Fur-trade records, the earliest accounts of the Native peoples of northern North America, have long been mined for data by historians, anthropologists, and legal researchers. In Traders' Tales, Elizabeth Vibert explores the assumptions behind the traders' views -- assumptions shaped by culture, gender, social class, and race. Shedding new light on the nature of colonial cultural relations in areas that became Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia, she illuminates the ways in which racism and ethnocentrism are constructed historically.