Trade House - Reception Room & Trade Room

Trade Room, part of the Trade House Complex

NPS / Sawyer Flynn

Quick Facts

Amenities

3 listed

Benches/Seating, Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits, Scenic View/Photo Spot

The Trade House consisted of two rooms, with the Reception Room being the most important one. This is where the leaders of the Tribes would meet with the Traders from the American Fur Company to negotiate the terms of their trade. The room itself was minimalist, with only one bench for sitting, but adorned with curios from both cultures.

When a band from the Upper Missouri Tribes arrived to trade, they were greeted in the Reception Room by the trader, one or two laborers, and an interpreter if needed. A fire was lit in the fireplace, and food and drinks were served. After the meal, pipes were passed around, and the trader made a speech emphasizing friendship and peace. The tribal leader then spoke, repeating many of the same things the trader had said, and described how his people had survived the winter and any recent hardships. Gifts were exchanged, with the trader giving the chief items like black powder, coffee, sugar, tobacco, or even a musket, while the tribal leader might present the trader with a bow and arrows in a skin quiver, a rawhide storage bag, or a beaded and quilled pipe bag. Once the gifts had been exchanged, the two men began to negotiate the trade. The tribal leader spread out a buffalo robe and other furs for the trader to examine, and the trader carefully inspected them while the tribal leader and his men talked about how they had obtained them. After this, the trader retrieved some of the newest items from the Trade Shop, and both parties examined each other's wares before serious negotiations began. This initial trade was pivotal to each negotiator. For the tribal leader, he is setting the price his people will expect for their robes this year. The better price he can set the more value their robes are worth. For the trader, he is negotiating the fort's profits for the year but he must not undervalue the robes. If he gives too poor of a trade value the tribe may not come back net year as there are competition forts up and down the Missouri River and just north of the site in Canada all vying for the same furs. The price for each robe would be set in trade good, not cash value as cash had no meaning on the upper Missouri. When the negotiations were concluded, the trade began. The tribal leader will inform his people what the trade is for this season, and then all persons in the band would trade individually for items they needed based on the price set by their tribal leader. If the price was set as, for example, a knife, tin pot and yard of cloth, not everyone in the band would need those exact items, but they would understand the relative worth of them and be able to use that worth to negotiate for items they did desire. In this way, over 25,000 to 50,000 buffalo robes were slowly and methodically traded each year at Fort Union. Men and women would divide the hides in their families and trade for what they each needed. The band then visited old friends and family in the fort, feasted, and relaxed. After a week or so, the entire band, having acquired all they needed or wanted, broke camp one morning and moved on through the breaks. After a few parting salutations, the band disappeared until the following year.

The Trade Shop was a showroom that stocked over 200 different items. These items could be categorized as either laborsaving or ornamental. Laborsaving items were those that were manufactured, such as fabric, metal knives, and copper or tin cook pots. These items were durable, long-lasting, and helped save labor by eliminating the need to hunt, butcher, and tan an animal hide to make clothing or cooking utensils. Ornamental items, on the other hand, were purchased for their decorative value, such as silverwork ear wheels, ear bobs, and brooches, glass beads, fabrics, vermillion mineral pigment, brass tacks, and small tin and copper tinklers (cones). Some of these items were made on-site, with blacksmiths and tinsmiths employed to create tin and metal work, including arrowheads and spearpoints. The Fort Tailors made ready-made shirts and elaborate jackets called "Chiefs Coats", which were one of the most expensive items traded in the Trade House. However, most of the manufactured items were imported from overseas, including fabric from France, beads from Italy, woolen blankets from England, and guns from Belgium.

Learn more: 
Watch an interpretive trade house talk.
Watch a reenactment of a typical trade scene
 

Open Transcript 

Transcript

Hi, welcome to Fort Union. Right now, you're standing in the most important room in the entire fort. This is where Indian chiefs, elders, the higher ups of their tribe, would meet with representatives of the American Fur Company. Sit down, smoke a pipe, drink coffee, eat a fine meal, give gifts to one another, make speeches. Eight hours later, or thereabouts, you're hopefully ready to trade.

So this room is a reception room. This is where those chiefs and elders are actually going to be doing most of their work face to face with the American Fur Company. There are over 13 different tribes that are trading out here-- the Crow, the Cree, the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, the Gros Ventre, the Nez Perce, the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota.

And the Naokta is a very important one, because that is the Assiniboine tribe. The Assiniboine tribe are the tribe that actually asked for this fort to be built here on their land, and they are going to be some of the most frequent customers for the American Fur Company.

Today, I'm dressed as traders at that time would have been especially, under cold weather conditions. I assure you underneath all of this, I'm wearing a fine three piece suit and a tie. And so, I'm going to be actually meeting face to face with these Indian chiefs and elders, and if I'm working with the Assiniboine tribe, then I'm going to have to say Haú, [NON-ENGLISH], which is, hello, friend. Good day to you. And that's about where my Assiniboine ends.

But this room is that meeting space, and it's going to take eight hours of social ceremony, getting to know one another. Typically, if I'm working with the Assiniboine Tribe, I'm going to be intermarried in with the Assiniboine Tribe, and that holds true for most of these traders out here as well. And they are talking about the price of this Buffalo robe right here. What's it worth? What can they expect to get for their hide? So, the answer is $3 to $3.50, give or take.

But when you translate that out into your actual trade goods which is what they're looking for. It's going to be three knives or a knife and a kettle or one tomahawk, 6 to 10 gets you a gun, usually about eight. 10 gets you a horse, and 25 gets you a very fine chief's coat, which although it's not very functional for cold weather like this, it does look rather nice.

26 different species of pelts are going to be traded out here, everything from grizzly bear to mouse. They're not picky. It's the American Fur Company, not just the American Buffalo company, and they are going to be supplying all these gifts out to this group right here, because this is a group that's setting that price. Send them back out to their people, let them know the deal that has been arranged, and if everyone agrees, they come up to either the small window in the trade store or about nine windows inside the warehouse range and then trade through it. Obviously, if you have 900 people, you're going to want that nine windows, so it's 100 people per window as opposed to 900 to one window.

Duration:

2 minutes, 35 seconds

Learn why the Trade House was the economic center of Fort Union Trading Post with this Trade House talk by Living Historian and National Park Service Interpreter Ranger Flynn. This short program describes why this rustic building is truly is the most important building at the fort complex and discusses the importance of cultural understanding in the fur trade.