The Rocky Mountain Fur Trappers and Price Inflation

What they paid vs. what we pay 

The beaver pelt was the staple trade item of the early eighteen hundreds, hence the name “Fur Trade Era”. The beaver trappers of the early eighteen hundreds would go into the mountains, trap beaver through winter and spring, then rendezvous at a previously agreed location. While there, they would sell off their skins to men like William Ashley and John Jacob Astor, who in turn would sell them to distributors who could make then into hats, or sell them one at a time to individuals.

With the money they received for their pelts, (which, in 1829, sold for $5.25 a pound, with each man averaging about 74 pounds of fur each), they bought the supplies they needed to do another year of beaver trapping in the mountains.


Some of these supplies sold at the rendezvous sites were; fishhooks, traps, coffee, sugar, tobacco, lead shot, knives, cloth, and blankets. These were the staple items meant for use, but there were a few more like cloth, beads and awls which were almost strictly for Indian trade. From the Lewis and Clark expedition, all the way up to the late 1800’s, trade with the Indians was a priority. On the Lewis and Clark expedition, there were over 4,600 needles, 70 square yards of red cloth, many shiny medallions and hundreds of pounds of kettles and army jackets strictly for Indian trade.


In John Jacob Astor’s inventory of tools, he has over 300 knife blades, over 11 gross assorted awls, 70 files, 509 assorted axes, 300 log dogs and 1,050 assorted hooks, most of which were for trade with the Indians. That is how important trade was.


In 1813, if a man wanted 1 dozen fishhooks in town, he could get them for about $0.50 cents, depending on where he got them. The Current Price Equivalent (CPE) of that is about $7. If a man wanted a dozen fishhooks at a rendezvous, he would loose $1.50. The CPE of that is about $22. We can go to Wal-Mart and get ½ dozen hooks for $0.95. In 1832, Jonson Gardener, a free trapper, paid $2 each for a lot of butcher knives, CPE is about $52 EACH. Those same knives were bought by the seller for less than $0.20 cents each in town. Now we can order those same knives for $8.00 a piece.

The reason for such inflation was the cost in getting the supplies to the rendezvous site. He had to carry them on horse back or buggy many hundreds of miles at the risk of his life and still make a profit. Now I come to awls, which were the #1 trade item with the Indians. Today a good leather stitching awl is $6.50. In 1812, you could get a dozen shoe awls for around 5 cents, a CPE of $0.06 each, as opposed to $6.50. Blistered steel sold for 7 cents per pound, CPE $1.05 a pound. Today it is as much as $30 for maybe 3 pounds of steel. So as you can see from these few examples, the price of some things has gone down, and the price of other things has gone way up. I wrote this article as an insight into what money was worth back in “the good ‘ole days” and what the trade items were worth. I really hoped you liked it and learned something from it.