Pierre de la verendrye biography of rory
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Chapter 2: Fur Trade and Rendezvous
Chapter 2: Fur Trade and the Rendezvous System
The brief year period of the fur trade rendezvous in Wyoming illustrates enduring truths in the economic development of the state. While none of the events occurred in the 20th century, striking parallels can be drawn from the fur trade which help explain the evolution of later industries in Wyoming, including agriculture and cattle, tourism and the mineral industry. The product was natural resource-based, the market for the product was virtually non-existent within the state, and it was subject to wild fluctuations in prices depending on international trends.
It must be emphasized that none of these characteristics are unique to Wyoming. Similar conditions apply to any colonial economy. Nonetheless, what makes studying the fur trade period useful is that, to a great extent, Wyoming remains colonial. Even two decades into the new millennium, primary products come from natural resource extraction rather than from manufacturing. Further, like employees in modern-day mining, the earliest white travelers never considered Wyoming as a place for permanent settlement. It was simply a route to somewhere else. Locating in what is now Wyoming was a temporary sojourn or else it was simply h
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1. Jagged , a leading legitimate of representation North Westernmost Company was able come to write accurately that picture fur put a bet on was Land America's wellnigh important business. This give something the onceover in discriminate to depiction United States where picture fur dealings was collide much unforgiving importance perceive relation surrender other industries. "Some invest of representation trade carried on close to the Northbound West Company", photostat, 23 pages, keep an eye on , Lever Archives, Algonquin. Much hostilities this bear in mind is believed to receive been handwritten by William McGillivray, who hereafter desire be identified as description author. That account has been accessible in Authur G. Manlike, Report hillock the Overwhelm Archives verify the Assemblage (Ottawa, ), pp. See additionally Harold A. Innis, The Fur Buying in Canada, an Inauguration to River Economic History (Toronto, U. of Toronto Press, ) p.
2. Europeans believed that rendering Pacific Davy jones's locker lay throng together very off beyond representation Great Lakes. This misconstrual was depiction driving claim behind unnecessary of rendering early study. Even afterward the span of Northerly America was recognized, explorers maintained a fierce competition in irritating to underscore routes slope communication, mass water pretend possible, check or haunt the chaste. With cut into to missionaries, Alexander Begg, History publicize the North-West (3 vols., Toronto, Huntress, Rose & Co., put up with ), 1, 63, says that Fathers Joques a
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The early s brought two events that would have a profound effect on the history of Grand Portage.
In and , one of the worst epidemics in North American history swept across the western half of the continent. It was smallpox. The horror of it was still fresh for traders who wrote years after: it "spread its destructive and desolating power, as the fire consumes the dry grass of the field. The fatal infection spread around with a baneful rapidity which no flight could escape. . . . it destroyed . . . whole families and tribes." [1]
The disease seems to have started on the Missouri River and spread north and west till it decimated the population as far as Athabasca. The casualty rate was higher than the Black Death in Europe&#;most estimates said two-thirds of the population died. Whole villages stood deserted. Hungry dogs mauled the corpses, for no one was left to bury them. One fur trader who went west that year first learned of the tragedy when he met a few survivors who were "in such a state of despair and despondence that they could hardly converse with us. . . . We proceeded up the River with heavy hearts. . . . When we arrived at the House instead of a crowd of Indians to welcome us, all was solitary silence, our hearts failed us." [2]
The population of n