Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870 is the ground-breaking historical anaylsis of First Nations and Métis women in the fur trade by historian Sylvia Van Kirk. Sexual encounters between First Nations and Métis women and the fur traders of the North West and Hudson's Bay Companies are generally thought to have been casual and illicit in nature.This illuminating and book reveals instead that Indian-white marriages, sanctioned “after the custom of the country”, resulted in many warm and enduring family unions. These were profoundly altered by the coming of the white women in the 1820s and 1830s.