The Cost of Living 1833 - 1843

The Cost of Living 1833 - 1843

The principal liquor in use here is alcohol diluted with water. It is sold to the men at three dollars the pint! Tobacco, of very inferior quality, such as could be purchased in Philadelphia at about ten cents per pound, here brings two dollars! and everything else in proportion.                     John Townsend

For the people in the west, the cost of living was very cheap compared with today. We surround ourselves with luxuries and comforts, that while nice, are not necessary to survive.  Such items weren’t practical for people in the west during the fur trade. They made sure to have items that enabled them to hunt and to protect themselves, plus a few simple food stuffs. Some powder, ball, lead, percussion caps, (if you had any guns which used them), salt and pepper, coffee and sugar were all you need to get you by with. Occasional things were also purchased, like replacing lost or broken items, a new piece of clothing to help with the coming cold months along with some gifts at the small forts and trading houses found throughout the west.

But what did these things cost? And just how much would this cost you in trade? I’m going to list some prices recorded at the rendezvous and at the small trading houses to show you how “mountain prices” worked.

Let’s start with the first with a portion of a letter written by Captain Benjamin Bonneville to his General in Chief, while in the Wind River country July 29, 1833.
If they have horses and traps of their own, they agree to sell all the furs caught at $4 a pound, purchasing their supplies and loss of traps. And the great object of Companies is to catch their men on their way to rendezvous and trade their credits with whiskey, tobacco, and c--.

Prices- at the Great Stoney Mountains (Rockies)
•  Skin trapping do           4 to 5 p.
•  Furs vary from              4 to 5 p.
•  Blankets coloured        18 to 20 each
•  Tobacco                         2 to 3 p.
•  Alcohol                        32 per gallon
•  Coffee                           2 per tin or pint
•  Sugar                            2 do [short for ditto]
•  Flour                             1 do
•  Shot guns, prime best   $4                
•  Rifles                           $10
•  Horses                         20 to 25

Dr. Fredrick Wislizenus tells more about the trading that went on:
In place of money, they use beaver skins, for which they can satisfy all their needs at the forts by way of trade. A pound of beaver skins is usually paid for with four dollars’ worth of goods; but the goods themselves as sold at enormous prices, so called mountain prices. A pint of meal, for instance, costs from half a dollar to a dollar; a pint of coffee beans, cocoa beans or sugar, two dollar each’ a pint of diluted alcohol (the only spirituous liquor to be had), four dollars’ a piece of chewing tobacco of the commonest sort. Which is usually smoked, Indian fashion, mixed with herbs, one to two dollars. Guns and ammunition, bear traps, blankets, kerchiefs, and gaudy finery for the squaws, are also sold at enormous profit…. With their hairy banknotes, the beaver skins, they can obtain all the luxuries of the mountains, and live for a few days like lords.                            

Even later in the period, the small trading houses had approximately the same prices, David Adams’ records in his 1841-3 account books:
• Tobacco $1.50
• Knife $1.50
• Pt mint milk (pint of liquor) $1.00
• Sugar pint $2.00
• Pipes $1.00
• Blankets (3 pt) $7.00

For a real look at what these items and more really cost the traders, see Guy Peterson’s Four Forts on the South Platte, pages 55 and 56. The long list there shows what the trade goods destined for winter Indian trade on Arkansas River cost them.
[Remember a pint is about the size of the large tin cup we use today at our gatherings] rendezvous prices in 1825:

• Coffee- $1.50 per pound
• Sugar $1.50 per pound
• Tobacco $3.00 per pound
• Powder $2.00 per pound
• Fish hooks $1.50 per dozen
• Flints $1.00 per dozen
• Scissors $2.00 each
• Knives $2.50 each
• Blue cloth $5.00 per yard
• Scarlet $6.00 per yard
• Lead $1.00 per pound!
• Blankets $9.00 (3 point)
• Buttons $1.50 per dozen
(5)
Some of the companies charged items to their men’s accounts and just because you belonged to the company, you didn’t get a discount. The prices were what they sold to everybody else as you can see in this following list from Jedediah Smith’s trip west (Harrison Roger’s ledger book).