After the 1763 Treaty of Paris, with France having to hand New France over to the British, the French fur trade network disappeared. But in 1779 the old Montreal-based overland trade network was taken over by a new group of pedlars, this time British ones but still using French voyageurs as well as Iroquois. The resulting North West Company (NWC) rapidly rose to a position of dominance by gaining a de facto monopoly of the trade in the fur-rich area around Lake Athabasca.
To maintain its Athabasca monopoly the NWC competed, at a loss if necessary, with its opponents on the Saskatchewan River, around Lake Winnipeg and north of the Great Lakes. On the North Saskatchewan River the rival companies leapfrogged westward past each other’s posts in an attempt to gain a commercial advantage with First Nations. Intensive competition with the NWC spilled beyond Rupert’s Land into the Mackenzie drainage basin and the Pacific slope, combining economic conflict with occasional physical violence.
Simon Fraser was in charge of all the NWC operations west of the Rockies and he ended up charting most of what became British Columbia, established the first European settlements and, in 1808, was the first to explore the entire Fraser River which was named after him.
But it was the introduction of the horse that really revolutionized Plains culture. When horses were obtained, the Plains tribes rapidly integrated them into their daily lives. People in the southwest began to acquire horses in the 16th century by trading or stealing them from Spanish colonists in New Mexico. As horse culture moved northward, the Comanche were among the first to commit to a fully mounted nomadic lifestyle. This occurred by the 1730s, when they had acquired enough horses to put all their people on horseback.
The horse enabled the Plains Indians to gain their subsistence with relative ease from the seemingly limitless bison herds. No longer did they have to use buffalo jumps to capture their food supply. Riders were able to travel faster and farther in search of bison herds and also more easily transport goods, thus making it possible to enjoy a richer material world than their pedestrian ancestors. For the Plains Peoples the horse became an item of prestige as well as utility. They were extremely fond of their horses and the lifestyle they permitted.
By 1659, the Navajo from northwestern New Mexico were raiding the Spanish colonies to steal horses, and by 1664, the Apache were trading captives from other tribes to the Spanish for horses. But the real beginning of the horse culture of the plains began with the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in New Mexico when the Pueblos overthrew the Spanish and captured thousands of horses and other livestock. For the next 12 years, until the Spanish were able to reconquer the area, the Pueblos traded many of these horses north to the various Plains Indians groups and their distribution spread rapidly. The Shoshone in Wyoming had horses by about 1700 and the Blackfoot people, the most northerly of the large Plains tribes, acquired horses in the 1730s as did the Cree, Assiniboine, and Mandan. By 1770, the Plains Indians culture was mature, consisting of mounted buffalo-hunting nomads that stretched from Saskatchewan and Alberta southward to the Rio Grande.
However, within 100 years the bison would be extinct. The species'
dramatic decline was a direct result of habitat loss due to the expansion of
ranching and farming in western North America, industrial-scale hunting
practiced by non-Indigenous hunters, increased Indigenous hunting pressure due to
non-Indigenous demand for bison hides and meat, and the deliberate policy by
settler governments to destroy the food source of the Indigenous peoples during
times of conflict.
There were
two principal groups of Plains people, the Blackfoot
Confederacy (Niitsitapi) made up of the Blackfoot, Peigan, and Blood
people and the Iron Confederacy made up of the Cree-Assiniboine (Nehiyawak) people. The Blackfoot were enemies of the
Crow, Cheyenne and Sioux but their most mighty and dangerous enemy,
however, were the political/military/trading alliance of the Iron Confederacy and their Plains Ojibwe and Metis allies.
Historically, the Blackfoot Confederacy were nomadic bison hunters and trout fishermen, who ranged across large areas of the northern Great Plains of western North America, specifically the semi-arid shortgrass prairie ecological region. They followed the bison herds as they migrated between what are now the United States and Canada, as far north as the Bow River. Having acquired horses and firearms from white traders and their Cree and Assiniboine go-betweens the Blackfoot used these to expand their territory at the expense of neighboring tribes.
The Iron Confederacy rose to predominance on the northern Plains during the height of the North American fur trade where they operated as middlemen controlling the flow of European goods, particularly guns and ammunition, to other Indigenous nations and the flow of furs to the HBC and NWC trading posts. Its peoples also played a major part in the bison hunt and the pemmican trade which supplied fur traders with food. The decline of the fur trade and the collapse of the bison herds eventually sapped the power of the Iron Confederacy after the 1860s, and it could no longer act as a barrier to settler expansion.
Until their extinction, bison/buffalo hunting was an activity that was fundamental to the economy and society of the Plains Indians peoples who inhabited the vast grasslands of the interior plains of North America. As bison hunters, the Metis became important suppliers of food for the traders, specifically pemmican, a food made of fat, dried meat, and berries like saskatoons, strawberries, or blueberries. Pemmican stored well and provided highly concentrated nutrition. There were approximately 2,000-3,000 calories in every pound of pemmican. This food supply literally fuelled the fur trade so that traders could move northwest into the Athabasca region. Indigenous women were key to this success, as they were the ones that made the pemmican. Together the Métis bison hunters and their families created a valuable economic niche in the fur trade economy.
A key invention of the Metis people was the Red River cart. Made with only wood and buffalo hide these highly versatile carts could carry up to 1,000 lbs. and even be floated across rivers. With the cart the Metis were not restricted by canoe to do their bison hunting and this revolutionized the commercial bison hunt. Until the coming of the CPR these carts were the primary conveyance vehicle for transporting just about anything across the prairies.
In
1812 the HBC granted Lord Selkirk a large section of its land (74 million
acres) for the purpose of establishing an agricultural colony of impoverished
people from Scotland. This was part of the Rupert’s Land concession
where HBC had been granted a monopoly. However, there were already people
living there; First Nations, Metis, and NWC traders, and they disputed the HBC
claim to sovereignty of the land.
This new invasion, the Selkirk settlement or Red River Colony as it
became known, lay in the middle of the already established area called the Red
River Valley where there was a major concentration of Métis people, who had a
thriving economy supplying the NWC fur traders. This Métis presence also straddled the NWC canoe routes and various
forts.
When the first of the Red River Colony settlers arrived, it was too late to plant crops and they had to hunt buffalo to survive. Selkirk Governor, Miles MacDonnell, turned to the local Indigenous populations of Ojibwa and Métis to supply the new influx of helpless settlers with meat, grease, and pemmican. In early 1814 Governor Macdonnell issued the Pemmican Proclamation which outlawed the sale of pemmican and other foodstuffs to fur traders. This development did not go over well with the Métis or the Nor’Westers, who were both economically dependent on the pemmican. Red River pemmican was essential to the NWC and without it they couldn’t feed their employees. Governor Macdonnell also started impounding NWC supplies and ordered the NWC to abandon all their posts.
The NWC and Metis retaliated by burning down settler’s homes, stealing their cattle, and generally intimidating them so they would leave. The strategy worked and once everyone was gone by the summer of 1815, they then set fire to Fort Douglas and all of its buildings. Over the winter HBC rebuilt Fort Douglas but, in the following summer, the Nor’Westers and their Metis allies launched another attack.
Referred
to as the battle of Seven Oaks, 21 Red River settlers and HBC employees were
killed while only one NWC employee died. The Metis took control of Fort Douglas
and held it until the following year. The
Métis success in this conflict contributed to the development of Métis
nationalism. Between 1816-1821 there were an endless series of
raids between HBC and NWC on each other’s forts and trading posts with the
occasional resulting death.
In
1818 the Pemmican War trials began in Montreal and included 38 cases of murder, 60 cases of
grand larceny and 13 cases of arson. Lord Selkirk himself was tried on charges of theft,
false imprisonment and resisting arrest. Hostilities finally ended in 1821 when
declining profits and government pressure facilitated a forced merger of NWC
with HBC. The competition was now over.
The fur trade had a profound affect on Indigenous communities. The introduction of European goods such as metal knives, axes, and cooking pots made cooking, cutting trees, and butchering animals much easier. The convenience of rifles and ammunition made hunting easier but also promoted more deadly warfare and the people eventually lost the art of making bows and arrows, making them dependant on obtaining powder and gun repairs from the trading posts. With the introduction of the horse, canoe technology and paddling skills also began to wane.
At the time of the merger, the amalgamated HBC consisted of 97 trading posts that had belonged to the North West Company and 76 that belonged to the Hudson's Bay Company. When the competition between both companies came to an end, the combined posts were reduced to 52 for efficiency and to eliminate redundancy. This of course had an adverse effect on Indigenous groups who had established themselves in permanent communities near the trading posts. But unlike the U.S. which was always wanting to slaughter the First Nations and take away their land, in Canada the First Nations were considered crucial to the maintenance of the fur trade as both customers and suppliers, and the HBC looked after them and made sure they didn't starve when times were lean.
In the name of efficiency the canoe was replaced with the York Boat on major river corridors. Because these boats could carry more at a time, it reduced the numbers of people needed, and the sturdy, locally built York Boat became the preferred mode of transportation. The boat’s heavy wood construction was a significant advantage when travelling waterways where the bottom or sides of the hull were likely to strike rocks or ice. Canoes then were commonly constructed with soft hulls of birch bark or animal hide and were vulnerable to tears and punctures. The solid, all-wood hull of the York boat could simply bounce off or grind past obstacles that could easily inflict fatal damage on a soft-hulled vessel. That advantage became a disadvantage, though, when portaging was necessary because it was a brutal form of work as the boat was far too heavy to carry and the crew had to cut a path through the brush, lay poplar rollers and drag the boat overland.
Competition between the English and the French had been
disastrous for the beaver population and, by the 1800’s, they were hunted almost
to extinction in many parts of the country. The status of beavers changed
dramatically as it went from being a source of food and clothing for Indigenous
peoples to a vital good for exchange with the Europeans.
During the competitive period of 1779 to 1821, the value of furs tended
to go up while the value of goods declined. These prices were an incentive to
over-trap. After 1821, the newly formed company had to address the resource
shortages created by the fierce competition, and efforts to manage and conserve
beaver populations were made. Without the fierce competition of the NWC, the HBC now
was able to create and enforce stricter rules and regulations about hunting and
trapping and better control the prices of the furs.
