Many tender ties : women in fur trade society, 1670-1870

Summary: Sexual encounters between Indian women and the fur traders of the North West and Hudson's Bay Companies are generally thought to have been casual and illicit in nature. This illuminating book reveals instead that Indian-white marriages, sanctioned "after the custom of the country," resulted in many warm and enduring family unions. These were profoundly altered by the coming of the white women in the 1820s and 1830s. Among the women are Thanadelthur, the spirited Chipewyan who led an expedition from York Factory into the Barren Grounds; Isabel Gunn, the Orkney lass who signed on with the Hudson’s Bay Company disguised as a boy; Marie-Anne Lajimoniere, the first white woman to make a permanent home in the West, and beautiful Sarah Ballenden, the tragic part-Indian wife of Chief Factor John Ballenden. Professor Van Kirk’s sympathetic analysis has been meticulously researched from little-known journals, letters and wills in Canada and Great Britain.

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