The fur trade was an important part of the economic history of North America because it incorporated First Nation economies into a larger world economy. In 1670 the English Crown granted a royal charter to a group of investors incorporating the Hudson’s Bay Company (Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson’s Bay). The newly formed company proposed to circumvent the French trading monopoly into what was become Canada by locating in Hudson Bay. The charter required the company to furnish the King (or his heirs) two elk skins and two black beaver pelts as rent or payment for the charter.
The English Crown, relying on a European legal doctrine known as the Discovery Doctrine, which in their minds gives Christian monarchs the right to rule over pagans, ignored possible First Nations’ claims to the land and granted the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) all lands which drain into Hudson Bay. The HBC was given all the powers of a sovereign state: absolute proprietorship, supreme jurisdiction in all civil and military affairs, the power to make and interpret laws, the power to maintain ships of war, the power to erect forts, and the power to declare war against ‘pagan’ peoples.
The land granted to the HBC was known as Rupert’s Land, named after Prince Rupert who was one of the investors.
The HBC strategy was relatively simple: to locate trading posts, known as factories, along the shores of Hudson Bay where ships from England would unload European manufactured goods and load North American furs. While the designation of a trading post as a factory sounds strange to modern English-speaking ears, the designation comes from the title of the person in charge of the post: the factor.
Regarding the advantages of locating on the shores of the remote Hudson Bay, Peter Newman, in his book Empire of the Bay: An Illustrated History of the Hudson’s Bay Company, writes:
“By choosing to settle the deserted shores of Hudson Bay rather than more attractive landfalls to the south, the early traders appropriated the overwhelming advantage of being able to deliver their trade goods into the very heart of the new continent, for the network of wide rivers that flowed to Hudson Bay rolled through a fur-rich hinterland stretching back to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Another advantage that allowed the fur trade to flourish was that most of Canada’s huge drainage system is interconnected by relatively short portages.”
The furs would be obtained in trade from First Nations peoples. The HBC would use a standard advertising technique—word of mouth—to spread the news of the factories and the many wonders that they contained to the inland First Nations. The company envisioned its factories on the coast rather than inland.
The HBC had little interest in converting the indigenous people to Christianity or “civilizing” them. Peter Newman writes:
“The HBC was much more interested in making money than making history.”
The land along the southern portion of Hudson Bay was occupied by the Cree. The Cree quickly became trading partners with the HBC, bringing their furs directly to the HBC factories rather than trading them to the Ottawa who then would trade to the French. Just as the Ottawa had served as middlemen for the French fur trade, so the Cree now became the middlemen for the HBC.
Cree became a major trading language and many the HBC employees learned it. In addition, many Cree learned English. While the HBC policies, unlike those of the early French traders and the later traders from the North West Company, discouraged intermarriage with Natives, such marriages were, in fact, fairly common. As the HBC traders and explorers moved inland from Hudson Bay, they did so with Cree guides and thus learned the Cree names for the people they encountered: the Dene were called Chipewyn (meaning “Pointy Coats”) and the Inuit were called Eskimo (“Eaters of Raw Meat”).
It should be pointed out that the designation “Cree” comes not from the Cree, but from a closely related people, the Ojibwa, who called them “Kiristinon.” The Cree called themselves “Nehiawa” (“The People”). The Cree were allies with the culturally and linguistically related Ojibwa. Later, as they moved west with the fur trade, the Cree and Ojibwa became allied with the Assiniboine, an unrelated Siouan-speaking people.
In 1684, the HBC built York Fort (also known as the York Factory) at Port Nelson, near the mouth of the Nelson and Hayes Rivers. In his entry on York Factory in Exploring the Fur Trade Routes of North America, Michael Payne writes:
“The Hayes offered the best route into the interior from Hudson Bay and connected York directly with a massive hinterland.”
With the establishment of the York Factory, the Plains Cree, who had been trading with the French, began paddling their canoes to Hudson Bay to trade with the HBC at York Factory. For more than two centuries the York Factory would be the most important HBC fur trading post. It became the capital of the fur trade.
The trading post, by the way, was named for the Duke of York, one of the governors of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
When the original York Fort was established, it was on disputed ground: disputed between two European powers, England and France. With the Treaty of Utrech in 1714 the French withdrew. By 1782, it became the most profitable HBC trading post, trading more than 30,000 Made Beaver per year.
By the 1760s, the fur trade at York Factory began to decline and soon the HBC found itself locked into battle against a major rival, the North West Company. To meet the new challenge, HBC began to locate trading posts in the interior. One of the major highways into the interior was the Hayes River. Since the York Factory was situated at the mouth of this river, it gained new importance as the entrepôt for the interior trading posts. For here, European goods would be transported into the interior, and the furs obtained in the interior could be loaded on ships bound for the lucrative English and European markets.
In 1782, a French naval expedition captured the York Factory and destroyed the fort. The following year the HBC returned and re-established the post. Disaster struck again in 1787 in the form of a major flood. As a result of the flood, the trading post was relocated to a site on higher ground about two kilometers upstream. Work was started on a complex which combined a warehouse, residence, and workshop. The employees called the new complex the Old Octagon in reference to the shape of the courtyard.
By the 1820s, the York Factory was a small town which included not only the HBC employees, but also a group of Homeguard Cree who lived around the factory. Between 1830 and 1838, HBC constructed a huge warehouse—30 meters square and two stories high—which would be the largest building constructed by HBC until the advent of its retail stores in the twentieth century.
From 1821 until 1846 two brigades each year, known as the York Express, would travel from York Factory to Fort Vancouver in present-day Washington state. Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River, was the headquarters for the HBC Columbia Department.
By the 1860s, the York Factory was in decline as the HBC was able to ship goods to the Red River from St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1957, after 275 years of operation, the HBC closed the factory. Peter Newman writes:
“Although the great white depot building remains standing, York Factory today is little more than a haunted memorial to the HBC’s involvement in the fur trade. Conditions changed and the Company changed with them, without a backward glance.”
It was declared a national historic site in 1960 and has been operated by Parks Canada since 1968.
Indians 101/201
Twice each week—on Tuesdays and Thursdays—this series present American Indian topics. Indians 201 is an expansion/revision of an earlier essay. More about the fur trade from this series:
Indians 101: The Canadian fur trade 200 years ago, 1821
Indians 101: The French Fur Trade
Indians 101: The eighteenth-century fur and hide trade
Indians 101: The Astorians and the Indians
Indians 101: Fort Manuel Lisa and the Indians
Indians 101: Fur Trade in the Rockies, 1801 to 1806
Indians 101: Nor'westers and Indians in the Columbia Plateau
Indians 101: The Pemmican War