fur trade

New Book Focuses On Growth of Schenectady in 1760-1800

November 22, 2020 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Book purchases made through this link support New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.

John F. Gearing’s new book Schenectady Genesis, Volume II: The Creation of an American City from an Anglo-Dutch Town, ca. 1760-1800 (Colonial Schenectady Project, Ltd., 2020) looks back into Schenectady’s history: from the post French & Indian War period, into the War for Independence, and later Schenectady’s own fight for independence from Albany. [Read more…] about New Book Focuses On Growth of Schenectady in 1760-1800

When Saratoga Was An American Frontier

August 13, 2020 by Sean Kelleher 4 Comments

On August 13th, 1689, New York Governor Leisler wrote “Scharachtoge [Saratoga]…there are six or seven families all or most rank French papists that have their relations at Canada and I suppose settled there for some bad designe and are lesser to be trusted there in conjunctione of tyme than ever before the bad creatures amongst us gives me great occupatione.” [Read more…] about When Saratoga Was An American Frontier

Native American History: The Ohio River Valley and Great Lakes Region

February 6, 2019 by Liz Covart Leave a Comment

During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Ohio River Valley proved to be a rich Agrarian region. Many different Native American peoples prospered from its land both in terms of the land’s ability to produce a wide variety of crops and its support of a wide variety of small fur-bearing animals for the fur trade.

In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast About Early American History Susan Sleeper-Smith, a Professor of History at Michigan State University and author of Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian Women and the Ohio River Valley, 1690-1792 (The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2018), helps us explore this unique region and the important roles it played in the early American past. [Read more…] about Native American History: The Ohio River Valley and Great Lakes Region

Kayaderosseras Patent Settlement: A Short History

July 24, 2018 by Jim Richmond 1 Comment

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the final settlement of a dispute between land owners and the Iroquois Confederacy over the rights to one of the largest land grants in colonial New York, the Kayaderosseras

Patent. Important in it own right, this dispute and its eventual resolution sheds light on the politics of land acquisitions from Native Americans in the colonial period. [Read more…] about Kayaderosseras Patent Settlement: A Short History

Furs and Foes: Tales of Colonial New York

October 9, 2016 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Former Upstate New York resident, John M. Cahill’s new book Savage Wilderness (W & B Publishers Inc, 2016), is a novel of life on the frontier of 17th-Century New York, Savage Wilderness is the second book in Cahill’s The Boschloper Saga.

In 1687, the Colony of New York was in dire financial straits. The flow of beaver pelts, the life’s blood of the colony, had slowed to a trickle. In response, New York’s governor, Thomas Dongan, granted licenses to a group of Albany traders to enter New France and travel to Michilimackinac at the juncture of lakes Huron, Michigan and Superior. There, they would trade furs with the Ottawa and other “far” Indian people, thus diverting those furs from Montreal to Albany. [Read more…] about Furs and Foes: Tales of Colonial New York

The Albany-Montréal Fur Trade, 1700-1754

March 25, 2015 by Liz Covart Leave a Comment

The smuggling trade between Albany and Montréal presented a large problem for the imperial governments of Great Britain and France between 1700 and 1754.

In this episode of the “Ben Franklin’s World” podcast, Dr. Eugene Tesdahl, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, joins us to discuss the infamous Albany-Montréal Trade and the business of smuggling in colonial North America. You can listen to the podcast here: www.benfranklinsworld.com/021

The Worlds of the Seventeenth-Century Hudson Valley

June 17, 2014 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

What follows is a guest essay by Jaap Jacobs and L.H. Roper, authors of the newly published
The Worlds of the Seventeenth-Century Hudson Valley.

As the proverbial schoolchildren know, the Englishman Henry Hudson (c. 1570–1611) conducted his 1609 exploration of the river that bears his name on behalf of the Dutch East India Company. In the same year that Hudson sailed north up the river, trading, fighting, drinking, and negotiating with Native Americans on the way, a Frenchman named Samuel Champlain made his way south from the St. Lawrence River. His trip was not a voyage of exploration and Champlain was not the leader of the expedition. Yet it too involved interaction with Native Americans, culminating in an armed encounter on what later became to be called Lake Champlain between Huron and Algonquian Indians and their French friends on the one side and the Haudenosaunee of the Iroquois Confederacy on the other side. [Read more…] about The Worlds of the Seventeenth-Century Hudson Valley

Munsee Indian Trade in Ulster County

December 29, 2013 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Munsee Indian Trade in Ulster County, New York 1712-1732 (Syracuse Univ Press, 2013), edited by Kees-Jan Waterman and J. Michael Smith offers the full, annotated translation of a recently discovered Dutch account book recording trade with Native Americans in Ulster County, New York, from 1712 to 1732.

The ledger contains just over two-thousand transactions with about two-hundred native individuals. Slightly more than one-hundred Indians appear with their names listed. The volume and granularity of the entries allow for detailed indexing and comparative analysis of the people and processes involved in these commercial dealings in the mid-Hudson River Valley. [Read more…] about Munsee Indian Trade in Ulster County

William Starna’s New History of the Mahican

November 23, 2013 by Editorial Staff 1 Comment

The University of Nebraska Press has published From Homeland to New Land: A History of the Mahican Indians, 1600-1830, by William A. Starna, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the State University of New York College at Oneonta.

This history of the Mahicans begins with the appearance of Europeans on the Hudson River in 1609 and ends with the removal of these Native peoples to Wisconsin in the 1830s. Marshaling the methods of history, ethnology, and archaeology, William A. Starna describes as comprehensively as the sources allow the Mahicans while in their Hudson and Housatonic Valley homeland; after their consolidation at the praying town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts; and following their move to Oneida country in central New York at the end of the Revolution and their migration west. [Read more…] about William Starna’s New History of the Mahican

A Journey into Mohawk and Oneida Country, 1634-1635

October 27, 2013 by Editorial Staff 2 Comments

In 1634, the Dutch West India Company was anxious to know why the fur trade from New Netherland had been declining, so the company sent three employees far into Iroquois country to investigate.

Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert led the expedition from Fort Orange (present-day Albany). His journal includes the earliest known description of the interior of what is today New York State and its seventeenth-century native inhabitants and it is now issued in a revised edition as A Journey into Mohawk and Oneida Country, 1634-1635: The Journal of Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert (Syracuse Univ. Press, 2013; Translated and Edited by Charles T. Gehring and William A. Starna). [Read more…] about A Journey into Mohawk and Oneida Country, 1634-1635