Brooches for barter

Published on Tuesday 19 April 2005 13:27

ANGUS Mackintosh, an agent working for Canada fur traders Mactavish, Frobisher & Co, placed an order with Robert Cruickshank, a Montreal silversmith. In the order, dated 19 May 1800, Mackintosh sought a massive cache of jewellery, including 23,000 silver brooches of various sizes.

Mackintosh saw these brooches as more than just shiny trinkets. They may have been silver, but they were as good as gold in the fur trade.

This hoard of jewellery was used as a form of payment – or barter - for pelts caught by Native American trappers. It was a common transaction when fur trade dominated the North American economy in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

An insatiable demand for high quality fur had been created by the vagaries of European high fashion, particularly for felted fur hats. Many hundreds of thousands of animals, especially beavers, met their end to keep the heads of Europe's fashionable elite warm.

A glance at a 1765 list of "Equivalents for Barter of goods and skins" details how one small brooch could be exchanged for a racoon or musquash skin, while a woman's silver hair plate would fetch the skins of four bucks or three large beavers. Mackintosh's order represents the skins of at least 25,000 beavers.

But what has this to do with Scotland? Well, the surnames are perhaps the first clue. The highly lucrative British North American fur trade was dominated by two firms - the North West Company (NWC) and the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), both of which were chiefly staffed by Scots. More than 80 per cent of HBC workers were Orcadians, while the NWC was operated by Highlanders such as James McGill, Simon MacTavish and William MacGillivray. It's no surprise, therefore, that when looking for trade goods to barter with fur trappers, these men turned to a fellow Scot to supply their needs.

Cruickshank was born in Arbroath, the son of a Presbyterian minister and probably the descendant of an Aberdeen family of goldsmiths. He served his apprenticeship as a silversmith in London before emigrating to Montreal in about 1773 where he soon built an extensive and profitable business.

What is unusual, however, are the designs of the Montreal-made brooches. Many are shaped like hearts, with added crowns and sometimes with two hearts enjoined. Most Scots would undoubtedly recognise these as being almost identical to the ubiquitous Luckenbooth brooch that is sold today in virtually every Scottish jewellers or tourist shop.The Luckenbooth-type brooch has a long history. It was popular in Scotland from at least the early 18th century, and probably dates back a good deal further. The term Luckenbooth itself, however, didn't come in to use until the late 19th century, probably because the heart-shaped brooches were sold from the little shops or "luckenbooths" that clustered round St Giles' Kirk in Edinburgh. Before that they had simply been called heart brooches, and had been made all over Scotland.

Cruickshank would certainly have seen many of them, owned by his mother and sisters. He was probably one of those responsible for taking the style to Canada, but Native American interest may have started earlier, as Scots women and children were seen wearing them. The numbers of Scots settlers in British North America increased after the end of the Seven Years War (1763), and of course again in the aftermath of the American Revolution, when many colonists who remained loyal to King George fled the new US to British Canada. It is quite probable that Scots women wore the brooches as a reminder of emotional ties with the home country.

Whatever the reason, the silver keepsakes became quite popular with Native American women. They wore them in such great numbers that the brooches’s popularity developed into a type of national emblem of the Iroqois people. Indeed, one of the leading contemporary Iroquois silversmiths luxuriates in the splendid name of Sandy MacKenzie – another fascinating insight into the links between Scotland and North America.

George Dalgleish is a curator at the National Museums of Scotland