The fur trade began the colonization of North America. The fur trappers and traders were among the first ever to venture into the interior of the continent, just as the fur traders, fishermen and whalers had been among the first to settle along the coasts. French explorer Jacques Cartier began this trade in the 1530s, meeting and dealing with Native Americans nearly a century before the much more famous colonies such as the Plimoth Plantation.

At the time, fur was used to trim the edges of clothing. Later it would explode as beaver pelts became in demand around the world. This trade began as an offshoot of the cod fishing along the NW Atlantic coast in the 16th century. The fishermen were successful because they had learned how to dry fish to preserve it on the long voyage back to Europe. Drying needed sheltered harbors to lay up their ships, and forested lands so they could cut wood and make the fires for drying the fish. This is how the fishermen first met the Native Americans.

The fishermen traded metal items for beaver robes made of sewn-together, native-tanned, beaver pelts. The Native peoples all over North American used these beaver robes to keep warm in winter, and they were ideal for the fishermen as they returned home across the Atlantic. But once the hat-makers of Europe saw them, they knew they had much better material than they could get locally, and started to demand more.

In this way, the seasonal fishing trade changed to a year-long interior fur trade. This was the sole reason Quebec was founded on the St. Lawrence River in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain. Gradually other settlements were built farther and farther west, and the fur trade supply chain grew ever westwards and then around the Great Lakes.

The fur trade quickly became a matter of politics, with governments involved, first the French and the the British. Each government sought to make alliances with the Native Americans who supplied the furs. This was to guarantee supply. The Native Americans, for their part, saw these powerful Europeans as allies to help them to fend off their foes - other Native American tribes. All this took place in the 1640s.

But the new trade had all manner of unintended consequences. The Native people were traded alcohol for their furs as well as firearms. The insatiable demand led to the over-hunting of beaver and its near extermination. This led in turn to many fierce battles between Native Americans for the dwindling beaver lands. At the same time, new infectious diseases brought by the French caused widespread death among the native peoples. For example the Huron population was near extinction by 1650.

The vast area of the north Known as the Canadian Shield was prime beaver territory. This is why the Hudson's Bay Company was set up there. By a strange twist of fate it was set up by two French trappers whose furs had been confiscated by French officials for trapping without a license. Radisson and Groseilliers went to London, and here they got funding for two ships to explore the Hudson Bay, and in 1670 to form the Hudson's Bay company which would come to dominate the fur trade for the next two centuries.

The French continued to explore west, and it was these fur explorations that took people like La Salle to the Great Lakes and then the headwaters of the Mississippi. As they claimed all this land for France, so the inland of North American was to become the Louisiana that American would purchase in 1803.

The French built a series of small forts to verify their land claim, the first of which was Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario in 1673. But at the same time, the success of the Hudson's Bay company was taking trade away from the French. This led directly to the French pushing north and west to get new beaver lands.

The problem with all of this was that it took a long time for people in the trade to get their money back. It might be four years before a sale paid for by a trader to a native American got back to Europe and was sold. It meant that people in the trade had to be wealthy, and afford the long wait to make a profit. This is why, for France, the fur trade came to be controlled by a small number of merchants in Quebec. This was to continue with traders in the Mississippi and with British companies such as Hudson's Bay. It was the reason the fur trade came to be dominated by a few giant companies in the 19th century.

Virtually all Indian communities encouraged fur traders to take an Indian wife in order to build a long-term relationship that would ensure the continual supply of European goods to their communities and discourage fur traders from dealing with other Indian tribes. For their part, fur traders found that marrying the daughters of chiefs would ensure the co-operation of an entire community.

By the end of the 18th century the four major British fur trading outposts were Fort Niagara in modern New York, Fort Detroit and Fort Michilimackinac in modern Michigan, and Grand Portage in modern Minnesota, all located in the Great Lakes region. But after the Revolutionary War these places became part of the United States, and so the British bases were moved northwards and westwards. At the same time, the United States began to think of how it could enter the fur trade. That is why President Jefferson encouraged John Jacob Astor to set up a rival American fur company tot eh British Hudson's Bay company, and that is why Fort Astoria in Oregon Territory was the first ever settlement on the American Pacific coast.

Beaver was not the only fur prized in North America. In the southern Appalachians and Mississippi Basin, French and British struggled against each other to control the deerskin trade. Deerskin trade was at its most profitable in the mid-18th century. Charleston and Savannah were the main trading ports for the export of deerskins. Charleston received tobacco and sugar from the West Indies and rum from the North in exchange for deerskins. In return for deerskins, Great Britain sent woolens, guns, ammunition, iron tools, clothing, and other manufactured goods that were traded to the Native Americans.

The deerskin trade had already begun to decline due to over-hunting of deer by the time of the Revolutionary War. Many Native Americans were subject to violence from the new Americans who sought to settle their territory and rear cattle. The government also sought to encourage Native Americans to give up their old ways of subsistence hunting, and turn to farming and domesticated cattle for trade.

Lewis and Clark opened up the market on the fur trade for Americans in the Upper Missouri. Many of the people who became traders in this area were the mixed race descendants of fur traders and Native Americans from the northeast.

By the 1820s, the fur trade had expanded into the Rocky Mountains where American and British interests begin to compete for control of the lucrative trade. By the 1830s Canadians and Americans were venturing into the West to secure a new fur supply.

The 1840s saw a rise in the bison trade as the beaver trade begin to decline. By the 1850s the fur trade had expanded across the Great Plains, but over-exploitation of bison as well as the arrival of settlers spelled the end to this, the last part of the fur trade that had shaped America.