Fur-trade.
While the
English-American colonies remained dependents of
Great Britain, they derived very little advantage from the extensive fur-trade with the Indians, for the Hudson Bay Company absorbed nearly the whole of the traffic.
It was contention between the
French and
English colonists for the control of this trade that was a powerful element among the causes that brought on the
French and Indian War (q. v.). In 1762 a fur company was organized in New Orleans for carrying on the fur-trade extensively with the
Western Indians.
It was started by the
director-general of
Louisiana.
A trading expedition was fitted out, and under the direction of Pierre Ligueste Laclede, the principal projector of the enterprise, it went to the
Missouri region, and established its chief depot on the site of the city of
St. Louis, which name was then given to that locality.
There furs were gathered from the regions extending eastward to
Mackinaw, and westward to the
Rocky Mountains.
Their treasures went in boats down the
Mississippi to New Orleans, and thence to
Europe; or up the
Illinois River, across a portage to
Lake Michigan, and by way of the
Great Lakes and the
St. Lawrence to
Montreal and
Quebec.
Early in the nineteenth century, furtrading posts had been established on the
Columbia River and other waters that empty into the
Pacific Ocean.
In 1784
John Jacob Astor (q. v.), an enterprising young German merchant of New York, embarked in the fur-trade.
He purchased furs in
Montreal and sold them in
England; after the treaty of 1795 he shipped them to different
European ports.
In this trade, chiefly, he amassed a fortune of $250,000, when he embarked in a scheme for making a great fur depot on the
Pacific coast.
He was then competing with the great fur companies of the
Northwest, under a charter in the name of the American Fur Company, for which he furnished the entire capital.
Mr. Astor made an earnest effort to carry on the business between the
Pacific coast of
America and
China, founding the town of
Astoria at the mouth of the
Columbia River.
Through the bad faith of a business partner in 1813, that establishment was sold for a nominal sum and placed under British control.
After that
Mr. Astor carried on his operations in the region of the
Rocky Mountains, with his chief post at
Mackinaw.
Alaska, acquired in 1867 by purchase, opened a new field for the
American fur-trade.
The furs from that region are mainly those of the fur-seal; there are also those of the beaver, ermine, fox, otter, marten, and other animals.
From 1870 to 1890 the monopoly of the trade was in the hands of the Alaska Commercial Company of San Francisco, Cal. In the latter year the government granted the right of
[
492]
taking fur-seals to the North American Commercial Company for a yearly rental of $60,000 and $7.62 1/2 for each
seal-skin.
Canadian sealing-vessels were, for several years, illegally engaged in the indiscriminate slaughter of the seals, threatening their extinction.
In 1889 some of these vessels were seized by
United States revenue cutters, thus giving rise to the
Bering Sea controversy with
Great Britain.
See
Alaska; Anglo-American commission; fisheries.
