Detroit The Manufacturing Frontier And The Empire If Consumption By Cangany

In “Fashioning Moccasins: Detroit, the Manufacturing Frontier, and the Empire if Consumption, 1701-1835” by Catherine Cangany; the author offers an interesting outlook on the transformation of North America’s Frontier. Cangany argues that through observing the small frontier town of Detroit you can see the western frontier’s change through the study of moccasins. Her argument is persuasive because she chronologically structures her article, effectively shows Detroit’s transformation and gives a variety of examples allowing the reader to see the influence of moccasins.
Catherine Cangany’s article is well-structured helping the reader follow her research. The beginning of her article consists of a summary of what she will expand upon allowing

With this increase, it showed a surge in the colonists’ preference for moccasins as well. This also led to the small homemaking of moccasins to not last long. By the late eighteenth century its small business had developed into a cottage industry that was unable to stay small for long: “in years after Montresor’s letter about the military’s winter apparel at Detroit…something quite different occurred…government and trading officials were acquiring moccasins in bulk by the 1770s” (81) Montresor’s letter helped increase Detroit’s small industry expand outwards as different areas desired to buy their product. Cangany’s also notes that at this time when historians believed: “colonial manufacturing efforts to have been minimal or quickly suppressed by imperial administers” (85). Detroit, however, in its quick growth as an industrial town proved this idea wrong as it only continued to expand and increase in regional popularity. By the end of the eighteenth century, Cangany’s research shows that Detroit found itself becoming capable of surviving as a global

The business of moccasins proved Cangany’s point that there is much more to see in small frontier towns in the growth of America in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Detroit, while expanded during this time, simultaneously shows an important influence of moccasins during this time period. In Cangany’s article, she also uses a small town in French Canada to prove that this the popularity of moccasins was not just occurring on the American frontier: “French-Canadian habitants were making their own moccasins. They did so for many of the same reasons” (79). With this choice of footwear occurring in much of the new world, Cangany has a reason to question how important moccasins