The Author
Nathaniel C. Hale graduated from the United States Military Academy
at West Point in 1925. After serving in the Army, he resigned his
commission to enter business, but joined the Army again on the outbreak
of World War II. He was Commandant of an Officers Training School prior
to overseas duty with the Signal Corps. Since the war, Colonel Hale has
become well known as an author and historian. In 1952 he received the
annual award of the Society of Colonial Wars in New York for his book,
VIRGINIA VENTURER, which was cited as the outstanding contribution of
the year in the field of American colonial history. Colonel Hale and
his wife, both of Southern birth, make their home in the Rittenhouse
Square section of Philadelphia and spend part of their summers at their
cottage in Cape May, New Jersey.
_PELTS and PALISADES_
By the Same Author
VIRGINIA VENTURER
_A Biography of William Claiborne 1600-1677_
[Illustration: THE FUR TRADE FURNISHED THE MEANS OF CONTACT BETWEEN
WIDELY DIVERGENT CULTURES.]
_PELTS and PALISADES_
THE STORY OF FUR
and the
Rivalry for Pelts in Early America
_By_
_Nathaniel C. Hale_
[Illustration]
RICHMOND, VA.
THE DIETZ PRESS, INCORPORATED
COPYRIGHT BY
NATHANIEL C. HALE
© 1959
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To My Grandchildren
_Preface_
The story of fur is as old as the story of man. Some brief account of
ancient man’s quest for fur is included in the beginning of this book.
However, the main narrative is concerned with the rivalry for pelts in
early America.
The discoverers of our country came here looking for gold. They found
it in fur. After that the fur trade formed the pattern of exploration,
trade and settlement. It sustained the colonies along the Atlantic
seaboard until they could be rooted in agriculture and it was a
controlling factor in the westward movement of our population.
In the seventeenth century there was a seemingly insatiable demand in
Europe for beaver pelts, inflated in no small degree by early laws
prohibiting the use of cheaper furs in hat making. Since there was an
apparently inexhaustible supply of these pelts in America, the fur
trade quickly became the economic lifeblood of the colonies. On it was
laid the cornerstone of American commerce.
On it, too, was laid the cornerstone of European imperialism on
this continent, the prosecution of which was largely motivated by
the energies of the mercantile classes of the nations involved.
The merchants, their factors, and the fur traders, shaped colonial
policies. The statesmen only signed the implementing documents.
It was the trader in quest of beaver who first met and conducted
diplomatic relations with the Indians and who first challenged the
claims of competing nations. Indeed, it was this fur trader in the
wilderness, making allies and building palisaded trading posts, or
forts, who determined colonial borders and who largely influenced the
outcome of the imperialistic struggle for the continent.
That struggle culminated in the French and Indian War and that is the
event which ends the story in this book. _Pelts and Palisades_ does not
pretend to be a comprehensive study of the early American fur trade.
Its only intent is to illustrate in narrative form the significant
effect of that trade on the genesis of America and the westward
movement of its people.
Included in the narrative are frank accounts of merchants and
traders among our founding fathers who built their fortunes or their
reputations on fur. As all the men who were prominent in this activity
could not be named, only meaningful case histories that point up the
pattern of the early fur trade have been cited. Fortunately, there are
local histories, county and state, that do name most of these truly
pioneer Americans and credit them with their individual accomplishments.
The era of the early fur trade, typified by the white trader and
the Indian hunter, began drawing to a close after the French and
Indian War. The white trader then became the trapper and a whole new
conception of the fur trade in America developed as the frontier rolled
across the plains and on to the Rocky Mountains. Today we may be on the
threshold of still another era, that of the fur farmer.
In any case the fur industry continues to be big business in this
country, total activity at all levels--raw furs, dressing and dyeing,
and retail sales--being estimated at about one billion dollars. After
exporting some twenty million dollars worth of domestic pelts, the
United States annually consumes around two hundred million dollars
worth of raw furs altogether--this, according to a recent bulletin of
the Department of Commerce. About fifty percent of this consumption is
imported.
Our imports are chiefly Persian lamb and caracul, mink, rabbit and
squirrel. While the fur farms of this country produce great quantities
of mink, fox, chinchilla and nutria, our principal domestic production
of wild furs consists of muskrat, opossum, raccoon and mink. All other
wild furs including “King Beaver” of colonial times run far behind this
field.
Curiously enough, the lowly, unwanted muskrat of the seventeenth
century is now the “King” of the wild furs. Its main domicile is the
State of Louisiana. Because of the muskrat’s residence there Louisiana
produces many more pelts, all fur-bearing animals included, than any
other state in the union. Southern Louisiana is in fact one of the
most important fur producing areas on our continent. In that section
alone there are approximately twenty thousand local trappers of
muskrat, mink, otter and raccoon.
Altogether there are two million full or part-time trappers in the
United States, bringing in about twenty million pelts a year. There
are also some twenty thousand or more fur farms contributing several
million pelts annually, although fur farming had its inception in this
country not much more than thirty-five years ago. Additionally, there
are the raw fur imports. To transform all these pelts into dressed and
dyed furs and retail them to milady calls for the services of thousands
of additional people at manufacturing, jobbing and dealer levels.
Even as in ancient times such a great outpouring of commercial energy
and money for fur is mainly decreed by fashion. The arbiters of fashion
are fickle of course, but at a recent showing of designer collections
for women in New York it was said that fur and fur trimmings were
everywhere, with mink currently in most popular favor. As one newspaper
correspondent reported, hats were made of fur or trimmed with it; coats
were collared, cuffed, bordered or lined with it; suits wore wide
fur collars and revers; and evening gowns had deep hemline borders
of fur. And not so long ago in the _New York Times_ appeared a full
page advertisement for a chair upholstered in fur, “the world’s most
sumptuous hostess chair ... lavished with the enchanting elegance of
genuine mink!”
The author wishes to acknowledge the many kindnesses of those who
have been helpful to him. He is much indebted to the staffs of the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia.
He is also indebted to members of the General Society of Colonial Wars,
the Netherlands Society, the Colonial Society of Pennsylvania and the
Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia who have assisted
him in many ways. From papers he has delivered before these groups has
come much of the material used in this book. The author is also very
grateful to Professor Arthur Adams of Boston, Massachusetts for his
criticism and advice.
A bibliography of the works consulted in the preparation of the
manuscript is appended, special acknowledgement being due to Doctor
Amandus Johnson of Philadelphia for his published documentations of the
Swedish fur trade in the Delaware valley.
And, to his wife, Eliska, the writer of this book is very thankful for
her patient understanding during the many week ends that he spent on
the manuscript.
NATHANIEL C. HALE
_Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1959._
_CONTENTS_
_Page_
PREFACE vii
_Chapter_
I. ROYAL ROBES AND BEAVER HATS 1
II. VIKINGS AND SKRAELINGS IN VINLAND 16
III. CODFISH LAND SPAWNS A FUR FRONTIER 24
IV. SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN LIGHTS A BLAZE OF RED TERROR 37
V. ENGLAND MOVES TO EXTEND HER REALM 44
VI. CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH TAKES TO TRADE 57
VII. THE DUTCH PROFIT BY A MUTINY 67
VIII. CONCEPTION OF NEW ENGLAND 82
IX. THE PILGRIMS RELY ON GOD AND BEAVER 91
X. A BORDER FIXED ON THE COAST OF MAINE 107
XI. THE BAY OF VIRGINIA 114
XII. KENT ISLAND AND THE BACKSIDE OF VIRGINIA 124
XIII. NEW NETHERLAND’S SOUTH RIVER 135
XIV. SWEDISH INTERLUDE ON THE DELAWARE 147
XV. NEW NETHERLAND THREATENED WITHOUT AND WITHIN 164
XVI. THE ENGLISH CLOSE THEIR COASTAL RANKS 180
XVII. WESTWARD THE FUR FRONTIER OF AMERICA 186
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 205
INDEX 209
_PELTS and PALISADES_
_Friend, once ’twas Fame that led thee forth
To brave the Tropic Heat, the Frozen North;
Late it was Gold, then Beauty was the Spur;
But now our gallants venture but for Fur._
JOHN DRYDEN, 1672.
I
_Royal Robes and Beaver Hats_
It might be said that man’s first true possession was the fur skin of
an animal.
Prehistoric mankind prowled the earth seeking food, shelter and
mates--only those needs intended by nature to preserve him and to
perpetuate his species. He had no accumulated wealth. Even his first
crude weapons, rocks and sticks, were expendable. He had nothing
material to treasure until he began to acquire coverings for his body.
Body coverings must have become useful to primitive man in the last
glacial period, during the very evolution of human society. His
earliest needs were doubtless served by the pelts of such cold-climate
animals as the reindeer and the bear. Once _Homo sapiens_, stretched
out on the floor of a chilly cave, experienced the warmth of fur skins
accumulated from these animals that he had eaten, it could have been
but a short step to using pelts as clothing. All the world was not cold
however.
In the middle latitudes early man knew little of thickly furred
animals, and had less need for warm garments. He used foliage, grasses
and eventually goat and sheep skins as skirts to hide his uncleanness.
It was probably no more than modesty, a primal sense of shame, that
first prompted him to cover himself. Later, as he learned to shape
and weave and to appreciate his art, he fashioned his clothing for
adornment.
Then it was that pelts stripped from bowed chiefs of the colder
countries came to be prized as rarities of beauty and usefulness, as
kingly trophies. Conquerors adopted them as ornaments and symbols of
victory and power. Fur became prime loot. For many generations of man,
while contacts between peoples remained essentially war-like, prize
pelts from the farthest corners of the known world were brought home by
warriors as evidence of their prowess and as tribute to their rulers.
Some rulers among the rising civilizations of the ancient world made
extravagant use of fur skins, especially the brightly hued pelts of the
big cats.
Tradition has it that the voluptuous Assyrian queen, Semiramis,
acquired eight thousand tiger skins during a plundering campaign in
India. Presumably, much of this loot was used to decorate the palace
and hanging gardens of sinful Babylon which this storied enchantress is
supposed to have founded.
Pharaohs and high priests of ancient Egypt used quantities of lion,
leopard and panther skins as ornamental and ceremonial pieces. Men of
high position draped these colorful pelts over their shoulders, tying
the paws in the back with ribbons. The tail of the lion was appended
animal-fashion by pharaohs to impart the beast’s qualities to the
wearer, and warriors stretched their frame-wood shields with leopard
skins. Extant today is a wall painting on a tomb of the eighteenth
dynasty which shows tax-paying Ethiopians bearing their tribute of
pelts to an Egyptian king.
And, when barter finally joined hands with a war as a better means
of contact between peoples, it was fur that helped bring it about.
Evidence of such military commerce emerges from the mists of Greek
antiquity. The legend of Jason and his quest for the Golden Fleece is
in all likelihood the fanciful story of a fur trading expedition in the
thirteenth or fourteenth century B.C.
Some students of Greek mythology interpret the Golden Fleece as
symbolism of one kind or another. However, it is specifically
identified in the legend as the pelt of a golden ram and ornamental
pelts are shown in archaic bas-reliefs to have been an integral part of
Greek culture.
The perils encountered by Jason and his adventurers, as first related
by them, were probably intended to point up the difficulties of
their achievement and to help guard the secrets of their trade-route
discoveries. No doubt Greek hero worship contributed to the subsequent
embellishment of the legend. But, if like most other folk tradition
this epic of the Argonauts had its origin in some simple fact now
obscured by the telling, that fact must lie in the Golden Fleece
itself. Certainly, without its existence in some form, as the object of
the voyage, there would be no motivation--no story.
But of course there is a story, and a good one, even after eliminating
the delightful folk-tale embroidery.
For recognition of his right to the throne Prince Jason of Greece
bargained with his crafty uncle, King Pelias, to go on a dangerous
voyage to the Euxine Sea in search of the Golden Fleece. Jason planned
well. All the gods and great heroes of Greece came to his assistance.
With Juno’s help a ship called the _Argo_ was built for the expedition.
According to the legend it was capable of holding over fifty men, but
the building of a ship to accommodate half that number would have been
a gigantic accomplishment for those days. After manning the _Argo_ with
heroes selected for their particular talents in sailing, fighting and
overcoming special dangers of the voyage, Jason set out on his quest.
The Argonauts were involved in many perilous adventures after they left
Greece. Nevertheless, they negotiated the treacherous straits at the
entrance to the Euxine Sea and followed its shore until at great length
they came to the country of Colchis. There they bargained and fought
against tremendous odds for the Golden Fleece, much the same as fur
trading adventurers who crossed another unknown sea to a New World some
three thousand years or more later.
But, when Jason returned with the treasure and placed it at the feet
of Pelias, the king became very wrathful. It seems the fleece was no
longer golden.
This is entirely believable, whether it was lambskin or something else.
Assuredly, prime lambskin, even a mutated sort, could have had no more
lustre than royal baum marten, ermine, sealskin or other fine pelts
available to Jason in the region he had visited.
In any event Pelias thought he had a good excuse not to keep his end of
the bargain with Jason, a common enough denouement in itself, one that
has been acted out untold times in both history and fiction.
That is the plot of the legend, as related only to the probable fact
of the fleece’s existence. How the fleece came into being, that is,
how the golden ram descended from the heavens first into Greece and
then betook himself to the far off country of Colchis to be slaughtered
for his radiant coat, all would seem to lie in the realm of pure myth.
So would many other imaginative passages of the legend as recited
variously by bards who have embroidered on the tale. And, of course,
the episodic adventures of the Argonauts have little or no bearing on
the plot.
The story in its origin does appear to have been simply that of a
Greek expedition bent on military commerce in the Black Sea, the first
organized fur trading voyage in recorded history.
From the ancient Greeks, too, comes the English word which describes
the fur skin of an animal. Pelt, a contraction of peltry from the old
Anglo-French _pelterie_, is derived from the Greek _pelta_. A _pelta_
was a half shield made of the skin of an animal. It was carried by the
warriors of Greece and later by the Romans. A foot soldier armed with a
_pelta_ and a short spear or javelin was called a _peltast_. Hence also
the verb pelt, used to indicate repeated blows by striking or hurling
missiles, as against a _pelta_.
Although the Greeks had competition on occasion from the Persians and
others, they drove a great trade in the Black Sea for over a thousand
years. At the Bosphorus they founded Byzantium, one of the world’s best
known emporiums. Great quantities of fur trimmings for the tall bonnets
and robes of the Mesopotamians were traded there. The felting used so
extensively by the Scythians, as well as the valuable pelts which the
Israelites used as temple decorations and as offerings to the deity,
all passed through this famous fur market. And of course from Byzantium
came the pelts which the Greeks themselves used so extravagantly as
house decorations and body raiment, especially battle dress.
After the Romans took over Greece’s trade, they in turn carried on a
brisk commerce in pelts through Byzantium where lambskin, marten, sable
and ermine were exacted in vast quantities as tribute.
The market for pelts expanded tremendously under Rome’s driving demand
for luxuries. From the Slavic steppes and forests and from the shores
of the Black and Caspian Seas came all manner of pelts. Furs of the
finest quality--pure white ermine, black fox and silvery sable--along
with silks and gems, came by trade caravan from Mongolia and Cathay,
across the Asian wastes. Down the Nile from deep in Africa travelled
Ethiopians bearing their lion and leopard skins. Arabian traders,
having learned the law of the monsoon winds, crossed the Indian Ocean
to bring prime pelts as well as spices and other riches from Hindustan
and the Malay Archipelago to the Mediterranean.
Italy was the main center of the world’s commerce in pelts, with the
Romans reaching out not only for the far eastern trade in precious fur
such as sable and ermine but into northern Europe, to Flanders and even
into Scandinavia for beaver, otter and bear--and for more ermine. For
ermine was becoming the garment of state wherever royalty held court,
pure white ermine being held in highest esteem. Demand for this regal
fur far exceeded the means of supply. Not until the Germanic hordes
cycloned down from the north did the impetus of this Italian trade in
fine pelts abate.
Then all trade, culture, and even most western knowledge of the world,
shrank almost into oblivion. The Dark Ages settled down upon civilized
Europe.
* * * * *
It took the impact of Mohammed’s vicious attack on Christendom and
Islam’s subsequent conquests in the Mediterranean to stir the western
world from its lethargy. The resulting Holy Crusades awakened curiosity
about Moslem luxuries and better ways of living. Western trade was
restimulated; merchants again began bidding up fine furs.
There was a new, stepped-up demand for ermine pelts by dignitaries of
the Church and other nobility. Fashion came to require quantities of
mantles and robes of the royal white, as whole systems of protocol on
the use of ermine were established. To indicate rank on state occasions
the lustrous white robes of the nobility were often decorated with the
ermine’s black tail tips or the paws of the black lamb. Decrees were
issued permitting peers to wear trimmings of the white fur on their
scarlet gowns. And, king and judge having originated as one, it was but
natural that the judiciary came to be permitted the use of white ermine
as the badge of high legal dignity, of purity.
The ermine, a slim little animal of the weasel family which produces a
semi-durable pelt of soft, glossy fur, is thought to have gotten its
name from Armenia, a fur center in ancient times. Medieval writers
often referred to the ermine as the Armenian rat. However it was the
breed inhabiting the northern latitudes of Asia that was most sought
after because of its snow-white fur.
In winter the live ermine’s coat ranges from creamy white in northern
Europe to pure white in parts of Siberia; the tip of its tail is always
black. During the summer the white fur usually darkens in varying
degrees to a yellowish brown except for the underparts of the animal’s
body. Medieval nobility’s choicest ermine pelts were those which were
all pure white, except of course for the black tail tips. Because these
came from Siberia they could be obtained only through eastern trade
channels.
To make terminal contacts with these eastern channels eager Italian
merchants risked their fortunes and their very lives. Eventually, like
most frontier traders, they won through by individual enterprise.
Commerce with the Moslems was a hazardous business however, even after
two rising emporiums of Italy, Genoa and Venice, built armed navies to
support it. But bartering and warring, sometimes between themselves,
the Genoese and the Venetians extended their trade and their navies
gained complete control of the Mediterranean, to make it once more the
main western highway of Eurasian commerce.
These encounters, with the Arabs and the ancient cultures they had
preserved, eventually reawakened a long dead interest in the far east
too. In the thirteenth century the Venetian traveler, Marco Polo,
penetrated beyond the Moslem barrier to the East, visited the Great
Kublai Khan in Cathay and returned to write a wondrous tale about what
he had seen in the Orient.
There was gold plate, and there were sapphires, rubies, emeralds and
pearls to be had in the far eastern countries, just as the ancients had
said. For proof, road-weary Marco Polo brought home with him samples
of these jewels sewed in the linings of his tattered clothing. Also,
in plenteous variety in the East he had found spices for seasoning
and deodorizing, commodities for which all Europe yearned desperately
during the middle ages.
And, Polo reported glowingly, there were silks, and priceless furs!
The clothes of the wealthy Tartars in the far east were for the most
part of gold and silk stuffs, lined with costly furs, such as sable
and ermine and black fox, in the richest manner. Robes of vair were
much to be seen also. These consisted of hundreds of tiny Siberian
squirrel pelts, the grey backs and white bellies of which were joined
together checker fashion. In winter the Tartars wore two gowns of
pelts, one with the soft, comforting fur inward next to their skin, and
the other with the fur outward to defend them against wind and snow.
Sable was esteemed the queen of furs in Mongolia. The dark,
silver-tipped fur of the Siberian sable was thick and silky, the
leather thin. According to Polo prime sable pelts, scarcely sufficient
to line a mantle, were often worth two thousand besants of gold.
However, ermine appears to have been preferred in India where
Ibn-Batootah, a famous Moorish traveller of the fourteenth century,
reported an ermine pelisse was worth a thousand dinars, or rupees,
whereas a pelisse of sable was worth only four hundred at the time.
In any case these two aristocrats of the weasel family, sable and
ermine, depending on the quality of their pelts, vied for favor among
the lords of the east, as did to some extent the rare black fox of the
icy regions in the far north.
Polo said that when the Grand Khan of the Tartar Empire quit his palace
for the chase he took ten thousand retainers with him, including his
sons, the nobles of his court, his ladies, falconers and life guards.
For this entourage great tents were provided, appointed luxuriously and
stretched with silken ropes. The Khan’s sleeping tents and audience
pavilions were covered on the outside with the skins of lions, streaked
white, black and red, and so well joined together that no wind or rain
could penetrate. On the inside they were lined with the costly pelts of
ermines and sables. The Venetian marvelled at the skill and taste with
which the inlaying of the pelts was accomplished.
When this intrepid adventurer travelled into northern Mongolia he
found the country alive with traders and merchants. “The Merchants to
buy their Furres, for fourteene dayes journey thorow the Desart, have
set up for each day a house of Wood, where they abide and barter; and
in Winter they use Sleds without wheeles, and plaine in the bottome,
rising with a semi-circle at the top or end, drawne easily on the Ice
by beasts like great Dogs six yoked by couples, the Sledman only with
his Merchant and Furres sitting therein.”
These fur traders showed the Venetian huge pelts, “twentie palms long,”
taken from the white bear in the far north. That was the Region of
Darkness, so-called because for “the most part of the Winter moneths
the Sun appeares not, and the Ayre is thick and darkish.” There, Polo
was told, the natives were pale, had no prince and lived like beasts.
But in the polar summer when there was continuous daylight they caught
multitudes of large black foxes, ermines, martens and sables.
Ibn-Batootah, who later travelled this country, told how the traders
bartered with the mysterious inhabitants of the far north.
After encamping near the borders of the Region of Darkness the traders
would deposit their bartering goods in a likely spot and return to
their quarters. The next day on returning to the same place they might
find beside their goods the skins of sable, ermine and other valuable
furs. If a trader was satisfied with what he found, he took it; if not,
he left it there. In the latter case the inhabitants of the Region
of Darkness might then on another visit increase the amount of their
deposit, or as often happened, they might pick up their furs and leave
the goods of the foreign merchant untouched.
So far as the traders were concerned these people of the far north with
whom they bartered might as well have been ghosts. The traders never
saw them.
The pelts of all the polar animals were lusher and finer and
consequently much more valuable than those found in the districts
inhabited by the Tartars. Because of this the Tartars were often
induced to undertake plundering expeditions in the Region of Darkness
for furs, as well as for domesticated animals kept by the natives
there. Invariably, it appears, the inhabitants simply sought safety
in flight from the raiders, putting up no fight and never showing
themselves.
Marco Polo said that lest the Tartar raiders lose their way during the
long winter night, “they ride on Mares which have Colts sucking which
they leave with a Guard at the entrance of that Countrey, where the
Light beginneth to faile, and when they have taken their prey give
reynes to the Mares, which hasten to their Colts.” Continuing, he said
that from this northern region came “many of the finest Furres of which
I have heard some are brought into Russia.”
About the mysteries of Russia, Polo learned little. But he was certain
that it was of vast extent, bordering in the north on the Region of
Darkness and reaching to the “Ocean Sea.” Although there were many fine
and valuable furs there, such as sable, it was not a land of trade he
reported.
How wrong he was about that!
* * * * *
German merchants were long since firmly established with fur factories
in Russia, and Norse sea-rovers had first tapped the trade of that land
hundreds of years earlier.
During the dark centuries when western Europe was sinking in despair
fierce Vikings in their horned helmets were traversing the Slavic
lands, plundering as they went and dropping Arabian, Byzantine and
Anglo-Saxon coins which later marked their routes. By way of the Volga
and the Dvina the Norsemen brought back far-eastern spices and pearls
obtained on the shores of the Caspian Sea in exchange for amber and
tin. But chiefly they transported skins. They bartered Baltic furs for
lustrous Oriental pelts and frequently used both slaves and coinage as
media of exchange. By way of the Dneiper and other rivers they even
traded on the Black Sea, and at Byzantium, portaging their dragon boats
from stream to stream with marvelous facility.
In the ninth century the Norsemen established a truly great trading
city of their own at Novgorod. It was located on a table-land where
four main waterways of Russia converged to form trade routes to the
Caspian, Black and Baltic Seas. Here the Vikings, inter-marrying with
the natives, settled down and prospered in the riches of their commerce
with the farthest corners of the world. Furs and other oriental
luxuries, cloths, honey, spices, metals, and the wax consumed in such
quantities by the Christians, all passed through their hands.
Rurik, the Norse leader of these Russified Scandinavians, or
Varangians, built a castle and a fort at Novgorod in 862 to protect
the independence of the surrounding province, and thus was laid the
foundation of Russia.
An ancient chronicler tells also of the wicked, fabulous trading city
of Julin at the mouth of the Oder River on the Baltic Sea. The Saxons
called it Winetha (Venice). It was inhabited mainly by pagan Slavs. But
there were Norsemen there too, and in fact anyone could live and trade
in this emporium of the north so long as he didn’t declare himself a
Christian. Julin disappeared at an unknown date beneath the water due
to the encroachments of the sea. Trusting in the wealth of its trade
and despising God, it went the way of Sodom and Gomorrha according to
Christian bards.
In the eleventh century whatever did remain of Julin belonged to the
Christian Germans. German merchants, crossing the Elbe from the west,
colonized the Oder valley and other Slavic lands on the shores of the
Baltic. At Thorn in Poland they exchanged cloth and other goods for
ermine, sable, fox and calabar (grey squirrel). They even penetrated
Russia deeply for trade. At Novgorod they had a fur trading settlement
active enough to prompt expressive protestations from the pious Canon
Adam of Bremen.
“Pelts are plentiful as dung” in Russia, he wrote, but they are “for
our damnation, as I believe, for _per fas et nefas_ we strive as hard
to come into the possession of a marten skin as if it were everlasting
salvation.” According to him it was from this evil source in Russia
“that the deadly sin of luxurious pride” had overspread the west.
Indeed, by comparison with the self-mortifying Christian standards of
the time, luxury in dress was very pronounced among the rising German
merchants and their wives. It was even more so among the men than among
the women. The most conservative patricians and councillors wore cloth
hoods ostentatiously trimmed with beaver and other fine fur, and long
fur cloaks of exquisite quality. So proud were they of their finery
that the Councillors of Bremen once forged a document pretending to
prove that Godfrey of Bouillon during the First Crusade had vested them
with the right to wear fur and gold chains.
The Church frowned upon the use of fur by the laity or any except the
highest ecclesiastics. In fact, since early in medieval times the
wearing of fur by the common man had been regulated by severe laws. But
even among the Christians a man’s wealth and standing permitted its use
in some degree. As always in the past, fur was a symbol of power and
prestige. And, these German merchants were becoming a real power as
they gained a monopoly of the Baltic trade.
They formed a strong federation of the towns they had founded at the
river mouths along the south shore of their sea. Their luggers plied
the North Sea and the Thames in Britain. At Wisby on the important
Isle of Gothland they early established an emporium. From the first
Christian centuries barbarian Gothland had been the most active center
of Baltic trade. Now it was under the control of this Hanseatic League
of German cities which dominated the Baltic Sea and was soon permitting
no carrying bottoms there other than its own.
In the thirteenth century the enterprising Hansa towns had monopolistic
trade factories established not only in England and Scandinavia, and at
Novgorod in Russia, but at Pleskow and perhaps even at Moscow. Their
fur traders penetrated to the White Sea. Within another century they
had extended their operations beyond the Urals into Siberia as far as
Tobolsk and the River Taz. By then their bold assurance had gained them
factories or the protection of trade-guild concessions in Flanders,
France and Portugal. They were granted concessions even in Venice,
their great Italian rival, whose own trading galleys were in turn
annually invading England and Flanders.
But cruelty and haughtiness were born of the Hansa’s strength and
pride, and lasting enmities resulted.
German arrogance met its first tests at Novgorod. There the Hansa
traders incurred the everlasting resentment of the Russians, who in
an effort to cope with mounting indignities resorted to cheating the
Germans at every opportunity. Buying furs was risky business except
in well-lighted places where it was easy to test quality. Resentments
often flared into conflict, and the factory in Novgorod became a kind
of hostile encampment.
In spite of reduced returns, however, the Hansa merchants clung
tenaciously to their trading privileges in Russia for some time.
Not until Ivan the Terrible crushed the independent provinces and
consolidated the Russian Empire were the Germans finally driven out--in
the sixteenth century.
Then the Scandinavian powers revolted against the Hansa monopolies and
the cruelties of the Germans within their borders. During the wars
that followed the power of the Hanseatic League declined rapidly. With
feudalism breaking up on the continent in western Europe, men had been
freed for competitive commerce. It was the time of the Renaissance
and trading impulses were quickening everywhere. New maritime states,
sensing opportunity, had already risen to challenge the monopoly in the
Baltic. Danes, Dutch and even the commercially-retarded English had
been competing for the prize.
In England as early as 1404 a group of merchant adventurers organized
a company to carry trade to Baltic cities. But as it turned out the
agricultural English were not ready, for, although their sailors and
traders fought savagely during piratical encounters in the Baltic,
at home they were still hindered by their feudal system, a system
against which the Germans had early rebelled as being incompatible
with commercial enterprise. The absence of a large middle class, of
sufficient urban community life in England, forestalled any real
commerce.
The backward Englishmen didn’t have anything but lead, tin and cheap
skins to export, and they had to buy back some of that, reworked, at a
premium. On the continent at the time there was a saying: “We buy fox
skins from the English for a groat, and re-sell them the foxes’ tails
for a guilder.”
The Danes, situated strategically to cut the Baltic trade lane, fared
much better than the English. But in the end it was the Dutch who
succeeded the Hansa in carrying trade. The main lane of traffic from
Bruges in Flanders, over the North Sea, around the Danish peninsular,
and through the Baltic to Russia belonged eventually to Holland. So did
the remnants of the Hansa’s former fur trade at Novgorod.
* * * * *
Dutch requirements for skins mounted rapidly with the coming of the
Renaissance. Even a brisk market for worn, discarded and inferior
pelts was maintained in Holland. The pinch for pelts came about as a
result of a tremendously stepped-up demand for fur in manufacture--in
the felting of hats!
In Holland, as in other countries crawling out of the Dark Ages, beaver
skin had been permitted as headgear to almost all who could afford it.
Beginning with the time that the wearing of hats became fashionable in
Europe this costly fur was used extensively for that purpose by people
of means. It would appear, in fact, that in England from the time of
Chaucer the word _beaver_ was practically synonymous with _hat_.
Now, felt hats, which had brims and other advantages over those
fashioned from pelts, were being pressed out in quantity by the
trade-conscious Dutch for world commerce. Dutch beavers, they were
called, and they came in a variety of shapes and quality.
Due to the peculiar matting quality of fur filaments, felting had been
a profitable manufacturing art for centuries. The Greeks had practiced
it. The Mongolians of Kublai Khan’s time used felt matting for tents;
rich Tartars sometimes furred their robes with pelluce or silk shag.
The Normans who wore felted articles of dress brought the art to
England.
Fur is made up of short, barbed hairs that are downy and inclined to
curl. Matting or felting, which would expose a live animal to cold and
storm, is prevented in most animal coats by relatively stiffer guard
hairs lying alongside the fur filaments and keeping them separated.
But, the ancients had learned that by first plucking the coarser guard
hairs from a pelt, the downy fur that remained could easily be removed
from the hide, processed, pressed into felt mats and blocked into any
shape.
Although many other furs were used in the manufacture of hats, the
best felts were of beaver. For one thing they were practically
indestructible. Discarded beaver hats could be worked over and made
like new. Then, a new method of combing out the fur filaments of the
beaver pelt was developed, to better utilize the skins. This left the
pelts with the guard hairs to be worked into stoles for clerics and
officials, and the combed-out fur fibers of course for the manufacture
of hats.
Dutch beavers for both men and women found their way to England, to
Baltic countries, to France, Portugal and into the Mediterranean.
These, as well as other products of the north, were eagerly sought
in trade-hungry Venice, until recently the mistress of a thriving
Mediterranean carrying trade.
Venice had reached this position of trade eminence in the Mediterranean
after a bitter, hundred years’ war to eliminate Genoa as her rival.
The most savage of the battles between the fine navies of these two
medieval states had been fought over the Black Sea fur trade. But then
the Turks, taking Constantinople in 1453, erected a toll-gate at this
ancient Eurasian cross-roads, and the bite they took as middlemen all
but stagnated world trade through the Mediterranean.
To make matters worse, the Portuguese, who had been exploring the south
Atlantic, rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa
in 1488. An alternative route to India and Malaya had been discovered!
But, although Italy’s hold on the fur trade and other oriental
traffic was broken, her own need for fine pelts and luxuries had not
diminished. Italian coffers were overflowing with the riches of past
commercial glory, while a golden age of elegance was blossoming in
Europe for those who could afford it.
One of the keynotes of the Renaissance, as illustrated in the art and
literature of the time, was an increasing appreciation of beautiful
furs. Throughout the western world wealthy women took to adorning
themselves with expensive pelts. If, as was said at the time, the
ermined luxury of a Queen of France was cast into the shade by the
furred splendor of a matron of Bruges, much more could have been
claimed for the oft-wed daughter of Pope Alexander in Italy.
When this young lady, Lucretia Borgia, was married to her fourth
husband, Alfonso de Ferrara, furs competed with jewels in dazzling
array. Although the marriage was celebrated by proxy, the
twenty-two-year-old bride wore a diadem of diamonds, thirty strings
of splendid pearls, a gown of ruby velvet edged with sable, and a
cloth-of-gold train lined with ermine. According to Sanuto, the
Venetian diarist, it took ten mules to carry the boxes containing
the furs of her trousseau, there being no less than forty-five robes
trimmed and lined with sable, ermine, rabbit, wolf and marten.
[Illustration: IN EUROPE THERE WAS A TREMENDOUS DEMAND FOR BEAVER FUR
IN THE MANUFACTURE OF FELT HATS.]
With the need for such elegance, it is small wonder that the cooped-up
western world, alive and vigorous by then, hailed the Portuguese
discovery of a new spice route to the East Indies and began casting
about in every direction for passages to the even greater riches of
Cathay.
II
_Vikings and Skraelings in Vinland_
By the closing years of the fifteenth century, not only were the
mercantile classes of western Europe thoroughly awake to the
possibilities of world trade, but a good number of other people were
beginning to think for themselves about the world around them.
If one could cross by land to China, which itself faced on the sea,
there must be ways to reach that fabulous country by skirting the land
masses of the world. In that manner the Portuguese had discovered an
all-water route to India and Malaya. Or, was there the possibility of
an even more direct passage to both China and the Indies by sailing
straight west across the ocean?
The ancients had said the world was a globe. Hundreds of years
before Christ, Greek philosophers were sure the world was round. One
of them, Eratosthenes, calculated the earth’s circumference to be
40,000 kilometers (amazingly enough today, within 9 kilometers of the
meridional figure!) And Strabo, a geographer who lived in the first
century, recorded that if it were not for lack of sailing equipment to
negotiate the immensity of the Atlantic Ocean one could travel from
Spain to India by keeping to the same parallel.
Of course this did not agree with the teachings of the scriptures which
spoke of the “four corners of the earth.” All during the dark ages
ignorant clerics of the Church preferred to think of the world as a
flat platter and pretended to forbid a contrary conception because it
did not conform with the Bible. The low level of western culture had
blindly accepted the thesis that the inner edges of this platter-like
world were inhabited by monstrous creatures, and beyond the edges--a
bottomless gulf!
On such grounds most people of the western world still resisted any
notion that the world was round. But there was a question in the minds
of many.
The Phoenicians, the Greeks and the Arabs had navigated the waters
of the Atlantic--so had the Irish and the Vikings who long since
discovered and colonized “islands” across the western sea--all
without falling off the edges of the world. The Arabs, even now, were
making the globes they had made for centuries for their sailors and
traders. Many learned men in the west, geographers and scientists,
were confident that the world was round; only recently at scholarly
Nuremberg a fine globe had been completed showing Asia right across
from Spain.
If there were “islands” they could be skirted, large though some
of them might be according to the legends and the sagas of ancient
mariners. Christopher Columbus, the Genoese sailor, must have heard
about these western islands at Iceland when he visited that old
Irish-Norse settlement in 1477. Certainly he must have heard much about
Greenland.
Greenland, a continent-like island in the west, had been colonized by
several thousand Norsemen in the tenth century under the leadership of
a red-headed, murderous Icelander named Eric Thorvaldson. From there
two of his sons, Leif and Thorvald, an illegitimate daughter named
Freydis, and a former daughter-in-law, Gudrid, with her new husband
Thorfinn Karlsefni, set out on even more daring trading and colonizing
expeditions to other great islands--“the western lands of the world.”
First, Leif, whose conversion to Christianity against his pagan
father’s will may have had something to do with his wish to get away,
made landings in America in 1003. To Leif it was “White Man’s Land”
or “Great Ireland,” for he knew that Christian Irish had preceded him
there. There is in fact some evidence today that Celtic missionaries
in staunch, hide-covered coracles, and others too, had been crossing
the sea and making settlements in America for five hundred years before
Leif Ericson sailed west from Greenland. But Leif’s visit is recorded
with much more credibleness.
In the tradition of his Viking ancestors Leif and his crew of
thirty-five men visited Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, and appear to
have made their camp for the winter on Cape Cod where they built a
good house. There they leisurely cut timber and gathered vines for
cargo back to treeless Greenland. Some of the crew shaped a new mast
from a tall tree for their dragon ship. Others collected peltries. All
marvelled at the mildness of the new country’s climate.
Leif called the land surrounding his camp site “Vinland,” probably
because of the abundance of the greenbrier vines which grew there.
These made strong, flexible rope material when stripped of their thorns
and stranded together. On the other hand the name “Vinland” may have
been derived from the grape-vines and wineberries discovered there by
Leif’s family retainer, a “southerner” called Tyrker. If this slave
came originally from the Mediterranean area as his name might indicate
he may well have been the first to recognize grapes and demonstrate
their usefulness.
One thing is certain however; the addition of wine to Leif’s already
valuable cargo, when he embarked for Greenland the following year, made
his expedition most exciting--one to be emulated!
Ambitious Thorvald Ericson, for one, did not feel that the western
lands had been sufficiently explored by his brother. He set out in 1004
and spent two years in Vinland investigating the coasts and rivers. In
his Viking ship, the same one that Leif had used, the sagas seem to
say that he ranged north of Cape Cod along the Maine coast and south
through Long Island Sound.
The natives Thorvald met on his voyage were surprised whenever possible
and liquidated without quarter. Skraelings, he called them, meaning
shriekers or war-whoopers. No doubt the rough treatment afforded the
wild Skraelings was an approved medieval means of taking possession
of their fur skins with the least bother. In any case it ended in
Thorvald’s own death. One day hundreds of Skraelings in their canoes
suddenly attacked the Viking ship. Although the Norsemen drove them
off with much slaughter Thorvald was mortally wounded in his armpit
by an arrow. He was buried ashore that same day. His men returned to
Greenland the following year, in 1007.
It has been claimed that the encounter in which Thorvald was slain took
place at Mount Desert Island on the Maine coast. Somes Sound does seem
to fit the site of the battle as related in the saga. Certainly, great
numbers of natives could have been in the habit of congregating there
with their canoes during fur trapping season, for Mount Desert Island
was a favorite haunt of beavers and other fur bearers in past centuries.
In 1010 wealthy Thorfinn Karlsefni and his wife Gudrid, who had urged
the project upon him, took something over 160 colonists from Greenland
to establish a permanent Norse trading settlement in the western land.
They went in dragon ships and round-bottomed cargo vessels loaded
with “all kinds of livestock,” including a bull. The men had headgear
adorned with horns, antlers or ravens’ wings. They wore short breeches
and were clad with leather armor. Pelts were wrapped about their legs.
The women wore girdled tunics. Heavy fur coats and lambskin hoods lined
with cat fur protected the voyagers, men and women alike, when the seas
were icy and the winds biting. Most of them survived to reach Vinland,
where Gudrid bore her husband a son, Snorri, the first autumn they
spent at Leif’s old house.
Snorri, who was to become the ancestor of a number of distinguished
men including three Icelandic bishops, appears to have been the first
European of record born in America.
At Vinland the Skraelings came with “packs wherein were grey furs,
sables, and all kind of peltries.” The bull having greatly frightened
them, it was some time before they loosened their bundles and offered
their pelts in trade. They wanted to exchange them for Norse weapons.
Karlsefni rejected this proposition. But the saga relates that he gave
them some milk, whereupon the red men wanted nothing else and barter
forthwith got under way.