York Factory Research Articles

The York Factory Express: Fort Vancouver To Hudson Bay, 1826–1849 by Nancy Marguerite Anderson

Reviewed by: The York Factory Express: Fort Vancouver To Hudson Bay, 1826–1849 by Nancy Marguerite Anderson Kenneth Favrholdt THE YORK FACTORY EXPRESS: FORT VANCOUVER TO HUDSON BAY, 1826–1849 by Nancy Marguerite Anderson Ronsdale Press, Vancouver, B.C., 2020. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 300 pages. $24.95, paper. The York Factory Express is British Columbian author Nancy Marguerite Anderson’s second book. She writes from her family connection to the fur trade history of the West, a story that extended across the 49th parallel before the U.S.-Canada boundary was established. Anderson recounts many of the stories penned by the Hudson’s Bay Company’s “gentlemen” traders, clerks, and administrators, usually Scots, and laments the absence of the narratives of the Canadiens, Iroquois, and their mixed-blood descendants, whose job it was to power every mile of these monumental journeys, between 1826 and 1854. Anderson’s account covers up to 1849. The author has woven a detailed tapestry of geography that spans half the continent from Fort Vancouver (now Vancouver, Washington) to York Factory on Hudson Bay (present Manitoba, Canada), a distance of roughly 2,400 miles, the express averaging fifty to sixty days outbound and inbound. Varied were the number of boats (three to five) and men (upwards of forty to seventy-five). The work is rich with description about the route, interspersed with passages from the relevant journals and diaries of such gentlemen as John McLeod (1826), Aemilius Simpson (1826), Edward Ermatinger (1827–1828), James Douglas (1835), George Traill Allan (1841), and Thomas Lowe (1847–1848) — all Scots — except for métis John Charles (1849). The book takes readers traveling as the voyageurs did, down dangerous rapids, through swamps, and across arduous portages, including Athabasca Pass through the Rocky Mountains. Although Anderson uses the gentlemen’s journals to provide the description of the trips, it is the virtually nameless voyageurs whose exertions move the story along. Anderson touches on every aspect of the express voyages, describing the food of the voyageurs, the songs they sang, passengers including women and children, conveyances such as “cassettes” that held journals and correspondence, canoes and horses as well as tracking the clinker-built twenty-eight-foot-long York boats used by the Saskatchewan brigades. No furs or trade goods in bulk were transported on these trips. Halfway through the book, Anderson describes the return trip, known then as the Columbia Express. She mentions six of the gentlemen — Ermatinger, Allan, Douglas, Simpson, Lowe, and Charles — who recount the journey back to Fort Vancouver. There were many new and inexperienced men on this inbound voyage, largely Canadiens and métis, and Orkney men who originally came to York Factory on ships from London. The excellent maps by cartographer Eric Leinberger, however, do not show all the places along the express route, so it is easy for armchair travelers to get lost. The essential ninety-mile Athabasca Portage between Fort Assiniboine and Edmonton House, which Anderson mentions, is not shown on the relevant maps. An appendix of all the placenames along the route would have been useful. There are twenty-eight pages of comprehensive notes, a list of general works consulted, and an index. Many photographs and drawings illustrate the [End Page 107] difficult biannual trip each way. There are some typos in this edition, along with the omitted figure numbers to the eleven maps. A general complaint is that Anderson uses the recent Canadian term “First Nations” with reference to Indigenous people both north and south of the present border. It would have been appropriate to use the actual names of the Indigenous groups where possible. While we do not know many names of the voyageurs, whose tradition was oral, the book’s epilogue is an homage to the “invisible” voyageurs. Anderson concludes by stating: “This was a huge accomplishment and was largely due to the character of the Canadien and Iroquois men who rowed the boats in the early years, and the Métis and First Nations men who later replaced them” (p. 252). The book is a labor of love, which Anderson attributes to her personal connection to the fur traders — her great-grandfather Alexander Caulfield Anderson and her...

Review: Peter Fidler: From York Factory to the Rocky Mountains, edited by Barbara Belyea

Review: Peter Fidler: From York Factory to the Rocky Mountains, edited by Barbara Belyea

Peter Fidler: From York Factory to the Rocky Mountains ed. by Barbara Belyea

Reviewed by: Peter Fidler: From York Factory to the Rocky Mountains ed. by Barbara Belyea Robert M. Briwa Peter Fidler: From York Factory to the Rocky Mountains. Barbara Belyea, ed. Louisville: University Press of Colorado, 2020. Pp. vii+359, sketches, maps, notes, index. $52.00, hardcover, ISBN 978-1-64642-015-5. Hudson Bay Company (hereafter HBC) surveyor Peter Fidler (1769–1822) is one of the more obscure figures of the Canadian fur trade. In Peter Fidler: From York Factory to the Rocky Mountains, Barbara Belyea ensures his greater prominence through masterfully editing two of Fidler's journals ("From York Factory to Buckingham House" and "From Buckingham House to the Rocky Mountains"), which he wrote over a nine-month period traveling the Canadian interior between 1792 and 1793. This volume is an admirable addition to any North American [End Page 138] historical geographer's bookshelf, for the text is a useful primer in understanding not only Peter Fidler's journeys but also the Hudson Bay Company's historical development, its literary practices, and its contributions to Canadian geographical knowledge. Belyea demonstrates how editors play essential roles in making primary sources legible to lay audiences. Her original contributions include an introductory chapter titled "Peter Fidler in Context" and extensive endnotes. I recommend that readers who are unfamiliar with the Hudson Bay Company (or those encountering Fidler for the first time) read these sections prior to diving into the journals, as Belyea provides essential contextual information. These sections outline Fidler's life, explain his obscurity among HBC historians, and provide necessary historical and geographical contexts to his journals. Moreover, Belyea demonstrates how HBC documents like Fidler's journals reflect a conservative literary culture that was developed to efficiently conduct business transactions across a geographically far-flung social network that had both North American and European participants. To modern eyes more accustomed to reading explorers' accounts published for general audiences, Fidler's journals are a challenging read—yet Belyea serves as an exemplary guide to the unfamiliar world of an eighteenth-century surveyor navigating vast tracts of the Canadian interior. Peter Fidler was a meticulous chronicler. His journals exhibit all the qualities required of an HBC surveyor. Fidler's daily entries are written in a form of shorthand akin to a captain's log. The journals' terse narrative structure—employing dashes instead of punctuation to indicate distinct ideas or temporal breaks—reflect wider writing practices adopted by literate HBC employees, who were required to produce standardized manuscript forms. Standardized lists, letters, journals, and maps were common HBC business documents. They often lost their utilitarian structure, however, when folded into memoirs by those who sought to profit off their HBC experiences by selling them to armchair geographers. In contrast, the two journals reproduced in this volume are the unedited entries of a skilled HBC employee in the field, designed for field navigation and use. Devoid of literary flourishes or sentiment, they document key events as perceived by someone accustomed to surveying, hard travel, and interacting with unfamiliar cultures for extended periods. Belyea's choice to reproduce Fidler's field notes in their original [End Page 139] structure is a key strength of the volume. Fidler seamlessly transitions between prose narrative, survey measurements, and sketched maps. Belyea chose to reproduce the latter as photocopies, inserting them wherever they appeared in the journals in their relative positions. Often these sketch maps leave Fidler's script legible, though others' small size—sometimes less than a sixteenth of a page—leave readers squinting at Fidler's annotations in vain. I found that the maps' positions on the page visually broke up Fidler's prose and sometimes left me disoriented, at least until I identified the correct narrative thread to pick up reading again (53). At other times, I wished for editorial annotations or captions for the more obscure sketches. Occasional disorientations aside, I applaud Belyea's decision to leave these elements of Fidler's journals untouched, because she rightly notes that to do so retains a sense of "how Fidler and other fur-trade writers perceived and mentally organized events and situations" (28). An important contribution of this volume is its ability to reflect how Euro-American geographical...

“We See Hard Times Ahead of Us”: York Factory and Indigenous Life in the Western Hudson Bay Region, 1880–1925

Focusing on the community of York Factory and the surrounding region in northern Manitoba between 1880 and 1925, this article traces the transformation of the Muskego Cree and Metis peoples of the district from independent traders, hunters, and wage labourers to a colonized people with diminished economic opportunities. Through evidence gathered from Hudson’s Bay Company journals, reports, and accounts, as well as from Department of Indian Affairs records, missionary correspondence, and oral history, I describe how the establishment of a fur trade mode of production incorporated the Indigenous economy of western Hudson Bay into an international market of trade and production, making the people of York Factory part of a global economy based upon a capitalist exploitation of resources. I also suggest that, beginning in the late nineteenth century, the Hudson’s Bay Company conspired to mitigate the economic impacts of resource depletion on its profit margin in the York district by pursuing an arrangement with the Canadian government to assume financial responsibility for the Indigenous people of western Hudson Bay. The article will trace the process through which changing capital interests, both local and global, came to manipulate an age-old pattern of subsistence and labour, debt and trade, as well as economic interdependence.

York Factory – National Historic Site of Canada Kichewaskahikun (Cree) (“The Great House”)

York Factory – National Historic Site of Canada Kichewaskahikun (Cree) (“The Great House”)

Non-insured Health Benefits for First Nations and Inuit People: an Overview for Information Providers

The Non-insured Health Benefits (NIHB) program provides First Nations and Inuit people in Canada with coverage for a limited range of medically necessary goods and services. These can include prescription drugs, dental care, vision care, medical supplies and equipment, short- term crisis counselling, and medical transportation (1). This article provides health librarians and other providers of consumer health information with some background on the program, differing perspectives on the legal and treaty requirements for service provision, the health literacy implications, and the role of a Treaty 7 NIHB Navigator in service delivery. Background and perspectives on the provision of NHIB Health care has been perceived in vastly different ways by government and First Nations people. Government support of medical services for First Nations, Inuit, and Metis people has a long history and various departments have been responsible over the years. The Medical Services Branch of Health Canada (MSB) was created in 1962 when various field services were merged with the Indian Health and Northern Health Services. MSB was renamed the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch in 2000 and now administers NIHB (2). The federal government claims the NIHB program supports registered First Nations and recognized Inuit in reaching an overall health status comparable to other Canadians. Though their health status is not equal and comparable, First Nations and Inuit people continuously work to ensure their health needs are met and are equal to other Canadians, and they assert that health benefits are an inherent Aboriginal and Treaty right and are constitu- tionally protected (3). In 1974, the federal government's position was written in a policy that stated there were no statutory or treaty obligations for providing health services to Indians, though the federal government would provide services and give financial assistance when medically necessary (2). They had also previously noted in 1957 that under Treaty Six medical care was an obligation, but medical services for all Indians were provided on humanitarian rather than on legal grounds (4). This difference in perspective creates barriers and jurisdictional issues around access to health care for First Nations and Inuit people. Treaty Six is the only treaty that specifically mentions health care in its text, which includes the clause for a medicine chest to be held at the Indian agent's home and offers emergency help, for example during epidemics. These clauses have been interpreted in various ways, particularly around the extent of care (4). However, the Supreme Court affirmed that the terms of treaties are not limited to the text in the treaty, but rather include the actual agreements between the parties (3). Historical documents show that several other treaty negotiations included discussions about the provision of medical services, but those discussions did not appear in the final text of the treaty (4). In addition to these specific clauses in Treaty Six, there are other supporting arguments around treaty rights and health care. Historical events support the First Nations assertion that medical care was tied to treaty rights. The connection between treaty and health care was solidly entrenched, with doctors frequently in attendance when treaty annuities were paid out, so much so that people at York Factory in Treaty Five spoke out in anger when no doctor accompanied the annuity treaty payments of $5 in 1915 (4). From a First Nations historical perspective, disagree- ments over jurisdiction and responsibility for the delivery of medical services influence current obstacles to access for First Nations and Inuit patients. These obstacles can include funding for the NIHB program, effective commu- nication, limited transportation, and in many cases, limited access to provincial health services and programs if clients reside on reserve. When the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) assessed the NIHB program in 2005, they found that increases in funding levels were only limited to an estimated population growth rate. Health needs and cost drivers were not considered as part of the funding equation (3). As well, cutbacks in the 1990s confused clients as benefits were delisted, eligibility and access changed, and generic drugs were encouraged; these changes continue today. Before certain medications could be accessed at a

Letters from Rupert’s Land, 1826–1840: James Hargrave of the Hudson’s Bay Company (review)

Reviewed by: Letters from Rupert’s Land, 1826–1840: James Hargrave of the Hudson’s Bay Company Erika Behrisch Elce (bio) Helen E. Ross, editor. Letters from Rupert’s Land, 1826–1840: James Hargrave of the Hudson’s Bay Company. McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2009. xi, 402. $49.95 Reading Helen E. Ross’s introduction to her edited collection of James Hargrave’s letters initially confused me: Hargrave, who ‘served almost forty years in Rupert’s Land,’ retired in 1859 as the Hudson’s Bay Company chief factor at York Factory, but Ross’s introduction deals in as much – if not more – detail with Hargrave’s family history, religious background, and attitudes toward women than with his experience at the gateway to the HBC’s vast Northern Department. What became clear upon reading the letters was that Ross, a respectful editor, was following Hargrave’s lead. Though readers interested in HBC history may be intrigued by the book’s title (McGill-Queen’s University Press makes it a handsome book to behold), they may be surprised by the contents. Hargrave’s letters are from Rupert’s Land, but the location of their creation is almost the only connection they have with York Factory. The presiding impression of Hargrave’s life at and around the Hudson’s Bay Company post is that he continually longs to be elsewhere. Moreover, though he professes contentment at his post – and his letters do occasionally speak of social pleasures to be had, most often around the table and involving a bottle – he only rarely feels compelled to describe his experiences. Part of his reticence may be prim professionalism; he simply doesn’t want to share company secrets with others. But the consistency with which he declines to offer any detailed anecdote – even against his correspondents’ express wishes to hear more details about his life – suggests that he is, in fact, uninterested in the events that fill his days. He excuses himself from playing the northern raconteur in many of his letters, lamenting that ‘month follows month without one story occurring worth telling.’ When adventures do occur, he is often [End Page 687] just as reticent: ‘The account of my journey from lake Superior hither [. . .] I am sorry to say I can now recall so lamely that every feature of interest has been blotted from it.’ These moments are disappointments, since Hargrave is so ideally placed to tell the story of life at York Factory and in the Hudson’s Bay Company: he is literate, articulate, and obviously has the gift of the gab, but he is excessively choosy about his topics. The collection contains numerous letters, especially to Hargrave’s family, that repeat each other, but the information in them remains interesting: Hargrave’s constant advice to his parents and siblings – about what to purchase and the price they should pay, how to arrange their houses, why never to lend money – reveals much about settler life in Lower Canada during the period. On occasion, his letters also contain some fascinating details of northern life in the 1830s, and almost against his will a narrative of HBC life emerges. These details are mostly found in the infrequent but regular letters to John George McTavish, chief factor at York Factory from 1821 to 1830. In his correspondence with McTavish, Hargrave describes HBC personalities, social factions, the quality of stores, and the fallout of McTavish’s decision to marry a Scottish woman after starting a native family. These comparatively short letters give a tantalizing peek into the commercial as well as social practices of company men, and their sprinkling throughout the book perks up the narrative considerably. In spite of his refusal to describe his life at York Factory, Hargrave’s correspondence reveals what is perhaps the essence of life in Rupert’s Land: it is a place to work but not to live. Hard-working and dreaming of his future, Hargrave devotes his youth to the stores at York Factory in order to live out his later years among family and friends. His greatest pleasures are the packages he receives that have nothing to do with work: personal letters and the occasional book. He is an...

Commerce by a frozen sea: Native Americans and the European fur trade

Introduction: Native Americans and Europeans in the Eighteenth-Century Fur Trade 1. Hats and the European Fur Market 2. The Hudson's Bay Company and the Organization of the Fur Trade 3. Indians as Consumers 4. The Decline of Beaver Populations 5. Industrious Indians 6. Property Rights, Depletion, and Survival 7. Indians and the Fur Trade: A Golden Age? Epilogue. The Fur Trade and Economic Development Appendixes A. Fur Prices, Beaver Skins Traded, and the Simulated Beaver Population at Fort Albany, York Factory, and Fort Churchill, 1700-1763 189 B. Simulating the Beaver Population C. A Model of Harvesting Large Game: Joint Ownership Versus Competition D. Food and the Relative Incomes of Native Americans and English Workers Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the Northwest by Jack Nisbet

 Reviews stronger appreciation of both the Nez Perce story and the national narrative of which it forms an integral part. Andrew H. Fisher The College of William and Mary The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the Northwest by Jack Nisbet Sasquatch Books, Seattle, 2009. Notes, bibliography, index. 290 pages. $23.95 cloth. Jack Nisbet’s knowledge of nineteenth-century Pacific Northwest inland fur-trade history and his background as a naturalist shine through in this biography of Scottish botanist David Douglas. This perspective brings forth new information to both seasoned Douglas enthusiasts and readers unfamiliar with the Douglas story. The Douglas fir — the ubiquitous evergreen tree of the Pacific Northwest — is familiar to most people living in the region,yet the story of themanforwhomthetreeisnamedisrelatively unknown. Nisbet, in his carefully researched and annotated biography, is helping remedy this situation. Douglas was employed as a plant collector by the Horticultural Society of London and was hosted in western North America by the British Hudson’s Bay Company.He kept a field journal during his travels,and Nisbet draws on As simple as one … two … three … One … share an unforgettable heritage experience. Two … give back by joining or donating to the Oregon Historical Society. Three … match your gifts with a contribution to the Cultural Trust, earning a credit that will reduce your Oregon taxes by your entire donation to the Trust. It all adds up: Trust donations directly benefit the Oregon Historical Society and support 1,200 cultural nonprofits in every county. You give twice but it only costs you once. Now, that’s smart giving. Donate at www.culturaltrust.org. Carleton Watkins, “Cape Horn, Columbia River,” 1867, albumen mammoth print, included in Wild Beauty: Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge, 1867 – 1957, a 2008 exhibition (Portland Art Museum) and book (Oregon State University Press). Photo, collection of Oregon Historical Society. 775 summer street ne, ste 200 salem, or 97301 (503) 986-0088 cultural.trust@state.or.us Follow us on:  OHQ vol. 111, no. 2 Douglas’s journal, correspondence among fur traders, and reports to weave a masterful story of the man behind the science.Douglas was the first scientisttoexploredeepinto the uncharted wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, and as Nisbet writes, “his finely textured accounts of the Northwest still shimmer against a place that, two centuries later, seems both familiar and drastically changed” (p. xiii). Douglas’s persistent efforts during his nearly ten years in western North America introduced more than two hundred new species to the gardens and forests of Europe. Though Douglas has been the subject of several fine biographies since his untimely death in 1834 at age thirty-five,Nisbet’s account is important because of his familiarity with the Pacific Northwest landscape and his ability to readily reveal the natural world Douglas was so passionate about. Nisbet knows his plants and animals and how they were used by Native Americans and fur-trade society. The author also gives readers an understanding of the larger context of the time period in which Douglas did his work:“in Great Britain at that time, botany reigned as the most important of the natural sciences — the basis of all medical training, and an essential cog in the economic engine of the Empire” (p. 8). Nisbet tracked Douglas across present-day Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia , following the routes the plant collector described so vividly in his journals. The biography is organized chronologically, following a prologue that places Douglas in the spring of 1827, hiking across the Rocky Mountains, accompanying the fur traders’ annual York Factory Express from Fort Vancouver to Hudson Bay. They were hauling a year’s worth of furs for London’s fashion markets. Douglas’s own words describe the dramatic mountain landscape, his feelings toward it, and the physical difficulties involved. Nisbet writes the narrative with a voice that quickly relates detail and context: “An oblong tin cylinder with rounded edges hung from a leather strap and bounced against his chest. This collecting box,or vasculum,identified the straggler as the Scottish plant collector and naturalist, David Douglas” (p. x). Five excellent maps help readers organize Douglas’s journeys. Each chapter relates the discrete stories that...

'It Was Canadian, Then, Typically Canadian': Revisiting Wilderness at Historic Sites

A culture of wilderness – academic, artistic, and popular – that idealised the heroic age of the fur trade so dominated historic site selection in Canada that our idea of wilderness became married to a particular point in time. Along the old routes of exploration and trade, on the rivers of the Canadian Shield spilling out onto the northern plains, Canada has preserved and reconstructed fur-trade sites to convey a sensibility of wilderness. Rocky Mountain House, York Factory, Old Fort William and others remain the flagship sites at both the national and provincial levels. However, these sites face significant dilemmas in terms of managing their environmental and historical resources. Choices of location, reconstruction and interpretation are essential to constructing an illusion or memory of wilderness.

The Triangle Fire, the Protocols of Peace, and Industrial Democracy in Progressive Era New York

Richard A. Greenwald argues that the New York Factory Investigating Commission (fic) created in the wake of the Triangle Fire “became the embodiment of Protocolism” (p. 217). More specifically, the fic drew on the ideas, ideals, and personnel of the Protocols of Peace proposed by Louis Brandeis and others as a means to bring both peace and rationality to the garment trades following the great strikes of 1909 and 1910. The claim is well worth exploring. The fic not only transformed working conditions in New York, it invented urban liberalism and forged the first working alliance between middle-class experts and reformers and machine politicians. Reformers such as Henry Moskowitz and Belle Moskowitz had helped hammer out and implement the Protocols and then worked closely with Al Smith and Robert Wagner. Unsurprisingly, as Greenwald shows, those reformers brought similar ideas to both projects and a similar vision of a rationalized market in which profits flowed from efficiencies rather than from naked exploitation of workers.

Eighteenth-Century Naturalists of Hudson Bay (review)

Reviewed by: Eighteenth-Century Naturalists of Hudson Bay Peter Keating Eighteenth-Century Naturalists of Hudson Bay. Stuart Houston, Tim Ball, and Mary Houston. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003. Pp. xxiv, 334, illus. $49.95 From its inception, the Hudson's Bay Company kept records that have served historians well. Among the data collected by the company, a good deal concerned natural history which, in its eighteenth-century acceptance, concerned not only plants and animals but much of what today would be termed anthropology, geography, geology, climatology, and so on. So in addition to furnishing the company with a steady supply of pelts (and feathers and quills), Hudson's Bay employees and visitors also provided measurements of temperature, rain and snowfall, the freezing point of mercury, the transit of Venus, as well as observations on Native language and custom, and samples of new species of plants, birds, and other wildlife. The present work offers a history of the data-gathering activities of eight Hudson's Bay Company employees whose employment spanned the eighteenth century. The method used in this study is resolutely biographical. Following an introduction to the Hudson's Bay Company, we are given brief biographies of six European naturalists such as Sir Hans Sloane and Karl Linnaeus who constitute the background, so to speak, for natural history in the eighteenth century. This contextualization, such as it is, is followed by eight more biographies of the aforementioned Hudson's Bay employees who collected data for their European masters. The book concludes with four more biographies of British naturalists in Charles Town, SC, who also supplied specimens and observations to Sloan and Linnaeus. Sandwiched in between this onslaught of biographies is a short chapter on climatology, which describes some of the weather observations [End Page 375] made by both the naturalists and Native peoples, and some of the issues involved in interpreting the observations, given the limits of the instrumentation used. As it stands, however, it is more a collection of notes than a chapter with a coherent thesis. The biographical approach allows the authors considerable leeway in their choice of facts, and in this respect, they are often like their natural history predecessors, unable to resist the odd fact or unusual observation. While much of the content of the biographies concerns the collection of natural history data and natural historical observations, both of which will usefully serve a future history of natural history in Canada (and elsewhere for that matter) or a history of the environment, there is an irritating tendency to stray off topic and to raise issues of peripheral interest (number of wives, Native and otherwise, number of children, alcoholism, etc.). Sometimes the detail borders on the whimsical, as when we are told, for example, that in order to join James Cook's ship the Resolution, for which he had been hired as a naturalist, Johann Forster took a post chaise to Plymouth (from where?), 'reaching Plymouth dock on 29 June' (22), only to be told in the same paragraph that he needn't have done so since the ship didn't leave until two weeks later. The importance of reporting Forster's undue haste is not explained, and it seems likely that there is no explanation. Why we are told that John Latham's mother was 'a Sotheby from Yorkshire' (28) remains equally mysterious. Ultimately, the intellectual content of the subject as well as the institutional context is largely drowned out by the often dreary flow of biographical minutiae, recurrent priority disputes – the authors are fastidious in their tracking of attributions across different editions of Arctic Zoology – and value judgements of questionable value; do we really know that Thomas Pennant was a 'refined gentleman' or that 'the 1770s was an exciting decade, notable for intellectual ferment' (127)? What I have described so far occupies merely half the book. Aside from the notes and indices, the other half is composed entirely of appendices. While I do not deny that there is much information contained herein (for somebody), I do not understand the principles behind their inclusion. Why, for example, is there a list of all the boats that sailed into York Factory between 1716...

Working Women and the Triangle Fire

This article examines newspaper coverage of the Triangle fire of 1911, focusing on the issue of labor and women's position in the workplace during the Progressive Era. The treatment of the fire by the four newspapers studied was unique. It focused attention on the working conditions faced by the workers rather than the violence that often resulted from their demands for better conditions. This decried the popular image of women as the “angel of the hearth,” protected and cosseted by the men in their families, and instead showed them as exploited workers and victims. Publicity about the fire and the ensuing investigations eventually led to the formation of the New York Factory Investigation Commission and sweeping factory safety code regulations.

From the courts to the state legislatures: social justice feminism, labor legislation, and the 1920s

The Progressive Era, a period of important social and political activism which stretched from 1890 through the end of World War I, now offers a rich, diverse historiography.1 In contrast, the 1920s...

Chronology of Terrestrial Den Use by Polar Bears in Western Hudson Bay as Indicated by Tree Growth Anomalies

In a large polar bear denning area inland from the coast of western Hudson Bay south of Churchill, Manitoba, previous denning activity was determined by examining tree growth anomalies in the black spruce (Picea mariana) around and above den sites. A concentrated sample of dens was examined at each of three lakes, and 14 additional den sites were sampled individually on nine lakes and streams, for a total of 31 den sites. Trees sampled at these den sites ranged in age from 46 to 236 years (n = 83, mean = 136, SE ± 95.66). Some individual den sites dated back at least 200 years. Although some dens had been used for up to 29 years, most were used for only 12 years or less, presumably until melting permafrost caused their collapse. Half of the dens were reused two years after their initial use, but the probability of den reuse declined in subsequent years to about 0.25 after 10 years. During the 20th century, coincident with a reduction in hunting during 1920-53 and the subsequent abandonment of York Factory, there appears to have been an increase in den activity and an accompanying change in the pattern of denning activity. The rate of disturbance to the trees at dens correlated significantly to the number of polar bear hides traded at York Factory over the 1840-1935 period (r = 0.654; p < 0.005). During 1850-99, denning activity was greater at points more distant from the trading post at York Factory. In 1900-53, there was an overall increase in denning activity, which was greatest in denning areas nearer to York Factory (r = -0.872; p < 0.01). In 1954-93, the increase in denning activity continued, but varied with distance from the coast (r = -0.724; p < 0.05). Mark-recapture studies undertaken from 1970 to 2000 confirm that female polar bears in the western Hudson Bay population have a long-term fidelity to this specific area for maternity denning, and from this study it is evident that the population has used this denning area for several hundred years at least.

TRADE, CONSUMPTION, AND THE NATIVE ECONOMY: LESSONS FROM YORK FACTORY, HUDSON BAY

Like Europeans and colonists, eighteenth-century Native Americans were purchasing a greatly expanded variety of goods. As fur prices rose from 1716 to 1770, there was a shift in expenditures from producer and household goods to tobacco, alcohol, and other luxuries by Indians who traded furs at the Hudson's Bay Company's York Factory post. A consumer behavior model, using company accounts, shows that Indians bought more European goods in response to higher fur prices and, perhaps more importantly, increased their effort in the fur trade. These findings contradict much that has been written about Indians as producers and consumers.

Property Rights, Competition, and Depletion in the Eighteenth-Century Canadian Fur Trade: The Role of the European Market

Pricing behavior at three Hudson's Bay Company trading posts is examined in terms of a model of long-run profit maximization of a depletable resource. At Fort Churchill, where the company acted as a monopsonist purchaser of furs from the Indians, rising European fur prices had little impact on prices paid to Indians and beaver stocks in the hinterland were maintained. At Fort Albany and York Factory, where the company faced competition from French traders, prices at the posts were raised and the beaver was depleted. These outcomes are consistent with optimal pricing behavior by the company. The lack of well-defined Native property rights to the beaver was a crucial element.

Voices from Hudson Bay: Cree Stories from York Factory

The era the elders describe, from the end of World War I to the closing of York Factory in 1957, saw dramatic changes - both positive and negative - to aboriginal life in the North. The extension of Treaty 5 in 1910 to include members of the York Factory band, the arrival of police and government agents, and the shifting economy of the fur trade are all discussed. Despite these upheavals, however, the elders' accounts demonstrate the continuity of northern life in the twentieth century, from the persistence of traditional ways to the ongoing role of community and kinship ties. Perceptions of aboriginal life have been shaped largely by non-Native accounts that offer limited views of Swampy Cree history and record little beyond the social and economic interaction that was part of life in the fur trade. The stories in this collection provide Cree perspectives on northern life and history, and represent the legacy of a younger generation of aboriginal people.

Voices from Hudson Bay: Cree Stories from York Factory

Voices from Hudson Bay: Cree Stories from York Factory

Voices from Hudson Bay: Cree stories from York Factory

The era the elders describe, from the end of World War I to the closing of York Factory in 1957, saw dramatic changes - both positive and negative - to aboriginal life in the North. The extension of Treaty 5 in 1910 to include members of the York Factory band, the arrival of police and government agents, and the shifting economy of the fur trade are all discussed. Despite these upheavals, however, the elders' accounts demonstrate the continuity of northern life in the twentieth century, from the persistence of traditional ways to the ongoing role of community and kinship ties. Perceptions of aboriginal life have been shaped largely by non-Native accounts that offer limited views of Swampy Cree history and record little beyond the social and economic interaction that was part of life in the fur trade. The stories in this collection provide Cree perspectives on northern life and history, and represent the legacy of a younger generation of aboriginal people.