California hide trade

The California hide trade was a trading system of various products based in cities along the California coastline, operating from the early 1820s to the mid-1840s.

In exchange for hides and tallow from cattle owned by California ranchers, sailors from around the globe, often representing corporations, swapped finished goods of all kinds. The trade was the essential constituent of the region’s economy at the time, and encompassed cities extending from Canton to Lima to Boston, and involved many nations including Russia, Mexico, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

The California hide trade was based on the export of hide, horns and tallow during the early nineteenth century from around 1810. Rancheros (affluent cattle farmers) and their vaqueros (cowboys) cared for free-ranging livestock along the California seaboard with the help of a Native American workforce. The cattle were not only the source of their food and many common supplies, but also their economy and livelihood. The hides of the cattle were taken to the shore and fat from the cattle was liquefied and separated, into tallow, collected in repositories crafted from hides known as botas. Both goods would be stockpiled near hub ports like San Diego and Monterey to await sale to international trading vessels.

Constituting the most widely traded good, the California hides were often known as ‘“California banknotes”’ due to common use as a medium of exchange. They would first need to be cured, cleaned, stretched, dried in the summer sun, whipped, salted, and folded, a long and tedious process completed by sailors themselves with the aid of Native Americans and the Hawaiian Kanaka peoples, together called ‘“droghers”’. Then they would be taken onto boats and rowed out to the ships, bound for Boston and the Northeast, where they would be crafted for use into leather-based goods like shoes and boots. The tallow, on the other hand, was shipped to South American countries such as Peru and Chile and used to make candles and soap.

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