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Women in the Fur Trade
[edit]Women played a vital and complex role in the development of the fur trade.[1] Indigenous women across Montana acted as economic mediators, cultural brokers, and producers/consumers of trade goods and foodstuffs. Over time, as a distinct fur trade society evolved around company-operated outposts, cross-cultural sexual relationships and marriages became commonplace between Euro-American men and women from various tribal communities.[2] These unions and the resultant family networks consolidated and cemented the political and economic ties at the heart of the emerging economy. [3] Many native women occupied central positions of agency and influence, but also proved vulnerable to violence and disease. [4]
Notable individuals include Natawista[5] (also known as Natoapxíxina, Na-ta-wis-ta-cha and Natoyist-Siksina[6]), who in 1840 married Major Alexander Culbertson, then the head of Fort Union, and Wambdi Autepewin, a Lakota woman widely known for her skills as a mediator.[2] Countless others, however, produced necessary articles of clothing and food; prepared skins and tanned hides for market; offered their knowledge of local ecologies and geographies; and became inextricably involved in the multicultural exchange of the trade.
- ^ Van Kirk, Sylvia (1980). Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur Trade Society, 1670-1870. Winnipeg: Watson & Dwyer.
- ^ a b Lansing, Michael (Winter 2000). "Plains Indian Women and Interracial Marriage in the Upper Missouri Trade, 1804-1868". Western Historical Quarterly. 31 (4): 413–433.
- ^ Graybill, Andrew (2013). The Red and the White: A Family Saga of the American West. New York: W.W. Norton.
- ^ Brown, Jennifer S.H. (1980). Strangers in the Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
- ^ Schemm, Mildred Walker (January 1952). "The Major's Lady: Natawista". The Montana Magazine of History. 2 (1): 4–15.
- ^ Wischmann, Lesley (2004). Frontier Diplomats: Alexander Culbertson and Natoyist-Siksina among the Blackfeet. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.