between the fur trappers and traders, and the natives. I had know that there was a considerable amount of business interaction and that women had been apart of it, even that some married the traders, but I was unaware that so many had married and that the cultures had intertwined and intermixed as much as they did. It was also interesting to me to see how the native women became phased out, first by there own children, who were raised in much more of a European fashion, and then by immigrant women. This phasing out and the social ideals and moral corruption of the Europeans allowed the native women to get pushed to the back.
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Hi Karin. I appreciate your review of this book. I believe there is a lot to be discovered about these ties between. American emigres and the people whom they lived with when establishing out post in the far reaches of the West and it's frontier. No doubt there are many stories, some 'traders' thought they were "saving" the indian woman. Others may have been like the philandering men of old and today that wed and had children with these indian women, only to abandon them if they had a falling out or as did occur, the fur companies were not particularly happy that their employees were fratrinizing with their main interests, the indians that provided the pelts. So, as did actually happen, trappers finding a season or two of modest gains at the out posts were told to abandon them, in so doing, if it had merely been an opportunity or convenience now a burden the trappers most likely left those families to fend for themselves. And while the indians did accept the single mothers back to their communities, this made matters worse for the tribes as their trading suffered as did the poor nascent metis families.
Regards, Utzer0n.
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