CHAPTER 2
THE FUR TRADE ERA
Beyond the horizon, for the Spanish and all others, there were many provinces where as Raleigh said "the graves have not been opened for golde, the mines not broken with sledges, nor their Images puld downe out of their temples." —BERNARD DEVOTO
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mst for wealth was the driving force b e h i n d most early European incursions into the New World. Spain grew fat on the looted wealth of Central and South America, but native civilizations to the north of Mexico's Aztec empire were not nearly as wealthy. The elusive Seven Cities of Gold, to Spanish explorer and military leader Francisco Coronado's dismay, proved to be n o t h i n g m o r e t h a n Pueblo villages. Coronado and others spent years searching for treasure, and, though myths of gold and silver treasure persisted, the European powers that expanded into North America turned their attention to the extraction of less-glamorous commodities. The quest for furs would become the driving force b e h i n d European expansion into North America—the force that eventually would lead to the settlement of the Mountain West and the estab15
