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The Wilderness Empires

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The Wilderness Empires Inuit Contact and Colonization The Wilderness Empire Newman, Peter C., Empire of the Bay: an illustrated history of the Hudson's Bay Company, Toronto, Madison Press Books, 1989, pp. 5-7 The Nor'Westers' outposts stretched from Nasquiscow Lake in central Labrador to Fort St James west of the Rockies, north to Fort Good Hope, south to Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River on the Pacific, across the Prairies and Great Lakes. As well as maintaining posts at nearly every important river junction in what is now northern and western Canada, the NWC established strings of trading forts in present day Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The supply lines converged on a cluster of forty warehouses at Lachine, a cart ride from the partners' headquarters in Montreal. The most remarkable feature of this wilderness empire was its roots in original exploration. The pathfinders and mapmakers of the North American continent's uper latitudes were the fur traders of the North West Company. With a few dramatic exceptions such as Samuel Hearne, Peter Fidler and Dr John Rae, the HBC’s officers for most of a century were content to remain ensconced around Hudson Bay, prepared to allow others to determine the lay of the land. The Nor'Westers were a more venturesome breed. Peter Pond was the first white man into the Athabasca Country in 1778, and half a decade later the various partnerships exploring the continent's outlying regions had become united in a transcontinental trading company determined to take on the HBC and its hoary charter. The Nor'Westers numbered among their officers some of history's most courageous explorers. Sir Alexander Mackenzie was the first European to cross North America north of Mexico; he and Simon Fraser hacked their way to the mouths of the torrential rivers which now bear their names. By 1805, the Nor'Westers had started trading past the Great Divide, and Western Canada's founding geographer, David Thompson, was well into his most productive decade of drafting the first workable maps of North America, which included his discovery of the Mississippi's headwaters.… 1 Newman, Peter C., Empire of the Bay: an illustrated history of the Hudson's Bay Company, Toronto, Madison Press Books, 1989, pp. 5-7 Inuit Contact and Colonization The Wilderness Empire Newman, Peter C., Empire of the Bay: an illustrated history of the Hudson's Bay Company, Toronto, Madison Press Books, 1989, pp. 5-7 That these enterprising expansionists deemed each new North West Company outpost to be an extension of the British monarch's reach was the company's most curious gift to posterity, since the Nor'Westers were nearly all either Scots or French - both victims of English imperialism. But they needed London. The manufactured goods essential to the fur trade, such as blankets, axes and particularly the much sought after guns, had to be purchased in England. London was, of course, also the chief market for dressed pelts, though the Nor'Westers later managed to sidestep that monopoly by trading some of their more valuable sea otter skins directly to Canton in southeast China, navigating half the globe to do so. The impact of the transcontinental trading routes was pervasive enough to work the magic that helped save Western Canada from being absorbed into the United States. The land had already been claimed through right of exploration by the Nor'Westers and later by occupation of the Hudson's Bay Company. It was a puny scattering of tiny outposts that held the line, but it was enough. The Nor'Westers' impulse to explore uncharted territories was less the product of an altruistic desire to advance the frontiers of knowledge than a result of the company's infrastructure and the stretch of its traplines. The NWC’s profitability depended on constantly moving onward and outward to tap newer and richer animal preserves. That, in turn, meant maintaining an ever-lengthening transportation system with large and multiplying overhead expenditures. Unlike the more sedentary Bay men, the Nor'Westers were constantly in motion because the Bay route reduced the cost of transportation by more than fifteen hundred canoe-miles, the geographical advantages clearly lay with the London-based Company. Never able to establish themselves on Hudson Bay, the Nor'Westers stepped over the edge of the horizon and explored virgin lands beyond the known world. (pp.5- 7) 2 Newman, Peter C., Empire of the Bay: an illustrated history of the Hudson's Bay Company, Toronto, Madison Press Books, 1989, pp. 5-7 .
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