The Merchant John Askin: Furs and Empire at British Michilimackinac
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The Merchant John Askin: Furs and Empire at British Michilimackinac
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781611862614 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Michigan State University Press |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2017 |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 262 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
Pretty Much of a Schemer
Albany, Pontiac's War, and John Askin's Bankruptcy, 1758–1764
On a humid August morning in 1763, John Askin watched his partner, James Gordon, spread out trade blankets on the bank of the Mohawk River in New York. According to Gordon,
As rum ... was ... strictly prohibited my partner Askin ... had fifteen ten gals. Cags [kegs] made as tight as possible, filled with the best of spirits, so that it might be reduced when it arrived at Detroit. These Cags were made up in Bales of Blankets, and other Coarse Clothes, to elude the discovery of them.
Looking at the kegs, neatly stacked, Askin turned numbers over in his head: rum cost about three to four shillings a gallon and could be exchanged for about six to eight shillings' worth of furs. Conservatively, they could see a 50 percent return on their investment, and contraband could fetch them much more, perhaps going as high as forty shillings per gallon. First, though, the kegs had to be hidden from the prying eyes of British officials. After watching for a few minutes, Askin tipped a wooden keg on its side and rolled it forward. The rising sun felt hot, and sweat dripped down his forehead and temples. He stopped to wipe his brow and stretch the ache from his lower back. Both men worked steadily as they readied the remaining kegs to be loaded onto three waiting boats. The plan was Askin's, and he was "pretty much of a schemer."
Soon their cargo of "blankets" looked no different from the hundreds of other bundles of merchandise streaming into the western Great Lakes. Celebrating a job well done, Askin gave Gordon an enthusiastic thump on the back. Together they made their way, stomachs empty and mouths parched, to a nearby tavern. They would rest and relax before the long, arduous voyage to Detroit, where they would pursue their trade in furs.
By the end of the 1760s, the British North American colonies exported £3.4 million worth of commodities each year. Half of this trade went to Great Britain, a fourth went to the slave and sugar colonies of the West Indies, while Ireland, southern Europe, and Africa split the remainder. Furs, valued at £91,000 in 1770, accounted for roughly 2.8 percent of the total exports, and roughly 5.4 percent of all Great Britain's North American imports. Although dwarfed by tobacco, indigo, rice, bread, fish, and whale-based exports, the fur trade thrived and prospered throughout the eighteenth century as an intersection between European fashion and North American Indigenous labor and diplomacy. Even with the general decline of the once-dominant British hat industry during the last half of the eighteenth century — a result of increased competition from French and North American hatters — Britain's control of Europe's supply of furs ensured the continued profitability of the trade. Furs stimulated economic growth on both sides of the Atlantic, and at fur trade centers like Albany and Montreal promoted the development of middlemen — traders and merchants who facilitated the trade and reaped, if careful and lucky, tremendous profits.
Both Askin and the British Empire worked to actualize a valuable lesson: that the social, economic, political, and diplomatic order of the Great Lakes and the Ohio Valley required a healthy, growing, and Indian-focused fur trade. The failure of Askin's trade and Great Britain's inability to secure peace with the Indians were closely linked to their inability to offer an equitable or reciprocal trade, and had profound repercussions for both empire and subject. The five-year period that spanned Askin's earliest years as an aspiring merchant and his subsequent bankruptcy set the stage for his emigration and employment as deputy commissary of Michilimackinac and his subsequent, more successful, reentry into the fur trade.
In 1758 Askin and Gordon were newly arrived immigrants from northern Ireland who had braved a crossing of the Atlantic Ocean during the height of the Seven Years' War. Starting in 1754, the empires of Great Britain and France clashed across the globe on land and sea. In Europe, following their own political and diplomatic agendas, the other great powers — Austria, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, Poland, Saxony, and Hanover — took sides with the French or British, and fought great and bloody battles. In India, oceans away, British and French trading companies, imperial armies, and local allies vied for supremacy. Hostile shots were fired in West Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and in the Philippines, and over the course of the war, from 1754 to 1763, over a million men, women, and children would die.
Before long, both Askin and Gordon made their way to Albany, New York, where they found employment in the fur trade. By the mid-eighteenth century, the New York fur trade was a firmly established, multiethnic, and transatlantic enterprise. Through the efforts of European hatters and furriers, beaver pelts that were trapped and cleaned in the Great Lakes by Indigenous men and women became the latest high-fashion accessories in London and Paris. In pursuit of these furs and the associated profits, the partnership of Kennedy & Lyle hired the twenty-year-old Askin, while Gordon found work through a wholesaler named John Macomb, a distant relative of Gordon's father. They began their careers as clerks. Gordon was promised £1 a day for his efforts.
By the time Askin and Gordon called Albany home, it was a bustling and thriving community of over two thousand Anglo-Dutch inhabitants. A map of the city from 1758 shows a settlement of broad boulevards and numerous irregular buildings nestled closely to the Hudson River, protected by a fort and the long walls of a palisade. Originally founded by the Dutch in 1614 as a small trading outpost, the settlement had been under British control since 1664. Albany's access to the fur-rich Great Lakes via the Hudson River and the Mohawk Valley, and its vicinity to the powerful Iroquois Confederacy — long-standing British allies, consisting of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora — established it as a central site of Great Britain's North American fur trade. From 1700 to 1755, rabbit, muskrat, otter, raccoon, deer, and, most importantly, beaver furs represented 20 percent of New York City's exports to Great Britain.
Unlike their French counterparts in Canada who traveled and wintered among their western Indian allies, often forming lasting ties of kinship in the villages in which they traded, Anglo-Dutch fur traders tended to be stationary, choosing to operate out of established posts, like Albany, Schenectady, and Oswego. Indian hunters and trappers were far from naive consumers of European wares and expected traders to offer merchandise that met their exacting demands. Traders who offered shoddy or subpar stock often saw their merchandise remain unsold. In this respect, Anglo-Dutch traders were able to compete with the more firmly entrenched and widespread French. The Indians of the Great Lakes were disposed to trade their lush furs with the Anglo-Dutch traders who brought cheaper, but higher-quality, British-made goods, particularly, black, red, and dark-blue stroud (a type of course woolen cloth), West Indian rum, and fine-grain gunpowder. What is more, France's inability to offer satisfactory or cost-efficient alternatives to British goods and the persistent oversupply of furs in France's Parisian markets encouraged French traders to ignore imperial rivalries and smuggle their furs to Albany to fetch higher prices and better merchandise.
Still, much of the hustle and bustle that Askin experienced as he went about his clerkly business for Kennedy & Lyle — keeping the account books and ledgers; providing receipts and issuing coin; overseeing shipping, packaging, and the pricing of furs; and maintaining stocks and stores — was a wartime phenomenon. Since 1755, Albany, despite its economic ambivalence about fighting the French and disrupting the fur trade, benefited from its close proximity to the principal theater of the Seven Years' War in North America. The long, porous borderland separating the French and British colonies that ran from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River into the Great Lakes witnessednumerous sieges and much terrible bloodshed. By strengthening the stone fortress and stockade that protected the city and adding a hospital and new barracks, the British military transformed Albany into a base of operations that supported lackluster campaigns against the French-held Fort Niagara and Fort Saint-Frédéric in 1755, and Fort Carillon and Fort Frontenac in 1758.
In the summer of 1759, as the military prepared another thrust into New France, Gordon arrived in Albany to discover that the position he expected to take was already occupied. Luckily for him, European armies were always in need of supplies. John Macomb "in conjunction with ... Kennedy & Lisle, concluded to fit out ... Askin ... and [Gordon] with a boat load of Goods and sen[t] [them] a sutling [i.e., acting as sutlers] to the Army." By July, Askin and Gordon were shadowing a large British army under the command of General Jeffrey Amherst, the commander-in-chief of the British military in North America, through the woods and waterways of northern New York. That summer they witnessed France abandon Fort Carillon, which had been, just a year earlier, the site of a bloody and disastrous British defeat. And several weeks later, on the southern shore of Lake Champlain, Askin and Gordon explored what was left of the smoldering wreck of Fort Saint-Frédéric, after the retreating French had blown it up.
Not far from Frédéric's ruins, in early September, Amherst began building a new fort called Crown Point. While the British soldiers toiled, Askin and Gordon found a clearing by the camp, pulled out several blankets from the back of an oxcart, and laid them on the ground. On top, they set a wide variety of items, ranging from the mundane to the luxurious: fresh fruits and vegetables, tobacco, books, extra clothes, threads and needles, sugar, and, if smuggled, spirits. Askin haggled with a Scottish officer over the price of snuff when Gordon brought him news of Quebec, a French citadel on the St. Lawrence River; outside the city, the French and British had fought a great battle and the French army had fled.
With Quebec in British hands, spirits soared across the British Empire. In early 1760, Askin and Gordon were back in Albany, where they "spent the winter making preparations for the [summer's] campaign, for [they were] engaged to supply the corps of Rangers, under the command of Capt. Robert Rogers, consisting of about 500 men." They received from Amherst a permit to supply "Refreshment and Necessaries ... Rum and Spirituous Liquors Excepted." The contract was a windfall for the two young sutlers.
Captain Robert Rogers was the most daring, successful, and famous provincial officer in the war. From his own purse, he recruited men from across New England and led them to prominence by skillfully ambushing Indians and the French in northern New York. Rogers cemented his fame in October 1759. He led his men deep into enemy territory and burned the village of Saint-Francis, which long served as a staging ground for Abenaki raids into New England. He earned the sobriquet Wobomagonda, "White Devil," and the respect and trust of Amherst.
In August 1760, Askin and Gordon trailed Rogers's men up Lake Champlain. The rangers scouted for a British army marching north from Crown Point, while at Fort Oswego, Amherst and his men began sailing east down the St. Lawrence River. The two forces planned to converge on Montreal, France's last remaining stronghold on the St. Lawrence. Cut off from France since the capture of Quebec, the governor-general of New France, Pierre de Riguad de Vaudreuil de Cavagnial, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, lacked the men and resources to mount an effective defense of the city. Instead of withstanding a hopeless and bloody siege, he surrendered Montreal to Amherst on September 8. Major fighting in North America ended.
Days after the fall of Montreal, Askin and Gordon consigned their remaining seven hundred pounds of trade goods to a Montreal merchant and made arrangements to return to Albany. However, before leaving, Askin sought out Rogers, whom he had grown to know quite well, to say his farewells and, perhaps, talk a little business. Amherst had ordered Rogers west to accept the surrender of the remaining French garrisons at Detroit, Michilimackinac, St. Joseph, and Miami. These communities represented the heart of France's Great Lakes fur trade, and Askin knew that Rogers would be well placed to take advantage of opportunities after the war.
In fact, before leaving Montreal, Rogers impressed upon Paul Burbeen, a clerk for Abraham Douw, an important Albany merchant, to let his employer know that "[Rogers] expected to make a Fortune" from his new orders. Leaning in to speak confidentially, Rogers told the clerk that "the French Officer that Commanded at Fort Detroit ... promised him about Three Hundred Thousand wt. of Furs at a low price." Privately, however, Rogers knew his boast was optimism laced with mounting desperation. Over the course of the war, he had spent and borrowed over £6,000 to raise, outfit, and supply his men, believing the Crown would reimburse his efforts.
Rogers and his men left Montreal and arrived at Fort Niagara on October 1, where they spent the night repairing their leaking vessels. He met with merchants Edward Cole, a close associate of Sir William Johnson, the superintendent of Great Britain's Northern Indian department, and Nicholas Stevens, and over dinner with Lt. Cesar Cormick, a fellow ranger, the four men formed Rogers & Company. They purchased £3,423 8s. worth of goods, and Rogers became the company's first customer, using their coffers to pay for the resealing of his ships and provender for his men.
Two months later, on November 29, Rogers accepted the surrender of the French garrison, and the British flag flew over Fort Detroit. In the frigid air of a Michigan winter, as the French paraded and stacked their arms while Detroit's inhabitants and their Odawa, Pottawatomie, and Wyandot neighbors looked on, Rogers drank in the scene; he was in the middle of it, relishing the thrill of military victory and economic success. In fact, over the next several months, George Croghan, a deputy of Johnson's in the Indian Department, and Captain Donald Campbell, the new commandant of Detroit, drew upon Rogers & Company for their official duties: purchasing presents to help clear a path toward peace between Britain and its Indian subjects, and procuring supplies, food, and firewood for the newly installed British garrison.
With the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley ostensibly under Great Britain's control, Sir Jeffery Amherst, the commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, his second-in-command, General Thomas Gage, and Sir William Johnson agreed to abandon several of the newly conquered French posts in hope of consolidating garrisons and reducing imperial expenditures. In 1761, after regarrisoning Detroit, Amherst ordered the southern posts of Fort Miami on the Maumee River and Fort Ouiatanon on the Wabash River manned. West and north of Detroit, British soldiers settled into Fort St. Joseph, Green Bay, and Michilimackinac. Located at strategic junctures, often on riverways or straits between lakes, these posts ensured proximity and contact between the region's Indians, fur traders, and British officials.
At these posts, Amherst, Gage, and Johnson also envisioned a more orderly, centralized, and manageable fur trade. With the French defeated, they would require British and French traders and merchants to pay a fee and post a good-behavior bond to obtain a license from military officers, Indian agents, or colonial governors to trade with the Indians. The license would dictate where the traders or merchants could operate and place them under the auspices of the post's commandants, who would ensure they sold merchandise at set prices and not traffic in liquor, take advantage of visiting Indians, or disobey any other orders. Failure to comply with the new regulations could result in loss of license, bond, and banishment. By shifting the fur trade away from Indian villages, the British leadership hoped a fair and equitable trade would develop between the British, French, and Indians of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, and the pretext for hostility would vanish.
That is not to say, however, that Amherst was genuinely worried about violence; he believed the Indian communities of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley were now nothing more than conquered subjects. Under intense pressure by London officials, Amherst quickly moved to end the costly French practice of placating the Indian communities with presents. He argued that gift-giving made Indian peoples indolent, and that such items should only be given as rewards or out of dire necessity. With new regulations freeing Indians from the ills of alcohol and the wiles of unscrupulous traders, Amherst believed they would take greater initiative hunting and trapping for the furs they needed to acquire vital merchandise. At the newly reestablished posts he directed his subordinates to provide no more than trifles to their Indian visitors, and then undertook a policy of keeping Indians low on gunpowder. Writing to Johnson in August 1761, Amherst argued that keeping "them scarce of Ammunition, is not less to be Recommended; since nothing can be so impolitick as to furnish them with the means of accomplishing the Evil which is so much Dreaded."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Merchant John Askin"
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Prologue. I Was Born at Aughnacloy in the North of Ireland in 1739: A Ubiquitous Man, the Great Lakes Fur Trade, and the British Empire xi
Chapter 1 Pretty Much of a Schemer: Albany, Pontiac's War, and John Askin's Bankruptcy, 1758-1764 1
Chapter 2 There Have Been Many Who Complain Much against You: Michilimackinac, Fur Trade Reforms, and John Askin's Commissaryship, 1764-1767 31
Chapter 3 Sound as a Roach and as Full of Intrigue: Michilimackinac, the Hudson's Bay Company, and John Askin's Fur Trade, 1767-1774 59
Chapter 4 One Should Never Give Offence in Trade: Michilimackinac, the American Revolution, and John Askin's Network of Exchange, 1774-1779 89
Chapter 5 The Key of Canada in His Pocket: Michilimackinac, the British Empire, and John Askin's Banishment, 1779-1781 119
Epilogue. A Drink Generally Closes the Scene: Alexander Henry's Lament and John Askin's Death 143
Notes 149
Bibliography 201
Index 223