Once, a prime beaver pelt was money, the standard currency for the fur trade. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia:
HBC brass token for one Made Beaver
“Soon after its founding in 1670, the Hudson’s Bay Company found it necessary to devise a unit of value that would accommodate Aboriginal people’s bartering to European bookkeeping methods. A Standard of Trade was established, based on the made beaver (one prime beaver skin in good condition), Prices of all goods were set in Made Beaver. Later the HBC issued brass tokens in denominations of one Made Beaver and fractions thereof.”
The tribes depended on the entire beaver — its warm pelts for clothing their bodies, delicious meals (especially the tail) and an important scent gland (castoreum). Indians harvested the best ones in winter, when beaver coats grew the thickest.
Fun fact: A prime beaver could weigh 60 to 100 pounds.
However, French fur traders and their British or Scottish bourgeois only prized the pelts — beaver hats marked the epitome of European fashion. Unfortunately because of this, Europe had long been depleted of beavers, so when various tribesmen offered furs to Radisson and Grosseilliers, Champlain and other Europeans, they immediately understood the value.
Fun fact: Hat-makers preferred older beaver pelts which had been worn all winter over newly-harvested ones because they wouldn’t have to pluck out the long guard hairs to use the felt-like fur beneath.
Value of a single beaver pelt
What did one prime beaver pelt mean in terms of trade goods — what would it purchase?
But first, guess which goods did the Indigenous people wanted most:
- Guns?
- Metal pots?
- Beads?
- Tools like chisels, fishhooks and needles?
- Alcohol?
Surprise — it was fabric, according to Carl Gawboy, in a presentation on his 2025 book, “Fur Trade Nation: An Ojibwe’s Graphic History.” Native Americans discovered the many conveniences of fabric and it became the most in-demand trade good.
On this 1703* poster for Hudson’s Bay goods, fabrics dominate the top section, with shirts and hats further down. Blankets weren’t listed, but from Tom Holloway I’ve learned that Ft. Vancouver inventories from 1825-1845 show more than a quarter million blankets. Fabrics were BIG!
And in A.J Riggs’ ledger for the Ho-Chunk for a winter in 1852-53 corroborates this: blankets, shirts, skirts and fabric vied with food as the most-wanted items.
Guns weren‘t the big item (implied in this picture), though they topped the list as the most expensive trade good — 10 pelts for a musket on this listing. Traders soon learned that with a single gun, Indians regularly needed powder, shot, lead, caps, gun worms and more. Consumable goods made the trade more lucrative for traders. The ledger of A.J. Riggs, trader to the Ho-Chunk, bears this out — almost every man traded for these critical items for firearms.
Kettles and metal tools, like knives, axes, chisels, traps, hoes and fishhooks certainly made Indians’ work easier. [Can you imagine the toil of boiling down maple sap in pottery vessels? Or carving a bone fishhook? Removing all the fat from a pelt with a stone scraper?]
According to the HBC list above, traders bundled some metal items together: 6 knives or 3 dozen hooks or 6 combs. But the Indigenous people were resourceful: If a chisel broke, they refashioned it into a fishhook or needle; if a kettle developed a hole, they cut it up to become a hoe or other tool.
The prices for trade goods were set by the Montreal partners who ordered the trade goods from Europe a year or more before voyageurs went to Grand Portage and then the individual fur posts.
Their wintering clerks at those fur posts kept detailed records of what trade goods were most in-demand and the owners used that information to plan their purchase orders.
Not only beaver pelts
A mink and a fisher
The tribes harvested many varieties of furs, but only moose, bear and otter held as much value as beaver for the fur traders.
By the 1850s, the Ho-Chunk in Watab traded using their annuity money, but those in Cold Spring brought in pelts.
- an otter was worth $5:
- a fisher or marten $3;
- a mink, $1;
- buckskin, $2;
- raccoon or wolf $.50;
- a muskrat $.10.
- No one brought in a beaver, so I don’t know its value then.
(In trade, the Ho-Chunk were charged $3 for a 2 ½-point red blanket or a 3-point white one, while a 3-point blue blanket cost them $4. The Made Beaver standard seems to hold at this time.)
Fun fact: A beaver pelt stretched in a circular frame was called a plus, pronounced “ploo.” Because one prime beaver was worth one blanket, it was also called a “blanket,” and still is.
*I’ve also seen a 1793 date for the HBC same list — the economies changed little over a long period of time, with local variations.
Final Thoughts
- Read about the fur trade through the eyes of an educated, too-young boy. Andre’s first brigade:
Book 3 of the series
“Waters Like the Sky”; his second: “Treacherous Waters”; Andre organizes a single canoe for his third voyage: “Uncharted Waters” Book 3, all in paper and ebooks.
- Subscribe to this blog and read posts as they are published!
- For what I’m researching or quirky discovers, visit me on Facebook or Instagram (@nlnlnraj): I love your comments.
- Book me as a speaker.
- Ask your library, local school, gift shop to buy copies.
- Be a voyageur for an hour—come to one of my presentations.
- Consider writing your own chapter—fan fiction—about what else could happen.
Sources:
- “A Toast to the Fur Trade: A Picture Essay on Its Material Culture” by Robert C. Wheeler. (Wheeler Productions, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1985)
- “The Great Northwest Fur Trade: A Material Culture, 1763-1850)” by Ryan R.Gale. Track of the Wolf, Inc., (Elk River, Minnesota, 2009)
- “When Skins were Money: A History of the Fur Trade” by James A. Hanson. Museum of the Fur Trade (Chadron, Nebraska, 2005)
- “Where Two Worlds Meet: The Great Lakes Fur Trade” Russel Fridley, director. (Minnesota Historical Society (St. Paul, Minnesota, 1982)
Currently reading:
- “Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America” by Leila Philip. 12 Publisher (New York, 2022)
- “Buffalo Shout, Salmon Cry: Conversations on Creation, Land Justice, and Life Together” edited by Steve Heinrichs. Herald Press (Kitchner, Ontario and Harrisonburg, Virginia,2013)
- “Fur Trade Nation: An Ojibwe’s Graphic History” written and illustrated by Carl Gawboy (AnimikiiMazina’iganan: Thunderbird Press, Cloquet, Minnesota, 2025)
Really like your article on the beaver pelt trade. It was so well researched.
Your compliments warm my heart. Thank you, Kathy!