Carrie Elder
Teresa Coronado
Eng 327
29 March 2016
The Real Effects of the North American Fur Trade
Eyewitness reports of historical
events are ideal places to uncover the real and honest depictions of histories
that are edited or romanticized. These accounts are crucial because they are
often written in vivid detail as the event occurred. Furthermore, these stories
can provide readers with a look into the author’s thoughts about the event that
is unfolding right before their eyes, completely free of retrospective
judgement because it was written during the event. Eyewitness narratives are
about capturing a moment in time in the blink of an eye, and therefore are the
best opportunity to get a story as it really happened. Father Etienne de
Carheil’s letter to Monsieur Louis Hector de Callieres, a governor, is a deeply
detailed and emotionally charged letter about the horrors of the fur trade in
the Upper Lakes that is deeply entrenched in religion and a desire for often
basic human rights to be respected. Carheil spent fifteen years watching
Indigenous people suffer at the hands of French merchants, hunters, and explorers,
all in the name of capitalist greed, and wrote this letter to plead for the end
of the injustices that he witnessed. This letter depicts the horrors of the fur
trade through the eyes of an outside observer, making it a valuable addition to
North American historical canon because of its placement in history as a
narrative that details the violence and oppression that Indigenous people faced
at the hands of the French.
Etienne de Carheil was a Jesuit
priest who became a missionary to the Iroquois and Huron people after spending
years amongst their tribes. He was a chief Jesuit missionary to the Native
Americans of the Straits for fourteen years. Carheil dedicated a portion of his
life to serving the Native Americans through his own religious beliefs. His
religious beliefs and close relationship with the Native Americans inform his
plea to end the fur trade and trafficking of Indigenous women. Carheil skillfully
uses religious beliefs to appeal to his audience, in this case one person, to
create the idea that the fur trade is inherently against the Christian
teachings of the King of France, “If his majesty desire to save our missions
and do support the Establishment of Religion, as we have no Doubt he does, we
beg him to most humbly to Believe What is most true, namely: there is no other
means of doing so than to abolish completely the two Infamous sorts of Commerce
which have brought the missions to the brink of destruction, and which will not
long delay in destroying these if they be not abolished as soon as possible by
his orders, and be prevented from ever being restored” (Carheil 193). Carheil
presents the trade and commerce occurring in the Great Lakes as being antithetical
to not only to missionary work, but to the institution of religion itself. The
only way to maintain religious order is to stop the trade. He appeals to the
sensibilities of Monsieur Callieres and the King by presuming that they are
followers of Christ’s teachings and therefore care about the plights of others.
Carheil proclaims this pillar of his argument first in order to set up the high
stakes of his letter and the brevity of his experiences of watching trade and
commerce tear apart the lives of Indigenous people – it is so awful that any
Christian person should be against it on religious principles alone.
After establishing the dire stakes
of the fur trade, Carheil begins to desperately depict the atrocities being
carried out by the French traders. He separate these evil acts into two
categories and discusses the grave impact these actions have on missionary work
and people themselves, “There is no other means of doing so than to abolish
completely the two Infamous sorts of Commerce which have brought the missions
to the brink of destruction, and which will not long delay in destroying these
if they be not abolished as soon as possible by his orders, and be prevented
from ever being restored. The first is the Commerce in brandy; the second is
the Commerce of the savage women with the French” (Carheil 193). He firmly
believes that the debauchery and trafficking of women will bring destruction of
values and an upheaval the work that missionaries like himself were currently
doing. Not only must be these awful acts be stopped, but they must be prevented
from ever happening again. Positioning the horrific actions of the French as
being sinful and dangerous to religious work exemplifies the true effects of
the fur trade. In his writing, Carheil presents an idea that the privacy of
women’s bodies must be maintained in order to maintain order based in religious
values, therefore the trafficking of women is inherently evil. Furthermore, he
connects the selling of brandy with these practices to suggest that debauchery
leads to forcible prostitution, which then leads to sinful acts of violence and
oppression. The author stresses a relationship between the actions of the
French with dire consequences in order to show the need for intervention, rather
than merely recounting events with no solution.
Carheil does hold the French
accountable for their actions. A selection of the text reads, “Both are carried
on in an equally public manner, without our being able to remedy the evil,
because we are not supported by the Commandants. They — far from attempting,
when we undertake to remonstrate with them, to check these trades—themselves
carry them on with greater freedom than do their Subordinates; and so sanction them
by their example that, on witnessing it, a general permission and an assurance of
impunity are assumed, that cause them to become Common to all the French who
come here to trade” (Carheil 195). In this passage, the author highlights the
power dynamics that allow for certain atrocities to occur. He reveals that
corruption and abuse of power happen publically, without repercussions, because
the Commanders do not use their place of authority to maintain any sense of
integrity during the trades, instead they turn a blind eye to the atrocities
their subordinates are carrying out right under their nose. As a result of
this, debauchery and prostitution become normalized institutions for French fur
trading because they are allowed to happen. The author presents a dynamic of
power that is corrupt and favors the oppressor, the French, and hurts the
oppressed, the Native Americans. The French purposely abuse their powers over
the Native American by depleting their resources and disrespecting their
personal and natural space. The French are allowed to do this because the only
people who have authority over their actions is themselves. This creates a
cycle of corruption in which they have given power to do what they want
unchecked. In knowing this, it becomes interesting to note that Carheil writes
to Monsieur Callieres, a governor to end the fur trade, the only higher power
that can stop the violent oppression happening in Montreal, and uses another
higher power, God, to stress the need for the end of this suffering. There are
different but interconnected structures of power occurring in Carheil’s letter.
The worst of all offenses is the
trafficking of Native American women to French soldiers. The author writes, “Their
third occupation consists in making of their fort a place that I am ashamed to
call by its proper name, where the women have found out that their bodies might
serve in lieu of merchandise and would be still better received than
Beaver-skins; accordingly, that is now the most usual and most Continual
Commerce, and that which is most extensively carried on. Whatever efforts the
missionaries may make to denounce and abolish it, this traffic increases,
instead of diminishing, and grows daily more and more” (Carheil 197). Carheil
finds this so abhorrent that he will not even call it what it is, which deeply
demonstrates how abhorrent these actions truly were. The increasing rate of
trafficking and the inability to stop it highlights how prevalent trafficking
was during the fur trade. The consuming of women’s bodies was as prevalent as
the selling and consumption of furs. Sexual oppression and violence is an
insidious aspect of the fur trade that Carheil depicts in his letter, albeit unceasingly,
because it is embedded in an abuse of power and dominance. However, the existence
of trafficking in the fur trade is overlooked and not talked about it – but Carheil
discusses it to show how evil the fur trade was and why it needed to be
abolished. His letter draws a connection between corruption and sexual violence
because they are bound in a system that turns marginalized people into objects
that can be humiliated and controlled – all in the name of capitalism.
Carheil’s letter depicts the real
cost of the fur trade without overlooking the despicable acts that occurred while
furs were exchanged. His letter is amongst a larger historical context of
capitalist oppression that deeply harmed the Native Americans. Native Americans’
labor was exploited during the fur trade as Adele Perry writes, “Indigenous
people supplied all the furs, much of the goods upon which the trade depended,
and a good dealof its labour. Indigenous women produced all the clothing and a
substantial part of the materials upon which the trade depended, and provided
the vast bulk of the reproductive labour and affective ties negotiated through
intimate partnerships with men tied to the trade” (Perry 3). Carheil’s
historical relevance is proven in this passage as it now shown that Native
American men and women were exploited by the French through work and sexual relationships,
which is demonstrated in Carheil’s letters. Furthermore, this relationship
demonstrates how capitalism often operates at the expanse of the labor of people
of color – as a result of power structures that place them in economically lesser
positions. This phenomenon occurred in Montreal during the fur trade with the
Native Americans having access to materials the French needed for capital. In
locating this, it is clear how relevant Carheil’s letter are.
The North American fur trade was an
egregious attack on human rights as evidenced by Carheil’s letter. This letter
is, then, an important addition to the North American canon pre 1800 because it
is an unflinching expose on the real atrocities that occurred during the trade
and the power dynamics that allowed them to happen. This letter can help readers
understand just how deeply capitalism and corruption damaged the Native Americans
and contributed to a cultural depiction of an entrie group of people as weaker.
As Christoper L. Miller and George R. Hamel write, “The cultural assumptions
reflected in those observations continue to inform American popular culture and
lie at the base of many persisting stereotypes concerning Indian rationality
and motivation,” (3) and this idea is deeply engrained in Carheil’s text. His
letter is a key to the negative cultural opinions of Native Americans as they
began with the French abusing their power over them in order to deplete their
uses – and often, their lives. This is why Carheil’s letter is so crucial to
the larger North American canon; it provides the readers with a non-revisionist
depiction of history that is stained with the blood of the Native American
people.
Works Cited
Perry, Adele. "Vocabularies of Slavery and
Anti-Slavery: The North American Fur-Trade And The Imperial World." Australian
Historical Studies 45.1 (2014): 34-45.America: History & Life.
Web. 29 Mar. 2016.
Miller, Christopher L., and George R. Hamell. "A
New Perspective on Indian-White Contact: Cultural Symbols and Colonial
Trade." Journal of American History73.2 (1986): 311-328. America:
History & Life. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.
Carheil, Etienne de. "Letter ... to Monsieur
Louis Hector de Callières, governor [on conditions in the Upper Lakes in
1702].” The Jesuit Relations and Allied
Documents. LXV.1: (188-235). Web. 29 March 2016.
Hyperlink: http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/ref/collection/tp/id/39400
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