The fur trade was an important part of the economic history of North America and incorporated American Indian economies into a larger world economy. With the fur trade, Native Americans gained access to European manufactured goods, including metal items such as knives, needles, axes, and guns; cloth items including yard goods, blankets, and clothes; and alcohol. In the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century fur trade alcohol, often in the form of rum or brandy, was an essential part of the trading process.
As a trade good, alcohol was ideal because it is addictive, quickly consumed, and the desire for more can be quite strong. However, the importance of alcohol was not as a trade good, but as a part of the essential gift-giving ceremonials that preceded the actual trading. Reciprocal gift-giving was a standard feature of traditional Indian trade, and the European traders were expected to participate in it if they were to trade with the Indians. The Indian trading partners often asked for gifts of alcohol. In his entry on the fur trade in the Encyclopedia of North American Indians, William Swagerty writes:
“Many Indian groups came to expect liquor as a present prior to commencing trade. Brandy and furs became inseparable early in the trade on the East Coast and remained the pattern as the trade expanded westward.”
In his book First Across the Continent: Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Barry Gough reports:
“Rum remained the necessary prerequisite to trade arrangements. The natives demanded rum, but the social costs seldom if ever escaped the traders.”
Some unscrupulous traders also found that intoxication made their Indian trading partners somewhat less aware of what they were doing and more easily swindled.
The North West Company, headquartered in Montreal, emerged as a major fur trading company in the late eighteenth century. Historian William Eccles, in his chapter in North American Exploration. Volume 2: A Continent Defined, reports:
“The North West Company traders plied the Indians with a delightful but deadly concoction called ‘high wine,’ made of a mixture of brandy, dark rum, sweet sherry, tawny port, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon, with water added according to circumstances.”
William Eccles also reports:
“Once addicted, the Indians would do virtually anything to get more, including trap the animals to extinction.”
While the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) policies initially discouraged the use of alcohol in trading, as competition with other fur traders, such as the Nor’westers (North West Company), increased, HBC found that it had to abandon its policy against providing alcohol to the Indians. In his book Empire of the Bay: An Illustrated History of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Peter Newman reports:
“Then, the Company altered its emphasis from immediately practical goods to one which would have a profoundly negative effect on its customers: alcohol.”
Anthropologist Hugh Brody, in his book Maps and Dreams: Indians and the British Columbia Frontier, writes:
“Alcohol, and spree drinking, are part of the Indians’ involvement with traders and trading.”
In his 1942 monograph The Effects of White Contact Upon Blackfoot Culture, with Special Reference to the Role of the Fur Trade, Oscar Lewis reports:
“Liquor soon supplanted other goods in desirability and become the most important single item in the trade.”
The importance of alcohol, namely brandy, to the fur trade was seen in 1775 when the HBC’s Cumberland House had a shortage of brandy which hampered trade at the post. HBC trader Samuel Hearne reported that even though they had trading goods available, the Indians wouldn’t trade because there was no brandy.
The impact of the fur trade on the lives and cultures of American Indians has been enormous. As a European trade item, alcohol probably killed more people than did guns. As a disease, alcoholism has had a greater overall impact than other European diseases, such as smallpox and measles. While diseases like smallpox are generally relegated to the past, alcoholism continues to impact Native communities.
Part of the long-lasting impacts of alcohol during the fur trade has been the stereotype of the drunken Indian. While alcohol had been used ceremonially by some American Indian groups, such as the O’odham, the fur trade introduced spree drinking as a social event. The fur traders who introduced drinking to the Indians were not Europeans who enjoyed a glass of wine with dinner but were men who drank to get drunk, and this is the style of drinking that they passed on to their trading partners.
The stereotype of the drunken Indian is generally interpreted through a racist worldview which sees Indians as physically unable to “hold their liquor” and therefore are racially inferior to Europeans. In terms of human biology, there is no significant difference between Indians and Europeans with regard to “holding their liquor.”
Indians 101
On Tuesdays and Thursdays this series presents American Indian topics. More about the fur trade from this series:
Indians 201: The Pemmican War
Indians 101: The French Fur Trade
Indians 101: The eighteenth-century fur and hide trade
Indians 101: Guns 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: The Pacific Fur Company