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Encyclopedia entry: Fur Trade
- Article from:
- The Oxford Companion to United States History
- Author:
Copyright© The Oxford Companion to United States History 2001, originally published by Oxford University Press 2001. (Hide copyright information)
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Fur Trade.
Animal pelts have probably been exchanged in North America since the beginning of human habitation, but large‐scale fur trade began only after the arrival of Europeans. As the Eastern Hemisphere's fur stocks dwindled, Europeans regarded North America as a fur reservoir and created flourishing trade systems in New York, the lower
Mississippi River
valley, and the Pacific Northwest. The principal fur‐trading arena stretched from the Great Lakes and the Ohio Valley to the northern Great Plains and
Rocky Mountains
. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this region saw fierce rivalries among several American and Canadian enterprises that maintained hundreds ...