Hi!!! We recently just finished our last humanities project of Grade 8. In this project we got to learn about New France and The history of Canada.
What Is New France?
New France was basically when the French and British found Canada. The french allied with  the Indigenous group called Ouendat and the British allied with the Indigenous group called Haudenosaunee.
What would they trade?
These groups would trade beavers and other animal furs/pelts for supplies like string, kettles, foods and tobacco. The reason that the French and British traded with these Indigenous groups a lot was because beaver fur was really popular back in Europe and you could make a lot of money selling it. Almost everyone had a beaver hat or a beaver coat.
What were the affects of trading pelts?
As beaver pelts got more and more popular back in Europe more and more beavers were being killed which lead to rapid decline in the population of beavers, which had a negative affect on the ecosystem of Canada. Also because of the low numbers of beavers
The Project
In this project we created 2 images representing the good and bad sides of a topic we got to choose. The topic I chose was fur trade because it was an essential/important part of New France.
The first image depicts…
Kettle and Food – I choose to draw a kettle and food because indigenous groups would trade fur/pelts for goods like kettles,tins,foods,string and tobacco. Wolf pelt- I drew a wolf pelt because mainly they traded beaver fur but sometimes they would trade furs like minks,rabbits,wolves and otters. For my image I chose to take a picture of a wolf hence the wolf pelt. Flags- The flags I drew were the Ouendat flag, the Haudenosaunee flag also know as the Flag of the Iroquois Confederacy, the old French Flag and the old English Flag. This represented the alliances that fur trade created between Europeans and Indigenous groups.
The second image depicts…
Dead wolf- The dead wolf represents the decrease in different animal populations (mainly beavers but other animals to). Because of the huge popularity of furs back in Europe there was excessive hunting which led to decreased populations of lots of animals. Revolver/gun-I drew a gun because once the Europeans introduced guns to Indigenous groups it became an essential item to have and so it became very valuable and worth a lot of pelts. 2 people fighting- Fur trade caused a lots of disagreements between people because of prices and quality. There were lots of negations, fights and even wars caused because of the Fur Trade industry.
Here is a picture of my image…
Thanks for reading. Have a great day!!!!