Accounting for Partridge: Food and Value in the Eighteenth-Century Hudson’s Bay Company

NORWEGIANS IN THE SELKIRK SETTLEMENT 1815-1870 By Paul Knaplund Few settlers faced more trying hardships or met with more disasters than did those whom Lord Selkirk brought to the forks of the Red River in the years 1812-15. Supplies for the settlement, seed grain, and animals for breeding had to be brought great distances. Once a year the Hudson 's Bay Company's ships from Great Britain arrived at York Factory on Hudson Bay, and thence supplies traveled more than seven hundred miles by rivers, portages, and lakes to the Red River. There were two alternative sources: by an even more toilsome route from distant Canada; or from the nearest settlements in the United States. Nature itself proved hostile to the colonists: during the first twenty years of the existence of the settlement early frosts, disastrous floods, and devastating invasions of locusts threatened to blot it out. Still more disheartening to the early immigrants was the hostility which they encountered from men of their own race. Though the colony was founded under the œgis of the Hudson's Bay Company, then controlled by Lord Selkirk , the servants of this company in America opposed the new venture. Not infrequently the settlers were thwarted by officers of the Hudson's Bay Company, and at the same time the colonists were exposed to the full fury of the hatred that the rival trading concern, the Northwest Company, harbored for the Hudson's Bay Company and all its schemes. So intense was this hatred that the Selkirk settlement was twice wiped out by the Northwesters. In June, 1815, the first governor of the colony, Captain Miles Macdonald, was forced to surrender himself to the Northwesters. Nearly all i 2 STUDIES AND RECORDS buildings were burned down and the settlers were dispersed. Reënforced by new arrivals from Europe, some of the colonists returned in the autumn, only to be overwhelmed by a greater disaster in the following year, when Governor Semple of the Hudson's Bay Company and twenty men of the settlement were killed in the battle, or rather massacre, of Seven Oaks, on June 19, 1816. The perpetrators of this outrage were half-breeds, incited, and promised great rewards for their foul deed, by officers in the service of the Northwest Company.1 The first man killed at Seven Oaks was a Norwegian , "Lieutenant" Holte, who, as the leader of a small band of Norwegians, had arrived at York Factory in September , 1814.2 To one man of Holte's group, Peter Dahl, belongs the distinction of being the first Norwegian farmer in the Red River Valley, and a successful one. With the coming of Holte and his compatriots hangs a tale. At the time when Lord Selkirk gained a controlling interest in the Hudson's Bay Company and decided to found a settlement in its territory, the company was fast losing ground to the Northwesters. As an aid both to the company and to the settlement, Selkirk determined to build winter roads connecting York Factory with the interior. Most of the servants in the lower ranks of the Hudson's Bay Company were recruited in the Orkney Islands, but at this time the Orkneymen as a group seem to have been deficient both in courage and in physical strength. Selkirk wanted men inured to the rigors of a northern climate, who had had experience as woodsmen, fishermen, and farmers, and who, above all, were strong, resourceful, and amenable to discipline . He was looking, not merely for road builders, but for handy men who might invigorate the service of the company and effect improvements in the ways and methods of living 1 A good account of the early history of the Selkirk settlement may be found in Chester Martin, Lord Selkirk's Work in Canada ( Oxford Historical and Literary Studies, vol. 7 - Oxford, 1916) . 2 Martin, Selkirk's Work in Canada , 111. THE SELKIRK SETTLEMENT 3 at trading posts and settlements. Such men, he believed, might be obtained in Norway and Sweden. Late in January or early in February, 1814, the directors of the Hudson's Bay Company voted to hire Norwegian and Swedish laborers for service in North America...

Reviewed by: Masters and Servants: The Hudson's Bay Company and Its North American Workforce, 1668–1786 by Scott P. Stephen Scott Berthelette Scott P. Stephen, Masters and Servants: The Hudson's Bay Company and Its North American Workforce, 1668-1786 (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press 2019) In Masters and Servants, Scott P. Stephen has probed the voluminous archival holdings of the Hudson's Bay Company (correspondence, minute books, accounts, and post journals) to unpack the nitty-gritty details of labour relations within the Hudson's Bay Company during the corporation's long first century (1668-1786). Stephen's central argument is that the Hudson's Bay Company's labour relations were underwritten by deep-rooted understandings [End Page 203] of master-servant relationships within a household setting and that Company posts should be construed as "household factories." Indeed, as Stephen demonstrates, the patriarchal household family made up of a master (the patriarch) and a family of kin, apprentices, and servants, was the dominant social construct of early modern Britain and its overseas colonies and trading companies. As Stephen demonstrates, the hbc's household factory was diverse. Hudson's Bay Company servants were not just Londoners and Orcadians, but also Canadien voyageurs who had absconded from French posts, Inuit and Chipewyan captives sold to factors by Lowland Cree raiders, and even the "mixed-blood" sons of hbc fathers and Indigenous mothers. The labour requirements of hbc factories were also diverse. The London Committee, governors, and factors demanded servants that could fulfill a variety of roles such as general labourers, mariners, officers, clerks, surgeons, and myriad tradesmen—armourers, bricklayers, carpenters, coopers, gunsmiths sawyers, shipwrights, and tailors—as well as more specialized labour in the form of birchbark canoe-makers and linguistic and cultural interpreters. Stephen's study outlines two major periods of the Company's history. The period from the 1670 charter to the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht was marked by an initial flurry of development along the Hudson Bay littoral followed by massive instability in both recruitment and retention of labour due to wartime conditions and French bayside military excursions. The second period, following the peace of 1713, was marked by much-needed stability and security and saw the Company's labour needs expanded and diversified as it established slooping (coastal trading) operations, whale fisheries, and several inland trading houses—Henley House (1743), Flamborough House (1749), and Cumberland House (1774). Stephen's analysis ends in 1786 when the hbc created the position of chief inland factor, which shifted the managerial centre of gravity and reoriented the balance of power of the coastal household factory. Stephen does a particularly good job at drawing comparisons of labour relations to early modern Britain and other long-distance British trading companies, like the East Indian Company (eic), Royal African Company (rac), and the Levant Company, to show how the masterservant relationship and the household system reflected larger trends in British imperialism. Unfortunately, Stephen does not provide a sense of whether there was something uniquely British about the household factory, and does not venture into French, Dutch, Spanish Atlantic Worlds to juxtapose the hbc's model of household governance against non-British trading companies, such as the French Compagnie du Nord, which operated in Hudson Bay alongside the hbc for decades. The lack of transnational or trans-imperial comparison opens the question as to how French or Canadien Company servants, like Jean-Baptise D'Laryea and Louis Primeau (whose careers are outlined by Stephen), saw themselves fitting into the structures of the household system with its reciprocal obligations, deferential and paternalistic behaviours, and social and moral covenants. To Stephen's credit, however, he does a much better job at teasing out social relations between the Homeguard Cree and the hbc, demonstrating how the Cree often imposed their own conceptions of kinship through marriage alliances in order to create reciprocal social connections on unwitting hbc factors and servants, which produced tensions within the household factory that mandated that servants remained celibate. [End Page 204] While the "household factory" produced a remarkably secure and stable political-economic entity that connected the Hudson Bay watershed fur trade economy to the larger British Atlantic World, Stephen...

The Role of Pemmican in the Canadian Northwest Fur Trade

In this year of the tercentenary of the incorporation of the Hudson's Bay Company it is appropriate to examine the founding membership of what may still be called “The Great Company.” It is surprising that the literature which chronicles the early adventures of the Company in the northern reaches of Canada has largely neglected a close scrutiny of the founders. The purpose of this article is to examine the early partnership, note the walks of life and social groups from which the adventurers came, and identfy those who formed the nucleus of leadership in planning and executing the endeavors for which the Hudson's Bay Company became renowned.In general, the men who established the Hudson's Bay Company were representative of the era of extensive oversea expansion that characterized Restoration England. They were essentially promoters and imperialists. Yet they were not the first of their kind, for in the thirteenth century merchants had formed regulated organizations for prosecuting the cloth trade. Nor did they ever possess the financial power or parliamentary lobby of the East India Company. Nonetheless, their interest in the fur trade, in a Northwest passage and in general scientific inquiry prompted these men to lay the basis of a firm that by the height of its influence in the early 1840 was engaged in business throughout most of British North America as well as on the Pacific slope south to San Francisco Bay, in the Pacific islands, and in Canton. Today this organization remains the oldest merchant trading company in the world and the oldest business firm on the North American continent.

Enlightened Zeal: The Hudson's Bay Company and Scientific Networks, 1670-1870, by Ted Binnema. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2014. xvi, 488 pp. $37.95 Cdn (paper). Science is never just about science, never just about knowledge (p. 3) is enigmatic first sentence of Ted Binnema's ambitious, and broadly successful, Enlightened Zeal. As its opening sentence suggests, this is a book that goes beyond a simple chronicling of scientific activity in Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) during period 1670-1870. Binnema seeks to explain context within which scientific discovery took place. He examines trans-Atlantic and North American scientific networks, which evolved over time and were crucial to advancement of science. He highlights commercial benefits to HBC of promoting its support of science with British politicians who controlled company's licence. He also illustrates how shifts in focus of scientific research responded to both commercial priorities of company and political priorities of British government. With such a broad agenda, it is not surprising that certain periods in company's history are dealt with much more comprehensively than others. A quick glance at table of contents reveals that, although this survey covers a two hundred year period, by far greatest emphasis is given to last fifty years. The first ninety-eight years of HBC's existence is dealt with in a mere twenty-eight pages. As author states, the company contributed little to public before 1768 (p. 49). From a scientific viewpoint, story becomes more interesting in 1769, when HBC participated in an initiative with Royal Society to observe transit of Venus between earth and sun. Binnema describes HBC's involvement in this project as a dramatic turning point that also briefly stimulated company to send natural history specimens back to Britain. Between 1774 and 1821, Binnema notes that company's principal scientific interest switched to cartography. As others have done, Binnema credits Samuel Wegg as being individual with greatest personal influence on company's more positive attitude toward science in late eighteenth century (Wegg was a member of Royal Society and a director of HBC, becoming its governor in 1782). However, it was competition in fur trade and not just influence of Samuel Wegg that caused HBC to establish its first significant inland trading post at Cumberland House, in 1774. The move inland, in turn, made maps an essential tool in HBC's rivalry with Northwest Company. As Binnema describes, the HBC and its Canadian competitors explored and surveyed only insofar as those efforts supported their trade. By early nineteenth century, HBC was certainly more receptive to science than it had been a hundred years previously, but whether this new attitude could yet be described as enlightened zeal is debatable. The heart of book is a series of four chapters set in nineteenth century. The ultimately successful search by Dease and Simpson for a northwest passage is seen as a public relations coup that contributed to renewal of HBC's licence in 1838. Yet major scientific focus of fifty years or so before 1870 was natural history. In particular, extension of HBC's reach to Pacific in this period proved to be a bonanza for botanists. The importance of David Douglas's work in Columbia District (Oregon Country) is stressed, both for value of his own work and inspiration he provided for others. It is perhaps not surprising that HBC was linked to scientific networks in Britain, as this was a period in which there was a great proliferation of British scientific associations. …

Dr. John Rae, who spent 22 years in British North America, accurately mapped more miles of North America's unknown northern coastline - excluding Hudson Bay - than did any other explorer. ... Unusually adaptable and a crack shot, he learned native methods of living off the land. Remarkably fit, he set records that have never been surpassed for speed and endurance on snowshoes. John Rae was born on 30 September 1813 in the Hall of Clestrain, near Stromness in the Orkney Islands. At age 16, he went to Edinburgh to study medicine and qualified as Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1833. His first medical job was as a surgeon on the Prince of Wales, the Hudson's Bay Company supply ship. A sailing ship of 400 tons, it carried 31 Orkneymen bound for employment at distant fur-trading posts. After loading the season's furs at Moose Factory, the Prince of Wales was turned back by heavy ice in the Hudson Strait and was forced to winter at Charlton Island in James Bay. There, Rae successfully treated his scurvy-afflicted men with cranberries and tender sprouts of the wild pea. Instead of returning to England, Rae accepted an offer from the Hudson's Bay Company of five years' employment as clerk and surgeon. ... In 1844, Hudson's Bay Company Governor Sir George Simpson proposed that Rae complete the survey of the northern coastline of North America. After studying surveying in Toronto, Rae left York Factory in June 1846 with ten men and two 22-foot boats. In April 1847 the expedition crossed Rae Isthmus to reach Lord Mayor's Bay, mapping the shore of Simpson Peninsula on the return journey. They then explored the west coast of Melville Peninsula, the two legs adding up to 1,050 km of new coastline mapped. For the most part they lived off the land; Rae shot nearly as much game as the other 12 men together. Soon after Rae's return, Dr. John Richardson offered him the position of second-in-command on the first search expedition for the missing John Franklin. ... In 1851, Rae set out on his third expedition with two men, two sledges, and five dogs. After crossing Dolphin and Union Strait, they explored 270 new km of Victoria Island coastline on foot. They next used two boats to complete the 740 km of exploration of the southern and eastern shorelines of Victoria Island. When Rae turned back, Franklin's ships Erebus and Terror, were trapped in the ice only about 80 km to the east, although he did not know it. ... Rae's fourth and final expedition in 1853 was designed to complete the survey of the continental coastline for the Hudson's Bay Company. He explored the Quoich River for 335 km, wintered at Repulse Bay, and set out in March 1854. At Pelly Bay the Eskimos gave him second-hand news of the fate of the Franklin expedition - other Eskimos had seen dead and dying men about four years earlier. Rae mapped 430 new km of coastline along the west side of Boothia Peninsula, leaving 240 km south of Bellot Strait unexplored. He proved that King William Island was indeed an island, separated from Boothia Peninsula by what is now called Rae Strait. Back at Repulse Bay, Eskimos brought him a silver plate, a medal, and several forks and spoons with names or initials of Franklin and his officers. Rae did not risk his men in searching further for the bodies of Franklin's men, but instead rushed back to England to recall the other search parties, which were widely scattered in the wrong areas of the Arctic. When Rae presented his report and his Franklin relics to the Admiralty on 22 October 1854, he forthrightly told of the Eskimo account of cannibalism practised by the British sailors. In spite of strong opposition from Lady Franklin, Rae and his men received the 10,000 Pounds Sterling for ascertaining the fate of Franklin's party. ...

The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) held a royal charter to trade in the bay's watershed from 1670, and its territories expanded, after an 1821 merger with the North West Company, along the Arctic and Pacific coasts. Ted Binnema surveys the HBC's involvement with learned communities in Britain, Canada, and the United States from the HBC's founding until its monopoly was ended and its territories transferred to the Dominion of Canada in 1870. The HBC was involved in exploration, surveying, cartographic and observational sciences, astronomy, meteorology, natural history, and ethnology. Binnema's introduction promises a case study in the history of knowledge networks in the British Empire, but this ambition is limited by a narrow definition of “science.” Several thematic chapters on the period after 1821 are more successful in reconstructing the networks to which the HBC contributed during the heyday of natural history. Binnema's central argument is that after a century of secrecy, the HBC became a “generous patron of science” (p. 7) as the result of networks linking HBC directors and officers in the field, metropolitan savants and institutions, and aboriginal trading partners. These networks were held together by rewards and recognition. The main motive for the HBC's support of scientific endeavors was to burnish its reputation. Binnema catalogs every printed acknowledgment of HBC assistance as a public “tribute,” and claims that these expressions of thanks redefined the HBC “brand” as enlightened, disinterested, and benevolent (pp. 11, 13). Tributes countered criticism of its commercial monopoly or its treatment of aboriginal peoples. Many HBC officers had time on their hands in the field and natural history provided intangible benefits such as male companionship, self-improvement, or a sense of meaning.

Reviewed by: Keepers of the Record: The History of the Hudson's Bay Company Archives George Colpitts (bio) Deidre Simmons . Keepers of the Record: The History of the Hudson's Bay Company Archives. McGill-Queen's University Press. xvi, 360. $80.00 Deirdre Simmons's Keepers of the Record sheds light on the history of the Hudson's Bay Company's nearly three thousand linear metres of archival holdings that span some three hundred years. She provides 'an account of how the Company kept its records' and an engaging 'history of the people who were responsible for making and keeping those records.' A convergence of business practices at the time of the company's founding in 1670 and support for 'intellectual and experimental endeavours' in the England of Charles II helped begin the company's long tradition in detailed record-keeping. But so did the company's reliance on precarious charter rights and its vulnerability to foreign and domestic merchant competition. Almost from its beginning, London committees insisted that employees keep records that could defend their shareholders' rights in court or help the business compete against commercial interlopers in North America. But Simmons's history, too, presents the company's 'voluntary' actions that fortuitously prompted its staff to squirrel away many of its now cherished vellum books, account ledgers, and letters sent between Hudson Bay and London that might otherwise have been trashed. Simmons's accounting, then, highlights both the context and the personalities of importance. They range from the overworked bayside scriveners to the imposing directors, all of whom contributed to the remarkable 'provenance and original order' of the company record. Noteworthy individuals include the late-eighteenth-century governor Samuel Wegg, whose pushing of the company's affairs inland from Hudson Bay necessitated careful mapping and new orders of record-keeping; Andrew Wedderburn, the committeeman reforming business and accounting practices in the critical years of competition; and, of course, George Simpson, whose dominance over the company coincided with its nineteenth-century trade monopoly over a vast extent of North America. Simmons has well-managed the difficult task of assembling this history. She traces largely forgotten paper trails that in some cases [End Page 565] take on a life of their own. These include the interplay of interests joining Radisson and Des Grosseillier with the company's first shareholders. There were the intrigues of Arthur Dobbs, who, in his bid to undermine the company's monopoly in the mid-eighteenth century, seems to have thieved some of the company's critical documents, including the important Kelsey papers. Most welcome above all, however, are Simmons's histories of secretaries, warehousemen, and clerks, many the 'blue-coats' drawn from charity schools, whether Christ's Hospital or the Grey Coat School, who found service in North America. Even there, the quality of their accounting and 'flourish' of their handwriting did not escape the scrutiny of the London Committee. Simmons then follows the history beyond the Transfer of Rupert's Land in 1870 and the new shuffle of papers in an era of land sales and shopkeeping within the new dominion. There is a consistent theme connecting the fur trade and modern eras: inevitably, tension mounted as the company's secretive record-keeping traditions ended up preserving documents of ever-greater historical value. In the 1920s, directors nearing their company's 250th anniversary became more conscious of the importance of its records to Canada and its historians. Steps were taken in the interwar period to formally establish a company archive with better organized documents, and, in 1938, make more accessible some of the journals and correspondence in publications of the Hudson's Bay Record Society. In 1950, the company supported the ambitious project to microfilm many pre-1870 records, a boon to Canadian researchers. Finally, momentum growing in the late 1960s to move the company's archives to Canada led to talks between the company and the British and Canadian governments. Eventually, the move took place in 1974, when six twenty-ton containers were dispatched from England - the records divided up between two ships as a safeguard in the event of shipwreck. Their placement in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is rightfully underlined for its importance in...

H. Lloyd Keith "Adventure" of the Colonel Allan oats of mail? Women's hosiery? Military shoes? At a fur trading post? One can imagine the astonishment of the new manager at Fort George in 1822 as he discovered these items and more among the trade goods leftbehind by the previous proprietors. Chief Factor J.D. Cameron of the Hudson's Bay Company arrived at the former Astoria near themouth of the Columbia River on November 8,1821, to assume command of the old trading post. When his canoe pulled alongside the rain-washed wharf, he noticed a crane for landing and loading goods. Amenities such as thiswere uncommon at his previous postings. Looking landward through misting clouds, a few hundred yards away he saw for the first time an imposing palisade some twelve or fifteen feet high enclosing nearly an acre of ground. Two bastions protected the fort'swalls with four- and six-pound cannon, and loopholes were provided along an interior gallery formuskets and swivel guns. Inside he would find two eighteen-pound cannons. All this arma ment protected a bevy of buildings, large and small, and an inventory of trade goods second in value only to those at FortWilliam, the old North West Company headquarters on thewestern shore of Lake Superior.1 Following themerger of theNorth West and Hudson's Bay companies in 1821,Cameron assumed charge of the newly acquired Columbia Depart ment. This vast trading area spilled over the Columbia River drainage to theThompson River in the north, southward as far as the Spanish territo ries, and extended from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. After completion of a thorough inventory of goods on hand at Fort George (the erstwhile Astoria and department headquarters), Cameron wrote awither ing letter acquainting theHudson's Bay Company officers of the status of their new acquisition: "The stock of goods [are] very great, and among the Number of articles tho' very expensive, yet are very useless articles in this 546 OHQ vol. 105, no. 4 ? 2004 Oregon Historical Society QHS neg., QrHi 35111 At the time of theColonel Allan s visit in 1816, Fort George was an enclosure of nearly an acre with fifteen-foot pickets. By 1845, when Henry James Warre traveled to the site and made the drawing on which this lithograph was based, theformer headquarters of theColumbia Department had been reduced to thesefew bucolic structures. Country."2 He had never before seen such items among the goods of a fur trading post, and he was appalled. There were four coats of steel-wire mail; ostrich and hackle feathers; hand grenades; men's, women's, and children's fine hosiery; men's military shoes; fine corduroy jackets and trousers; and fine gingham and silkumbrellas.3 There were also two eighteen-pound can nons, cannon carriages, and 240 rounds of ammunition. George Simpson, Cameron's superior and the Hudson's Bay Company's field governor in western North America, complained that "everything appears tome on theColumbia on too extended a scale except theTrade?4 To understand how and why such items appeared in the inventory at Fort George, one must look to the adventure of theNorth West Company's brig Colonel Allan. The story surrounding that venture also offers insights into theCompany's effort to diversify its trading strategy by plying goods in South America, California, and the Sandwich Islands (now Hawai'i) as well as offering itsColumbia furs for sale in Europe rather than China. Keith, "Adventure" of the Colonel Allan 547 Following the merger of the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821, the Columbia Department eventually experienced one of the greatest financial turnabouts in fur-trade business history. It had been a constant financial drain for theMontreal-based North West Company between 1813 and 1821,but by the end of the decade the Columbia Department had been transformed into a vital economic enterprise.5Much of this financial turn around has been attributed to the reforms introduced by HBC Governor George Simpson as a consequence of his 1824-1825 visit to the Columbia as well as to the Company's earlier decision tomarket Columbia pelts in Europe instead of China.6 Simpson...

The documents of the Hudson's Bay Company have long aroused the interest and curiosity of historians. It is widely known that the Company possesses a unique series of records of its activities, both as a trading concern and as a chartered company charged with the administration of large territories during its history of two and a half centuries. It is expected that these records would throw valuable light on the early history of vast parts of the present Dominion of Canada and also of lands which now form part of the United States of America. It is clear that they would provide material for a history of the Company, as such, and for the story of the early fur-trade between Europe and Canada. Such documents are the legitimate quarry of the historian. He seeks access to them, and he expects facilities for consultation to be given him. So far he has received perhaps inadequate recognition of his claims from the Company. For this there is a double reason. From its origin under the patronage of Prince Rupert the Hudson's Bay Company has been the subject of fierce controversy. Chartered by the Crown, and with specific public duties to perform, it typifies one aspect of English Mercantilism a private corporation which is placed in a privileged position in order that it may regulate an important trade and may advance national interests as well as private profits. Such a position is open to attack from all angles, and the status of the Hudson's Bay Company has been almost constantly challenged. Its duty to explore the vast domains entrusted to its care, to seek and discover a practicable North-west Passage (a duty at last fulfilled in 1937),' its struggles with interlopers of one kind and another, its methods of trapping and of trading, its attitude towards agricultural settlement, towards the natives, towards the trade in spirits, towards missionaries of various denominations, towards its own servants, active or retired they have all been the subject of petition, complaint and litigation. From this almost constant controversy has resulted the production of a certain number of publications and documents which leave an impression of the Company as a corporation with a great past, a history unrivalled in many respects, but open to criticism on some points. Parliamentary enquiries, McLean's Journal of his 25 years' service with the Company, the Reverend Herbert Beaver's published attack on the Company's administration of the Columbia River settlement, the official

(1990). Cradled in Furs Winter Fashions in Montreal in the 1860s. Dress: Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 39-47.

Book Review| November 01 1959 Review: The History of the Hudson's Bay Company, 1670-1870, by E. E. Rich The History of the Hudson's Bay Company, 1670-1870E. E. Rich A. R. M. Lower A. R. M. Lower Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Pacific Historical Review (1959) 28 (4): 391–392. https://doi.org/10.2307/3636137 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation A. R. M. Lower; Review: The History of the Hudson's Bay Company, 1670-1870, by E. E. Rich. Pacific Historical Review 1 November 1959; 28 (4): 391–392. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3636137 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentPacific Historical Review Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1959 The Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

On August 7, 1969, at the age of 73, James Cantley died, ... Some 56 years ago in the summer of 1913 ..., not yet out of his teens, ["Jim" Cantley] ... stepped ashore at Cartwright, Labrador, off the Pelican, the last of the Hudson's Bay Company's sailing ships. ... During his early years fur trading in Arctic Canada by small boats and dog teams he travelled extensively through the eastern Arctic. He carried out exploratory work on the east coast of Baffin Island in search of promising locations for Hudson's Bay Company trading posts. He established in 1914 the first post at Ward Inlet, Frobisher Bay, some 40 miles from the present site of the community, which has now become the main centre for the eastern Arctic. This was at a period when truly Arctic posts designed specifically to trade with the Eskimos for white foxes were being opened in the Arctic. ... In 1921 Jim Cantley was transferred south and appointed District Accountant and later Assistant District Manager of the Hudson's Bay Company's eastern operations with headquarters first at St. John's, Newfoundland and later at Montreal. In 1930 he moved to Winnipeg as Assistant Fur Trade Commissioneer and during the next eight years he made numerous trips throughout the Northwest Territories and the northern parts of all the provinces from coast to coast. He left the Hudson's Bay Company in 1938 and the following year organized and, for the next ten years, managed the Baffin Trading Company Limited which was engaged in trading and transportation in the eastern Arctic. In 1950 he joined the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development .... Part of his work was to carry out a survey of economic conditions in the Arctic. ... he retired from the Department in 1956. In 1957 he was appointed a Fellow of the Arctic Institute of North America and around that time he helped set up and was the Director of the Ottawa office of the Institute. With the closing of this office, Jim Cantley continued his association with the north in one way and another, corresponding with many people who were doing northern research. He also served the Arctic Circle Club for many years as one of the auditors.

Philip A. Chester, former head of the Hudson's Bay Company in North America, who died in Winnipeg on 23 August 1976 at the age of 80, was a founder of the Arctic Institute of North America and a member of its original Board of Governors. He was a firm believer in the importance of scientific research in the North and his Company was the first to support the new Institute financially. He took his responsibilities as a Board member seriously, providing wise counsel to its early officers and assistance to its members working in the field, at a time when government services in the North were few and far between. ... Recognizing that modernization of the fur trade depended for its success on transportation and communication, Philip Chester introduced the use of Company aircraft at a time when there were no aids to navigation and precious few maps. He equipped the trading posts with radio and employed progressive architects to design buildings suited to the special problems of northern construction. He cared very much for the welfare of his employees and provided better housing, special fringe benefits, and such humanizing touches as prizes for the best post gardens. Young Canadian apprentices were recruited for the first time, and the personnel, wherever they might be, soon understood that Mr. Chester not only required good performance but also took a direct interest in them. The Hudson's Bay Company was not alone in changing with the times. Reform of northern government was also on the way, though slower in getting started and uncertain in its direction. When in the nineteen fifties education, health, housing, transportation, and much more were at last acknowledged to be public responsibilities, the old Company did not, as it might well have done, stand in the way of change. When the history of the Canadian North in the present century comes to be written, the name of Philip Chester of the Hudson's Bay Company will stand high among those who led in reforming its administration and improving the conditions of those who live there.

Let me begin by invoking three moments from the history of the North American West. The first occurred in late 1801; the second, in 1842 or early 1843; the third took place in 1881. Together, these three moments set the stage for this volume of essays, an attempt probe the commingling of Canada's West with that of the United States West in history, image, and myth, adapt the phrasing of Henry Nash Smith's subtitle in Virgin Land (1950). Any story, any history, is a combination of verifiable fact, descriptive image, and believed (or disbelieved) mythology, and nowhere has this been more evident that in the North American West it explored, settled, and understood from the sixteenth century the present. Three moments. John L. Allen, author of the excellent Passage Through the Garden: Lewis and Clark and the Image of the American Northwest (1975), has also written of Thomas Jefferson's reaction the publication, in London, of Alexander Mackenzie's Voyages from Montreal, on the River St. Lawrence, through the Continent of North the Frozen and Pacific Oceans in the Years 1789 and 1793 (1801). He says that late in 1801 the President was worried because the publication of Mackenzie's book stirred the imagination of the Western world and jolted Jefferson's thinking on the geography of the western interior of North America (79). As a consequence, Jefferson ordered his own copy of the book from Philadelphia, he began poring his collection of books and maps on western North and he told his personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to begin making preparations for an American exploration the Pacific. More than this, Jefferson also informed the Spanish, British, and French ministers the United States of his intentions send Lewis west, as he put it, 'unite the discoveries' of the explorers of Rupert's Land with those of an American party farther south (80). That's just what Lewis and Clark eventually did--unite the versions of the geographical reality of the North American West then understood in Europe, in British North America, and in the United States. This is a first moment. The second occurred sometime over the winter of 1842-43 in London where Paul Kane, who there after studying art in Italy, met George Catlin and Catlin's art on display in Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. The American then basking in the fame that his for a short time, a notoriety fueled by his best-selling book, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians that had been published in 1841 (see Dippie et al). Kane, inspired by this meeting and by Catlin's images, decided embark on a similar project in Canada. He returned there and made an initial summer sketching trip the northern Great Lakes country in 1845 before securing the support of the Hudson's Bay Company for his transcontinental trip, 1846-48. As J. Russell Harper explains, Sir George Simpson--Inland Governor of the Company--wrote a circular letter all Hudson's Bay Company officers in 'Ruperts Land and Elswehere,' directing that the artist be given free transportation of company boats and 'hospitalities' at all posts. Kane, a guest of the Hudson's Bay Company, could go without cost anywhere in the vast territories it controlled (Qtd. in MacLaren, I Came, 11). It a wonderful deal. Kane, in fact, arrived on the Pacific coast in the same HBC brigade that brought the official news of the Oregon Treaty (1846). That is, he there just vast changes were afoot. The third moment is a brief one, barely mentioned in the biographical accounts of North America's most-famous Western painter, Frederic Remington. In 1881, Remington made his first trip west Montana, the trip from which he sent back--drawn on a piece of wrapping paper--his first illustration appear in Harper's Weekly (in February 1882). During that trip he crossed the Canada-U.S. border on horseback and there, according one commentator, saw his first Mounted Police--bringing in a Blackfoot suspected of murder. …