The Fur-Trade Frontier And What It Actually Was

To understand Marie Dorion’s world, it is necessary to understand the specific social environment of the fur-trade frontier, which was not simply a backdrop to her story but the structure within which her life was organized.

The fur trade of the early nineteenth century was a system of enormous geographical and cultural complexity.

It stretched from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, from the subarctic to the Gulf of Mexico.

Its labor force was drawn from multiple European national traditions — French-Canadian voyageurs, Scottish-Canadian partners and managers, American trappers and merchants, British company men — as well as from the many Indigenous nations whose cooperation was essential to the enterprise at every level.