A Look at History
Mackinac Furs Served as Security Identifiers in Low-tech Era
BY FRANK STRAUS

One of the biggest changes that has occurred in the United States in recent years has been the growth of public security infrastructure, the barriers in many public, private, and mixed spaces that are meant to bar people who cannot display evidence that they are who they are supposed to be. An increasing number of American employees are asked to wear security badges at work, and many badges are color-coded to serve as a display of the employees' rank, status, and right to go into different locations within the workplace. An increasing number of new American housing developments are gated communities.

Many Americans believe that the threat of terrorism is something new. It is true that this challenge has unfamiliar aspects, but terrorism as such has been possible since the invention of explosive chemicals. One of the first persons accused of being a terrorist in the English-speaking world was Guy Fawkes, who allegedly led a band of men to dig a tunnel under the English House of Parliament and stuff barrels of gunpowder under it. The black powder was supposed to go off on November 5, 1605, and when the supposed plot was uncovered the previous night, the news created a sensation in London. The government proclaimed November 5 to be a holiday in England, and Guy Fawkes Day was still being celebrated with bonfires and thanksgivings in 1781, the year that the English army moved into Fort Mackinac.

London was an edgy city in 1781. Troops and security guards stood watch over every important government building. In order to keep the guards alert, the detachments were turned over, or "changed" frequently. The guardsmen were ordered to show their calmness and alertness at the end of each security detail by following a

prescribed series of marches and exchanges of passwords, called the "changing of the guard."

Guardsmen vetted for the high-security duty of protecting the royal family and the top officials of the kingdom were rewarded by being offered a special uniform, topped with a hat trimmed with fur from the North American black bear. The fact, visible to all, that a guardsman was wearing a bearfur hat, or "busbee," was evidence that he had passed through a security background check and could be trusted to perform his sensitive duties.

Other national capitals followed the same logic. They either strongly encouraged, or formally required, their officials and especially their guards to wear furs signifying the level of security they were authorized to enjoy.

In St. Petersburg, the capital of Russia, everyone wore furs in strict accordance to his or her rank. Humble Akaky Akakyevich, the hapless clerk in "a certain department," might have preferred something better, but had to have his overcoat trimmed with cat fur, although his creator, Nikolai Gogol, assured the reader (1842) that it was "cat fur that from a distance could almost have looked just like marten." No such economies would have been appropriate for the aristocratic Eugene Onegin, who was at home in palaces, and who rode his sleigh through the falling snow wearing evening winter dress and a "beaver collar" (1831).

As Pushkin's poem shows, by the early 1800s the Great Lakes beaver had taken a position close to the top of the international world of fur. The reader of "Eugene Onegin" will see repeated signs of how the wearing of furs opened doors in the security state of imperial Russia, including the ballet theatre with its cloak-room where "the servants yawn over the fur coats," and arrogant Eugene who strides past the security man guarding one mansion and flies "like an arrow" up its marble staircase.

Russia is not short of furbearing animals of its own, but even in St. Petersburg the North American beaver, with its glossy, blackish-brown barbed hairs, was the signal of choice that the wearer was a man who could be trusted in sensitive locations. Although there were plenty of security guards in the towns and cities of the early 1800s, there were no such men as the police. The powerful, when they thought of security in those days, thought over and over of vulnerable bridges, towns, and buildings, static targets to be guarded by vigilant, static security guards. The concept of a policeman, a man who could move about and carry out detective investigations in order to catch evildoers and keep the peace, had not yet been invented.

There were security guards in the United States too, although not as many as in Europe. In the early 1800s, slavery was legal in every American state except the states of New England, and it was taken for granted that every slave was a potential terrorist. Slaves were required to wear identification badges - several, made of tin stamped with numbers, have survived up to the present day - and could be stopped at any time and made to explain who was their master and where they were going. "Loitering" was a misdemeanor offense even for free citizens. Free citizens walking on a public street who seemed to be "acting suspiciously" outside the front door of a mansion could be rudely ordered to "move along."

At the bottom of these social rules was the fear of terrorism, especially motiveless terrorism. When Illinois Territory became a state in 1818, one of the first things they did was pass a law against arson: "That if any person shall willfully and maliciously burn or cause to be burned . . . any dwelling house, store house, barn, stable, or other building adjoining thereto, or if any person shall willfully attempt to burn by setting fire to any dwelling house, store house, barn, stable or other building adjoining thereto, every person or persons so offending shall, on conviction thereof, suffer death." Other states had similar laws providing the death penalty for terrorist acts, even unsuccessful ones.

The Illinois lawmakers passed another law against loitering and vagrancy: "Every able-bodied person who is found loitering and wandering about . . . and all other idle, vagrant, and dissolute persons, rambling about without any visible means of subsistence, shall be deemed and considered as vagrants." Every town and village was supposed to have a constable, a security guard to arrest vagrants and keep the peace within the village. Apoor man, if convicted of vagrancy, could be tied to a whipping post and publicly lashed. Such were the laws of the 1810s in the United States.

Throughout this period, there was a way for a man to minimize the possibility of disrespect or insult being shown to him in public places by a security guard, and that was to buy and wear the highest-quality fur hat that his purse would allow. It was taken for granted in those days (and some might come to this conclusion even today) that a man with a "visible means of subsistence," a man with obvious means, could be trusted not to be a security threat to the peace of the community. It is highly unlikely that any man wearing a beaver hat was ever arrested in the United States for loitering or vagrancy. The constable, if he saw a man wearing such a hat, would not glare at him or arrest him, but would instead smile and touch his cap.

The break in this security system came in London in the 1840s. A huge group of agitators, the "Chartists," demanding the extension of the right to vote in Britain to the working class,

arose in that decade, and organized a series of monster demonstrations that outnumbered the capital's security guards, and terrified Parliament. In response, the Prime Minister of the day, Mr. Robert Peel, created a new profession, that of the "policeman." Instead of passively guarding a building, the policeman moved about, investigated a community, and was proactive. Instead of insulting his fellow citizens, a policeman was carefully trained to be reasonably polite to everyone, even the poor. Parallel changes in the criminal laws of England removed the death penalty for property crimes, such as arson, and broke up the pillories and whipping posts.

The invention of the policeman was one of the most dramatic developments of the past 500 years in the long war of the civilized world against terrorism. Almost at once the intimidating security structure of London began to melt away. Security guards were retrained to take on pleasanter duties. The crime rate dropped dramatically. The policemen of London were nicknamed "bobbies" in honor of Robert Peel. The new profession quickly spread throughout the English-speaking world. Even in rural America, sheriff's deputies began to think of themselves as police "officers." In this new world of the

1840s, there was no reason for men to spend a month's salary on a beaver hat any longer. Demand in Europe for Great Lakes furs collapsed, never to fully recover. Crime no longer seemed so frightening. The new state of Michigan abolished its death penalty in 1847. The fur trade on Mackinac Island collapsed. Only echoing footsteps were heard in the great warehouse on Market Street, where beaver furs had been counted and baled for Montreal, New York, London, and St. Petersburg.