ann
(Ann)
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fish, pelts, and ginseng in Butha Ula in the late seventeenth century,
Shengjing had forty-five otter pelt hunters operating in ninejuhiyan, thirty
Siberian salmonfishermen, ten stork hunters,fifteen bee-keepers, thirty
game hunters, andfifty-five wild honey foragers. Sixty-fivefishermen were
based in Niuzhuang in southern Fengtian. There were also fox hunters and
falconers hunting pheasants.^115 Northeastern ginseng and honey hunters
were frequently supplemented by foragers sent from Beijing.^116 Some
aimanwere also operating outside Fengtian in Heilongjiang and Jilin,
mainly trapping sable, and some small groups were operating on the north
China frontier primarily as falconers. Finally, militarygūsabanners con-
tinued to engage in foraging, especially hunting.
Although devoted to specialized activities, these forager groups could
be reassigned. In 1710 , for example, Butha Ulajuhiyanwere deemed to be
gathering enough wild honey to suspend the activities of the manor honey
producers, and virtually all of Shengjing’sfishermen, banner personnel
and commoners alike, were disbanded in 1726 .In 1686 , thesejuhiyan
were ordered to end the“hardship”of trapping sable, which had been
garnering mainly low-quality pelts, and to start gathering pearls. By
1693 , they had been shifted to alternate years of honey gathering and
ginseng digging.^117
The Butha Ula foragers’tribute had originally beenfixed by statute
solely in terms of pelts,fifteen per man annually, raised to twenty
in 1653. Thus, the 192 pelt foragers active in 1685 would have owed
3 , 840 pelts. Although some foragers,like those ordered to grow crops
or specialize in sturgeon, were excused from this tribute altogether,
most continued to pursue their quarry under an elaborate system of
substitute forage that the trapperscould turn over to meet their basic
sable pelt obligations.^118
Table 4 shows that this system of equivalents in effect rendered sable
pelts a unit of account that persisted even after the actual use of pelts as a
medium stopped. Subsequent surpluses or shortfalls in Butha Ula pearl
quotas, for example, were still expressed in sable pelts because“if there
are no sable equivalents made for pearls, apportioning reward and pun-
ishment will be difficult.”This situation was probably compounded by
the elimination of the other equivalents in 1682 , when foraging was
suspended for ten types of “animals useless for sacrifice” (wuyong
shengwu) whose pelts or pinions would no longer be convertible into
sable. Silver as well could enter into wider regional circulation through
the quota system’s normal operation, which generally allotted cash
rewards for surpluses, although cloth awards were also common.
The Nature of Imperial Foraging in the SAH Basin 97
