ABSTRACT
This chapter explores that the acquisition by northern Athapaskans of European material culture and their increasing involvement in the white man's economy has had an important effect on settlement patterns. The modern period is characterized by the decline of fur trapping as a major source of income for the Indians, and by the rise of government services, particularly in Canada, along with the emergence of new extractive industries. Many factors have operated in recent years to make trapping less attractive to northern Athapaskan Indians, but the decline in this activity can be traced primarily to conditions on the world fur market resulting in a marked decline in the prices paid for furs. An almost total dependence on manufactured goods has been a feature of the government-industrial period. No area of Indian life were the changes brought about through a trapping-trading economy more significant than in settlement configurations.
