History Of The Fur Trade

Fur trade has been around since humans have been wearing clothes. People hunted animals for food and fur pelts which were worn for protection against weather. We also used the animal hair to make felt. Tents were made from goat, sheep, camels and much other animal’s hair. Felt was easy to make and lasted a fair amount of time, the best fur to make felt was beaver, and it soon came very valuable. Then the fall of the Roman Empire came, so the art of making felt was lost. It didn’t come back until these 2 things happened; first crusaders that were visiting Constantinople saw hats and clothes worn by people, and they decided to learn how it was made. The 2nd thing was that an invasion into Russia pushed many felt makers to move west into Europe. In the 1600, tonnes of people wanted to wear beaver fur, a new fashion was born. Because of hunting beavers in Europe were becoming very close to extinction.