Page 49 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

35.

42
in the same vessels." Since issuing their ukase, the Rus-
sians had done nothing to enforce it, so American vessels also

returned to the northern part of the Northwest Coast around

43
Nootka Sound.
What actually had a deleterious impact on the Ameri­

can fur trade in the 1820's was the increasing number of Ameri­

can vessels engaged in the trade. The resulting competition

suffocated the trade, as the volume of trade gradually over­

took the supply of fur. For the furs that remained the In­

dians and trappers began to demand exorbitant prices. By

1830 there was hardly an American ship to be seen along the
44
Northwest Coast. That Coast by then, nevertheless, had

become important to Americans outside the mercantile community.

The trade to Cnina from the Northwest, dating back to the

1780's was still responsible for the initial American aware­

ness of and interest in the Northwest Territory.

Although the American fur trade off the Northwest

Coast declined in the l820's, this trade did not completely

die. Even before the supply of furs dwindled on the North­

west Coast, American traders had begun to explore elsewhere

1
for furs. In the early 1800 s American vessels drifted
southward along the coast of California. The attraction to

42
Letter, Perkins & Co. to W. Smith, Sep. 10, 1822,
Perkins & Co. MSS "The Northwest Fur Trade," p. 538.

43
Letter, Bryant & Sturgis to J.P. Sturgis & Co.,
May 6, 1822, Bryant & Sturgis MSS.
44
Bradley, American Frontier in Hawaii, pp. 73-74. Adele
Ogden, The California Sea Otter Trade, 1784-1848 (Stanford, 1941),
p. 86.