Fur Trader Daniel Williams Harmon reported in his journal that he was robbed at Fraser Lake Post in 1811. He retrieved his articles, with the help of informants, from some people living nearby in a pithouse, but gave little consideration to the motives of anyone involved. To Harmon the incident seemed merely to be expected of a “Rascal”, and to have been mediated by his more rational peers who feared the trader’s threats of punishment. Two hundred years later, my excavations in a housepit near to this post have yielded a small assemblage of lithics, bone and fur trade goods. I explore the assemblage and historical records here for an understanding of the motives and expectations of those engaged in fur trade relationships and interactions, like the events described by Harmon, and the role that material objects may have played. I argue the introduced objects themselves cannot be understood as either simply functionally advantageous, or prestigious, and they thus did not create relationships of dependency between Indigenous people and fur traders. Instead, the artifacts encapsulated and enacted growing social and material entanglements rooted in principles of reciprocity, even when not recognized by the European traders.
