Picturing Prosperity

2018 ◽  
pp. 162-209
Author(s):  
Susan Sleeper-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Lakes ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Fur Trade ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Ohio River ◽  
Ohio River Valley ◽  
Luxury Goods ◽  
Western Great Lakes ◽  
Crucial Part

This chapter examines the stereotypes associated with the fur trade and contends that, in the Ohio River valley, an Indian-controlled fur trade was associated with increased levels of prosperity. This chapter also analyzes the types of trade goods transported into the Ohio region and shows how cloth became the most desirable object of trade. Europeans wove cloth to meet specific Indian demands, and traders transmitted instructions detailing the color, style, and even the weave of cloth meant for Indian consumption. By the mid-eighteenth century, luxury goods became a crucial part of the trade, and when the Seven Years’ War ended, the fur trade entered an expansionary period. Detroit emerged as one of the most prosperous fur trade posts in the western Great Lakes. This chapter is filled with dramatic illustrations of how cloth was transformed into the increasingly elaborate dress that characterized the diverse Indigenous people who lived in this region.

The Evolution of the Indian Fur Trade

2018 ◽  
pp. 67-104
Author(s):  
Susan Sleeper-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fur Trade ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Ohio River ◽  
Ohio River Valley ◽  
Green Bay ◽  
Indian Women ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Western Great Lakes ◽  
Trading Network

Green Bay was an early center of a precontact Indian trading network that stretched throughout the western Great Lakes. In the mid-seventeenth century, large numbers of Indian households were drawn to Green Bay from the Ohio River valley to trade with recently arrived French traders. Many Ohio Indians, especially the Miami, sent households to Green Bay to secure access to the manufactured trade goods available from the French. Movement was often voluntary, and not all Indians were driven west to seek refuge from the Iroquois. A brisk beaver trade led to an oversupply of furs in French warehouses, and Versailles reacted by closing the western trade. Without access to European goods, Indians returned to the Ohio River valley, where they began trading with the English and rapidly assumed control of the fur trade. For more than twenty years, the French trade remained closed, and the numerous Frenchmen who remained took up residence in Indian households, often marrying Indian women “in the manner of the country.” The fur trade ban encouraged Indian resettlement in the Ohio River valley, where Indians had access to highly desirable furs in the Black Swamp, The ban on the western trade refocused the fur trade to a region little explored by the French and controlled by Indians.

Gendered Mobilities: Performing Masculinities in the Late Eighteenth-Century Mobile Fur Trade Community

Ethnohistory ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amélie Allard
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Lakes ◽  
Fur Trade ◽  
Complex Dynamic ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Trading Posts ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Western Great Lakes ◽  
Multiple Levels

AbstractDrawing from archaeological data collected from Réaume’s Leaf River Post (Minnesota) and fur traders’ journals, this article considers the ways in which mobility impacted the performance of masculine ideals within the colonial spaces of the western Great Lakes trading posts of the late eighteenth century. It is argued that in this overwhelmingly male environment, the gendering of daily practices such as foodways and use of space worked in complex, dynamic ways and at multiple levels along lines of rank, experience, and, to some extent, ethnicity. Differing masculine ideals and the impacts of a mobile lifeway on their performance are particularly evident in the differences between men of high and low ranks: where the former struggled to attain ideals of civility and respectability in the interior, mobility enabled the latter to value independence and physical prowess. The case of Joseph Réaume illustrates how a man occupying a middle position was able to navigate both ideals of masculinity.

Reopening the Western Trade

2018 ◽  
pp. 105-128
Author(s):  
Susan Sleeper-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Food Supply ◽  
Exchange Process ◽  
Women's Work ◽  
River Valley ◽  
New France ◽  
Ohio River ◽  
Ohio River Valley ◽  
Women’S Work

Versailles had very little interest in the Ohio River valley until the beginning of the eighteenth century, when increased amounts of peltry found their way into English hands. Cadillac founded Detroit to divert the trade back to the French, but only when Detroit traders and merchants supplied what Indians most desired did this fort become a viable exchange post. The trade changed dramatically in the eighteenth century, as a large number of matrifocal households emerged along the western tributary rivers of the Ohio. These female-dominated households not only controlled the food supply but were the processors of peltry, thus allowing women to exert greater power over the exchange process. More than 70 percent of the trade goods shipped to Detroit consisted of cloth, and women’s work of transforming cloth into clothing transformed the dress and prosperity of the region. Although Detroit secured a greater share of the trade for New France, it intensified the conflict between France and England.

scholarly journals Stewart's Wilt Reactions of an International Collection of Zea mays Germ Plasm Inoculated with Erwinia stewartii

Plant Disease ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 84 (8) ◽  
pp. 901-906 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerald K. Pataky ◽  
Lindsey J. du Toit ◽  
Noah D. Freeman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Germ Plasm ◽  
Sweet Corn ◽  
The United States ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Ohio River ◽  
Ohio River Valley ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Stewart's Wilt

Maize accessions were evaluated in 1997, 1998, and 1999 to identify additional sources of Stewart's wilt resistance and to determine if reactions differed among accessions collected from various regions of the United States and throughout the world. The distributions of Stewart's wilt reactions rated from 1 (no appreciable spread of symptoms) to 9 (dead plants) were relatively similar among groups of accessions from all regions of the world except for those from the Mid-Atlantic/Ohio River Valley region of the United States, the southern United States, and the northeastern United States. The mean and median Stewart's wilt rating for 1,991 accessions evaluated in 1997 was 4. The mean Stewart's wilt rating for 245 accessions collected from the Mid-Atlantic/Ohio River Valley region was 3.1, which was significantly lower than that for accessions from all other regions. The mean rating for accessions from the southern United States was 3.7, which also was lower than mean ratings for accessions from all other regions. Ratings from trials in 1997 and 1998 were highly correlated (r = 0.87) for 292 accessions and 15 sweet corn hybrid checks evaluated in both years. Of 20 accessions rated below 2 in 1997 and 1998, seven were from Virginia, seven were from the Ohio River Valley or central Corn Belt of the United States, four were from the northern or western Corn Belt of the United States, and two were from Spain. Ratings for these accessions ranged from 1.7 to 3.1 in 1999. Ratings ranged from 2.6 to 3.7 for F1 hybrids of these accessions crossed with one of two susceptible sweet corn inbreds, CrseW30 or Crse16, which were rated 5.7 and 5.4, respectively. Based on the reactions of this collection of germ plasm, it appears that high levels of Stewart's wilt resistance are prevalent only among accessions collected from areas where the disease has been endemic for several years, whereas moderate levels of resistance can be found in accessions collected from nearly everywhere in the world.

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