<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> <P> "Their annual haunts, in the quest for furrs (furs), is so remote from European settlement, as to render them the greatest travelers in the known world; and as they have neither horse nor water carriage, every good hunter is under necessity of having several people to assist in carrying his furs to the company's Fort, as well as carrying back the European goods which he received in exchange for them . No persons in this country are so proper for this work as the women, because they are inured to carry and haul heavy loads from their childhood and to do all manner of drudgery". </P> <P> Hearne's chief guide Matonabbee told him that women had to carry everything with them on their long trips across the sub-arctic because "...when all the men are heavy laden, they can neither hunt nor travel any considerable distance". Perry cautioned that when Hearne traveled though the sub-arctic in 1768 - 1772, the Chipewyan had been trading with the Hudson's Bay Company directly since 1717, and indirectly via the Cree for at least the last 90 years, so the life - styles he observed among the Chipewyan had been altered by the fur trade, and in no way can be considered a pre-contact life style . However, Perry argued that the arduous nature of these trips across the sub-arctic together with the burden of carrying everything suggests that the Chipewyan women did not voluntarily submit to this regime, which would suggest that even in the pre-contact period that Chipewyan women had a low status . </P>

When did the fur trade end and why