At the beginning of the fur trade the Indigenous peoples worked mostly with the French. Overall, the French tried to be friendly with Native groups. The French wanted to have a good relationship, so they respected Native cultures. In Canada the Native people and the French traded, lived together, and often married and had families together. Eventually, their cultural differences began to blur together. The descendants of these people now make up an Indigenous group in Canada called the Métis.
At first the Indigenous people thought trading with the Europeans was a good thing. They traded furs for iron tools, kettles, wool blankets, and other useful supplies. While some positives came out of the fur trade for the Indigenous population, Europeans brought many bad things as well. These included guns, diseases, and alcohol. However, the most devastating result of the fur trade was the colonization of Indigenous lands by European settlers. The settlers eventually forced almost every Indigenous group in North America off their land.
