Commerce by a Frozen Sea reveals Native Americans as industrious people and effective traders who achieved a standard of living in the eighteenth century higher than most workers in Europe.

Commerce by a Frozen Sea
Native Americans and the European Fur Trade

Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis

2010 | 264 pages | Cloth $49.95
American History | Native American Studies
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Table of Contents

Introduction: Native Americans and Europeans in the Eighteenth-Century Fur Trade

1. Hats and the European Fur Market
2. The Hudson's Bay Company and the Organization of the Fur Trade
3. Indians as Consumers
4. The Decline of Beaver Populations
5. Industrious Indians
6. Property Rights, Depletion, and Survival
7. Indians and the Fur Trade: A Golden Age?

Epilogue. The Fur Trade and Economic Development

Appendixes
A. Fur Prices, Beaver Skins Traded, and the Simulated Beaver Population at Fort Albany, York Factory, and Fort Churchill, 1700-1763 189
B. Simulating the Beaver Population
C. A Model of Harvesting Large Game: Joint Ownership Versus Competition
D. Food and the Relative Incomes of Native Americans and English Workers

Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments