The transformation of beaver skins into felt and then hats was a highly skilled activity. The highest quality hats would be made fully from beaver wool, whereas lower quality hats included inferior wool, such as rabbit. These characteristics made felt the prime material for hatters especially when fashion called for hats with large brims. It will not tear or unravel in a straight line it is more resistant to water, and it will hold its shape even if it gets wet. Wool felt was used for over two centuries to make high-fashion hats. The prime staple fur has been beaver, although muskrat and rabbit have also been used. Each of the shorter hairs is barbed and once the barbs at the ends of the hair are open, the wool can be compressed into a solid piece of material called felt. All staple furs have a double coating of hair with long, stiff, smooth hairs called guard hairs which protect the shorter, softer hair, called wool, that grows next to the animal skin. These furs вЂ“ mink, fox, otter вЂ“ are fashioned by furriers into garments or robes.

Fancy furs are those demanded for the beauty and luster of their pelt. Wool FeltДЇurs have long been classified as either fancy or staple. Only in the nineteenth century did silk replace beaver in high-fashion menвЂ™s hats. Over time, beaver hats became increasingly popular eventually dominating the market. The wool came from various animals, but towards the end of the fifteenth century beaver wool began to be predominate. What remained a constant was the material from which hats were made вЂ“ wool felt.

The Restoration of Charles II of England in 1660 and the Glorious Revolution in 1689 brought their own changes in style (Clarke, 1982, chapter 1). Of course styles changed, and, in response to the vagaries of fashion and politics, hats took on various forms and shapes, from the high-crowned, broad-brimmed hat of the first two Stuarts to the conically-shaped, plainer hat of the Puritans. However much hats may be considered an accessory today, they were for centuries a mandatory part of everyday dress, for both men and women. The Demand for Fur: Hats, Pelts and Prices As a result, forces operating on the demand side of the market in Europe and on the supply side in North America determined prices and volumes while intermediaries, who linked the two geographically separated areas, determined how the trade was conducted. The animals were trapped and exchanged for goods in North America, and the pelts were transported to Europe for processing and final sale. The fur trade was based on pelts destined either for the luxury clothing market or for the felting industries, of which hatting was the most important. Finally, in the 1990s, under pressure from animal rights groups, the HudsonвЂ™s Bay Company, which in the twentieth century had become a large Canadian retailer, ended the fur component of its operation. In 1821, the northern participants merged under the name of the HudsonвЂ™s Bay Company, and for many decades this merged company continued to trade in furs. After the negotiation of JayвЂ™s Treaty (1794), the northern border was defined and trade along the Mississippi passed to the American Fur Company under John Jacob Astor. With the conquest of New France in 1763, the French trade shifted to Scottish merchants operating out of Montreal. For roughly the next hundred years, this northern region saw competition of varying intensity between the French and the English. Then in 1670, a charter was granted by the British crown to the HudsonвЂ™s Bay Company, which began operating from posts along the coast of Hudson Bay (see Figure 1). In the seventeenth century, following the Dutch, the English developed a trade through Albany.

Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers, and down the Mississippi. The first firms to participate in the fur trade were French, and under French rule the trade spread along the St. There was also a market in deer skins that predominated in the Appalachians. High quality pelts are available only where winters are severe, so the trade took place predominantly in the regions we now know as Canada, although some activity took place further south along the Mississippi River and in the Rocky Mountains. Exchange at first was haphazard and it was only in the late sixteenth century, when the wearing of beaver hats became fashionable, that firms were established who dealt exclusively in furs. Indians would trade the pelts of small animals, such as mink, for knives and other iron-based products, or for textiles.

Lewis, QueenвЂ™s University IntroductionДЄ commercial fur trade in North America grew out of the early contact between Indians and European fisherman who were netting cod on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and on the Bay of GaspГ© near Quebec. The Economic History of the Fur Trade: 1670 to 1870ДЇrank D.

Trading post find the rabbit