The sea otter trade
The Northwest Coast wired straight to Canton
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The sea otter has the densest fur of any animal, and in the eighteenth century its pelts sold in Canton for sums that made a single voyage pay. The trade is a clear case of Indigenous people holding bargaining power and using it: they knew the prices, played ships against one another and demanded particular goods. The wealth funded a flowering of totem poles and potlatch later read as "traditional" although the scale was new and trade-driven. Then came the collapse: the otter nearly extinct, and the smallpox epidemic of 1862 taking an estimated two-thirds of the Haida.
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When European ships discovered that sea otter pelts sold for staggering sums in China, the Northwest Coast suddenly became part of world trade. The Haida and Tlingit bargained hard and grew wealthy — before the otter was almost wiped out within fifty years.
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