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How Did The Fur Trade Affect American Culture

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The standard history of the fur trade tended to consider the Aboriginal Canadians as monolithic and treated them as completely subject to European dominance, economic and technological, from first contact. They argued that exploitative dealings and reliance on European technology immediately and inevitably led to the collapse of native societies. More recently historians, such as Bruce Trigger, while examining the Hurons drew attention to different elements of Huron society and how they responded to European influence over time. Other historians such as Abraham Rothstein have examined the cultural rather than economic aspects of the fur trade and maintained that it was not the exploitative relationship presented by the traditional view. Others …show more content…

In addition to altering alliances, the basic destructive capacity of guns significantly altered the nature of warfare between tribes, as described by a Saukamappee youth in comparing two battles, the first of which predates the introduction of guns, in which he stated “on both sides several were wounded, but none lay on the ground; and night put an end to the battle without a scalp being taken on either side, and in those days such was the result, unless one party was more numerous than the other.” and continues to describe a battle after the introduction of guns : “the battle had begun about Noon, and the Sun was not yet half down, when we perceived that some of them had crawled away from their shields…The greater part of the enemy took flight, but some fought bravely and we lost more than ten killed and many wounded; Part of us pursued, and killed a few, but the chase had soon to be given over, for at the body of everything Snake Indian killed, there were five or six of us trying to get his scalp or part of his clothing, his weapons, or something of his as a trophy of the battle.”(Friesen,38). Friesen characterized the pre-gun warfare as rather benign, stating that “Shields were adequate to defend against arrows, offensive tactics were static

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