Chesterfield recorded the effects of post life upon the Cree and Inuit, and showed how the white agents of the church and fur trade made us of native implements, clothing, and transportation. Recognizing the threat to native ways of life posed by the white man's advancing civilization, he photographed the native people's dress, their everyday activities, the details that define a culture. Much of what he recorded is now lost forever. The text by William C. James provides a detailed framework in which to understand the photographs. James describes Chesterfield's life, the region, the people he photographed, the role of the Hudson's Bay Company, the documentary significance of the activities depicted in the photographs, and the relationship between these and other extant photos of that region and era. The three-year period Chesterfield spent in the District of Ungava emerges as crucial in his own development and as a decisive turning point in the history of the region. Together with James's text, these pictures constitute an arresting chronicle of a place, its people, and their ways of life, now all irrevocably changed.

The Fur Trade Revisited is a collection of twenty-eight essays selected from the more than fifty presentations made at the Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference held on Mackinac Island, Michigan, in the fall of 1991. Essays contained in this important new interpretive work focus on the history, archaeology, and literature of a fascinating, growing area of scholarly investigation. Underscoring the work's multifaceted approach is an introductory essay by Lily McAuley titled "Memories of a Trapper's Daughter." This vivid and compelling account of the fur-trade life sets a level of quality for what follows. Part one of The Fur Trade Revisited discusses eighteenth-century fur trade intersections with European markets. The essays in part two examine Native people and the strategies they employed to meet demands placed on them by the market for furs. Part three examines the origins, motives, and careers of those who actually participated in the fur trade. Part four focuses attention on the indigenous fur-trade culture and subsequent archaeology in the area around Mackinac Island, Michigan, while part five contains studies focusing on the fur-trade culture in other parts of North America. Part six assesses the fur trade after 1870 and part seven contains evaluations of the critical historical and literary interpretations prevalent in fur-trade scholarship.

A Seattle Times selection for one of Best Non-Fiction Books of 2010 Winner of the New England Historial Association's 2010 James P. Hanlan Award Winner of the Outdoor Writers Association of America 2011 Excellence in Craft Award, Book Division, First Place "A compelling and well-annotated tale of greed, slaughter and geopolitics." —Los Angeles Times As Henry Hudson sailed up the broad river that would one day bear his name, he grew concerned that his Dutch patrons would be disappointed in his failure to find the fabled route to the Orient. What became immediately apparent, however, from the Indians clad in deer skins and "good furs" was that Hudson had discovered something just as tantalizing. The news of Hudson's 1609 voyage to America ignited a fierce competition to lay claim to this uncharted continent, teeming with untapped natural resources. The result was the creation of an American fur trade, which fostered economic rivalries and fueled wars among the European powers, and later between the United States and Great Britain, as North America became a battleground for colonization and imperial aspirations. In Fur, Fortune, and Empire, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin chronicles the rise and fall of the fur trade of old, when the rallying cry was "get the furs while they last." Beavers, sea otters, and buffalos were slaughtered, used for their precious pelts that were tailored into extravagant hats, coats, and sleigh blankets. To read Fur, Fortune, and Empire then is to understand how North America was explored, exploited, and settled, while its native Indians were alternately enriched and exploited by the trade. As Dolin demonstrates, fur, both an economic elixir and an agent of destruction, became inextricably linked to many key events in American history, including the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812, as well as to the relentless pull of Manifest Destiny and the opening of the West. This work provides an international cast beyond the scope of any Hollywood epic, including Thomas Morton, the rabble-rouser who infuriated the Pilgrims by trading guns with the Indians; British explorer Captain James Cook, whose discovery in the Pacific Northwest helped launch America's China trade; Thomas Jefferson who dreamed of expanding the fur trade beyond the Mississippi; America's first multimillionaire John Jacob Astor, who built a fortune on a foundation of fur; and intrepid mountain men such as Kit Carson and Jedediah Smith, who sliced their way through an awe inspiring and unforgiving landscape, leaving behind a mythic legacy still resonates today. Concluding with the virtual extinction of the buffalo in the late 1800s, Fur, Fortune, and Empire is an epic history that brings to vivid life three hundred years of the American experience, conclusively demonstrating that the fur trade played a seminal role in creating the nation we are today.

The Cultural Work of Photography in Canada is an in-depth study on the use of photographic imagery in Canada from the late nineteenth century to the present. This volume of fourteen essays provides a thought-provoking discussion of the role photography has played in representing Canadian identities. In essays that draw on a diversity of photographic forms, from the snapshot and advertising image to works of photographic art, contributors present a variety of critical approaches to photography studies, examining themes ranging from photography's part in the formation of the geographic imaginary to Aboriginal self-identity and notions of citizenship. The volume explores the work of photographs as tools of self and collective expression while rejecting any claim to a definitive, singular telling of photography's history. Reflecting the rich interdisciplinarity of contemporary photography studies, The Cultural Work of Photography in Canada is essential reading for anyone interested in Canadian visual culture. Contributors include Sarah Bassnett (University of Western Ontario), Lynne Bell (University of Saskatchewan), Jill Delaney (Library and Archives Canada), Robert Evans (Carleton University), Sherry Farrell Racette (University of Manitoba), Blake Fitzpatrick (Toronto Metropolitan University), Vincent Lavoie (Université du Québec à Montréal), John O'Brian (University of British Columbia), James Opp (Carleton University), Joan M. Schwartz (Queen's University), Sarah Stacy (Library and Archives Canada), Jeffrey Thomas (Ottawa), and Carol Williams (Trent University/University of Lethbridge).

To many, the North is a familiar but inaccessible place. Yet images of the region are within easy reach, in magazine racks, on our coffee tables, and on television, computer, and movie screens. In Northern Exposures, Peter Geller uncovers the history behind these popular conceptions of the Canadian North.

A critical edition of a Norwegian free trader's account of the fur trade in Manitoba.

Fur Nation traces the interwoven relationships between sexuality, national identity, and colonialism. Chantal Nadeau shows how Canada, a white settler colony, bases its existence and its nationhood on a complex sexual economy based on women wrapped in fur. Nadeau traces the centrality of fur through a series of intriguing case studies, including: * Hollywood's take on the 330 year history of the Hudson Bay Company, founded to exploit Canada's rich fur resources * the life of a postwar fur fashion photographer * a 1950s musical called Fur Lady * the battle between Brigitte Bardot's anti-fur activists and the fur industry. Nadeau highlights the connection between 'fur ladies' - women wearing, exploiting or promoting furs - and the beaver, symbol of Canada and nature's master builder. She shows how, in postcolonial Canada, the nation is sexualised around female reproduction and fur, which is both a crucial factor in economic development, and a powerful symbol through which the nation itself is conceived and commodified. Fur Nation demonstrates that, for Canada, fur really is the fabric of a nation.

This detailed study of the g̀ateway community' of Lac la Biche in northern Alberta examines life in the region during the fur trade near the Beaver River route, Portage La Biche, Red Deers Lake House, Greenwich House and Lac La Biche Post.