Where Two Worlds Meet: The Great Lakes Fur Trade

by Carolyn Ives Gilman, Eric Mortenson (Photographer)

Inspired by an exhibit of artifacts from the fur trade of the 1700s, this fascinating and attractive catalog includes a history of the fur trade and essays on various aspects of the early cross-cultural contacts between Indians and whites. Photos of tools, clothing, and trade items shown in the exhibit are accompanied by beautiful reproductions of eighteenth-century paintings and drawings, some in color.

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Carolyn Ives Gilman has been publishing science fiction and fantasy for almost twenty years. Her first novel, Halfway Human, published by Avon/Eos in 1998, was called “one of the most compelling explorations of gender and power in recent SF” by Locus magazine. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies such as F&SF, Bending the Landscape, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, Universe, Full Spectrum, and others. Her fiction has been translated into Italian, Russian, German, Czech and Romanian. In 1992 she was a finalist for the Nebula Award for her novella, “The Honeycrafters.”

In her professional career, Gilman is a historian specializing in 18th and early 19th-century North American history, particularly frontier and Native history. Her most recent nonfiction book, Lewis and Clark: Across the Divide, was published in 2003 by Smithsonian Books. She has been a guest lecturer at the Library of Congress, Harvard University, and Monticello, and has been interviewed on All Things Considered (NPR), Talk of the Nation (NPR), History Detectives (PBS), and the History Channel.

Carolyn Ives Gilman lives in St. Louis and works for the Missouri Historical Society as a historian and museum curator.

Reviews

[Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where Two Worlds Meet succeeds at reframing the nature of the communicative relationship between European fur traders and Native American tribesmen, debunking nigh ubiquitous myths, and depicting artifacts, both privately collected and recovered in archeological digs, and ranging in origin from as local as Pipestone Quarry to as remote as the Canton Province of China, that give a full picture of the reach and sophistication of an industry usually shrugged off as just a matter of pelts, wampum, and whiskey. This book would be worth it for the essays in the Appendix alone, but even the primary text is a deeply interesting full review of a unique museum exhibition that I wish I'd been able to see in person. A must read for any student of the Great Lakes Fur Trade.

[Sherri Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book for anyone who is just learning about fur trade. The pictures of the artifacts though is what makes this book interesting.