Beaver Tale: Eric Jay Dolin on the Fur Industry’s Role in Western Settlement

By Jenny Shank, 7-19-10

Fur, Fortune and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America
by Eric Jay Dolin
W.W. Norton & Company, 442 pages, $29.95

A beaver might be a more fitting national symbol for America than a bald eagle, given the way the quest for that rodent’s fur shaped this country’s history, from its earliest colonial days to its “Manifest Destiny” westward drive and beyond.  In his detailed history of the fur industry in America, Eric Jay Dolin doesn’t suggest that the fur trade is solely responsible for Britain’s eventual triumph over early Dutch, French and Swedish attempts to colonize America, or that it was the primary motivator behind the American Revolution, or that it was the only reason Thomas Jefferson launched Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery mission.  But Fur, Fortune and Empire makes clear that the fur trade played an undeniable role in these and other formative events in America’s history.

The story begins with beaver felt hats, fashionable across Europe on and off for three hundred years, from about 1550 to 1850, long after beavers had been trapped to extinction in England and other parts of Europe.  As one illustration in Dolin’s book shows, beaver felt was used in a wide variety of hats, including the “Navy cocked hat,” the famous colonial tri-corner “continental” hat and the top hat.  Before these hats were in vogue, most furs were worn by royalty or those who’d earned the right to wear furs through their wealth or position.  But beaver hats were popular among a wider section of society, and after the last English beaver checked out some time around 1526, British fur traders looked to the new world to satisfy market demands.

Once early explorers arrived on America’s Atlantic coast, they found it relatively easy to acquire beaver pelts through trade with the Indians.  The Indians did the trapping and fur preparation, and then brought the pelts to trading posts, where Europeans traded for them with knives, guns, and other metal goods, but especially wampum: beads made out of shells that were so important to the coastal Indians for rituals and ceremonies that Europeans soon began to use wampum as a form of currency.  For fur traders who survived the passage from Europe and maintained good relations with the Indians, and made it home with a ship emptied of trinkets and filled with pelts, the return on investment was enormous.

This fur trade equation began to shape America’s history from its earliest settlement.  Dolin writes: “For more than a decade after their arrival in America, the Pilgrims’ main source of income for purchasing supplies and paying off their debts had come from the sale of beaver pelts shipped to London—pelts they obtained by trading with the Indians.”

Colonists were expected to pay off their investors with shipments of pelts back to their countries of origin.  British, Dutch, French and Swedish interests consequently fought for control of key trading posts, and eventually, through a series of complicated maneuvers that Dolin lays out, the British won.  Until the Americans kicked them out.  But, Dolin writes, even after the Revolution, the British maintained exclusive control of several trading posts until a 1796 agreement finally made them turn the posts over.

The beaver isn’t the only animal that shaped America’s expansion—soon the trade in sea otter pelts led to activity on the West coast, and the quest for buffalo hides led get-rich-quick schemers to hunt that animal to near extinction.  These hunting expeditions increased America’s knowledge of the Western landscape, and contributed to the settlement of the West.

In addition to outlining the larger sweep of American history, Dolin also dips into individual stories, which prove to be some of the most compelling parts of the book.  There’s the story of how the fur trapper John Colter, a member of the Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery, saved his life by outrunning dozens of Blackfeet Indians in a race to the death.  Or the story of John Jacob Astor, who immigrated from Germany as a young man with a cache of flutes, sold them for capital and eventually made himself into a fur baron millionaire and real estate magnate, seemingly through sheer force of will.  The lives of mountain men Jim Bridger and Jedediah Smith both featured many suspenseful episodes, which Dolin vividly describes.

Packed with intriguing tidbits like these, Fur, Fortune and Empire serves as a fur-focused refresher course on American history that will have readers reconsidering the powerful role the fur trade played in swaying in our nation’s history.  The narrative of Fur, Fortune and Empire suggests that if you’re proud to be an American, you can thank the beaver.

Eric Jay Dolin is currently touring the West; he’ll be at the Tattered Cover (LoDo) on July 26 (7 p.m.), Powell’s Bookstore on July 27 (7 p.m.), Four Mile Historic Park in Denver on July 29 (7 p.m.), Estes Park Museum on July 30 (6 p.m.), and he’ll make several other stops in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado.