Museum of the Fur Trade

06/11/2026

Today marks the 79th anniversary of the passing of noted western author and fur trader James Willard Schultz. This Wi******er Model 1876, caliber .45-75 was purchased by Schultz in 1879.
Since boyhood, Charles Hanson was captivated with Schultz’s books, and was an early inspiration for his lifelong interest in fur trade history. The two corresponded regularly while Schultz was still alive.

“Wide, brown plains, distant, slender, flat-topped buttes; still more distant giant mountains, blue-sided, sharp-peaked, snow-capped; odour of sage and smoke of camp fire; thunder of ten thousand buffalo hoofs over the hard, dry ground; long-drawn, melancholy howl of wolves breaking the silence of night, how I loved you all!”

~My Life as an Indian: The Story of a Red Woman and a White Man in the Lodges of the Blackfeet, by by James Willard Schultz (1907) — Chapter 1: “Fort Benton”

06/09/2026

MATO: The Life and Times of James Bordeaux is now available for online purchasing.

https://www.furtrade.org/store/index.php?route=product/product&path=60_87&product_id=793&sort=pd.name&order=ASC&limit=100

06/09/2026

The French bombardment of York Factory (a.k.a. Ft. York, a.k.a. Ft. Nelson) during King William's War. From La Potherie's "Historie de l'Amerique Septentrionale." The bombs flying through the air are from the hidden mortar (figure C).

“In 1696 the British government sent two warships and three frigates of the [Hudson’s Bay] Company under [Captain James] Knight to recapture York and take supplies to Albany. On August 31 the French surrendered the fort without bloodshed.”
{snip}
"[Captain Pierre Le Moyne] D’Iberville had been plundering Newfoundland, when he was ordered to return to Hudson Bay in the ‘Pelican’ accompanied by three other ships. Two days after reaching the mouth of the Nelson in September 1697, he was waiting for the rest of the squadron to arrive, when he saw three ships bearing down on him. They proved to be three British ships, H.M.S. ‘Hampshire,’ and two Company vessels, ‘Dering’ and ‘Royal Hudson’s Bay.’ D’Iberville at once attacked, sank the ‘Hampshire’ with 290 men, captured the ‘Royal Hudson’s Bay’ and made the ‘Dering’ flee. Later in London, the mate of the captured frigate gave a deposition before the Lords of Admiralty:
‘Capt. Fletcher (who Comanded the Hampshire)’ he was reported to have said, ‘was a brave man, and Just before he gave his last broad Side, called to the said Monsr. D’Brevile, bidding him Strike, which he refuseing to do, Capt. Fletcher took a Glass and drank to him, telling him, he should dine with him immediately; Upon which the said French Capt. Pledged him in another Glass, And there upon his Men Fired a Volley of Small Shott upon the Hampshire which was returned with a like Volley to the French man; And after that the said Capt. Fletcher was not Seen; So that it was Supposed the said Capt. Fletcher was then killed.’
Three days later the ‘Pelican’ and her prize, the ‘Royal Hudson’s Bay,’ were driven ashore and wrecked. Many of the French ship’s crew were drowned. Meantime the ‘Dering’ escaped to the mouth of the Nelson River.
The next day three more French ships arrived and the fort was taken."
{snip}
"From [La Potherie’s account] one catches the indomitable spirit of both contestants in this, the greatest arctic sea battle in North American history.”

~Grace Lee Nute, "The French on the Bay," The Beaver: Magazine of the North (Winter, 1957).

06/04/2026

“A Greenland ship, besides a master and surgeon, generally carries a crew of forty or fifty men, comprising several classes of officers, such as harpooners, boat-steerers, line-managers, carpenters, coopers, &c. She is commonly provided with six or seven boats, which, as affording the principal means by which the fishery is to be carried on, are hung round her in such a manner as to admit of being detached and launched with the greatest possible expedition. After the whale is killed and cut up, the bone and blubber are stowed in the ship; but the attack upon the animal and all operations of its capture and destruction are carried on in the boats. The chief instruments with which every boat is provided are two harpoons and six or eight lances. {snip} The harpoon is made wholly of iron, and is about three feet in length. It consists of a shank with a barbed head, each barb, or with, as it is called, having an inner and smaller barb in a reverse position. This instrument is attached by a shank to a line or rope of about two inches and a quarter in circumference, and 120 fathoms in length. Each boat is furnished with six of these lines, making in all 720 fathoms, or 4320 feet. The use of the harpoon, which is commonly projected from the hand, but sometimes from a sort of gun, is merely to strike and hook the fish. It is by the lance that its destruction is accomplished. This is a spear of the length of six feet, consisting principally of a stock or handle of fir fitted with a steel head, which is made very thin and exceedingly sharp. The lance is not flung from the hand like the harpoon, but held fast as it is thrust into the body of the animal.”

~The Penny Magazine of the Society of the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, no. 74 — "The Whale Fishery," May 31, 1833.

06/02/2026

“In 1638 the Dutch faced competition along the Delaware from an unlikely source, Sweden. Peter Minuit, a disgruntled former employee of the Dutch West India Company, gained the ear of the Swedish court, where he extolled the virtues of mercantile enterprise in the New World. The crown created a monopoly, the Swedish West India Trading Company, with the nation’s chancellor as its president. Minuit initially headed the colony and the Swedes built posts along the Delaware. Various governors tried to counter Dutch opposition. They included the energetic Johan Printz, whose girth was greater than his height, and whom the Delaware Indians named ‘Big Tub.’ Despite the Swedish colonists’ best efforts, the mother country neglected the settlers and failed to send any supply ships from 1647 to 1654! The local Indians took advantage of the settlers’ weakness and massacred some of them. When New Sweden began receiving supplies again from Stockholm in 1655, Peter Stuyvesant, the choleric New Netherland governor, sailed an army into the Delaware. In a bloodless action he put an end to the colony by connecting it to New Netherland.”

~When Skins were Money: A History of the Fur Trade, by James A. Hanson (2017) — Chapter 4: "The Early Colonial Fur Trade"

05/28/2026

“We came to a cottage of an ancient witty man, that had had a great familie and many children, his wife old, nevertheleſſe handſome. They weare of a nation called Malhonmines [i.e. Menominees]; that is, the nation of Oats, graine yᵗ is much in yᵗ country. Of this afterwards more att large. I tooke this man for my ffather and yᵉ woman for my mother, ſoe the children conſequently brothers and ſiſters. They adopted me. I gave every one a guift, and they to mee.
Having ſo diſpoſed of our buiſſineſſe, the winter comes on, that warns us; the ſnow begins to fall, ſoe we muſt retire from the place to ſeeke our living in the woods.”

~Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson, Being an Account of his Travels and Experiences among the North American Indians, from 1652 to 1684. Transcribed from Original Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and the British Museum. First Published 1853. — Fourth Voyage of Peter Esprit Radisson.

05/26/2026

William Augustus Bowles (1763-1805)

Maryland born loyalist who participated in the Siege of Pensacola in 1781. He later became the self-styled Director-General of the Creek Nation, and attempted to establish an autonomous Indian republic in the Southeast.

“A British soldier at Pensacola during the Revolution, Bowles married a Creek woman, tried his hand at fur trading, and then organized a movement to create an independent southern Indian state. As an irritant to Spain, Britain encouraged Bowles and provided his movement material support. The menace of republican France however, forced the two erstwhile enemies to become allies in 1793. Bowles was abandoned by the British, captured by the Spanish, and deported to a prison in the Philippines.”
[…]
“[Bowles] escaped the dungeon in the Philippines and made his way to England, where he obtained renewed government backing for his autonomous Indian nation. In 1799 he landed on the coast of Florida. For two years he and his followers pillaged northern Florida, especially the trading posts and warehouses of Panton & Leslie Company. Two years later Bowles fell into the hands of the Americans. In gesture good will they turned him over to the Spanish, who promptly shipped him to prison in Cuba. He was never seen again.”

~When Skins were Money: A History of the Fur Trade, by James A. Hanson (2017) — Chapter 9: "Young America Looks West.”

05/23/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18nF13ncFX/

Come join us for the big 50th!

05/20/2026

“Burning glasses were standard items in the early trade of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Indian word for them was included in James Isham’s Indian vocabulary collected at Fort Churchill in the early 1740’s. They were regularly invoiced to the Bay posts in the 1750’s and are listed in the Standard of Trade for York Fort in the 1760’s. Years later Isaac Cowie, Hudson’s Bay trader on the western plains 1867-74, wrote:
‘In sunshine the burning glass quickly sets fire to touchwood or tinder, but for general service the flint and steel was the main reliance, and the natives were wonderfully adept in their use, making the sparks fly like a blacksmith’s forge. But till the art was acquired the novice often uses up a lot of skin and fiery language before getting a light.’
He went on to observe that in ‘those ‘matchless’ days…flint, steel and tinder…were the only means of striking a light, unless during sunshine with a burning-glass.’”

~“The Engages” Museum of the Fur Trade Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 4 (Winter 1979)

05/17/2026

Brick tea manufactured in China for the Russian American trade. The tea was compressed to facilitate its transport by camel from Mongolia across Siberia to Russia, and from there to Alaska.

The text on the brick is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, commonly used in most Eastern European countries:
КИРПИЧНЫ
ЧАЙ
ВЫСОКАГО КАЧЕСТВА

It roughly translates as “Tea Brick of High Quality.”