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Women in the Fur Trade
Women played a vital and complex role in the development of the fur trade. Indigenous women across Montana acted as economic mediators, cultural brokers, and producers/consumers of trade goods and foodstuffs. Over time, as a distinct fur trade society evolved around company-operated outposts, cross-cultural sexual relationships and marriages became commonplace between Euro-American men and women from various tribal communities. These unions and the resultant family networks consolidated and cemented the political and economic ties at the heart of the emerging economy. Many native women occupied central positions of agency and influence, but also proved vulnerable to violence and disease.

Notable individuals include Natawista (also known as Natoapxíxina, Na-ta-wis-ta-cha and Natoyist-Siksina ), who in 1840 married Major Alexander Culbertson, then the head of Fort Union, and Wambdi Autepewin, a Lakota woman widely known for her skills as a mediator. Countless others, however, produced necessary articles of clothing and food; prepared skins and tanned hides for market; offered their knowledge of local ecologies and geographies; and became inextricably involved in the multicultural exchange of the trade.