<P> About five years later, Oshahgushkodanaqua first met Johnston, who asked to marry her, but was refused permission by her father who did not think he wanted a long - term relationship . When Johnston returned the next year and again asked to marry Oshahgushkodanaqua, her father granted permission, but she herself declined, saying she disliked the implications of being married until death, but ultimately married under strong pressure from her father . Oshahgushkodanaqua came to embrace her marriage when she decided that Johnston was the white stranger she saw in her dreams during her vision quest . The couple stayed married for 36 years with the marriage ending with Johnston's death, and Oshahgushkodanaqua played an important role in her husband's business career . Jameson also noted Oshahgushkodanaqua was considered to be a strong woman among the Ojibwa, writing "in her youth she hunted and was accounted the surest eye and fleetest foot among the women of her tribe". </P> <P> White argued that the traditional "imperial adventure" historiography where the fur trade was the work of a few courageous white men who ventured into the wildness was flawed as it ignored the contributions of the Indians . The American anthropologist Ruth Landes in her 1937 book Ojibwa Women described Ojibwa society in the 1930s as based on "male supremacy", and she assumed this was how Ojibwa society had always been, a conclusion that has been widely followed . However, Landes did note that the women she interviewed told her stories about Ojibwa women who in centuries past inspired by their dream visions had played prominent roles as warriors, hunters, healers, traders and leaders . In 1978, the American anthropologist Eleanor Leacock who writing from a Marxist perspective in her article "Women's Status In Egalitarian Society" challenged Landes by arguing that Ojibwa society had in fact been egalitarian, but the fur trade had changed the dynamics of Ojibwa society from a simple barter economy to one where men could become powerful by having access to European goods, and this had led to the marginalization of Ojibwa women . More recently, the American anthropologist Carol Devens in her 1992 book Countering Colonization: Native American Women and the Great Lakes Missions 1630 - 1900 followed Leacock by arguing that exposure to the patriarchal values of ancien regime France together with the ability to collect "surplus goods" made possible by the fur trade had turned the egalitarian Ojibwa society into unequal society where women did not count for much . White wrote that an examination of the contemporary sources would suggest the fur trade had in fact empowered and strengthened the role of Ojibwa women who played a very important role in the fur trade, and it was the decline of the fur trade which had led to the decline of status of Ojibwa women . </P> <P> By contrast, the fur trade seems to have weakened the status of Indian women in the Canadian sub-arctic in what is now the North West Territories, the Yukon, and the northern parts of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta . The harsh terrain imposed a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle on the people living there as to stay in one place for long would quickly exhaust the food supply . The Indians living in the sub-arctic had only small dogs incapable of carrying heavy loads with one fur trader in 1867 calling Gwich'in dogs "miserable creatures no smaller than foxes" while another noted with the Slavey "dogs were scare and burdens were supported by people's backs". The absence of navigable rivers made riparian transport impossible, so everything had to be carried on the backs of the women . There was a belief among the Northern Athabaskan peoples that weapons could be only handled by men, and that for a weapon to be used by a woman would cause it to lose its effectiveness; as relations between the various bands were hostile, the men when traveling were always armed while the women carried all of the baggage . All of the Indian men living in the sub-arctic had an acute horror of menstrual blood, seen as an unclean substance that no men could ever touch, and as a symbol of a threatening femininity . The American anthropologist Richard J. Perry suggested that under the impact of the fur trade that certain misogynistic tendencies that were already long established among the Northern Athabaskan peoples became significantly worse . Owing to the harsh terrain of the subarctic and the limited food supplies, the First Nations peoples living there had long practiced infanticide to limit their band sizes, as a large population would stave . One fur trader in the 19th century noted with the Gwich'in, newly born girls were far more likely to be victims of infanticide than boys owing to the low status of women, adding that female infanticide was practiced to such an extent there was a shortage of women in their society . </P> <P> The Chipewyan began trading fur in exchange for metal tools and instruments with the Hudson's Bay Company in 1717, which caused a drastic change in their lifestyle, going from a people engage in daily subsidence activities to a people engaging in far - reaching trade as the Chipewyan become the middlemen between the Hudson's Bay Company and the other Indians living further inland . The Chipewyan guarded their right to trade with the Hudson's Bay Company with considerable jealousy and prevented peoples living further inland like the Tłı̨chǫ and Yellowknives from crossing their territory to trade directly with the Hudson's Bay Company for the entire 18th century . For the Chipewyan, who still living in the Stone Age, metal implements were greatly valued as it took hours to heat up a stone pot, but only minutes to heat up a metal pot while an animal could be skinned far more efficiently and quickly with a metal knife than with a stone knife . For many Chipewyan bands, involvement with the fur trade eroded their self - sufficiency as they killed animals for the fur trade, not food, which forced them into dependency on other bands for food, thus leading to a cycle where many Chipewyan bands came to depend trading furs for European goods, which were traded for food, and which caused them to make very long trips across the subarctic to Hudson's Bay and back . To make these trips, the Chipewyan traveled though barren terrain that was so devoid of life that starvation was a real threat, during which the women had to carry all of the supplies . Samuel Hearne of the Hudson's Bay Company who was sent inland in 1768 to establish contact with the "Far Indians" as the company called them, wrote about the Chipewyan: </P>

What did the rise of trade in new england lead to