Table of Contents

Introduction: Native Americans and Europeans in the Eighteenth-Century Fur Trade
1. Hats and the European Fur Market
2. The Hudson's Bay Company and the Organization of the Fur Trade
3. Indians as Consumers
4. The Decline of Beaver Populations
5. Industrious Indians
6. Property Rights, Depletion, and Survival
7. Indians and the Fur Trade: A Golden Age?
Epilogue. The Fur Trade and Economic Development
Appendixes
A. Fur Prices, Beaver Skins Traded, and the Simulated Beaver Population at Fort Albany, York Factory, and Fort Churchill, 1700-1763 189
B. Simulating the Beaver Population
C. A Model of Harvesting Large Game: Joint Ownership Versus Competition
D. Food and the Relative Incomes of Native Americans and English Workers
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments

Promotional Information

Commerce by a Frozen Sea reveals Native Americans as industrious people and effective traders who achieved a standard of living in the eighteenth century higher than most workers in Europe.

About the Author

Ann M. Carlos is Professor of Economics at the University of Colorado at Boulder and University College, Dublin. Frank D. Lewis is Professor of Economics at Queen's University, Ontario.

Reviews

"A well-researched and deftly written economic history of the eighteenth-century fur trade." (Timothy Shannon, Gettysburg College) "Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis, economic historians with a flair for anthropology and ethnohistory, . . are interested in the enthusiastic involvement of Native Americans who 'chose to spend time in the fur trade in order to acquire' European goods. . . . What emerges from their fine-combing of records . . . is a portrait of sophisticated Indian traders and consumers who often called the shots." (TLS)