North American Fur Trade and Industrialization of the North

• The fur trade in North America began almost as soon as Europeans began their explorations of the North American mainland. This is a brief description of the most significant events in the 250 years during which the fur trade flourished. This period of time can be roughly divided into three sections, the "French Era" from 1600 to 1760. The "British Era" from 1760 to 1816. And the "American Era" from 1816 to 1850.


• The North American fur trade was a central part of the early history of contact in The New World (North America) between European-Americans and American Indians. In 1578 there were 350 European fishing vessels at Newfoundland and sailors began to trade metal implements (particularly knives) for the natives' well worn pelts. The worn pelt was always highly desired by the Europeans as the outer coarse guard hair was worn off and the addition of human oils combined to make a particularly soft and beautiful result.
  
• Fur (especially beaver) was prized and very expensive in European markets
• At first, fur was not the most important thing that was traded. Then, around the year 1600, something happened: hats made from beaver felt became very fashionable. Everybody wanted one! At the same time, beavers were becoming extinct in Europe.
• Explorers continued to look for the Northwest Passage. In 1576 Martin Frobisher sailed on the first of his three voyages. John Davis continued the search, and Henry Hudson discovered the bay that was named after him.
  These men and others began mapping the land and the waterways. This would become important for both the fur trade and the exploration and settlement of Canada.
• the first commercial corporation in North America and largest fur trading company in the world, The Hudson's Bay Company.
  

(Student Note: I chose the region of Finland to discover the settlement and idustrilization of this country because I know little information on this country, and it is an interesting place in the circumpolar world.)

Settlements and Industrialization of Finland

Population trends in Finland in the 18th and 19th centuries were characterized by powerful fluctuations. The birth rate was close to 40 per 1000 inhabitants and the death rate about 25 per 1000. The development of agriculture and the expansion of urban trades accelerated population growth, while wars between Sweden and Russia, and disease and food shortages reduced the rate. It has been said that the last natural disaster to befall a European people took place in Finland at the end of the 1860s. The reasons for the disaster in question are to be found in the climate; summers were wintry and frosts destroyed the harvests in two consecutive years. Widespread famine ensued and the death rate rose temporarily to almost 80 per 1000.

Increased industrialization in Finland has steadily raised the proportion of the population living in urban areas; by the late 20th century about three-fifths of the total population lived in cities and towns. Farms are most commonly located in the meadowland regions of the southwest, where the fertile land is suitable for mixed farming. In the north farmers usually concentrate on small dairy herds and forestry. In Finnish Lapland there is some nomadic life based mainly on the reindeer industry. The major urban settlements are all in the southern third of the country, with a large number of cities and towns concentrated on the coast, either on the Gulf of Finland, as is the capital, Helsinki or on the Gulf of Bothnia, as are Vaasa and Oulu (Uleåborg). The only town of any size in the north is Rovaniemi, capital of the lääni of Lappi. Helsinki is the largest city, with a population about three times that of Tampere (Tammerfors) and of Turku, the country's capital until 1812.

Secondary Societies: European Contact and Theories of Change

Expeditions and Explorers

• The first known Europeans to contact the Americas were the Vikings ("Norse"), who established several colonies in the Americas.
• Leif Erikson established a short-lived settlement in Vinland, present day Newfoundland. Settlements in Greenland survived for several centuries, during which the Greenland Norse and the Inuit people experienced a mostly hostile contact. By the 15th century the Norse Greenland settlements had collapsed.
• In 1492 Christopher Columbus reached the Americas, after which European exploration
  and colonization rapidly expanded. The post-1492 era is known as the Columbian Exchange period.


• The European lifestyle included a long history of sharing close quarters with domesticated animals such as cows, pigs, sheep, goats, horses, and various domesticated fowl, which had resulted in epidemic diseases unknown in the Americas.
• Thus the large-scale contact after 1492 introduced novel germs to the indigenous people of the Americas. Smallpox (1525, 1558, 1589), typhus (1546), influenza (1558), diphtheria (1614) and measles (1618) epidemics swept ahead of initial European contact killing between 10 million and 112 million people, about 95% to 98% of the indigenous population.
• The population loss and the cultural chaos and political collapses it caused greatly facilitated both colonization of the land and conquest of the native civilizations.

European Encounter with Inuit
Inuit and Norse encounters are known through Norse legends and archaeological evidence. The Norse crossed Greenland to reach the Arctic and there they traded with the Inuit whom they called skraelings, Norse for heathen. In Newfoundland, considered part of the Arctic region because of the Beothuk who inhabited the island, the Norse built a settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows. Norse documentation indicates that they settled there around 1,000 years ago to facilitate trade with the Natives. According to Norse legend, the Beothuk were open to trade and enjoyed the iron goods they received in exchange for furs. The L'Anse aux Meadows site was abandoned shortly thereafter, but the Norse continued to trade with First Nations peoples along the Atlantic coast. Timber, fish, walrus, and polar bear meat were sought after by the Norse traders, but this trade declined after the fourteenth century.
European explorers captured or lured Inuit, and later, First Nations, onto their ships and brought them back with them to Europe

Sub-Arctic: Chippewyan and Dene
The various peoples of the Sub-Arctic region had either relatively early or relatively late contact with Europeans, some as late as the twentieth century. Those bands that occupied territories in coastal regions were more likely to come into earlier contact. Athapaskans participated in the fur trade, and in the whaling and fishing industries. For the interior bands, sustained contact often did not occur until the nineteenth century.

Short Time Line
waterborne exploration and expansion

1450-1559 Laying the foundation of early modern Europe

• Rise of modern science
• Portuguese’s voyages of exploration
• Discovery of the new world Development of industrial capitalism
• Humanism and new learning Revolution and reformation of the church
  
• 1450-1499
• 1473-6 Christian 1 of Denmark sends an expedition to Greenland to resume contact with Norse there; also looking for NW Passage
• 1480- Bristol merchants send out ships to prospect across the Atlantic (the Iceland trade lay behind this, and the knowledge of Greenland)
• 1480- Alphonse V of Denmark sends another expeditions west
• 1488- Cape of good hope is rounded
• 1492- Christopher Columbus reaches the west Indies
• 1492-Arctic thought to consist of four large land masses around the North Pole; two are extensions of Lapland and Greenland 1493-John Cabot to Newfoundland
• 1494-Treaty of Tordesillas
  
• 16TH CENTURY: Sailing the World
• 1500-Brazil is described
• 1504-First Breton fishers on Grand Banks
• 1513- America is recognized as a separate continent
• 1516- Proposal for a search for NWP fails for lack of willing crew
• 1517- Martin Luthers 95 Thesis signal beginning of reformation
• 1520-Magellan sails discovers straits of Magellan
• 1527- First English proposal for projects to reach china via north given to Henry 7th rejected
  
• A hundred Years:
• 1689-1789 New forms of government emerging From wars for control in Europe
• 1688-1721 From decline of some monarchies (Holland and Sweden) From new ideas about human and states Origin of enlightenment
• 1687-1715 Early enlightenment
• 1715-1748 Mature enlightenment
• 18th century
• 1712- American vessel takes a sperm whale: inaugurates American deep-water whaling treaty of Utrecht
• 1721- Hans Egede colonizes Greenland and establishes community; trade expands Bering
• 1725-42: Vitus Bering explores the bring strait and north cost of Siberia Russian GNEX led by Bering, Chirikov, Khariton, and Dmitri, Laptev, Cheelyuskin and others to the Bering sea and Arctic Siberia.

First Colonies: Faeroes, Iceland, and Greenland

Norse Vikings

• Famed for their longships, Vikings, in three centuries, founded settlements along the coasts and rivers of mainland Europe, Ireland, Normandy, the Shetland, Orkney, and Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland circa 1000.
• The term Viking commonly denotes the ship-borne warriors and traders of Norsemen (literally, men from the north)

Time Table of Norse History in Greenland
982-985
Erik the Red explores and names Greenland, after being outlawed for three years on account of manslaughter in Iceland.
986
Southern Greenland is settled by Erik the Red as he leads the first settlers from Iceland. Erik the Red settles in Brattahlid (today's Qassiarsuk) which becomes the center of the Eastern Settlement.
1000
Leif Eriksson, son of Erik the Red, returns to Greenland from Norway, bringing along the first Christian missionary. Soon hereafter, the first Christian church on the North American continent, Thjódhildur's Church, is built at Brattahlid.
1124-26
Greenland becomes a diocese of its own.
1480-1500
The Norse population of Greenland disappears.

Peoples of the Reindeer

REINDEER

• The reindeer is a deer living in flocks in the northernmost parts of Europe, Asia and North America.The reindeer are a ruminant and both the male and female reindeer carry antlers. It does not take to heat very well and tends instead to seek the high mountains during hot summer days.In the summer the main food is grass, leaves, herbs and fungae, of which the reindeer builds its fat to last the poor grazing of the winter. Then it feeds largely on various lichens and shrubs, continuously using the fat saved up during summer.
  
• The reindeer is well adapted to snow and cold. The winter fur is thick, consisting of a layer of wool close to the skin and long hairs covering it, filled with air. The reindeer can save both water and energy when it is cold. The supply of winter grazing depends not only on the size of the grazing land and its supply of lichens but even more so on the availability of the food. Ice crusts on the ground or a hard ice surface on the snow are among the greatest problems for reindeer herding. The grazing conditions on large clear cuts are worsened due to unfavourable snow quality and damaged lichens. The lack of tree pendent lichen is a serious risk for malnutrition for the reindeer when the grazing from the ground is inavailable on large areas.

REINDEER RESOURCES

• The reindeer have been a valuable resource for the Sami and other herding cultures. It is difficult to imagine the Sami surviving without the reindeer. In traditional herding, reindeer were used for food, clothing, trade (reindeer as a form of money), and for labor. Even before reindeer herding began the Sami lived on wild reindeer.
• Before the 17th century the Sami were able to live on wild reindeer for clothing and meat. They would have a few tame reindeer as draft animals.
• The Sámi people do not own any land. The right to free access to grazing for the reindeer is based on old customary rights.
• Like the Sami many other traditional Reindeer herders do not own any land, and they must migrate with the herds in order to obtain the substance of the reindeer.
  

HERDING SEASONAL ROUND

Spring Winter (March-April)

• In March and April the movement from the winter grazing land to the summer and calving lands in the mountains takes place.
• The mountain reindeer seeks out its calving place on the south slopes of the low mountains or in the sparse mountain birch region where bare spots on the ground show early.
• The food consists mostly of lichens.

Spring (April-May)

• In May the reindeer calves are born in the low mountains and in some regions in the forest land.
• The reindeer cows ordinarily have their calves on the same time and place each year
• The reindeer cow has one calf per year, weighing 4-6 kilos.
• The calf from the previous year is rejected before or during the calving. During this time the grazing consists of lichens, grass, herbs and leaves.
• The calving time is very sensitive to disturbances since the reindeer cow easily might abandon the new-born calf due to too much disturbance.

Beginning of Summer (June)

• After the calving time a calm period arrives for both the reindeer and the herders. The reindeer now seeks out birch forests, marshes and brooks where the fresh vegetation comes quickly.
• Fine grazing in the beginning of summer gives the grown reindeer the opportunity to gain whatever weight they might have lost during winter.
• For the reindeer herder this is a time of building and repair of enclosures, buildings and other facilities for reindeer herding.

Summer (June-July)

• This is the time when the reindeer go high up into the mountains or on the wide ranges where the heat and the insects are less bothering. The reindeer are especially sensitive to parasite flies with reindeer as hosts.
• This is an extremely hectic time for the reindeer herder, working evenings and nights for several summer weeks, taking advantage of the cooler climate at night. The collecting of the reindeer can take many days, according to the weather conditions.
• In the enclosure the calf follow the reindeer cow. This makes it easy to spot the ownership of the calf. With the lasso one catches the calf and marks it. The mark is a combination of cuts made in the calf’s ears. Each owner has his special mark.

Autumn (September-October)

• The reindeer are mostly in the low mountain region. The early frost nights in late summer lessens the nutrients of the grazing.The reindeer dig up roots and plant parts.
• The first snow influences the reindeer’s choice of grazing plants, and they mostly eat various ground lichens. In the latter half of September the bull slaughter is completed.
• It is a calm period for the reindeer herder, who now has time for fishing for household needs and other things needing tending to in a reindeer herding enterprise.

Beginning of Winter (November-December)

• This period begins when frost and snow stays permanently. The reindeer look for grazing land with remainders of green vegetation, grassy forest areas and marshes.
• During the beginning of winter the reindeer are gathered for separation into winter groups and for slaughter. The main part of the autum slaughter is done in November-December.
• After the slaughter the winter herd consists of some 75 per cent female animals. This is also the time to divide the reindeer into their respective winter grazing group.

Winter ( December-March)

• In the winter land the various winter groups graze in the coniferous forest belt mainly. The grazing mostly consists of lichens and berry plants. The reindeer is well adapted to an arctic climate.
• Winter grazing is the limiting factor in reindeer herding. The great problems are icing of the grazing land or hard ice crusts on the snow. Snow conditions for the reindeer deteriorate due to large clear cuts with unfavourable snow conditions and destroyed or damaged lichen cover.
• Winter groups therefore have to move between different grazing lands. The task of the reindeer herder in winter is to guard the edges of the herd and protect it from predators.

Peoples of the Tundras and Sea Shores

• Four main marine regions: Artic, Northwest Atlantic, Northwest Pacific or “Northwest Coast”
• Four Primary Culture Areas: Yupik/Inupiat/Inuit: Northwest Atlantic, Artic. Aleut: Northwest and northeast pacific, Northwest coast Northeast pacific.

ARCTIC

• The Arctic is the region around the Earth's North Pole, opposite the Antarctic region around the South Pole. In the northern hemisphere, the Arctic includes the Arctic Ocean (which overlies the North Pole) and parts of Canada, Greenland (a territory of Denmark), Russia, the United States (Alaska), Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland.
• The Arctic is mostly a vast, ice-covered ocean (which is sometimes considered to be a northern sea of the Atlantic Ocean) surrounded by treeless, frozen ground. It teems with life, including organisms living in the ice, fish and marine mammals, birds, land animals and human societies.

• Tundra is the coldest of all the biomes. Tundra comes from the Finnish word tunturi, meaning treeless plain. It is noted for its frost-molded landscapes, extremely low temperatures, little precipitation, poor nutrients, and short growing seasons. Dead organic material functions as a nutrient pool. The two major nutrients are nitrogen and phosphorus. Nitrogen is created by biological fixation, and phosphorus is created by precipitation. Characteristics of tundra include:


• Extremely cold climate
• Low biotic diversity
• Simple vegetation structure
• Limitation of drainage
• Short season of growth and reproduction
• Energy and nutrients in the form of dead organic material
• Large population oscillations

VERSUS.

Sub-Arctic Coastal Regions

• The harsh climate of North America's Subarctic region, which covers most of Canada, inhibited population growth. Agriculture was impossible due to short summers and extended annual freeze periods. Indigenous communities survived as nomads, hunting moose and caribou and fishing for needed food and living resources.


• The Subarctic culture area stretches from the Labrador Sea to within a few miles of the Bering Sea, and encompasses six Canadian Provinces, two Territories, as well as much of Alaska. The northern boundary between Arctic and Subarctic shows up in the vegetation change from treeless tundra (Arctic) to forests (evergreens in the west and evergreens mixed with deciduous species in the southeast). The area is a vast, harsh one within which to live, a land of physiographic and seasonal climatic extremes. The climate is characterized by short, warm, bright summers, low percipitation, and long, exceedingly cold winters.
  

Peoples of the Forests, Lakes, and Rivers

A group’s total way of life reflects an accommodation to environmental constraints enables individuals to meet their needs.

Climate:

• Sub-arctic climatic features:
• pronounced summer-winter cycle
• Long severe winters; moderately warm summers
• Powdery snow, deeper in some places in forests where wind does not pack it
• Affects fauna
• Spring thaw/fall freeze up limits travel and subsistence activities
  

The Annual Round:

• Movement between suitable locations in a territory to harvest a variety of resources
• Usually involves fairly small groups of people ca. 10-15
• Limited carrying capacity of sub arctic lands
• Larger congregations at fishing spots take advantage of peak spawning runs.
• Summer: travel difficult overland; mosquitoes people gathered along shores of lakes and rivers; fished
• Fall: dispersed to hunt animals for fat, hides and winter food migrating caribou, moose, small game
• Winter: freeze-up limited mobility
• After freeze-up people were mobile again, winter camps, often lake shore for fishing hunters would range to brush camps the area
• Spring: before thaw hard times until birds arrive
• After thaw people good be mobile again in boats etc.

Subsistence:

• Big-game hunters
• Barren ground caribou migrations
• Chutes and snare corrals, spread at river crossings, and spear and bow and arrow when herd dispersed Moose and woodland caribou tend to be solitary. Hunters tracked them, even when forced into deep snow
• Other animals:
• Bear: not a major resource but important for fat; specially respected by some people
• Beaver: important resource for some people, lodges open in winter
• Small animals: caught in snares and deadfalls
• Dog: domesticated; hunting animal; pack animal among Chipewayan
• Birds: seasonal resource; limited use in shield area; became more used after guns and twine nets
• Fish: important to some shield peoples; important to most Cordilleran peoples
• Hooked, netted in water, trapped, speared, and dip net





• Housing:
• variety of shapes and sizes for various uses
• Hide or brush over a wood frame where a group moved frequently
• Tipi-shaped, domed (more efficient for heat)
• Wood, in some parts of the southern sub arctic of Eurasia mostly after contact.

Clothing and bedding:

• Severe winters required insulating clothing and bedding furs; also high caloric intake, fire and continuous movement while outside
• Women prepared hides and sewed clothing
• Ng: shirts, dresses, leggings, furred robes, parkas, and specialized footwear

Western Subarctic Culture

These peoples live in the boreal forest in what are now Canada's western provinces and territories. They were originally hunter-gatherers dependent on caribou, moose and the fur trade. Most spoke Athapaskan languages except the Crees and Inland Tlingit. Major ethnicities in the Yukon, Northwest Territories and the northern parts of the western provinces.

"Hän Hwëch'in", which in the language means "people who live along the river", the river being the Yukon.

The Great Journey

Prehistory of Humanity:

A long long time ago... there was a species not yet man, but may have began the evolution of humaity. The species known as homo habilis lived from about 2.3 to 1.6 million year ago. Shortly after this homo habilis lived a newer species called homo erectus which became widespread from about 2 to 0.4 million year ago. Then from 500 to 200 thousand years ago Homo Sapiens branched off from the homo erectus species and started becomming more and more evolved. About 30 years after Homo Sapiens became the neandertalensis which lived from 230 to 30 thousand years ago. The neanderthal was more evolved and had the knowledge to use mousterian tools. Last but not least was the evolution on homo sapiens sapiens also known as the modern form of "man" became around 120 thousand years ago.

Stages of settlement:

• During Eurasia time people began living in warmer climates such as Africa and Asia, and as people began to move north with development.
  
• 45-35,000 years ago: Ice covered north, Humans spread from Africa up through Europe.


• Deglaciation begins 17 kya.
  
• Ca.15 kya. Siberia and far East widely populated with peoples of several distinct cultures


• People beginning to move into North America
  
• 3 to 4 “waves” of people at different times

People of the Circumpolar World

First people in southern Siberia Altai and Sayan mountains:

• Angara region
  
• Amur River system
  Pleistocene Epoch: 1.806 mya-5,000 years to 11,430 years ago to 103 years ago


• Upper pleistonce: 130-11 kya


• Lower Palaeolithic (old stone age): ends roughly 126 kya Middle Palaeolithic 126 to 40 kya


• Upper Paleolithic: 42 to ll kya

1. early: 42-30 kya
2. middle: 26-19 kya
3. late: 17-11 kya

• Middle Palaeolithic: 130 to 70 kya: several well-dated sites establish presence of middle Palaeolithic hominids in southern Siberia
  
• Early Upper Paleolithic:42-30 kya: represents the spread of anatomically modern humans into Siberia
  
• Populations don’t go beyond 55 degrees north
  
• Tools are a lot more advanced from middle palaeolithic period
  
• Middle upper Palaeolithic: 30-19 kya: represent successful adaptation to emerging mammoth steppe


• Large base camps connected to smaller activity-specific camps and resource extraction or kill sites
  
• Possible continued ties between Siberia and Western Eurasia
  
• Successfully colonized Sub-arctic Siberia as far as 60 degrees latitude and possible further.
  
• Middle Upper Palaeolithic:
  tools: Palaeolithic style
  Semi-subterranean dwellings made of Mammoth bone walls,Caribou antler roofs, and hide coverings, mosses.
  
• Skin tents
• Skin/fur clothing
• Carved artwork
  
• Upper Palaeolithic: 17 to 11 kya
  
• Higher mobility than prevailed during earlier phases of the upper Palaeolithic
  
• Characterised by wedge-shaped core and microblade technologies
  
• Earliest microblade sites in Baikal region (18 kya)
  
• Single mammal species dominate faunal assemblages (bison, reindeer, horse)


• Small game but no fish until about 12 kya
  
• Mesolithic (middle Stone Age):
  
• More sophisticated technologies (micro blade) ca. 20,000 BCE (22kya)