The fur trade was a huge part in the early economic development of North America. European traders and trappers explored the continent where they established relationships with local Native American communities in order to obtain the best pelts. Beaver was especially prized. For the majority of the fur trade era in North American history the primary fur market was overseas, in Europe. The fur trade ended as settlers took over the best trapping lands and eradicated wildlife which competed with livestock and humans for resources.
The fur trade (also called the Indian trade) was a huge part of the early history of contact in North America between European-Americans and American Indians (now often called Native Americans in the United States and First Nations in Canada).
European traders and trappers explored the continent and established relationships with native communities, hoping to obtain the best pelts—beaver was especially prized—for European markets.
The fur trade came to a close as game was depleted by overhunting, as expanding European settlement displaced native communities from the best hunting grounds, and as European demand for furs subsided.
Fort Dearborn, which was established to protect U.S. interests in the fur trade, and the various trading posts formed the first stages of settlement preceding the land boom of the mid-1830s.
Before that period, traders and travelers used Chicago mostly as a point of transit between the French and, later, the American settlements in the Mississippi Valley and the Straits of Mackinac.
Fur trading disappeared from Chicago as the population boomed and land speculation became the rage.
Feeds |
Contact