2 Putting Up Poles: Power, Navigation, and Cultural Mixing in the Fur Trade Carolyn Podruchny, Frederic W. Gleach, and Roger Roulette Material objects have always been central to the fur trade. Felt hats, fur pelts, blankets, and copper kettles were the raisons d’être of centuries of trade between Europeans and indigenous peoples in northern North America. As a sideline to amassing the valuable fur pelts, Europeans also collected vast arrays of objects from the many Aboriginal cultures they encountered, and Canadian antiquarians had a special fetish for fur trade artifacts that enabled many mu- seums to house substantial fur trade collections. All these objects constitute a chorus of voices that recalls the long history and great expanse of this mercantile enterprise. In a 1982 catalogue for the Minnesota Historical Society exhibit “Where Two Worlds Meet,” scholar Bruce White observes that “the fur trade ... thrived on communication – not simply through a language of words, but also through a language of objects.” 1 More recently, in her study of an 1840s em- broidered and beaded bag from central Rupert’s Land, Laura Peers has shown that items of clothing had different layers of meaning that derived from the diverse heritages of the people making and wearing them. 2 The fur trade is filled with innumerable multivocal objects, and most attention has been focused on those found in archeological digs or preserved in European cabinets of curios- ities. This chapter takes a slightly different track by examining an object that was rooted in place, that was not collectable, and that had a relatively short shelf life in archaeological terms: partially denuded trees fashioned into poles called lopsticks. These poles had a variety of meanings and uses among indigenous and European societies, and these meanings and uses collided in the fur trade. All who made and encountered these poles performed rituals with them; con- sequently, the poles became sites where identities were articulated and negoti- ated. We argue that those working in the fur trade drew on both indigenous and European traditions to create lopsticks as navigational tools; in doing so, they articulated a creole identity. In his 1848 narrative, Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) clerk Robert Ballantyne recalls that he encountered a cluster of lopsticks as he travelled from York Fac- tory on the western shore of Hudson Bay to Norway House at the northern end of Lake Winnipeg: Podruchny_Peers.indd 25 Podruchny_Peers.indd 25 09/04/2010 11:22:34 AM 09/04/2010 11:22:34 AM