Description:

Fur Trade

 

 



Fur Trapping in 1835 in the Rockies, with Mention of Chicago

 

In a letter home to his parents in northern New Jersey, John Brown describes his plans to join a group of men trapping furs in the Rocky Mountains. If that plan does not work, he and others will trap in the Winnebago Swamps of northern Illinois and southern Michigan Territory (Wisconsin). At the time he wrote this letter, Brown was helping to build the two-story Peoria County Courthouse in Peoria, Illinois.

 

JOHN BROWN, Autograph Letter Signed, to John Brown, July 7, 1835, Peoria, Illinois. 3 pp., 8" x 9.25".  Expected folds; tear from opening seal that affects three lines with small loss of text; repaired tears on some folds.

 

Excerpts

“John feels that he has become a citizen of the world at large.”

 

“there has a lot of young men concluded to go to the Rocky Mountains A fir hunting in case we could raise twenty men and we want as many more as we can get  the articles will be drawn to night and I expect before my letter starts the number required will have signed it. in case we cannot raise that number we will go to the winnebago swamps and trap there this winter  there is twelve of us all ready  the calculation is to go to the Columbia River  we will trap in the mountains this fall and next spring and next summer to go to the mouth of the Columbia  it is the calculation if we like the country to come back and get our tools and whatever else we want and go back again  I want you to see Wm Laurence and tell him if he can raise spunc enough to go along to come as I should be glad to have him go with us”

 

“I expect by this time you think I had better stay where I am, but I don’t. The people are coming into the country so fast that they are like to eat us all out  flour is seven dollars a barrel here and twenty at Chicago, and every thing in proportion.”

 

“the winters is not as long as there but pretty cold, for the wind blows over these prairies at A curious rate  the summers is about as warm as there but would be warmer if it was not for the wind as it is A rare thing to see A day without a fine breese  the nights are cooler than they are wit you.... I am at work on the new court house building in this place and get 26 dollars per month and found....”

 

Historical Background

The North American fur trade began in the sixteenth century, when French explorers traded with Native Americans for furs. From the mid-sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, felted beaver fur hats were extremely popular in the fashions of Europe and led to intense competition among European and Native American nations to control the trade in beaver pelts.

 

By the 1820s, the fur trade had expanded to the Rocky Mountains, where American and British traders vied for control of the important trade. After the War of 1812, the demand for bison robes began to grow, but beaver remained the primary fur trade item. By the 1840s, the bison trade grew sharply, while the beaver trade began to decline, as European fashion turned to silk hats.

 

Trapping and trading furs was an extremely lucrative business, and some made tremendous fortunes. John Jacob Astor (1763-1848), for example, became the first multi-millionaire in the United States from the fur trade. Soon after the signing of the Jay Treaty in 1794, Astor made a contract with the North West Company to import furs from Montreal to New York and then ship them to Europe at great profits. He established the American Fur Company in 1808, and it came to dominate the fur trade in the Great Lakes area. A beaver skin, weighing an average of twenty-four ounces, was worth about $2 in Oregon in the 1830s, where it was the circulating currency of the area. The same beaver skin could be sold in New York or London for $7.50.

 

 



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