WHERE TRACKS ARE DRAGGED: Indigenous Women’s Trade Through 18th Century Adirondacks

WHERE TRACKS ARE DRAGGED: Indigenous Women’s Trade Through  18th Century Adirondacks by Maeve Kane When Agnese, a Kahnawà:ke Mohawk woman, traveled through the Adirondacks in the summer of 1742, she connected two colonial centers of trade across imperial borders and through traditional Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) territories. Agnese carried a pack of beaver pelts down from Montreal and returned with red fabric and fine laces.  This trade was illegal for Agnese's trade partners—one a French widow, the other a future mayor of Albany--but for Agnese, that colonial border between Canada and New York and the colonial jurisdiction that attempted to regulate it simply did not exist. This talk will discuss the Indigenous women who conducted trade between Albany, Montreal, and Haudenosaunee territories, the things they bought and carried, and what it means for Haudenosaunee sovereignty and the right to free travel in the 21st century. $8 Admission\Members Free. Doors open at 6:30. Kane is Professor of History at the University at Albany, and co-author of a new textbook on American women’s history. She is also part of a new podcast on the American Revolution, “Worlds Turned Upside Down.”