209 Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian Conference Papers (1974)

FUR TRADERS, RACIAL CATEGORIES, AND KINSHIP NETWORKS

Jennifer Brown

University of Chicago

Resume. Avant le fusionnement de leurs compagnies en 1821, les hommes de la Compagnie de d'Hudson et ceux de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest employaient normalement des termes different pour designer les indigenes metisses des territoires indiens. Ces usages contrastants semblent refleter la difference d'attitudes et d'antecedents de ces deux groupes d'employes ainsi que les structures sociales distinctes dans lesquelles ils etaient integres—avec des implications quant aux genres de rapports sociaux que ces commercants entretenaient avec les groupes indigenes (en grande partie algonquins) et leurs membres. 210 Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian Conference Papers (1974)

FUR TRADERS. RACTAT, CATEGORIES, AND KTWSHIP NETWORKS

In the decades between the 17cOs and 1821, the country of numerous

Algonquian groups, as well as of many groups farther north and west, was also increasingly familiar territory to two varieties of European fur trader—Hudson's Bay Company men employed from London, , and

Canadian-based traders serving the interests of the various partnerships that eventually combined into the North West

Company. The Hudson's Bay and North West Companies had strikingly different origins, histories, and organizational structures, and their personnel differed widely in their social origins, backgrounds, and 1 affiliations. This paper attempts first to sketch some of the social contrasts between these Companies and between their men, and then to pursue some possible relationships between these contrasts and the racial categories and attitudes of Hudson' s Bay men and North Westers in the Indian country.

The Hudson1 s Bay Company was founded in 1670 as a royally chartered monopoly claiming exclusive rights to trade in Hudson Bay and its water­ shed. For a century before the first partnerships were formed, this London-based concern had been sending officers and servants to Hudson Bay to establish and build up permanent posts along the Bay shores. These men were not drawn from the North American colonies; they were Englishmen and Scots (particularly from the Orkneys) who came directly from the British Isles to the Bay to serve out contracts of a fixed number of years at fixed wages or salaries. There was a con­ siderable gulf, social as well as geographic, between these men and their 211 Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian Conference Papers (1974) employers. Company authority was vested in the so-called London Committee a group of substantial shareholders. These merchants, investors, and minor nobility typically never travelled to the fur trade country, but directed their enterprise on the basis of second-hand information carried home to them on their annual ships from the Bay. And correspondingly, the Bay servants on whom the success of their trade depended, rarely became stockholders or Committee members.

Numerous Hudson's Bay Company servants shared certain other distinctive characteristics. In the 1680s, the Company began to hire boys in their early teens (and sometimes younger) as apprentices for seven-year terms

(Rich, 1961, I: 157, 296). These boys were to be brought up in the fur trade, and the London Committee hoped that they would become loyal

Company men and skilled traders and officers. The chances that such apprentices would develop lasting allegiance to the Company were good.

Removed from their homeland at an early age, they were unlikely to develop or maintain strong family or other social ties that would conflict with

Company loyalties. Often their non-Company ties were few and weak to begin with; the numerous apprentices who were poor "parish boys" or drawn from charitable institutions such as Christ's Hospital or the Grey

Coat Hospital at Westminster (Davies 1965: 63; Rich 1961, II: 98) had few strong links to British society to begin with.

Furthermore, once their Bay began, employees were subject to regulations discouraging them from forming ties that would divert them from Company business. The London Committee early expressed a strong preference for unmarried servants, and by 1684, had further ruled that no white women were to be granted passage to the Bay (Rich 1945, Second 212 Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian Conference Papers (1974)

Series: 230). Traders' long contracts and the infrequency of their furloughs from Hudson Bay made it difficult to maintain family relation­ ships in Britain. And they were directed, while in the Bay, to live lives of monastic celibacy and quasi-military discipline, segregated from

Indian women as well as from white (Rich 1961, I: 145, 496).

Hudson's Bay men responded to these regulations and to their isolated situation by seeking out sexual, familial, and friendship attachments within their restricted circumstances. In growing numbers, as time went on, they departed from Company rules to form alliances, often long-lasting, with Indian women. And many developed strong friendships with their fellow employees in the Bay. One common type of friendship link was the asymmetrical bond of patronage between senior officer and apprentice or junior officer. In later years, many men cemented these ties by marrying their patrons' native daughters according to a "custom p of the country" well recognized as such by the early nineteenth century. Hudson's Bay Company man J.E. Harriott described the "custom," as he knew it in this period, to a Canadian law court in 1869:

When I say married, I mean according to the custom of the country, which was by an agreement between the father of the girl and the person who was going to take the girl for wife. We lived as married people, when married this way...I was married after the custom of the country myself.. .When I took a wife as above mentioned, I made a solemn promise to her father to live with her and treat her as my wife as long as we both lived. ("Johnstone et al. vs. Connolly," 1869: 285-286) Such men might become the more firmly attached to Hudson Bay through kin ties both to Company colleagues and to native relatives among the so- called Home Indians, largely Cree or of mixed descent, who were con­ nected with the various posts. 213 Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian Conference Papers (1974)

The social origins and organization of the North Westers from Montreal were strikingly different. The North Wester Company grew out of assorted business partnerships to become the BLBC's most dangerous competitor until the two Companies combined in 1821. It was built on two solid bases; firstly the fur trade skills and knowledge that had been acquiring for 1 50 years before the British conquest of , and secondly, the enterprise and capital of the Britishers, largely

Highland Scots, who began to arrive in Montreal in the 1760's, after the conquest, to make their fortunes.

The Britishers who so quickly took over the Montreal fur trade stand in marked contrast to their Hudson's Bay rivals. As K.G. Davies (1966:

168) has remarked, the North West Company was helping to create Canadians, whereas Hudson' s Bay men contracted to come directly from Britain to their assigned posts and to retire directly back again once their terms of service ended. Many North Westers had migrated to from Scotland before they entered the fur trade; some had settled in

New York until the American Revolution roused their loyalist sympathies and brought them to Montreal or other parts of eastern Canada such as

Glengarry in eastern Ontario. North Westers were therefore often familiar with colonial society both south and north of the St. Lawrence River; they had lived in it, and some had even been born in it.

In another respect too, they contrast with Hudson's Bay men. Scottish migrants commonly brought with them numbers of family members and "High­ land cousins," or if they found success in the New World, encouraged relatives to follow and join them once they were established. Scottish

North Westers were no exception. One of their major figures, Simon

McTavish, brought several of his relatives into the fur trade, and 214 Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian Conference Papers (1974) numbered over a dozen other North Westers among his kin by blood and marriage before he died in 1804. The directors of the fur trade firm

f Phyn, Ellice, and Forsyth, which backed some of the North Westers' o partnerships from Montreal after leaving its original home in Schenectady,

New York, were similarly interrelated (Wallace 1934: Appendix A). Such kinship solidarity or "clannishness" was also conspicuous among other

Highland Scottish North Westers such as the Mackenzies and McTavishes, and persisted among traders of North West Company background for some decades after they and their Company became part of the HBC. North

Westers who were not already part of these kinship networks might join them by marrying in. And cousin marriage was an acceptable means of consolidating families and fortunes. The family of Sir Alexander

Mackenzie, Scottish immigrants first to New York and then to Canada, showed, as W. Kaye Lamb has noted, a great and long-standing "propensity for marrying kinsmen." Following the example set by several earlier

Mackenzies, Sir Alexander married fellow clanswoman Geddes Mackenzie in 1812 (Lamb 1970: 45). (Similarly, another Mackenzie connection, HBC

Governor George Simpson, married his own first cousin in 1830.)

The structure of the North West Company, unlike that of the HBC, lent itself well to the purposes of Scottish fur traders seeking to advance their family and clan interests. Company authority was vested not in a remote London Committee but in the hands of "Partners," many of whom had wintered in the Indian country. As company shareholders, they combined first-hand knowledge of fur trade conditions with a greater personal interest in and control over their Company's fortunes than gewa or salary workers could be expected to have. As partners involved Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian215 Conference Papers (1974) in the hiring of recruits as well as in the fur trade itself, they were in a position to place relatives in the concern and to advance their interests so that they too might become partners. In such a way did

Simon McTavish aid the fur trade careers of his nephews, the McGillivrays and his fellow clansman, John George McTavish. And J. G. McTavish con­ tinued the practice as a Hudson's Bay man after the 1821 Coalition, securing his own nephews' entry into the Company.

One further comparison between Hudson's Bay men and North Westers is relevant here. Hudson's Bay men, while they might reach positions of high rank and considerable authority as Governors or Chief Factors at their fur trade posts, came home to find themselves relatively unimpor­ tant employees of a relatively small and unimportant company in one of the world's greatest capitals, a large city where fur trade life was little known and lacked a place in the traditions of the citizenry. Their

North Wester analogues returned home to a city built on the fur trade, where they ranked as important citizens. They built mansions, bought seigneuries, and supported civil and religious institutions, being active in the founding, for example, of the St. Gabriel Street Presby­ terian Church. Wintering partners could claim special prestige in the social life of Montreal; only they could become members of the exclusive

Beaver Club and attend its elaborate banquets and reunions. At the same time, their independent and sometimes hardly Christian life style in the

Indian country was familiar to many and accepted with little surprise in a city with a long coureur de bois tradition.

Doubtless related to these differences between Companies were certain contrasts in their traders' demographic and familial patterns in the

Indian country, and in their racial categories and attitudes toward its Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian21 6Conference Papers (1974) native population, especially toward those of mixed descent. It is clear that, by the early nineteenth century, substantial numbers of traders of both companies had allied themselves with Cree, Ojibwa, and other native women, and had fathered considerable numbers of mixed- blood children. Those Montreal Britishers who did so were, like their

French , thereby perpetuating a long-standing Canadian habit of relative sexual freedom in the Indian country, one early accepted by many Indians as well as many coureurs de bois, although deplored by civic and religious leaders. Correspondingly, North Westers, as well as the colonial society in which they moved, were more accustomed to the presence of mixed-bloods than were their British rivals. .And they found in their colonial context distinct linguistic categories to des­ cribe mixed-bloods as a separate group. The French Canadian terms, metis and brule, were accessible to them. And by the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century, they were using the term "halfbreed," a word that according to the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary, first appears in American publications of 1775 and 1791.

Hudson's Bay men, on the other hand, entered the Indian country without the cultural baggage of the fur-trade-based colonial society of Canada, and were ruled, even if imperfectly and remotely, by a Committee that enjoined circumspection, civility, and morality in dealing with the natives. Their fur trade children were fewer in numbers, and their Com­ pany and home society offered no ready social category in which to place these offspring. A scrutiny of HBC records has so far revealed that

Hudson's Bay men accordingly did not possess or use a distinct term to classify mixed-bloods as a separate group, until their unfriendly encoun­ ters with the North Westers (as recorded, for example, in Peter Fidler's Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian21 7Conference Papers (1974)

Red River Journal of 1814-) familiarized them with racial terms used by the latter. Before that period, traders of the London company classified people of mixed descent as either "English" or "Indian," apparently on the basis of cultural attributes. Charles Isham, son of an English

HBC officer and an Indian woman, received an English and served the Company for many years; in Company records he was reckoned among the "Englishmen." (e.g., HBC Archives B.239/f/3,fo.1l). But those fur traders' children who had been assimilated among the Home Indians around the Bay posts were themselves classed as Indian. At York Factory in 1801, for example, John Ballenden recorded his meeting with an "Indian

Lad...who is the Son of an Officer that holds a very high Station in

Your Honours Service." (HBC Arch. B.239/a/l05,fo.28). Occasionally the blanket term, "native," was used to refer to groups that would clearly have contained both Indians and people of mixed blood, but Hudson's Bay men had no terms to isolate and single out the latter until they came to borrow the North Westers' categories. The terminological contrasts in usage between Hudson's Bay and North

West Company men may be partially explained in historical and demographic terms, as indicated above; categories for mixed-bloods were available to the Montrealers, and their numbers were sufficient for them to attain recognition as a distinct aggregate in the population. Some social- structural reasons, however, may also be advanced for these contrasts.

Mixed-blood descendants of Montreal traders began in the early 1800s, and particularly in the early history of Lord Selkirk's Red River Colony, to exhibit a new awareness of themselves as a distinctive social group. The

North Westers themselves early fostered this development for their own tactical purposes in their conflicts with the HBC and the Red River 218 Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian Conference Papers (1974) settlers, but it acquired and maintained Its own momentum for many decades, expressed in the emerging concept of la nation metisse. The Red River metj s in particular were by 1818 developing their own distinctive leader­ ship and social organization (Sprenger 1972: chapters two, three).

Another set of social-structural factors may help to explain the tendency of North Westers to conceptualize mixed-blood natives as a distinct group in a period when HBC men were not yet placing them in a separate category. North Westers, as indicated earlier, tended to be heavily enmeshed in their own European and eastern Canadian kinship networks. While many of them fathered children in the Indian country and maintained and showed fondness for their native families, It was not uncommon for them to show ambivalence about these attachments and ultimate allegiance to their white kin at home, and to find their final marriage partners among their own and their colleagues' white female relatives in Montreal or in Britain. Thus did William McGillivray when, after having founded a Cree family, he married the sister of his colleague,

John McDonald of Garth, in 1800. And thus did William Connolly, marrying his Montreal cousin, Julia Woolrich, in 1832, after having been allied for many years with a Cree woman. Hudson' s Bay men, on the other hand, customarily had few strong kin and social ties to draw them away from their native families, even if they faced greater Company resistance to acquiring and maintaining such involvements. In the early nineteenth century they were strongly supporting the establishment of schools at the main Bay posts for their children and the founding of Red River

Colony as a place to which they might retire with their native families (see for example HBC Arch. A.6/l7,fo.94; A.1 l/H8,fos.3,31). Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian219 Conference Papers (1974)

The strength of the North Westers' white kinship connections, and the apparent contrasts between North West and Hudson's Bay Company men in this respect, are suggested by the distinctive character of several legal disputes that developed after the deaths of some of the Montreal

Britishers. On several occasions their white and native relatives became involved in court cases over these mens' estates, arguing over the validity of marriages in the fur trade country and the legitimacy of children born there. The estates of at least five prominent former

North Westers, Alexander Fraser, William Connolly, Hugh Faries, Samuel

Black, and Peter Skene Ogden, were subject to such conflicts in varying degrees, as their white relatives found that native kin might have some legal claims after all, and as the courts explored the extent and con- 3 sequences of these traders' domestic attachments in the Indian country. I have not found any cases of HBC mens' estates being subjected to such litigation.

In conclusion, there is evidence to suggest several related propositions about social contrasts between North Westers and Hudson's Bay men in the

Algonquian country and beyond. They differed importantly in respect to their backgrounds and social and kinship affiliations. Their racial terminologies differed for some time, particularly with respect to natives of mixed blood. And correspondingly, their attitudes towards these natives developed somewhat differently. The North Westers often seemed more ready and willing to set the metis or "halfbreeds" at some distance from themselves. Their sentiments in favor of their long-standing kin and clan affiliations could either appear as racial prejudice or combine with it to the detriment of these natives. At least some fur trade observers found that this potent combination of kinship and race still 220 Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian Conference Papers (1974) persisted in the 1840s among their colleagues of Scottish North Wester background; McTavishes and McKenzies were winning promotions while natives who had offered long and good service were passed over. Trader

James Anderson commented sharply on this issue, on December 24, 18^6, in a letter to his brother Alexander. The promotion of two McTavishes and

Hector McKenzie had been, he noted, "the Subject of bitter Remark."

If Interest is to be the Main Channel of Promotion— let it be proclaimed abroad—and let not young men waste their best days in the Vain and delusive hope— that acknowledged Merit, Long Service and abilities are to be rewarded by promotion in due time... [native born clerk Joseph Gladman' sj Case is most gross—He was a district Master before the McTavishes were (perhaps) born—has borne an excellent Character— and has been in charge of Ruperts River district— the most Valuable in this Dep^ for two Years—now mark how he has been treated—he was succeeded in the Charge of New Brunswick by Peter McKenzie—who is (entre nous) but Three Removes from a Fool... Still Peter was promoted in /LJ+ as soon as he could be... but poor Joe has some 16th part of Indian blood in his Veins and for that unpardonable defect—he is deprived of the Fruits of his Labours. (James Anderson Papers, Provincial Archives of British Columbia) As a more general conclusion, it appears that fur traders were not, as some have been tempted to assume, a homogeneous mass of Europeans.

There were some significant social differences between North Westers and

Hudson's Bay men and between their Companies, differences that modified the character of their behavior toward Algonquian and other Indian groups, their attitudes toward the natives, both Indian and of mixed descent, and their relationships not only with natives but with their colleagues and

their European and fur trade kin. Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian22 Conference1 Papers (1974)

NOTES

The contrasts between companies outlined here are studied in greater detail in my doctoral dissertation, Company Men and Native Families: Fur Trade Social and Domestic Relations in Canada's Old North West, currently being prepared for the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. I gratefully acknowledge the aid and cooperation I have received in my research from several manuscript repositories—most importantly, The Public Archives of Canada and the Hudson's Bay Company. HBC Archives materials published by permission of the Hudson's Bay Company. For studies of this "custom," see Sylvia Van Kirk, '"The custom of the country': an examination of fur trade marriage practices," Canadian Historical Association meetings, Toronto, June 1974; and Jennifer Brown, "'The custom of the country': fur trade marriage in the Hudson's Bay territories," Central States Anthropological Society meetings, Chicago, April 1974. The documentation of these cases is extensive. The best-reported and most interesting for its in-depth study of the various issues involved is Connolly vs Woolrich (Lower Canada Jurist 11, 1867, pp. 197-265; La Revue legale 1, 1869, pp. 253-400). 222 Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian Conference Papers (1974)

REFERENCES CITED

Davies, K.G. (ed.) 1965 Letters from Hudson's Bay 1703-40. London, Hudson's Bay Record Society. 1966 From competition to union. Minnesota History 40), 4-, 166-177.

"Johnstone et al. vs Connolly," Court of Appeal, 7 September 1869. La Revue legale 1, pp. 253-400.

Lamb, W. Kaye 1970 Journals and letters of Alexander MacKenzie. Cambridge University Press, HaKluyt Society Extra Series No. 41.

Rich, E.E. (ed.) 1945 Minutes of the Hudson's Bay Company 1679-1684 (First and Second Series). London, Champlain Society for the Hudson's Bay Record Society.

Rich, E.E. 1961 Hudson's Bay Company 1670-1870. New York, Macmillan.

Sprenger, G. Herman 1972 An analysis of selective aspects of metis society, 1810-1870. K.A. thesis, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg. Wallace, W.S. 1934 Documents relating to the North West Company. Toronto, Champlain Society.