Trading-post clerk Matthew Hill is standing behind his counter. A potential trader walks in. Hill points out his wares of bright beads and blankets. Swiftly, the trader thrusts forward his beaver pelt and a deal is struck. As another happy customer leaves the small wooden building, Hill is pleased that he has made another trade.
But there is a little twist to this scene. This trading post is not somewhere north of the Yukon but in the center of the National Canal Museum at Easton's Two Rivers Landing. Hill, despite his colorful garb, is not an employee of the fur-trading Hudson's Bay Company. He's a 17-year-old Easton High School student, and his customers are usually bright-eyed children with symbolic paper "buckskins" to trade, not French Canadian or Native American trappers.
It is all a part of "A Trip Back in Time to 1791: The Fur Trade," an exhibit at the canal museum. Major contributors to the exhibit were Explorer Post 1776, Bethlehem historian Robert P.L. Frick, the Jacobsburg Historical Society and museum volunteer Vivian Fishbone.
"It was in many ways a community effort," says Lance Metz, historian at the canal museum.
The exhibit, which continues through Oct. 31, is designed to help youngsters and adults understand an industry that, according to Metz, was instrumental in settling North America. "Cities as diverse as Chicago, St. Louis, Albany and Detroit all grew from fur-trading posts," says Metz.
Metz points out that the impact of the trade was far-flung. For example, the beads produced for the fur trade were largely made in Morano, Italy, an island near the city of Venice. "The fur trade was one of the first international businesses," Metz adds.
When the English, French and Dutch began to explore North America in the 17th century, it was clear that there were no cities of gold like the fabled treasures of the Aztecs and the Incas discovered by Spanish explorers in Central and South America.
The deep forests yielded treasure in the form of fur-bearing animals. Unfortunately for beavers, it was their fur that was highly prized by fashionable hat makers. The little animal became the object of desire among the wealthy and royalty of the Old World.
By the 16th century, fur traders in Europe were being forced to go deeper and deeper into Russia in search of the little animals on which their businesses depended. For them the discovery of North America was equivalent to Cortez's conquest of Mexico.
The early fur trade may have had a foothold in the Delaware River Valley. "There are some very early unsubstantiated rumors that in the 17th century there was a Dutch trading post at what became Phillipsburg," says Metz. A building said to fit the description of a 17th-century Dutch structure was located on the New Jersey side of the Delaware. "But it was torn down long ago and there is no written record," says Metz.
At first, the trading consisted of native Americans bringing furs to European traders. By the 18th century, the Europeans had learned how to trap the fur-bearing animals. With England's victory at the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, the French were forced out of North America. It left the island nation with control over the continent's fur trade.
By the late 18th century, two major fur-trading businesses, the Northwest Company and the Hudson's Bay Company, dominated the industry.
In the early 19th century, John Jacob Astor, a German immigrant turned fur trader, created what became the giant American Fur Company. Using methods that were regarded as unscrupulous even in a business that had few scruples to begin with, he was able to force the Northwest Co. out of business.
In 1834, Astor left the fur business and invested his profits in New York City real estate, much of it slum property. When he died in 1848, leaving behind a fortune of $20 million, Astor was the richest man in the United States. His great-grandson, John Jacob Astor IV, died in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.
Although the French government was gone from North America after 1763, French Canadians were not. It was the skills that these voyageurs (French for traveler) learned from Native Americans that became essential in the successful fur trade.
"Fur-trading expeditions proved most lucrative when carried out by men from Sorel, Three Rivers, L'Orignal and other Quebec hamlets," writes Grace Lee Nute in her 1955 book, "The Voyageur."
In these towns, "babes grew into manhood with the almost certain knowledge that they would someday paddle canoes for the Northwest Co., the Hudson's Bay Co., the American Fur Co., or a rival firm or trader." Astor once said it would take three American trappers to equal one French-Canadian voyageur.