In the first part of the seventeenth century European fashion, in the form of beaver hats, made the beaver the primary North American fur sought by European traders. North America had an abundance of beavers. European traders, such as the Dutch, began moving inland and establishing trading posts where American Indians could trade beaver pelts for European manufactured goods.
The European fashion trend of wearing beaver hats emerged from Sweden’s involvement during the religious (Catholic versus Protestant) Thirty Years War (1618-1648) in Europe. In his chapter on the beaver hat in Exploring the Fur Trade Routes of North America, Doug Whiteway writes:
“Swedish soldiers wore wide-brimmed hats with such romantic appeal that everyone had to have one.”
However, Europe’s beavers had been trapped out by the early seventeenth century, so North America became the primary source for the beaver pelts needed in making the fashionable hats.
Beaver hats were also practical: in his book Empire of the Bay: An Illustrated History of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Peter Newman reports:
“Before the invention of the umbrella, beaver headgear provided an elegant way to keep dry.”
In addition, the hats indicated the wearer’s position in the social hierarchy.
The Dutch, whose presence in North America was not of long duration (about 40 years), were interested primarily in the beaver trade and viewed Indians as something to be tolerated, like cold winters and hot summers. In general, the Dutch appeared to have little interest in learning about the Indians and their culture. In his chapter on the Dutch in Attitudes of Colonial Powers Toward the American Indian, Allen Trelease writes:
“Seventeenth-century Dutchmen, like the other colonizing peoples, assumed without question that European culture was richer, stronger, more highly developed, and closer to God than any other on earth.”
From an Indian viewpoint, the Dutch were seen as not being hospitable because they gave few presents and charged for repairing guns.
The Dutch generally followed a policy of “live and let live” with regard to the Indians: they did not force assimilation or religious conversion on the Indians. According to Allen Trelease:
“Both at home and abroad the Dutch found it less possible and less congenial to force conformity on religious, political, and racial minorities.”
In his book Wilderness at Dawn: The Settling of the North American Continent, popular history writer Ted Morgan puts it this way:
“The Dutch were traders, bottom-line oriented, indifferent to imperial strategies. They didn’t develop strong Indian alliances. Nor were they particularly interested in religious conversion.”
In his book Indians, William Brandon writes:
“The Dutch were also primarily in the beaver business, eager to uphold and sustain the forest nations who might act as district jobbers for them.”
Between 1614 and 1624, it is generally estimated that the Dutch fur traders obtained about 10,000 beaver skins annually from the Connecticut Indians alone. To facilitate this trade, the Dutch traders began using wampum (beads made from shells) as a type of currency. According to historian Michael Oberg, in his book Uncas: First of the Mohegans:
“Dutch traders acquired wampum from the Pequots and Narragansetts in exchange for European trade goods. The Dutch then carried this wampum to Indians in the interior, exchanging it for furs.”
One of the items which the Indians, particularly the Iroquois, demanded in exchange for their furs were guns and the ammunition. The Dutch supplied their Indian trading partners with guns and with these guns the Indians expanded their territory, often displacing tribes which did not have access to guns.
Another important trade item was alcohol. Officially, the Dutch enacted a number of laws designed to stop the liquor traffic with Indians, but these tended to be ignored. Allen Trelease writes:
“They were willing to pay a high price for Dutch beer and brandy, and there were plenty of colonists willing to supply the demand without much regard for the consequences.”
In 1624, the Dutch West India Company established a trading post, Fort Orange, in present-day New York on the western shore of the Hudson River. Located at a strategic crossroad linking the Iroquois and New England, Fort Orange became a major trading post. The Dutch colonists consisted of 18 families of Walloon immigrants who were French-speaking, Protestant refugees from Spanish Netherlands. At Fort Orange, the Dutch trader exchanged metal tools, cloth, glass beads, firearms, ammunition, and other European goods for furs, primarily beaver.
Ethnologist T.J. Brasser, in his chapter on Indian-European contacts in Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 15: Northeast, reports:
“The decimating effects of the early fur trade on the coastal beaver populations are indicated by the upriver establishment of most of the Dutch trading posts. The days of the coastal fur trade were passing in this area and the traders had to move deeper into the back country in order to obtain furs.”
The differences in the ability of the different tribes to be able to obtain European trade goods from the Dutch created tensions between the tribes. In 1624, prompted by trading concerns, war broke out between the Mahicans and the Mohawks (one of the nations of the Iroquois Confederacy). The Mohawks drove the Mahicans east and north of Fort Orange, thus gaining direct access to the Dutch traders. According to anthropologist T.J. Brasser):
“The Mahican maintained their villages, gardens, and all other territorial rights east of the Hudson River, but the loss of western hunting territory resulted in the evacuation of part of the Mahican population from their Hudson River villages to new hunting grounds.”
In 1624, Dutch colonists arrived and laid out New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. In order to legalize their occupancy in the eyes of other Europeans, the Dutch bought Indian land. They recognized the Indians’ ownership of the land and thus the legal necessity of buying land before appropriating it. In general, the Dutch tended to be fair when buying land and cases of fraud and high-pressure tactics were the exception rather than the rule. Allen Trelease reports that:
“…much of the land which the Dutch bought around New Amsterdam was purchased so far ahead of actual need that the Indians continued to occupy it undisturbed for years after the purchase.”
The Indians, in contrast to the Dutch, viewed the land as community property which belonged to the entire tribe or band for their use in perpetuity. They did not view it as a commodity to be bought and sold. The Indians thus viewed land purchases as simply payments for temporary use, while the Dutch looked upon these as final sales.
More American Indian histories
Indians 101: The Dutch and American Indians in the 17th century
Indians 101: The Dutch, the Indians, and Fort Orange
Indians 101: New Amsterdam and the Indians
Indians 101: American Indians 400 years ago, 1623
Indians 101: American Indians and Europeans 400 years ago, 1622
Indians 101: American Indians 400 years ago, 1621
Indians 101: American Indians 400 years ago, 1620
Indians 101: 17th Century Books About Indians