The relationship between the Crow nation and the American fur trade was one of the most extensive and consequential in the history of the northern plains, and it is the specific context that produced the documentary record of Woman Chief’s life.

The American Fur Company and its competitors established a network of trading posts along the upper Missouri River from the 1820s onward.

Fort Union, built in 1828, was the crown jewel of this system — a major fortified trading post that served as the commercial center for the entire upper Missouri region.

The Crow were among the most important trading partners for this network.

They were skilled processors of bison robes — the primary commodity of the upper Missouri fur trade in the middle decades of the nineteenth century — and they had access to the beaver and other fur-bearing animals that the trade also sought.