Why read Many Tender Ties?

Book cover of Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870

Book description

Sexual encounters between Indian women and the fur traders of the North West and Hudson's Bay Companies are generally thought to have been casual and illicit in nature. This illuminating book reveals instead that Indian–white marriages, sanctioned "after the custom of the country," resulted in many warm and enduring family…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Many Tender Ties as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Cecilia Morgan

Author

This book places First Nations and Métis women at the heart of fur trade society and shows that they played crucial roles as workers and wives, mothers, and daughters. Van Kirk creates striking portraits of women whose relationships with fur traders made them important linchpins between their Indigenous and Métis communities and white fur trade society.

The book takes an innovative approach to studying the fur trade in early Canada. Van Kirk also shows how these women’s lives were deeply affected by changes in the fur trade and the coming of settler society to Western Canada.

From Cecilia's list on social and women’s history.