The Fur Trade

The Swedish Cavaliers slouch hat is the height of fashion in the 1600s and Europeans desperately need a new source of beaver pelts. Then, traders discover North American beaver, which have much thicker pelts because of the colder climate. Trade with Native Americans begins immediately. Fur, very important. And for that, they required access to the Native Americans. For a long time, Europeans thought that the beaver came from some mysterious Lake way in the interior that only Native Americans knew how to get to. The fur trade here is incredibly important in the 1600s. A matter of fact, it's so important that in the 1620s, the Plymouth colonists come up from Plymouth and establish several trading posts in Maine. Economically, the pilgrims don't make it in Massachusetts. They make it in Maine. They had come here as part of investment venture, and they had a certain number of years in which to pay back the cost of that adventure, and hopefully make a profit for everyone. And it turned out that the kennebec valley provided them with the best opportunity to do that. It's a wonderful opportunity to get rich on the fur pelts because essentially the fur trade is one of these situations where both the Indians and the Europeans benefit. The Indians just give a few sort of scruffy old beaver pelts and which the English can sell for tremendous profit in England. And on the other hand, the Indians get these incredible goods. This high-tech stuff of your day steel knives and fish hooks and woven textiles, and sometimes even guns and alcohol that they're not supposed to get. But these are things that they can't get anywhere else. So both sides does very well in the fur trade because I think they're really taking advantage of the other side. The pilgrims really don't threaten the Indians the way perhaps European settlement did in southern New England because you don't have pilgrims as farmers moving here. You're not trying to clear the forest. You're happy for the force because it's where the beavers live. Only later when the emphasis switches to a permanent agricultural settlement, do you really find those same kinds of tensions breaking out in northern New England that had been long part of the situation in southern New England.