Fur Trade Nation
by Carl Gawboy
So begins Carl Gawboy’s groundbreaking graphic history of the Fur Trade Era. From 1650 to 1850, the Ojibwe Nation was the epicenter of the first global trading network. Trade goods from Afric, Asia, Europe, and South America flowed into the Great Lakes region, floating along Ojibwe waterways in birchbark canoes paddled by mixed-race Voyageurs.
Gawboy brings the reader on an unforgettable journey while emphasizing the enduring impact of the Fur Trade Era on history, geography, and contemporary life in Minnesota, the Great Lakes region, and the two other nations within the Ojibwe Nation’s borders—the United States and Canada. Along the way, Gawboy illustrates how to make a beaver top hat, build a canoe, harvest manoomin, load and fire a trade gun, and much more.
A nationally recognized artist and member of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa, Gawboy taught college courses on this extraordinary historical period for thirty years. He has distilled his knowledge into more than 800 pen and ink drawings, connecting historical records and art, oral traditions, Western and Indigenous scholarship, family history, and contemporary artisans who continue to practice the crafts which sustained the Fur Trade.
Gawboy offers a fresh perspective on the Fur Trade Era, placing Ojibwe technology, kinship systems, cultural paradigms, and women at the heart of this remarkable era, where they have always belonged.
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Canoe Trips
Canoe Trips
