Historical characters showed off their wares Sunday at Fur Trade Days in the boatyard of the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium. Three men shared what it was like to live and work as a French fur trader before the turn of the 19th century.
Before matchbooks
Isaiah Brimmer, 8, held in his hands a clump of dry straw and the promise of a fire.
Mark Wagner, director of education at the River Museum, bashed a piece of flint against steel, emitting a small, but precious, shower of sparks onto the kindling.
"Each spark is a tiny piece of steel," Wagner said. "The flint is harder than the steel, so we're actually scraping off the steel."
In the days before matches, French fur traders who relied on candlelight in the vast wilderness had a few tools available: flint, steel, kindling and charcoal paper.
The kindling began to smoke, and Wagner quickly lifted it out of Brimmer's small hands, blew until a flame emerged and dropped it to the group, where he lit the wick of a candle.
"Compared
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Before GPS
Hundreds of years ago, the stars didn't have to compete with twinkling city lights.
Cartographers relied on the night sky to determine their latitude using an astrolabe.
Robert Taunt, of La Crosse, Wis., held up an astrolabe, which looked similar to a musical instrument with its polished wood, shiny brass and swinging pendulum. Navy ships still carry astrolabes to this day, Taunt said.
"If you go out to sea, you can see all the stars. It's kind of a shame not to use them," he said.
Although early map makers were fairly accurate, sometimes they made mistakes.
A 1755 map of Lake Superior includes Philippeaux Island, a large swath of land that doesn't exist.
"It was on the maps for 100 years," Taunt said.
Before debit cards
For Europeans selling goods in the New World, beaver pelts, or plews, were the currency of choice.
"If you were a person that was rich in Europe, a sign of your wealth was a beaver hat," said Phil Palzkill, of Trempealeau, Wis.
A nice top hat took about 13 plews to make, driving the
demand for fur. Traders canoed down the Mississippi River and its tributaries, trading and trapping furs.
Palzkill pointed to a sprawling red blanket displaying calico fabric, tobacco, beads, knives and other goods. Each item was priced by the plew.
"This was your dollar bill," he said.
Fur Trade Day - Mark Wagner, director of education at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium talks about the clothes of the "fur trading days" and how a fire would have been started back then.
