Author: Charles River Editors
Narrator: Jim Walsh
Unabridged: 3 hr 30 min
Format: Digital Audiobook
Publisher: Findaway Voices
Published: 04/11/2023
Genre: History - United States - Colonial Period (1600-1775)
Though the importance of hats is easy to overlook, it was deadly serious in more ways than one, impacting the beavers and birds used to make fashionable hats, the environment of the region, and the people fighting over the resources. Beaver hats put the Dutch, British, and French in conflict, and later the Americans and Canadians. Plumed women’s hats were considerably less important historically, but they had a huge ecological impact. The beaver is a crucial species that once had an immense impact on the environment around it, while the short era concerning the plume trade for women’s hats drove a number of bird species to near-extinction. Indeed, several species have never recovered their numbers. The end product was fashionable men’s and women’s hats, sold primarily in Europe and the United States, but from raw materials to finished products, these hats linked tribal peoples, traders, hunters, trappers, merchants, and soldiers. Whether it crossed their minds or not, countless men and women in London and Paris were linked to the North American wilderness and all the violence it entailed.
The fur trade had its tensions, but for many years, traders and natives worked out their own systems, times, and traditions, allowing many different groups to interact and even compete without issues that led to war. Though native groups sometimes found themselves in conflicts based on long-standing rivalries or relations with the Europeans, most of the fur traders, the trappers, the Indians, and Hudson’s Bay Company officials lived peaceably. The great amount of distance from one another in this land of millions of miles likely helped to alleviate tensions. When a new vision for the Hudson’s Bay Company came about, one where settlers, not itinerants, would be responsible for the colony, the rules changed.
When Robert Louis Stevenson published Treasure Island in the late 19th century, it all but created every stereotype now associated with pirates. The book is a coming of age adventure that mixes character studies, action, a vivid setting, and comment...
Few cities epitomize the best and worst of the United States like Detroit, which started as a remote trading post and grew into an industrious town before exploding into a bustling city. That city then fell, leaving a legacy of anger and despair on...
“Little by little, the bird makes its nest.” – Old Haitian Creole ProverbVibrant, up-tempo vocals and exquisitely soulful harmonies paired with an accordion-heavy and drum-tastic blend of folksy and bluesy instrumentals that one ca...
“Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel.” - – Fyodor Dostoyevs...
A white seabird with a teal beak dappled with pink and orange colors and a set of apple-red webbed feet hops from one branch to another with all the grace of a toddler learning to take his first steps. Not far from this charming bird, the red-footed...
“[W]e observed the Enemy marching down towards us in three Columns, at 10 they formed their Line of Battle, which was at least six deep, having their Flanks covered by a thick Wood on each Side, into which they threw above 3000 Canadians and I...
The island of Hispaniola is the second largest island in the Antilles chain behind Cuba, and host to the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti, however, covering the western third of the island, is a French-speaking territory while the Do...
Though the importance of hats is easy to overlook, it was deadly serious in more ways than one, impacting the beavers and birds used to make fashionable hats, the environment of the region, and the people fighting over the resources. Beaver hats put...
Deep within the bayous and swamps of Louisiana resides a population descended from an exodus. These people, called Cajuns or Acadians, were expelled from their homelands. Persecuted and homeless, they traveled hundreds of miles south in search of a...