Rascals, pilfering, and purchases: the social and material entanglements of the early nineteenth century fur trade at Fraser Lake Post

Abstract

Records related to Fraser Lake Post in New Caledonia and an assemblage of artifacts from a nearby Dakelh pithouse are used to query the early engagements of Indigenous people with fur traders and their materials. The central concern is with what fur traders regarded as theft, which they considered an affront and threat to the norms of commerce and presumed was motivated by a desire for material gain and flaws in personal character. The trader’s rhetoric brings into focus contrasting views of relationship building and the role of material culture in the process. When the exchange relationships are contextualized within sets of entanglements between individuals and social groups at various scales, discordant views of proper exchange and the value of material things can be better understood as resulting from differing ethos of reciprocity, with the material objects as more representative of relationships than technological changes and reliance.