The papers in this book focus on themes which have been near the centre of fur trade scholarship: the identification of Indian motivations; the degree to which Indians were discriminating consumers and creative participants; and the extent of Native dependency on the trade. Spanning the period from the seventeenth century up to and including the twentieth, with distinguished authors such as J. Arthur Ray and Toby Morantz, The Subarctic Fur Trade will help scholars become more fully aware of the issues concerned with Native economic history.

Shepard Krech III's profile page

Shepard Krech III (editor) is a professor of anthropology at Brown University and director of the Haffenreffer Museum.

In contributing so substantially to the understanding of the complexities of the interaction of the fur trade with northern hunting and gathering societies, [this book] also contributes to the understanding of interaction between human societies in general.

American Historical Review

The Subarctic Fur Trade offers a sampling of the most innovative and influential scholarship being produced in the field today … The volume breaks new ground in its emphasis on the little-studied fur trade of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and as a result revises and expands the current chronological framework used to measure the loss of autonomy of subarctic tribal societies resulting from interaction with whites … Few volumes merit the accolade “state-of-the-art.” This is one of them.

Western Historical Quarterly

An innovative approach toward better understanding the fur trade in the subarctic by combining the interdisciplinary perspectives of anthropologists, historians, and geographers… an advancement in fur trade scholarship.

Arctic