Provisions of the Fur Trade

Volume 6 of the six-volume Encyclopedia of Trade Goods, Provisions of the Fur Trade is nearly 500 pages long with over 600 illustrations, most in color. Subjects covered include fur trade rations, feasts, and famines; bread and biscuits, grain including wild rice; fruits; sugars including maple; condiments, soaps, spices, fur trade gardening and husbandry, the Indian trade in meat, corn and other foods; fish; preservation of foods, including pemmican, canning drying etc. Other major chapters are devoted to the trade in liquor, beer, and wine; tobacco and beverages such as tea, chocolate and coffee. The text and illustrations also deal with government rations intended to divert the Indians from their old lifestyles and into subsidized reservation existences. The entire North American Continent is covered from the earliest voyages to the end of the fur trade.