Straits Fur Trade Book Earns State History Award

Author and historian Timothy Kent dressed as a voyageur.

Timothy Kent, featured this fall at the annual meeting of Mackinac Associates at Mill Creek and with his wife, Doree, at Culturama festivities in St. Ignace, has received the 2005 State History Award from the Historical Society of Michigan for his two-volume set of books, “Rendezvous at the Straits; Fur Trade and Military Activities at For De Buade and Fort Michilimackinac, 1669-1781.”

In the foreword of these volumes, David Armour, longtime deputy director and historian at Mackinac State Historic Parks, noted, “Tim Kent has written the only comprehensive overview of the area known as Michilimackinac, focusing equally on both sides of the Straits.”

Mr. Kent found doing the research for these books particularly interesting, since he has been able to document many of his direct French ancestors working in the fur trade at the Mackinac Straits from 1685 through 1758. Through his research, he has highlighted the fact that the Straits of Mackinac served as the hub of commerce, military, and missionary activities in a huge area of North America. The Straits area was also the center for the production of birchbark canoes, food items, and the long panels of birchbark that were used to cover the pole frames of traveling shelters. As a result, the residents of the Mackinac Straits supplied everything that was needed for canoe expeditions except the European merchandise and supplies.

In “Rendezvous at the Straits,” Mr. Kent included more than 50 ancient French documents that he found in French and Canadian archives and translated them into English. His research also focused on various aspects of daily life at the Straits that are little known. These include prostitution, widespread trade in native slaves, and huge amounts of illegal commerce.

Mr. Kent’s other works include the two-volume set, “Ft. Pontchartrain at Detroit; A Guide to the Daily lives of Fur Trade and Military Personnel, Settlers, and Missionaries at French Posts,” the two-volume set, “Birchbark Canoes of the Fur Trade,” “Paddling Across the Peninsula; An Important Cross-Michigan Canoe Route During the French Regime,” and “Tahquamenon Tales; Experiences of an Early French Trader and His Native Family.”

For the last book, he spent about 20 years researching and reproducing most of the items that were used in daily life by the native people of the Great Lakes region, plus the main goods that were brought into the area by French traders. Then, along with his wife, Doree, their sons, Kevin and Ben, and their dog, Toby, they lived in the wilderness with just these items for a week or more each summer for 10 years. While doing this living history research, they focused each year on a couple of different areas of wilderness living, such as hunting and trapping, cooking, hide tanning, woodworking, and sewing. They would first learn how to do the native method for each task of daily life, by the hands-on approach. Then they would compare the same tasks while using imported French implements.

The book Mr. Kent is now writing is about the many adventures the Kent family had while they paddled the 3,000-mile length of the mainline fur trade canoe route across the U.S. and Canada. This route stretched from Montreal in the east to Fort Chipewyan in northern Alberta in the far northwest. The family began this project when their two boys were five and seven years old and they spread it out over 15 summer trips. This was the route that many of their fur trade ancestors traveled hundreds of years ago.

Mr. Kent has traced more than 725 of his direct ancestors, who came to Canada from more than 120 communities in France. Many of these colonists worked in the fur trade from about 1618 in such occupations as fur trade company manager, clerk, trader, interpreter, canoe brigade, guide, voyageur, merchant/outfitter/fur buyer, investor, laborer, tradesman (cutler, gunsmith, and post carpenter), birchbark canoe builder, and trans-Atlantic shipping merchant. Considerable numbers of these individuals either worked at or were based out of the Straits of Mackinac, at both Fort De Buade in St. Ignace and Fort Michilimackinac in what is now Mackinaw City. In the future, Mr. Kent plans to write the life stories of these individuals for another book.