North American Fur Trade - Indian Response To French-English Competition - Over Exploitation and Depletion of Beavers

Over Exploitation and Depletion of Beavers

The effect on beaver stocks of competition between the English and the French was disastrous. The status of beavers changed dramatically as it went from being a source of food and clothing for Indians to a vital good for exchange with the Europeans. The French were constantly in search of cheaper fur and trying to cut off the Indian middleman which led them to explore the interior all the way into Lake Winnipeg and Central Plains. While some historians dispute the claims that the competition was predominantly responsible for over-exploitation of stocks, others have used empirical analysis to emphasize the changing economic incentives for Indians and role of the Europeans in the matter. Innis holds that the population of beavers decreased dramatically even before the rivalry in the 1700s and stocks in far-flung western areas were increasingly being tapped before there was any serious competition between the English and the French. However, there is widespread agreement on the matter in ethnohistory literature that Indians depleted the resource. Calvin Martin holds that there was a breakdown of the relationship between man and animal in the values of the Indians which made them drastically accelerate the exploitation of reserves.

The English and French had very different trading hierarchical structures. The Hudson Bay Company had a technical monopoly of the beaver trade within the drainage basin of Hudson Bay while the Compagnie d'Occident was given a monopoly of the beaver trade farther south. The English organized their trade on strictly hierarchical lines while the French used licenses to lease the use of their posts. This meant that the French incentivized the extension of trade, and French traders did indeed infiltrate much of the Great Lakes region. The French established posts on Lake Winnipeg, Lac des Praires and Lake Nipigon which represented a serious threat to flow of furs to the York Factory. The increasing penetration near English ports now meant that the Indians had more than one place to sell their goods.

As competition increased between the English and the French in 1700s, the fur was still predominantly caught by Indian tribes which acted as the middleman. The response to increased competition lead to a severe over-harvesting of beavers. Data from three of the trading posts of the Hudson Bay Company show this trend. The simulation of beaver populations around trading posts are done by taking into account the beaver returns from each trading post, biological evidence on beaver population dynamics and contemporary estimates of beaver densities. While the view that increased competition between the English and the French led to over-exploitation of beaver stocks by the Indians does not receive uncritical support, most believe that Indians were the primary actors in depleting animal stocks. However, there has been a lack of critical discussion on other factors such as beaver population dynamics, the number of animals harvested, nature of property rights, prices, role of the English and the French in the matter.

The primary effect of increased French competition was that the English raised the prices that they paid to the Indians to harvest fur. The result of this was greater incentive for Indians to increase harvests. Increased price will lead to a gap between demand and supply and to a higher equilibrium in terms of supply. Data from the trading posts show that the supply of beavers from the Indians was price elastic and therefore traders responded with increased harvests as prices rose. The harvests were further increased due to the fact that no tribe had an absolute monopoly near any trade and most of them were competing against each other to derive the maximum benefit from the presence of the English and the French.

Additionally, the problem of the commons is also glaringly visible in this matter. Open access to resources leads to no incentive to conserve stocks and actors which try to conserve lose out compared to the others when it comes to maximizing economic output. Therefore there appeared to be a lack of concern by tribes of the First Nations about the sustainability of the fur trade. The problem of over-exploitation is not helped by the fact that the efforts by the French to remove the middle men such as the Huron who increasingly resented their influence meant that stocks were put under more pressure. All these factors contributed to an unsustainable trade pattern in furs which depleted beaver stocks very fast.

An empirical study done by Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis show that apart from the settling to a lower level of stable population, further declines were caused by over-harvestation in two of the three English trading posts (Albany and York). The data from the third trading post are also very interesting in that the post did not come under French pressure and was therefore shielded from the kind of overexploitation of stocks which resulted at the other trading posts. At Fort Churchill, the stocks of beaver adjusted to the maximum sustained yield level. The data from Churchill further reinforce the case of over-exploitation of stocks caused by the French-English competition.