The Fur Trading Era
Have you ever trapped an animal. Well the trappers had to do this every day for a living. The life of a trapper was very harsh and lonely. Some trappers got married mostly to Indians. Here is a look at what their life was.
Movement
Before we start culture is about location too. Fur Traders were originally from Europe. Most of them were from France. Some were from British and Spain. They moved to the west side of the Mississippi River. There was a fur trading company in Missouri. Most of them were in the west. Now let's get started.
Daily Life A trapper usually wore a beaver pelt hat for his head and moccasins for his feet. For the rest of his body he wore cloaks, robes, and sometimes even dresses with fine trim for the rest of the body. They also wore a possibles bag that looked like
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This was also known as multilingual. One of these languages was the country they originally came from. Most of them were French but some of them were Spanish and British. Another one was the Native Americans language. Tribes had different languages. For example the Algic tribe, a tribe up north by Canada, spoke Ojibwa. The third language was English of course. They needed to learn French to communicate with other trappers. They needed to learn the Native American’s language to trade and get help or help the Indians. If they went to a fort they needed to learn to speak English (Bothe).
Arts
Trappers themselves didn’t necessarily have craftsmanship. The art was in the fashion of the trapper’s pelts. Mainly beaver pelts. There were a lot of different types. All the military hats and fashion hats such as the, popular, stovepipe hat were made of beaver. Going along with fashion, a lot of clothes and dresses were made of beaver, bear, and deer. Shoes were made of leather but they weren’t as comfortable as the moccasins made by the Indians. (“Trappers, Traders, and Trailblazers”).