Indian Trade—Documents related to William Conner's involvement in the fur trade
[The following is from an interview with F. M. Finch which appeared in the Indiana Journal of October 30, 1887. Finch was William Conner's brother-in-law and worked for several years at the trading post. Other Finch information is usually reliable, despite having been written several decades after the events described.]
"The great trade of the indians was for peltry. That was the principle product that the white man wanted to buy and the one they [indians] found easiest to furnish. They were very skillful in the preparation of skins for the market. They made coon-skins almost rectangular in dressing them. Their mode was to trim the head to the eyes and sow the skin of the forelegs to edges of the neck and head, making the fore part as broad as the hind part. They were cleaned very carefully, all the meat and fat being removed. I never saw a white man who could fix them as nicely as the indians did. Dear skins were prepared and stretched in the same way. The mode of stretching was to make little holes along the edges of the hide, through which strips of tough bark were run, to these strips bark strings were tied, and then fastened to trees or saplings on either side and drawn tight. There were some skins of smaller animals, such as the otter, muskrat and mink that were not stretched in this way. In skinning these animals the incisions were made about the mouth and head, and the body was drawn through the cut, leaving the skin inside out. They then thrust a stout hoop of oak or hickory into it, and by its tension the skin was stretched tight. The white people usually had a piece of board cut in proper shape that they used for this purpose."
"How were the prices regulated?"
"They depended chiefly on the quality of the pelt. The indians were very shrewd in their trading and understood the condition and value of a pelt as well as the trader did. In judging one, those who are expert do not look at the fur, but at the skin side. If an animal is killed in the proper season, when the fur is thick and fine, the skin is of a yellow color inside. If it has been killed out of season, the skin is bluish in color, and the fur is poor.
All of the skins except beaver were sold by weight, and for that reason the indians never cleaned them as nicely as they did other skins. They left as much fat on them as they dared in order to make them weigh more. Some times the traders would open the beaver packs and find pieces of stone or metal put in between the skins to add to the weight."
Peltries
[The following is an excerpt from an obituary of William Conner transcribed from the August 22, 1855 edition of the Indiana Journal. It is signed F. Evidence suggests that it was contributed by F. M. or J. Finch, but there is a slight possibility it was written by one of the Fletchers.]
"The Indian trader practiced nothing of that system of CREDIT, which is the great feature of Western traffic. [An overstatement. Traders would indeed sometimes extend credit to tribes, as their greedy circling come annuity time so eloquently speaks to. TRC] His was a system of immediate payment, if not in money, what was current [currency?] with the trade, PELTRY. This item of barter consisted of the skins of almost every animal of the forest. These skins were compressed into compact bales, called packs, by means of a rude but not inconvenient press. in which the WEDGE contributed to its mighty agency to reduce the pack to the required size- These packs were laid across the backs of horses, and on either side, upon a rude saddle composed of two forked sticks, attached to short side pieces by thongs."
Trading Practices
[An 1888 interview conducted by historian Jacob P. Dunn with early Hamilton County resident Robert Duncan cast light upon one of William Conner's business practices]
[Regarding annuity payments and credit]. "He [Conner] had an odd way of paying them which he used in order to to keep their accounts so they could understand."
"They were divided into three grades. The older ones were to receive so many dollars, the next younger so many half-dollars and the youngest so many quarter-dollars."
"Conner would give the old ones as many sticks of a certain length as they were to receive dollars; to the next class shorter sticks and to the next still shorter."
Then they would all take places, grouped in families on the prairie between Conner's house and the river, covering an acre or two of it."
"There all could see and be seen, and Conner and his assistants would go about and give a dollar, or part of a dollar, as the case might be, and take a stick."
"This was continued until the sticks were all taken up and the money paid."
[Source: Richmond Paladium-Item, June 15, 1968]
(Press image courtesy of the Museum of the Fur Trade Quarterly)