How Did French Involvement In The Fur Trade Change Life For Native Americans

The French were interacting with Northward American Natives for a century earlier the English. Here's how they established friendly relations and learned each others' languages.

Why did some Native Americans already know European languages when the English began colonizing northeastern Due north America in the early 1600's? The reason is that they'd been interacting with the French for nearly a century before the start permanent English settlement was established on North American shores. It was merely a few years afterward Columbus fabricated his famous voyage that the French began to explore the eastern coast of North America. Henry VIII'southward father was nonetheless on the throne of England when the French were making these early trips across the Atlantic. They came to explore but rapidly discovered that North America was rich with a resources that was very valuable in Europe, as well as among the Natives… fur.

Exploration was quickly abandoned for commercial enterprise, and the French North American fur trade was born. It is ane of the earliest commercial enterprises of any European land on the North American continent. The French spent much of their time hunting and trapping animals for fur in what is now eastern Canada, and it apace became a big business. The French came seasonally, during the warm months when the animals were out and about and agile, so went domicile for the cold seasons, their precious cargo in tow. The furs they brought back to Europe with them were used all across the continent to manufacture textiles.

During their forays onto North American shores, the French encountered the Natives and developed a adept relationship with them. This was much dissimilar from later English and Spanish interactions with them, equally people from these nations established permanent settlements and tried to force their religions and customs on the Natives, which was met with resentment. The French treated the Natives as equal trading partners and didn't effort to convert them or change them in whatever way. Instead, they traded tools and weapons with them in exchange for furs the Natives themselves had trapped, since Natives used furs in their ain clothing. The Huron and Ottawa tribes were the kickoff tribes with whom the French traded, but the trade eventually moved to other tribes who wanted in on the action. The things they were trading fur for with the French were equal to bully wealth in their societies.

As the French and the Natives interacted, they developed friendly relations with one another. They besides began to acquire each others' languages. Some French fur traders fifty-fifty married Native women and began staying in Native villages yr circular. The French were definitely the European nation with the most marriages into Native tribes, and these friendly relations were the very reason for information technology.

Past the time the English language began colonizing Virginia and New England, the French already had a century of positive interactions with the Natives of the surface area backside them. Because many Natives in the area were able to speak French, they could communicate with the early English explorers, who also knew the language. This knowledge provided an opening for them to also learn English. Plenty Natives who were bilingual in French learned English from the earliest English explorers that by the time the Mayflower landed in Plymouth in 1620, at that place were a handful of local Natives who could communicate with them in their ain linguistic communication and thus help the Pilgrims through their beginning difficult winter in the New World.

Will founded Ancestral Findings in 1995 and has been assisting researchers for over 25 years to reunite them with their ancestors.