In mid-July 1925, the SS Bayeskimo ran into heavy drift ice at the entrance to Hudson Strait. The ice carried her north, squeezing the steamer and testing the strength of her rivets. Helpless until the tide changed and the ice moved, the officers and crew could only watch and listen to the ship's tormented groans. Slowly at first, trickles of freezing water seeped through the steel plates on her bow. The trickles became a flood, and Bayeskimo began to sink. Bayeskimo was one of hundreds of ships in the Hudson's Bay Company's fur-trade fleet. For much of the company's history, they roamed Hudson Bay, the subarctic and beyond the Arctic Circle, servicing far-flung posts. Some even battled their way around the tip of South America to open up trade on the west coast of North America. During these arduous voyages, many came to grief under conditions that would test the mettle of any ship. Here are some of their stories.

The Massawomeck are but one of several hinterland Indian groups which having made a brief, frequently violent, appearance during the 17th century, disappear. Eyewitness & contemporary accounts of the Massawomeck, which are confined to the period 1607-1634, are closely associated with the founding of the English Jamestown & Maryland colonies in tidewater Virginia. Unfortunately, references to the Massawomeck are brief & frequently apart from the mainstream of events. Yet a sizable body of antiquarian & scholarly literature regarding the Massawomeck was generated, largely in the 19th century, which often classified them as one or another of the Iroquois tribes. This vol. attempts to expand upon what is known of the Massawomeck in the hope that it will be possible to enhance our understanding of trade between the mid-Atlantic Indians in the Chesapeake Bay latitudes & the Ontario Iroquois in the 16th century & the first three decades of the 17th century.

This book explores the development of the fur trade in Chesapeake Bay during the seventeenth century, and the wide-ranging links that were formed in a new and extensive transatlantic chain of supply and consumption. It considers changing fashion in England, the growing demand for fur, at a time when the Russian fur trade was in decline, examines native North Americans and their trading and other exchanges with colonists, and explores the nature of colonial society, including the commercial ambitions of a varied range of investors. As such, it outlines the intense rivalry which existed between different colonies and colonial interests. Although the book argues that fur never supplanted tobacco as the region's principal export, noting that the trade declined as new, more profitable sources of supply were opened up, nevertheless the case of the Chesapeake fur trade provides an excellent example of how different elements in a new transatlantic enterprise fitted together and had a profound impact on each other.

How environmental forces, and human responses to them, profoundly shaped both Native American and colonial life along the Potomac River. James D. Rice’s fresh study of the Potomac River basin begins with a mystery. Why, when the whole of the region offered fertile soil and excellent fishing and hunting, was nearly three-quarters of the land uninhabited on the eve of colonization? Rice wonders how the existence of this no man’s land influenced nearby Native American and, later, colonial settlements. Did it function as a commons, as a place where all were free to hunt and fish? Or was it perceived as a strange and hostile wilderness? Rice discovers environmental factors at the center of the story. Making use of extensive archaeological and anthropological research, as well as the vast scholarship on farming practices in the colonial period, he traces the region’s history from its earliest known habitation. With exceptionally vivid prose, Rice makes clear the implications of unbridled economic development for the forests, streams, and wetlands of the Potomac River basin. With what effects, Rice asks, did humankind exploit and then alter the landscape and the quality of the river’s waters? Equal parts environmental, Native American, and colonial history, Nature and History in the Potomac Country is a useful and innovative study of the Potomac River, its valley, and its people.

"By beginning where the standard works leave off and carrying the story up to its logical conclusion in 1865, this book fills a definite void in the history of the fur trade in the American West. Set in the upper Missouri country, which was bypassed by settlement until the 1860s, it focuses primarily upon the St. Louis firm of Pierre Chouteau, Jr., and Company, usually known as the American Fur Company....This is not the distorted and romanticized approach so typical of much of the literature on the earlier fur trade. Drama is inherent, but it is sound, well-conceived, carefully documented history."-American Historical Review