Four episodes in and the unnecessary ahistorical nonsense continues.
The
only item Delaney can trade with the aboriginals is gunpowder? Really? How do they use it? Otter-skin grenades?
Actual historical trade goods would have included
- Gunpowder
- Things to use the gunpowder in: muskets and pistols.
- Things to propel with the gunpowder: shot, lead bars, bullet moulds.
- Things to maintain the above: gunsmith tools.
Maybe without being able to supply gunpowder, Delaney would find little market for the above, but items he'd still be able to trade include:
- textiles, ribbons and thread
- beads
- sewing needles,
- knives
- hatchets
- axes
- adzes
- pots, kettles and frying pans
- spoons and ladles
- fishhooks
- arrowheads
- alcoholic beverages
And what does the show tell us Delaney would get in return?
Smoked beaver pelts. What were
the writers smoking? Beaver pelts are not smoked. This is just another example of lazy and ignorant writing. Oh, maybe that's what the gunpowder was for. In fact the most common fur product in the North West coastal trade wasn't beaver, but sea otter pelts (also not smoked). The show makes it sound like Delaney is intending to open some new trading market, but in fact at the time the show is set in, trade in sea otter pelts had been ongoing for a generation, and the supply was in decline. Much of the trade based on trading posts was in the hands of the Montreal-based Northwest Company. The American Pacific Fur Company had arrived in 1811, but sold its interests to the NWC during the War of 1812 because of the risk British naval domination posed to their operations.
Something the show gets right is that a major portion of the fur obtained on the west coast was sold to China. However, as a British subject, Delaney would be unable to purchase tea. The EIC had a monopoly on export of Chinese goods to Britain or by British subjects, and indeed would have required Delaney to use the EIC as agents for selling fur to the Chinese. An upstart trader like Delaney had no prospect of begin granted a monopoly on the tea trade between China and the west coast, and there was no market for tea on the west coast.
Finally it is not clear why Delaney would want to get a message to Thomas Jefferson, since Jefferson had by this time retired from official political life and held no public position.