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The North West Company, Pedlars Extraordinary

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The North West Company, Pedlars Extraordinary Mr. Morton is professor of history at Champlain College in Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario. He is the author of numerous articles and books in the field of Canadian history, including The Canadian Identity (1961), and The Critical Years: The Union of British North America, 1857-1873 (1964). The NORTH WEST COMPANY PEDLARS EXTRAORDINARY W. L. MORTON THAT THE North American fur trade was Unlike the Eskimo and the European, he essentially a commercial marriage of primi­ neither lived by nor used the sea. Trade be­ tive ways and needs to the more advanced tween him and the transoceanic European, techniques and demands of European and accordingly, turned upon either tbe Indian Chinese markets is one of those truths so going to the shore or the European going evident and general that they could scarcely inland. be proved if there were need. Similarly, tbe The earliest barter was of course entirely North West Company before 1821 was an coastal, even when separated from fishing extraordinarily successful union of the prim­ voyages and pursued as a distinct under­ itive culture of the forest Indian tribes taking. The scattered references we possess with the sophisticated civilization of West­ to the fur trade of the sixteenth century all ern Europe. This paper tries to point the way allude to trade on the coast, whether casual toward a study of the company's effective or at a seaside rendezvous. The first histori­ merger of commerce and culture; it attempts cally known rendezvous was Tadoussac on to be a critical essay rather than a piece of the Gulf of St. Lawrence; Quebec, Trois research.1 Rivieres, and Montreal were each in turn Let us begin by noting that tbe North meant to be the same, but tbe trade was American Indian with whom the fur trade carried steadily inland by the happy acci­ was conducted was an inland forest dweller. dent of the great sea entry of the St. Law­ rence River. A similar entry was Hudson ^ The history of the North West Company has Bay, and a far more successful example of now been reconstructed with sufficient complete­ the coastal trade was that pursued by the ness both to establish the character of the company Hudson's Bay Company from 1669 to 1774, as a business organization and to explain its role in the North American fur trade. This has been done until the competition of the trade from despite the lack of documentary evidence for most Canada forced the English company also to of its business affairs. The historical task has been begin trading inland. carried so far chiefly by two recent and massive works: Paul Ghrisler Phillips, The Fur Trade (Nor­ The obvious commercial advantage to man, Oklahoma, 1961); and E. E. Rich, The History Europeans of the coastal trade was that it of the Hudson's Bay Company 1670-1870 (London, 1958, 1959). placed on the Indians the cost of trans- Winter 1966 157 porting furs to the seaside and goods inland. summer.^ On the hunt the Indian relied al­ More significant to the theme of this paper most wholly on deer hide and beaver robes is that for the Europeans it avoided the for his clothing. Thus his culture possessed necessity of mastering the techniques and two necessities of the fur trade: the means manners of Indian travel and life. Coastal to live on the country as it was, and furs trade provided a meeting place for commer­ themselves. cial barter with a minimum of cultural ex­ Commerce with the whites might improve change, whereas the inland trade could be the means of hunting and of fishing. Such carried on only by Indian means. The items as the gun, the iron hatchet, and the Europeans had to become "Indianized," and steel trap increased the Indian's efficiency, cultural exchange was greatly increased. but his own culture had long provided the The French traders led in this process, and essential tools, such as the bow and arrow, the North West Company, as the heir of the the stone ax, and the deadfall — plus a forest Frenchmen, became the principal repre­ craft not easily learned, let alone improved sentative of European commerce and cul­ upon. To live in the forest it was imperative ture in the inland fur trade. to be able to move, both as a lone hunter and in bands. This the Indian could do with BEFORE the rise and character of the com­ a skill which the European was to surpass pany are discussed, it is necessary to exam­ only by the aid of the mechanical inventions ine the part played by one of the two of the nineteenth century. The Indian pos­ partners in the fur trade — the primitive or sessed the canoe in its most exquisite form — Indian. The Indians of the northern forest the birchbark. This product of the northern zone were a seminomadic people who lived forest and the remarkable craft of canoe by food gathering: hunting, fishing, and building was in fact to be the prime mover picking fruits in season. Tribes like the of the Canadian fur trade. It was used from Montagnais and the Cree, who depended the first by the Indian to bring furs to the purely on hunting and fishing, were more coastal rendezvous, and by the European to stiictly speaking nomadic. Many tribes, penetrate inland. Fragile it was, but it pos­ however — notably the Iroquoian — had ac­ sessed the inestimable advantage that it quired tbe culture of Indian corn; some were could be repaired on the spot, given a readily harvesters of wild rice; and some tapped the available supply of birch bark, spruce root, hard maple for sugar.^ The need to return to and spruce gum. or remain by the cornfields, tbe rice lakes, The canoe gave to the Indian a summer and the sugar bushes explains why they are range of hundreds — even thousands — of termed seminomadic, and even this is per­ miles. No such travel was possible in winter, haps not to be applied to tribes like the but the Indian culture did provide means Hurons or the Onondaga, whose lands were rich in corn. But these people had a "shift­ '^ Maple sugar is rarely taken into account by fur ing" agriculture, and almost no Indian tribe trade historians; yet note the frequent references in was fully and finally committed to one spot Elliott Coues, ed., New Light on the Early History —^ "settled" in the European sense of the of the Greater Northwest: The Manuscript Journals of Alexander Henry and of David Thompson, word. 1799-1814, 1:4, 25, 30, 101, 112, 122, 130, 162, 170, 192, 196, 211, 244, 259, 275, 281; 2:492, 629, Even with supplements like corn, wild 681 (New York, 1897); and in Charles M. Gates, rice, and maple sugar, most Indians relied in ed.. Five Fur Traders of the Northwest, 32, 37, 44, the main on hunting and fishing for theff 165, 234, 236, 270, 273 (St. Paul, 1965). food. Both meant considerable movement, ^ The necessity for this movement is brought out with painful clarity in Edwin James, ed., A Narra­ dispersal in the winter to the hunting tive of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner grounds, and congregation at the fishing (Minneapolis, 1956). On the importance of fruit, see, for example, Henry, in Coues, ed.. New Light runs and the fields and berry patches in on the . Greater Northwest, 2:485. 158 MINNESOTA History for the movement of nien and goods neces­ Indian culture supplied to the trade. Most sary to hunting and following trap lines. important of all was manpower.* The ab­ Snowshoes and moccasins made walking original Indian was the first hunter and possible over the deep, soft snow of the trapper, the first canoeman and snowshoer, northern woods, and the toboggan enabled and the white trapper and voyageur were the hunter to transport his game and furs his pupils. In the lands that became the These two means of movement were as in­ United States the latter largely supplanted dispensable to the fur trapping of the him as trappers and boatmen, but in the winter as the canoe was to the fur trade of Canadian forests the local Indian has re­ the summer. mained tbe principal fur-taker down to the present. The fur trader relied not only on THUS there were in the primitive economy local hunters; he sometimes persuaded all but two of tbe elements needed to sus­ whole bands to move with him or used tain the fur trade. These two — market Indians like tbe eastern Iroquois, who found demand and capital to finance a year's oper­ regular employment in following the trade.^ ation of fur collection, transport, and sale The work of the Indian hunter and trap­ — Europeans were to supply, along with per was augmented by that of the Indian the management that was to bring all to­ woman, preparer of food, carrier of bur­ gether in a functioning system. But it was dens, curer of furs, and sewer of shirts, leg­ not only tools and techniques that the gings, and moccasins. These tasks, of course, were exclusively the squaw's work, such •"This is one of those self-evident facts which, if being the rigid division of labor between the not made explicit, is sometimes seriously neglected. The importance of Indian manpower was drawn to sexes in the Indian culture. It was therefore my attention by Mr. Jan Kupp and will be devel­ practically impossible to live off the country oped by him in his doctoral dissertation for the and carry on the fur trade without the as­ department of history.
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