We learn from Larpenteur that a Wittico-weeon, was a name applied to the lowest grade of prostitute, one who had no husband and goes about providing herself for pay. Lahontan tells us of the Ickoue ne kiouffa, or Hunting girls. They did not wish to marry, instead would attach themselves to any man who they took a liking to. They often accompanied their lovers into the wilds on hunting expeditions.

Journal’s of the Mountain Men and Traders have many references to the women who they encountered during their travels. Some speak kindly of the women, most don’t. The moral code of the European men play a large part in how the women were judged and noted.

It is sometimes hard to determine if the trader’s journals refer to intertribal prostitution or the procurement of Indian women for the whites. It seems as though the idea of prostitution varied from tribe to tribe. Therefore, the traders and trappers found a variety of circumstances in which to react to depending on where they found themselves and where they, themselves were from. Concubinage was often mistaken for harlotry, whore-mongering with slave trade and wife-lending with pandering. It seems that before the coming of the white man, prostitution among Indian women was not at all common. In war societies, women are usually more plentiful than men, making the acquisition of women, with out paying for them, rather simple. Among some tribes, polygamy was common and divorce was easy, there was no need for prostitution. Prostitutes in pre-white times would have had to be paid for in horses or other house hold goods, items often needed for survival. With the coming of the whites and their foo-fra, trade materials were plentiful.

Lewis and Clark report they had difficulties with a Chinook chief’s wife and six female relations. Their journal states that the "regular prices proportioned to the beauty of each female". They further note: "We warned the men of the dangers of intercourse with this frail society; and they cautiously abstained from connection with them."

Alexander Henry the Younger, writes of his observations while in Astoria at John Jacob Astor’s fort on the Columbia: "Numbers of women reside during certain periods of the year in small huts about the fort and from which it is difficult to keep the men... On the arrival of the spring and autumn brigades from the interior they pour in from all parts, and besiege our voyagers much after the manner which their frail sisters at Portsmouth adopt when attacking the crews of a newly arrived India fleet. Mothers participate with their daughters in the proceeds arising from their prostitution; and in many instances husbands share with their wives the wages of infamy. Disease is the natural consequence of this state of general demoralization, and numbers of the unfortunate beings suffer dreadfully from the effects of their promiscuous intercourse."

In 1830, John McLoughlin wrote a letter while at Fort Vancouver, in it he voices concern about women aboard the Hudson’s Bay Company supply brig , The Dryad : "If so be the case, I request she be immediately sent on shore, and I hope no women on any pretense will be allowed to reside on the Dryad... PS I am informed there are three women residing on the Dryad."

David Thompson, writes after his experience with a whore turned medicine woman: "She had set herself up for a prophetess, and gradually had gained by her shrewdness some influence among the natives as a dreamer and expounder of dreams. She recollected me before I did her, and gave me a haughty look of defiance, as much as to say, I am now out of your power. Some six years before then she was living with one of my men as his wife, but became so common that I had to send her to her relations; as all the Indians are married, a courtesan is neglected by the man and hated by the women." (This is believed to be "Man Like Woman" who I have previously written about in T&LR)

In Canada, during the French regime, it was common knowledge that some commandants had their harem of native girls, who helped pass the time and meet the need of the men in isolation stationed the far reaching posts. It has been said that the coureur de bois often changed missions into "taverns for drunkenness and Sodoms for iniquity." It seems according to journals that the opposite was commonly true of brigades in transit. Their mornings started at about three a.m., and they labored hard all day, rushing from one destination to another, paddling or portaging as much as sixteen hours a day. The Indians who brought their women for trade often found conditions some what less favorable. Henry, among other bourgeois, noted the arrival of women at the known portages, or carrying places. Henry describes the girls in waiting as " a plague of women". In an envious manner, Hudson’s Bay Company man Philip Turnor observed that a Nor’wester had "his feather bed carried in the canoe, his tent, which is exceedingly good, pitched for him, his bed made, and his girl carried in and out of the canoe..."

The infamous field headquarters for the North West Company was Grand Portage, at the western top of Lake Superior. Here, for a few fevered weeks each summer arrived thousands of half-wild North men from the distant interior lands and the "porkeaters" from lower Canada and "Les Girls." The call of "Je suis un homme!" was the challenge heard by the porkeaters from the Northmen. The acquisition of a woman was not difficult considering the eager awaiting females. The "Cantine Salope" (Harlot’s tavern) was known to be the loudest and rowdiest spot inside the Grand Portage palisades. The cantine salope offered the caresses of the Ojibway girls, the usual regale of a few gills of free rum, more rum for sale at eight dollars a quart, pork, butter, and white bread. Traders made notes in their journals that the women had flashing eyes and plenty of sex appeal. While the Ojibway were rated as having higher morals than many North American Indian tribes, every society has it’s loose women.

The voyageur soon went broke after his arrival. His money and what ever else he could trade soon ran out. He was lucky if he did not end up in the "butter tub" or the fort’s jail. One voyageur was quoted to have said: "Now I have not a spare shirt to my back, nor a penny to buy one. Yet, were I young again, I should glory in commencing the same career. There is no life as happy as a voyageur’s life, not place where a man can enjoy such freedom as in the Indian country. HUZZA! HUZZA! POUR LE PAYS SAUVAGE!"

When the voyageurs traveled on, the women behind had something to show for their efforts, trinkets, the voyageurs winter wages and possibly his shirt too.

The posts and forts of the fur trader’s were locations of "frolic" at certain times of the year. With the regale of rum, and more available for purchase, there was much ceremonial visiting, dance and battles. Daniel Harmon wrote of one particularly messy frolic (as refereed to by the Nor’Westers), "Of all the people in the world, I think the Canadians, when drunk, are the most disagreeable." "Frolics" were characterized by flagrant sexual promiscuity and rape. Henry could not bring himself to describe fully.

(Some of the descriptions I have read in Journals on this subject I, will not relate here as to not offend anyone.)

It seems that some tribes, resigned themselves to the power of rum.

Women who were chaste when sober and quickly turned to prostitution when under the influence of alcohol, were forgiven by the people of their tribes, for their actions while intoxicated. According to Duncan Cameron, the Nipigon tribe were: "pretty chaste when sober, but when the least in liquor, they indulge themselves in such sport as comes their was; when found out they will say they remember nothing about it, and they were senseless at the time, so that it was not they who misbehaved but the liquor. A woman, therefore, is never reckoned a prostitute for what she does when inebriate, provided she was never known to misbehave when sober..." Prostitution, while not condoned by some tribes, seems to have been accepted and nothing more than commercialized vice, which was an everyday occurrence at trading posts.

The prostitution of women proved profitable by a Kwakiutle Indian who, twice a year accompanied his wife to Victoria, a Hudson’s Bay Company post near Fort Rupert, for the purpose of selling her in trade for blankets. It was not unusual for her to earn a bale of blankets (50) worth $125.00 each visit. The enormous potlatches of the Pacific Northwest were often financed in this manner.

In the west, trapping parties often traveled on foot with pack-trains. Even on the remote trails and by canoe on remote rivers and tributaries, Indian panders appeared for the sake of carrying on trade. One first-time brigade leader, John Work stated that "as usual some women arrived for the night." The women were paid for with tobacco and buttons. Work continues, saying there were not two dozen buttons left among the men by morning.

The caravans who crossed the Great Plains were more likely to have had hostile encounters with the Pawnee, Comanche and Kiowa than from friendlies with women for sale and barter. It was in the journal of Josiah Gregg that we hear of some prostitutes on the plains in 1831 when his caravan was approached by thirty of forty women, " all of whom were summarily turned adrift without waiting to speculate upon the object of their visit."

In 1811, Henry the Younger describes his experiences with the Gros Ventre at Rocky Mountain House on the Saskatchewan: "In offering their women they surpass all other nations I have ever seen. They appear to be destitute of ignorant of all shame or modesty. In their visits to our establishments women are articles of temporary barter with our men. For a few inches of twist tobacco a Gros Ventre will barter the person of his wife or daughter with as much sang-froid as he would bargain for a horse. He has no equal in such an affair, through the Blackfoot, Blood or Piegan is now nearly as bad - in fact, all those tribes are a nuisance when they come to the forts with their women. They intrude upon every room and cabin in the place, and even though a trader may have a family of their own, they insist upon doing them the charity of accepting of the company of at least one woman for the night. It is sometimes with the greatest difficulty that we can get the fort clear of them in the evening and shut the gates..."

Samuel Chambers, a vitriolic American Fur company trader at Fort Sarpey stated that the fort was "full of loafers. feasting and lounging in the houses. Every pan, plate and cup is brought in requisition three or four times a day to feast brats and whores... The women are all whores, the young bucks impudent scoundrels, the old rips thieves... I find this morning that Murrell (Meldrum), not being satisfied with one whorehouse, has converted the Store into another." It seems however that other big American fur trading forts kept a more taut rein on the goings on inside the walls of the fort. Bent’s fort on the Arkansas, Fort Union, Fort Pierre, and Fort McKenzie succeeded in keeping the women from sleeping inside the fort and instead, outside in "squaw towns" and tipi brothels.

The following somewhat comical account of the desperation of some men at Michilimackinac, to sneak women into the fort is told by John Long, who was involved in the effort: "I applied to two soldiers and asked them if they could spare time to roll a large hogshead of bottled porter from Chippeway Point to the Fort; they told me whenever it suited me they would be ready to assist. Having purchased the hogshead, and got it rolled down the hill whilst the officers were at dinner, I told the squaws of my plan, and having knocked out the head and bung, and bored several holed to admit as much air as possible, desired them to get in, which with some difficulty I persuaded them to do. I then replaced the head, and ran immediately to the soldiers to acquaint them that the porter was ready and desired their assistance without delay, as I was afraid some of the bottles were broken, and it would be proper to examine them as soon as possible. The soldiers immediately returned with me, and applying their shoulders to the cask, rolled it up the hill with great labor and fatigue, continually observing that it was very heavy..." He continues with his story stating that one of the soldiers missed his footing, in turn the hogshead broke loose and the girls all spilled out at the bottom of the hill. The commander of the fort, as he was watching, was reported to have commented, "Pretty bottled porter, indeed!"

In 1832, at Pierre’s Hole the Indian prostitute and her pander hit the jackpot. In the beautiful Teton Basin gathered a great concourse of white men. They arrived from the American Fur Company, Rocky Mountain Fur Company and a multitude of free trappers. Near the the mountain men, were camped Indians of the Nez Perce and Flathead. The Indians had something more valuable to trade than buffalo and beaver hides: their women.

After the purchase and consumption of whiskey made of raw alcohol and plug tobacco and a stop at the gaming blanket, if the men had enough left to trade, they might procure a mountain wife to accompany them and make their travels more pleasant. If they had squandered to many of their goods, and could not afford a wife, or just did not want one, a woman could be purchased for the hour or night. Joe Meek states that his "Mountain Lamb" set him back $300.00 for her horse, $50.00 for a bridle, $150.00 for a saddle, $50.00 for her "musk-a-boots" Not to mention clothing, jewelry, blankets and other finery suitable for a Mountain Man’s woman.

While in the early days of Indian prostitution, it seems the act was most often committed for not only foo-fraw, but blankets, cloth, sewing supplies, and cooking utensils were acquired to make their lives easier. Towards the end of the fur trade however, the act of prostitution seems to reach lower and lower levels of degradation. In the year 1835, Thomas Fitzpatrick, a frontiersman and guide sadly wrote: "They (the Indians) are in abject want of food half the year... Their women are pinched with want and their children constantly crying with hunger.. Already, under pressure of such hardships they are beginning to gather around a few licensed hunters... acting as herdsmen, juvvers and interpreters, living on their bounty; while others accept the most immoral methods with their families to eke out an existence."

In Clark Wissler’s opinion: "The deadliest weapons of the white man were his disease, his demoralizing vices, particularly prostitution and liquor. The first reduced the population to a fragment, the last tended to demoralize and incapacitate the survivors."

With the knowledge of the disease having been introduced by the white man, deep feelings of despair and hatred was aroused within the Indian. The Indian, known for their love and kindness towards their children, now faced miscarriages and complete sterility as a common aftermath of venereal disease.

What occurred here in this country during the fur trade has occurred all over the world involving numerous peoples. The coming, the taking and the destruction will continue as long as there are susceptible people to be taken advantage of.

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