Trade Silver: Its Significance in European-Indigenous Alliances | Historical Artifacts | Frontier

[Music] hello the cabin by golly there he is Cherry my friend long time long time indeed sir Hees my heart good to see you and likewise mine you looking good you wintered well and you sir indeed chly morning it's cool it's that time of year but yeah let's warm you up by the fire that sounds great thank you it's a wee bit warmer here Jerry for you feels nice let me take your musket maybe you could throw a chunk of wood on the fire and I'll get that door closed someday real Spring's coming yeah indeed the birds are all back so they know something we don't know excellent excellent oh that feels nice we'll get a cup of coffee going here and warm your old bones almost as old as mine well some days they feel older I'm sure M that was a good cup of coffee man most people drink my coffee say it's a wee bit strong strong anyway I would like to uh introduce Jerry neens um Jerry's kind of a walking Encyclopedia of many aspects of the 17 and 1800s but I'm going to say his Forte would be trade silver um he's like a friend of mine Nathaniel kilu down in the state who has the Buffalo Trace I think every waking hour that you have free you must be researching something in addition to that Jerry uh has a Facebook page called um portraying natives of the War of 1812 and I find it fascinating some of those tidbits of history that you post in that site I take it run with it I don't have to do the work I just sit back and Jerry does the research for me thank you the the research is all there the our ancestors left us a lot of information all we have to do is take the time to find it and read it find it there you go anyway Jerry has put out a display of trade silver I'm pretty much going to turn it over to him I'm going to learn a lot this morning and I hope you enjoy um what Jerry's got to share with us today shall we have a look at the display certain this is absolutely amazing Jerry and and I I think what a lot of us are you're going to share today is how significant um a role trade silver played in the early trade with indigenous peoples in this continent we're going to get I know you just from the display I can tell you're going to get into a lot of other things uh other than just trade silver like material items um wool blankets but shall we start with trade silver and um you can sure teach away I'm a sponge for listening thank you yeah uh one of the first things uh that was traded or given to the first nation's people you around the time of contact was uh a lot of jewelry items uh the Jesuits often would entice some of their their uh Native uh friends with what we refer to as Jesuit rings so uh Rings small crosses and so on and metals and that sort of thing um as uh trade progressed uh and the Europeans found out what the native customers wanted or their native friends and allies uh they soon became focused on those things uh of course like any culture the native culture also had higher ranking individuals and lower ranking individuals wealthy individuals and so forth so uh in that regard when when you were establishing uh trade relations you wanted to focus on the Chiefs first impress them press them uh and in that regard you often saw some of the bigger items like uh armbands and the Gores often engraved with the Royal Cipher or sometimes an igy of of a perhaps the clan members uh uh Effigy deer so on just before we move on to that Jerry it's probably worth noting that we're looking at these Jesuit Rings we're because there's sort of an evolution as this trade taking place right so we're talking 1600s we're talking shamp plain early and the Jesuits going into Honan and meeting the hon people and um uh the AL gonin so this is 1600s and now we're moving more into 17 time has progressed you've got uh New France so you have French Canada M and you have uh the British in the colonies in the colonies uh but of course the uh desire for Furs and trade was very competitive along with the Dutch as well in in Albany and in New York and so on so you started to see uh a a real focus on silver silver being recognized as something pure and uh anyone familiar with Native culture will understand the significance of of uh the positivity and negativ negativity that exists uh anywhere and so just like many Christians will wear a cross for good luck or for protection uh a lot of the uh Native individuals saw silver and wore it not only be for its looks but for its protection from the outside energy around us you can also draw in um any example we talked about at one point about smudging and the purification of this very symbolic cultural thing that was done by most uh Nations so Inc comes the purity of silver yes certainly if anyone that is familiar with smudging you draw the smoke to your face have your your eyes your nose your mouth over your ears hoping that any you'll be free of any negativity or bad energy and so on and of course to your heart and just like that you have things like silver earbobs or silver earrings uh silver ear Wheels anybody familiar with uh the dream catchers the silver ear Wheels help protect or catch any negative energy that you might hear bad bad birds and so on and so forth you don't want to hear the evil exactly and you don't want it entering your mind to corrupt you or or whatever uh and of course circular the significance of the circle has no beginning and has no end so it's recognized as the the we know the world as being round Mother Earth Mother Earth Mother Spirit grandfather grandmother moon right and and again it just is something that is recognized as uh not only a piece of jewelry but for the very reason of staying a person helping a person stay straight and true mhm so even things like the gorier and the gor goes back a long a long time Medieval Times maybe earlier and it was a piece of uh armor to protect the throat and the area and uh over time when of course the knights and shining armor vanished it was kept on as a sign of rank as an officer's Rank and you you you can see this one has got the the Royal Cipher engraved on it right so things like this and arm the large arm bands were given to Chiefs and you know principal men and high ranking Warriors and so on as a sign of their status the other thing you brought up so this is sterling silver um which was the Cuda GR in the trade world but some of the um silver we're talking about such as the armbands that you showed um they're not sterling silver well that's a that's a good point now sterling silver of course unlike Copper Brass based material doesn't won't turn your fingers and green uh so what some of the more not so fairly businesslike silver Smiths would try to pass off what they called washed or plated silver mhm and that is basically today we would know it as uh German silver so it's copper more or less copper based with a coating of silver over top or some other metal uh but uh yeah earning silver of course much preferred you uh you shared a story uh with us about uh a trade that the natives weren't very happy with and decided to uh uh the next season when they came into the trading post to get revenge for the the way they've been treated and it it it actually um involves uh plated German silver yes there's uh uh Detroit area the region was a huge Trading Center where it was uh situated Between the Lakes and so on and uh so quite often every year when the the the naves would bring their pelts down and so on to to trade they also brought uh maple sugar as well well there happened to be uh a particular trador his name was Thomas buer and he wrote a some of the things that he saw and witnessed during his time just prior to the War of 1812 in that region and one of them as you mentioned consisted of a a group of natives that had come from uh Western Michigan and down to the area to to trade and of course there's everybody in their their brother were trading and this particular silver smith by the name of lefer I believe his name was he traded a bunch of silver and other items uh for this maple sugar uh and uh then of course uh what he traded was washed silver or plated silver so when these natives went back up hey what's the deal here turning my clothes my Height's going green ears and so on so the following year they came down again and bushville met with him and he knew they told him what had happened the previous year and he oh there there could be trouble but uh the chief that he talked to NOP they got it covered it's it's okay and as a result they went to trade with this leafer once again and they did and they came back to buer real and they said everything went good uh we're we're going to be on our way and leafer came past berille later in the day with 1500 lb of maple sugar in birchbark baskets and Trays to take to Fort Malden to sell to the the military and that's exactly what he did but uh what happened when he got there was the commissary ah head of the commissary he he uh checked the sugar for quality of course and uh unbeknownst to this poor Trader leafer who had swindled the natives the previous year uh they had uh put uh filled the treeses with sand and put perhaps an inch of maple sugar on the top so when the commissary agent cut it open to see the quality he took a mouthful and he found it to be more sand than sugar that's a great story F came back to berville and was just uh quite beside himself but uh what could he do a little revenge on the part of the natives these items Jerry I find pretty fascinating so they were called moons M and and what was the the significance of them well much like the uh the ear Wheels uh because they're circular they represent or stand out in a lot of native cultures as we mentioned earlier the Earth and the moon and the sun grandfather sun and grandmother Moon MH uh so of course they recognize that nice on a full moon is nice and shiny just like this is nice and and shiny and where it's worn on the chest it's covering again now it's protecting any negativity the heart in the heart area your chest area and again many had different uh configurations or diagrams on them [Music] mhm some again had Effigies so that's a clan Effigy Of The Crane clan that we see up in the Sous St Marie area Central great lakes that engraving is incredibly well done yeah so while we're on significance um I'll put out my my hum um contribution to Jerry's Exquisite table but I like to dabble at different crafts and um I decided I'd try Trace over myself so uh as my first and only piece but um so it's a St Lorraine cross um now the significance of that one was with the anabi ojibway people um and you might talk a little bit about the significance of the dragon fly yes uh it's seen as being representative of of the dragonfly which of of course has four wings and in a lot of the cultures the dragonfly is what is referred to as an old ancestor one of the ancient ones Flyers one of the ancient flyers and uh probably because they were so good at eating mosquitoes that's why I think they like they eat a lot of mosquitoes they're my friend but it became readily it was recognizable and uh much like other things we haven't just got in there yet but uh there's different nations that preferred different patterns or a pattern that they liked and once the fur traders in that area uh were able to understand what their clients or customers wanted they would have that item made in something that would be recognizable to them now the hood andon or this the Six Nations people there's a lot of we see a lot of Masonic Lodge uh influence in some of their later you know uh silverware um and again a fellow in again in the uh Detroit region Fort Malden Amherstburg he mentions and his Isaac well mentions in his travels about trade silver and some Nations preferring certain patterns which would be an identifier for anybody that would happen upon a group seeing them where uh perhaps something with a a uh a Masonic emblem or something is un unique like this uh which maybe recognized oh that perhaps that looks like six nations so and of course as soon as you would start talking to the individual you would certainly know what nation uh he was he was part of was a kind of an identifier as well yes yeah in some instances for sure so I don't think I'll be giving up my day job Jerry when I look at some of the quality of this trades over but it was a learning experience I look forward to making more but I'm also observing here um it's not always a symbol such as a dragonfly or a moon U but we also have European influence in this trade silver in this case Scottish mhm yeah the locken booth uh M which is primarily a heart-shaped uh brooch and in this case the two hearts you know signifying love always when you're wearing that perhaps a young woman might give that to her her favorite bowl or vice versa so that no matter where they travel their hearts were always joined as one but uh the Northwest company being having a lot of Scottish right there you see that influence trors you see we start to see that influence and you sometimes see the crowns as well on on that sort on that jewelry as well now you mentioned I just want to get back to to something you mentioned that you thought this was crude um there is uh over time we saw some native influence where the native individuals started to make their own jewelry and in uh archaological digs we see trade silver repurposed arm bands repurposed into wristbands and into uh things like uh earrings um so nothing went to you know you might think that your attempt was crude but it's actually not too not too bad all you're so kind Jerry you're so kind back to that influence too you might think of Irish Harp was one of the ones right and we think of the Irish influence of Sir William Johnson counseling on his front lawn um yeah this is absolutely fascinating yeah in regards to Sir William Johnson now we're talking Seven Years War as it's known in in Canada and in the the states the French Indian War the need for an for allies in this case uh the native allies was such that the British catered to them whatever they needed you know they gave and when it came to uh the silver works you know it was there was never enough no expense no expense was was spared much to the government's sugar in because they often complain about the cost of the goods given to the first nation's people uh but uh again you had to know your customer and Sir William Johnson uh not only cemented relations by being a good uh Trader uh but uh by intermarrying uh with Molly BR with Molly Brandt uh which also again cemented uh cemented those relationship both through military Alliance and through the trade absolutely for sure before we leave um trade silver and get on to some of the other trade items I I have to show my trade share because in the three and a half years we've we've been filming the Woodland Escape I have had a thousand questions what's that stuff you're wearing on your shirt and um it was worn by Europeans as well particular on the frontier I think Long Hunter comes to mind the voyageur wore it um it could be used as currency if you needed it you could trade it back into the trading post but maybe we could step over where there's a little more light you could demonstrate um a shirt here and we'll talk about how significant this particular bit of trade silver was sure well again all this uh all this silver had to be worn and there's different ways that it was worn and uh on a typical uh trade shirt ruffled linen ruffled uh trade shirt we can see that it was worn in some ways almost like you would Envision a chain mail uh on the chest over the coming down the shoulders over the wrists and so on and you and of course the ring broches as Peter mentioned was probably the most common trade silver Broach that you saw and again came in different sizes could be used in decorated clothing uh from shirts to breach Clouts uh to whatever the individual thought needed a little bit of of bling I suppose um again your we're seeing this circle we're seeing the continuous Continuum of Life of Mother Earth and all the significance that had to the native people yeah uh during the War of 1812 williiam klous who was the head of the biid in the Niagara region he complained uh after the uh the Battle of uh of the temps when all of the British native allies came from the Western regions and were at Burlington Heights uh there wasn't enough food to feed everybody the military and the and the the native allies and CLA mentions that they've sold all their silver to buy as much food as they they can and now now they have no silver to uh to uh wear or buy food with so they're absolutely uh in a bad way should point out the b is the British Indian Department correct significant uh PL of sign significant role in getting that Ally to trade with them to attract them into yes fighting for them with them and and maintaining that military Alliance right stemming back from the time of William Johnson and and even before and uh trade silver of course linen shirt ruffled shirts we see on trade lists from you know fairly early times the same items are are repeatedly given to the point where they have uh an identifier a little sheet of what a a chief a standing Chief is normally given as a gift ruffled shirt uh stra material right leggings breach clout and so on and then the the wife of a chief what she's given right and the warrior and and so on right down so no way it's it was well thought out and everything had a purpose the ring bro brooches of course played a a significant role uh they're often found in archaeological digs as well because they were so common Jeremy bsby a British uh uh officer I believe he was a surgeon was part of the uh the group uh when the Border was was decided upon after the war of 1812 and uh he uh took part in uh a gift giving or distribution of the annual Presence at drum Island and he paddled over from uh Michel maau with uh Chief Jean Baptist the saganak and he writes in his journal that the both the women and men wore trade shirts some of them with as as many as as five and 600 broches covering totally cover covering their shirts the back and the weight he he thought it was quite a spectacle reminded him of of chain mail there are a few sketches from the time period too even into the 1700 showing War Chase head to toe head to toe interesting well let's step over here and before we leave trade Ser talk a bit maybe about um the manufacturers um I read an account um you probably know all the information but um uh trade silver manufacturer in Quebec City that employed somewhere between 50 and 60 engravers alone and you probably know his name well Robert Krank was probably the most prevalent silver name I knew you know the name in in in in Montreal and uh something that very few people realize is that these silver Smiths weren't just making especially a fellow like Kus shank they weren't just uh making silver for the uh fur trade uh for Native use they were also making uh uh items like chales and so on for churches uh silver plates and spoons and so on so we see their work is is wide is wide widespread and uh we mentioned about having a a touch Mark you would often see the man the the maker stamp on the piece of silver so you can identify we can even now of course because uh these silver Smiths had to be uh sort of registered with the government we can identify Robert Cru Shanks Mark Charles arnaldi from others yeah Mark uh Pier you get lur his Mark uh the Widow Schindler and krisen Fuller and and John orne that's a John orty hatband uh and yeah so it's fascinating that their work is still seen and uh it's still valued today as much as it was uh 200 years ago and being reproduced it's it's worth too noting that um I'm fast forwarding our Persona is 1750s but if we we get into the 1800s and we got this rivalry between the husand Bay Company and the Northwest trade company now the husand Bay Company want to get rid of this they don't want this as a trade item simply because of the cost so and the costs are going up like it does nowadays the Northwest trade company on the other hand decided no we're going to keep this and there was a couple of years in there where all of a sudden the indigenous peoples went we're not going to trade with Hudson Bay Company it was a big business mistake if you would so they all brought brought their Furs into the Northwest company and I think it's 1821 am I right 23 the merger the merger and um so in in the interim Hudson Bay brought back in trade silver to get back that trade and as soon as they merged they dropped trade silver and that that's where you see the end of a an era basically yeah the the greatest Peak for trade silver would be from the Revolutionary War you know the the forming of the Northwest company right up until the merger we we do see on some some uh Hudson Bay Company lists in the late 1790s we see trade silver jewelry somewhere marks in actually in Peter Fiddler L he makes a note of crosses silver crosses plated so they will sell they will sell a cross at sterling silver but they much rather sell you one that's made out of that's plated that's that's that's sheep after the merger you're right uh they didn't they were never the HBC was never a big fan of trade silver although they were forced to kind of by the Northwest company to dabble in it before the merger uh but uh afterwards anything they did make was almost always German silver uh and uh it it soon dwindled with it dwindled out of fashion want to put a couple of myths aside so we have a trade musket here this is early English uh the Northwest trade musket you own a couple of yourself but you you hear people talking about when they came in to trade for these that they would trade beaver pelts stack flat had to be the height of the musket in order to get one of these uh from a trading post and uh well we know that's totally inaccurate yeah yeah ex exactly um the value of a beaver it usually referred to as made Beaver um it varied over a time period as competition increased and and so on and so forth um but uh the significance of of a gun and a blanket to a degree was was was pretty close as far as what they were valued at in Beaver uh but uh they were never again the height of a height height of a the other thing we think of this as the thing that a native would come in and and trade very quickly for but um talking with the historical researchers at Fort William in Northwestern Ontario it was the one item they gave away now not always they were bought and sold um but it was not uncommon for a native to come in with no pelts and he needing a gun and they say here it is yet it would be the most expensive item in the trading post but what it did according to the historian and it makes a lot of sense is it it Enslaved the natives to that Fort they needed they didn't have the skills or the tools to repair air uh they needed lead they needed flints uh so it kept bringing them back into that for so it was a it was a you know something that was done quite frequently in that time period yeah you're right and it's not thatth the different fur companies didn't know the value of the gun you you see on their lists and they tell you what that gun costs them M so of course the equivalent in beaver pelts would be reflected but in order to get a beaver pelt if you give your customer a a a trap and a and a gun that's it's going to come back it's good this is a good trade right this is a good trade and on that note the British un Department uh would give guns to the Chiefs and the Warriors we see on their list that's another thing that's given to them so they knew if you're in if they were in an area in the Great Lakes where there's a British post and they were would annually give them uh what they refer to as presence they knew that the chief knew that he's going to get a he's going to get a gun once a year for sure whether you know if he doesn't want it that's fine but he's going he's going he's going to take it uh and again not only for beavers but as a military you know if you want a military ally they're a lot better if they're if they're armed correct right with something that you're using uh and uh every Fort had an armorer and a Smith that would repair the native guns for him if they need be and suppli them with ball and shot different sizes with Jerry's beautiful display of trade silver here it's it's kind of hard to see what's underneath it but um we're going to move on to textiles and the importance of it in in the fur trade um and maybe we can start to talk about these beautiful trade blankets and sure I'll leave it to you to explain what we have here when we look at uh at the trade list and what was uh uh wanted or requested or or needed we see that textiles by far is number number one and textiles is anything from uh the blankets to material stting material ribbons and molten cloths it's the list is is endless uh the blankets uh in particular of course the the most common sizes for a time were the the one one and a half two two and a half and three of course so anything from the youngest child up to uh an adle being the three point and again these were used as uh uh blankets and could be made into uh kotes somewhere blanket capot we see uh and uh all handwoven of course coming from from England or old England I should say but these weren't these were handwoven by well the fellow that that made these is a fellow by the name of uh Robert Stone and he hand we leaves these blankets he's spent 50 years uh studying and he continues to this day to research and he probably in my opinion makes the most authentic uh blanket absolutely I can't get over the thickness like I have a number of Hudson Bay blankets um modern in terms of their production or manufacturing but the thickness of that fur I or wool I can just uh I give me one of those Street pointers I keep my old bones warm in the winter when I track the French also made blankets as well and we see on lists there's different pricing uh but once uh once the French Indian War kind of came to an end we saw uh the importance of the French dwindling to the you know and overtaken by their British counterparts uh we see uh uh the greater quantity is coming from uh England uh and again again when you mentioned HBC we happen to see over a period of time the blanket evolves so what was the the size of a three-point blanket um then versus now then versus now is has changed the other interesting thing we should begin to dispel some mess like it's just assumed that um that you know one bar was a a beaver pelt this was 1 and A2 but we know that prices vary just like they do in our modern world the price for this might go up or down depending on what they were getting for Beaver plumes in in England or France Y and and to give you an idea we'll see again I'll focus on the British Indian Department because their main focus on the items they distributed were strictly for Native use so we'll see on lists of three-point blankets 500 pairs mhm you know then the next size Down 2 and A2 point we'll see 300 Pairs and so you can see how widely they're being distributed and the the Indian Department uh was based in uh I shouldn't say based but that Indian Department was every Fort usually a representative was in every Fort from Montreal right out west to The Mao and the Green Bay and so on so we these blankets covered a huge Geographic area much like uh the other the silver items as well I got I have to give you a hats off again to your research cuz one of the things I like when you post you you get all these trade lists and you post them yeah and one can glean so much from it you can extrapolate a little bit for the most part they they're plain they're speaking plain English this is how many they sent this is what they cost in those days dollars speaking of dollars what we're on it why don't we talk a little bit about this guy sure and because we're talking what we see on this table whether it's whether it's material Fabric or trade silver there wasn't a lot of hard currency and and we get into well I'm going to let you explain there sure uh of course being uh getting up into the up country nobody had had hard currency or paper uh currency with them so not only the trade the trade system the barter system uh but uh when you if you did happen upon anybody with hard currency I like to tell people um the Spanish dollar was recognized all all over North America all over North America and theh World right because it was guaranteed um and uh its value never went down it remained the same so what's a person to do if they had a Spanish dollar with them if they wanted to buy something that only cost a minimal amount if I was to give you a Spanish dollar you'd look at me like I had three heads what am I supposed to do with I don't have any change so what was common to do in that right people will recognize it as a Hollywood thing but uh the term a pieces of eight and uh all that refers to as a Spanish dollar cut into eight pieces and the pieces were referred to as bits mhm and I'm sure you're I know my father and your father as well probably mentioned the when we brought back a treasure he might look at and say that's not worth two bits heck I'm a Frugal side I'm still saying it that ain't worth two bits and uh that I'm a tough Traer that comes right back from the bits of the Spanish dollar two two bits made a quarter and uh it's interesting again I referred to the War of 1812 because that's sort of my main focus there's an American uh surgeon that went with the American Fleet after 1812 to try and retake uh Fort misham akov from the British and he mentions uh during his time in Detroit where they stopped for a few days he went over to the Canadian side to try and uh find some fresh vegetables he was a doctor so he knew that it was important uh to have your vegetables and so on and he mentions a couple things one thing was that he could hardly find anybody over in Canada that in winds the modern day Windsor that could speak English or would speak English they all would speak French to this American MH and uh none of them wanted to sell to him and when he bought something the C the F he bought the vegetables for pulled out of his pocket a whole pile of these pieces of of eight to try and tell the surgeon how much the vegetables were and the surgeon uh mentioned that he thought how backward these people are that they're still using this sort of thing as as currency but it's it's kind of funny the Spanish dollar was still Rec recognized as late as 1850 as legal tender in the United States because it took that long for the United you know the after the Rev War you just don't be you become a country but it takes a long time to get your infrastructure and that that was solid currency so it was legal tender right up to about 1850 they produced during the the continental army or the re American Revolution they produced what they called Continentals which was their own dollar well due to inflation a year or two after they're absolutely useless and Washington and his Congress want to buy them all back in and they bought them back at 1% of their face value so to shows you what to do okay let's move on to um other items so we got broad cloth we got wool we got bolts of linen and yeah all those good things silk handkerchiefs we we should show that in a moment but we also get into knives pots kettles axes um and they're all before we think of this as the number one but this is number one then I'm thinking knives and Kettle Stone Age people all of a sudden building bir birb canoes I know the value of a really good Crooked Knife and that's a grand one it may be messing when you go home can't guarantee that one won't be um so yeah you can talk maybe a little bit about sure other trade items sure the the useful items like like knives and you and you see kettles the knives were brought in uh by the thousands usually you see them listed by the gross so a gross is 144 of any one I'm a dozen dozen so uh of course the the red handled scalping knife uh later on list we see it called uh uh just a butcher's knife but these were distributed sold traded by the thousands of thousands thousands and they did evolve a little bit too in size and shape we should bring up the uh the maker and give a little note to who made these blades these two particular knives were made by a by the name of Ken Hamilton Ken Hamilton has again another one of these fellas that has spent his lifetime researching and trying to reproduce something that was a spot on he also made this blade he made little clasp knife yeah yeah and often it was a very common item to be carried in shooting Bays or have cor yeah it was commonly you you saw these used for cutting everything it's like like your Swiss army knife your jack knife in your pocket right down to a pipe tamper y because they often cut their tobacco into smaller pieces when I'm checking if I can find one tool that does two or three or four things that's the tool I carry yeah if I can find multi-purpose things let's talk U briefly I'll just hand you this and you can yeah talk about silk is another thing that the natives just absolutely love that's right yeah it was it was well silk is silk you know when you get the the real uh the real product uh it's got so many qual good qualities it's light it's Airy but at the same time it it can keep you keep you warm and getting back to the trade silver for a minute often in the Great Lakes areas we would see the silk anger Chiefs used as a bandana around their head decorated with the the trade silver buckles as well right we almost forgot Jerry because you got to tell a wee bit of history behind I assuming it's called a Chief's hat indeed it's a Chief's hat uh we mentioned earlier that the British Indian department and William Johnson and the French everybody would give the uh deserving Chiefs or principal men uh an outfit of clothing usually a red coat uh and done in lace andly elaborate exactly and a hat that was laced right whe you know whether it be Tri corn and then into round uh round hats and so on mhm again a status symbol easily recognized and the guy that's wearing this obviously was important and as far as the longevity of some of these items for Chiefs goes uh laced hats and Lac coats they span almost 200 years of use so a laced hat remained a piece of of clothing or an item that was given to a chief well into the in 1920s yeah so symbol gives you an idea that's right it's s you know as a symbol it remained that for for many many years fascinating Jerry so you're going to uh stay enjoyment for a meal I am sir we're going to cook up there I'm getting a little hungry um so as I mentioned at the start um Jerry's amazing knowledge and he shared such a wee bit of it today I mean we could U I talked earlier we could do an entire day just on trade silver but uh anyway the other thing I should point out before Jerry Le I'm going to try to entice him back is is he he's a Storyteller and if you watched us I I like a good story and uh Jerry related a story once to me uh we were up at Nancy Island at a historic event uh and Jerry related the story of a fellow by the name of Livingston and that that story not only did you tell it well but the story is fascinating and maybe we can entice you back if I I feed you well enough right give you libation I can entice you back to tell the story about Livingston it's it's getting better all the time I'll bet it does yeah you have to pay particular attention when Jerry tells a story especially the parts he makes up so anyway uh those are the best parts shall we cozy up to that fire get some viddles cooking sounds good thank you very much Cheers [Music] Cheers for [Music]

Channel: The Woodland Escape

Views: 10,958

Keywords: do it yourself, 18thcentury, 19'thcentury, americanhistory, canadianhistory, logcabin, rustic life, frontiere, wilderness, bushcraft, homestead, pioneer life, native culture, black powder, flintlock, blacksmithing, handtools, woodworking, self reliance, sustainable living, gardening, food preservation, root cellar, foraging, living history, living archeology, hunting, rumford fireplace, Knife making, Tomahawk, reenacting, reenactors, forts, canoeing, prepping, survival, videography, cinematography, wildlife

Id: LTuH_R_DFcc

Length: 46min 26sec (2786 seconds)

Published: Tue May 14 2024