![Hide Droughing](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Hide_Droughing.jpg)
The California hide trade was a trading system of various products based in cities along the
California coastline, operating from the early 1820s to the mid-1840s.
In exchange for hides and
tallow
Tallow is a rendering (industrial), rendered form of beef or mutton fat, primarily made up of triglycerides.
In industry, tallow is not strictly defined as beef or mutton fat. In this context, tallow is animal fat that conforms to certain techn ...
from cattle owned by California ranchers, sailors from around the globe, often representing corporations, swapped finished goods of all kinds. The trade was the essential constituent of the region’s economy at the time, and encompassed cities extending from
Canton to
Lima
Lima ( ; ), originally founded as Ciudad de Los Reyes (City of The Kings) is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón River, Chillón, Rímac River, Rímac and Lurín Rivers, in the desert zone of t ...
to
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
, and involved many nations including
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
,
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
, the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, and the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
.
Process of trade
![Vaqueros](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Vaqueros.jpg)
The California hide trade was based on the export of hide, horns and tallow during the early nineteenth century from around 1810. Rancheros (affluent cattle farmers) and their
vaquero
The ''vaquero'' (; pt, vaqueiro, , ) is a horse-mounted livestock herder of a tradition that has its roots in the Iberian Peninsula and extensively developed in Mexico from a methodology brought to Latin America from Spain. The vaquero became t ...
s (cowboys) cared for free-ranging livestock along the California seaboard with the help of a Native American workforce. The cattle were not only the source of their food and many common supplies, but also their economy and livelihood. The hides of the cattle were taken to the shore and fat from the cattle was liquefied and separated into tallow, collected in repositories crafted from hides known as botas. Both goods would be stockpiled near hub ports like
San Diego
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...
and
Monterey
Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under both ...
to await sale to international trading vessels.
Constituting the most widely traded good, the California hides were often known as “California banknotes” due to their common use as a
medium of exchange
In economics, a medium of exchange is any item that is widely acceptable in exchange for goods and services. In modern economies, the most commonly used medium of exchange is currency.
The origin of "mediums of exchange" in human societies is ass ...
. They would first need to be cured, cleaned, stretched, dried in the summer sun, whipped, salted, and folded, a long and tedious process completed by sailors themselves with the aid of Native Americans and the Hawaiian
Kanaka peoples, together called “droghers”. Then they would be taken onto boats and rowed out to the ships, bound for Boston and the Northeast, where they would be crafted for use into leather-based goods like shoes and boots. The tallow, on the other hand, was shipped to South American countries such as Peru and Chile and used to make candles and soap.
In order to take part in the exchange itself, the Mexican government, which ruled California at this time, instituted a fee for foreign ships to pay upon entry into the coastal waters, a fee often manipulated and avoided by trading captains through subterfuge and bribery of collectors. A
tariff
A tariff is a tax imposed by the government of a country or by a supranational union on imports or exports of goods. Besides being a source of revenue for the government, import duties can also be a form of regulation of foreign trade and poli ...
system charging up to 15,000 pesos enacted by the Mexican government would be paid at the customs house at Monterey, which allowed trading vessels to buy and sell goods at all of the California ports. To be able to evade the tariff was considered the mark of a professional and a badge of honor by many captains of the day. Predominantly American vessels, which negotiated high tariffs on their payloads via honest or dishonest means, often saw returns three times the value of the cargo which they brought.
The settlers (Spanish speakers born in the area became known as
Californios
Californio (plural Californios) is a term used to designate a Hispanic Californians, Hispanic Californian, especially those descended from Spanish and Mexican settlers of the 17th through 19th centuries. California's Spanish language, Spanish-s ...
) were able to purchase any number of manufactured products from trading ships - notably described by the writer
Richard Henry Dana as “floating department stores”. Products purchased by the Californios and others were diverse and significant, many being finished goods not fabricated in the region, including silk, wine, sugar, lace, cotton, hats, horses, clothes, tobacco, cutlery and tea from abroad.
Hubs of influence
![Maritime Fur Trade-WorldContext](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Maritime_Fur_Trade-WorldContext.png)
By the mid-1820s, the hide and tallow trade, facilitated by Spanish missions and their clergy and later replaced by private ranches, represented the key profitable industry in California, taxes on their primary products propping up the regional economy and infrastructure. California ports such as
San Diego
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...
,
Santa Cruz,
Santa Barbara,
San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo (; Spanish for " St. Louis the Bishop", ; Chumash: ''tiłhini'') is a city and county seat of San Luis Obispo County, in the U.S. state of California. Located on the Central Coast of California, San Luis Obispo is roughly halfwa ...
,
San Pedro and
Monterey
Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under both ...
would grow to prominence and success in California as instrumental ports of commerce.
Prepared hides were taken onto Bostonian ships in California which sailed up and down the California shoreline, arriving and trading at these cities perhaps for four months at a time. The crew stored purchased hides at the bayside anchorage of
La Playa in
San Diego Bay
San Diego Bay is a natural harbor and deepwater port located in San Diego County, California near the U.S.–Mexico border. The bay, which is long and wide, is the third largest of the three large, protected natural bays on California's of c ...
until tens of thousands of hides had been gathered over a period of a few years, now having obtained an expedient and suitable count for the return journey. Some round-trip ventures could take as many as three years for one ship.
Goods from the trade would reach various corners of the globe including Canton in the Far East, Lima in Peru in South America, and Boston in New England. The Hawaiian ports of
Honolulu
Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island ...
and
Oahu
Oahu () (Hawaiian language, Hawaiian: ''Oʻahu'' ()), also known as "The Gathering place#Island of Oʻahu as The Gathering Place, Gathering Place", is the third-largest of the Hawaiian Islands. It is home to roughly one million people—over t ...
existed as significant destinations and ports of call along the way to California, China, and other destinations such as the Russian ports,
Petropavlovsk,
Fort Ross
Fort Ross (Russian: Форт-Росс, Kashaya ''mé·ṭiʔni''), originally Fortress Ross ( pre-reformed Russian: Крѣпость Россъ, tr. ''Krepostʹ Ross''), is a former Russian establishment on the west coast of North America in ...
and
Sitka
russian: Ситка
, native_name_lang = tli
, settlement_type = Consolidated city-borough
, image_skyline = File:Sitka 84 Elev 135.jpg
, image_caption = Downtown Sitka in 1984
, image_size ...
, and the
Sandwich Islands
The Hawaiian Islands ( haw, Nā Mokupuni o Hawai‘i) are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, and numerous smaller islets in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kur ...
as well. Hawaii itself, a British protectorate at the time, existed as a great hub of trade, providing unique goods such as tobacco which could be sold in California and elsewhere, while also becoming a safe haven in the winter for ships engaged in the hide trade. Canton in China provided a tempting market for seal and otter skins, procured mostly earlier in the century on the California coast before the seal and otter populations started to wane, the skins sometimes fetching over twelve times their original value.
Fort Vancouver
Fort Vancouver was a 19th century fur trading post that was the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company's Columbia Department, located in the Pacific Northwest. Named for Captain George Vancouver, the fort was located on the northern bank of the ...
, another British protectorate, provided a key jumping-off point to the California coast as the
Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...
came to power in the area. The geographical extent of the trade grew to become a global enterprise.
International political ramifications and multicultural interactions
![USS Boston (1799)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/USS_Boston_%281799%29.jpg)
The Hide Trade proved to gain momentum and come to its ultimate fruition as a result of Mexican Independence in 1821, when individual ranches replaced missions during Mexico’s
“secularization” era in the 1820s and 1830s. The number of large ranches increased exponentially by 1840, with cattle numbering over one million in the region.
Though many nations including Russia and the United Kingdom came and traded along the California coastline at major ports, contributing to this economic growth, the United States became the most influential. American trade initially began with sailors from New England, who found an interest in the California otter and seal skins industry which diminished in prominence rapidly after the beginning of the nineteenth century. As hides and tallow replaced seals and otters as the primary products of commerce, corporations such as John Begg and Company of the United Kingdom and
Bryant and Sturgis,
William Appleton and Company, and Marshall and Wildes of Boston
Marshall and Wildes business records, University of North Carolina
/ref> began to demonstrate a vested interest in the hide trade. The John Begg and Company representatives Hugh McCulloch and William Hartnell
William Henry Hartnell (8 January 1908 – 23 April 1975) was an English actor. He is best remembered for his portrayal of the First Doctor, first incarnation of The Doctor (Doctor Who), the Doctor in ''Doctor Who'' from 1963 to 1966. In film, ...
were able to ensure British influence in the trade for three years beginning in 1822, the de facto first year of the enterprise.
Competition between the two powers escalated over dominance in the trade, with the United States eventually gaining the upper hand. The flourishing company of Bryant and Sturgis itself grew to become the most influential private business venture, facilitated by its associate William Gale, taking in four fifths of all hides from California. The influence of Bryant and Sturgis proved so pervasive that locals equated the company’s city of headquarters, Boston, with the entire United States. Thus, American influence in the region can be traced back as far as the 1820s.
California, during the tenure of the successful hide trade, represented a significant crossroads of various cultures, a frontier shaped by diverse peoples from around the world. Native Americans including the Tlingit
The Tlingit ( or ; also spelled Tlinkit) are indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their language is the Tlingit language (natively , pronounced ), , Chinook, Kodiak Kodiak may refer to:
Places
*Kodiak, Alaska, a city located on Kodiak island
* Kodiak, Missouri, an unincorporated community
*Kodiak Archipelago, in southern Alaska
*Kodiak Island, the largest island of the Kodiak archipelago
** Kodiak Launch Com ...
, Haida
Haida may refer to:
Places
* Haida, an old name for Nový Bor
* Haida Gwaii, meaning "Islands of the People", formerly called the Queen Charlotte Islands
* Haida Islands, a different archipelago near Bella Bella, British Columbia
Ships
* , a 1 ...
, Aleut
The Aleuts ( ; russian: Алеуты, Aleuty) are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleut people and the islands are politically divided between the U ...
and Tsimshian
The Tsimshian (; tsi, Ts’msyan or Tsm'syen) are an Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Their communities are mostly in coastal British Columbia in Terrace, British Columbia, Terr ...
groups as well as others often interacted with white traders, at times giving way to positive and negative experiences. Often seeking areas where their trade was less prominent, otter-hunting Tlingit Native Americans would board the ships of foreign captains to travel from Alaska elsewhere. Undoubtedly, Tlingits benefited from commercial trade as well, obtaining objects like copper, porcelain, buttons, and dishes that they may not have come upon otherwise. Often, American or British traders and sailors from the east would stay in California, becoming some of the first Americans to settle in the region, living and intermarrying with Spanish families as a result of Mexico’s relaxed and welcoming laws regarding resident aliens. Eventually, by the 1840s, the originally booming hide and tallow trade began to diminish in significance, the cause proving to be the overabundance of hides now in the eastern markets of Boston created by the trade itself.
Stories and accounts of the region such as Richard Henry Dana Jr.
Richard Henry Dana Jr. (August 1, 1815 – January 6, 1882) was an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts, a descendant of a colonial family, who gained renown as the author of the classic American memoir ''Two Years Before the Mast''. ...
’s ''Two Years Before the Mast
''Two Years Before the Mast'' is a memoir by the American author Richard Henry Dana Jr., published in 1840, having been written after a two-year sea voyage from Boston to California on a merchant ship starting in 1834. A film adaptation under the ...
'' and Alfred Robinson’s ''Life in California'', seen through the eyes of sailors and voyagers, gave rise to a great fascination and recognition of the California region. Setting an important historical antecedent, the California hide trade contributed to a dream of Western promise and success in the minds of Americans back East which helped inspire droves of immigrants during the Gold Rush, according to the historian John Caughey, who states, “The hide and tallow trade had made California an outpost of New England”. Ultimately, the California hide trade set an important precedent which would impact the way the people looked at the West for decades to come. For those interested in further information, The Peabody Essex Museum
The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts, US, is a successor to the East India Marine Society, established in 1799. It combines the collections of the former Peabody Museum of Salem (which acquired the Society's collection) and the ...
located in Salem, Massachusetts
Salem ( ) is a historic coastal city in Essex County, Massachusetts, located on the North Shore of Greater Boston. Continuous settlement by Europeans began in 1626 with English colonists. Salem would become one of the most significant seaports tr ...
provides one of many, unique places where one can learn firsthand about the California hide trade.
See also
* Maritime Fur Trade
The maritime fur trade was a ship-based fur trade system that focused on acquiring furs of sea otters and other animals from the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and natives of Alaska. The furs were mostly sold in China in ex ...
* California Fur Rush Before the 1849 California Gold Rush, American, English and Russian fur hunters were drawn to Spanish (and then Mexican) California in a California Fur Rush, to exploit its enormous fur resources. Before 1825, these Europeans were drawn to the nor ...
* Californios
Californio (plural Californios) is a term used to designate a Hispanic Californians, Hispanic Californian, especially those descended from Spanish and Mexican settlers of the 17th through 19th centuries. California's Spanish language, Spanish-s ...
* List of Ranchos of California
These California land grants were made by Spanish (1784–1821) and Mexican (1822–1846) authorities of Las Californias and Alta California to private individuals before California became part of the United States of America.Shumway, Burgess M ...
* History of California through 1899
Human history in California began when indigenous Americans first arrived some 13,000 years ago. Coastal exploration by the Spanish began in the 16th century, with further European settlement along the coast and in the inland valleys following ...
Notes
References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:California Hide Trade
Pre-statehood history of California
Hides (skin)
Trade routes
Maritime history of California
History of Los Angeles County, California