124 



THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



trade is that for hat-making, old and 

 Avorn beaver skins were preferred to 

 new and in 1636 Bradford in his History 

 of Plymouth Plantation notes that coat 

 beavers, as they were termed, brought 

 twenty to twenty-four shiUings the 

 pound, others selHng for fifteen to six- 

 teen shilHngs the skin. As Adrian van 

 der Donck wrote, "unless the beaver 

 has been worn, and is greasy and dirty, 

 it will not felt properly"; so whenever 

 possible, the Indians were wheedled or 

 cozened out of their robes and these 

 went into the making of hats. The hats 



of those days were valuable and cherished 

 possessions, of sufficient importance and 

 endurance to be handed down by will 

 from father to son. Also they could be 

 rented by the year for about fifteen 

 dollars by those who could not afford to 

 purchase outright. All of which shows 

 that Dame Fashion was not so fickle in 

 those days as now. 



The English colonist did not neglect 

 the beaver. The "Fortune," the first 

 ship to visit Plymouth, took back in 

 1621 two hogsheads of beaver and other 

 pelts, and in 1634 Winslow sent twenty 



!ui,Lil Uluiji-uijIuc .Sucitly 



The beaver hat still survives in Wales as part of the national costume. Photograph reproduced 

 t-irough the courtesy of the National Geographic Society. Washington, D. C. 



