There was abuse of Indian women, particularly in the period of competition, but it should be emphasised that the norm of fur trade society was the development of distinct family units and that many fathers showed considerable concern for the welfare of their children. The Hudson's Bay Company began the first schools in western Canada when in 1806 schools were set up at the Bayside posts to provide for the rudimentary education of the children of its employees. Boys found employment with the fur companies, while girls were raised to become the wives of other fur-traders. By the early nineteenth century, the daughters of mixed marriages had largely replaced the Indian wives in fur trade society. As a result, there was a much greater tendency for "country marriages" to be regarded as unions for life, and many fur-traders and their half-breed wives were remarried by the missionaries. Quite a number of officers took their familes with them when they retired to eastern Canada, while Red River and later Vancouver Island provided a permanent home for many company employees and their families.
Conclusion
As the fur trade was supplanted by the coming of settlement, the unique way of life that had characterised early western Canada faded into oblivion. The motive for close economic cooperation between Indian and white disappeared with the result that Indian and Métis were pushed to the periphery of western society. The waterways fell silent, the forts decayed and were torn down, their history being of no significance to the people building the new cities of the West.
Life in the fur trade was hard, often monotonous; yet it is interesting that for the people who lived it, it was surrounded by an aura of freedom and adventure. Let us leave the last word to the old voyageur who declared in 1825:
I have been forty-two years in this country. For twenty-four I was a light canoe man.... No portage was too long for me.... Fifty songs a day were nothing to me. I could carry, paddle, walk and sing with any man I ever saw.... I wanted for nothing; and I spent all my earnings in the enjoyment of pleasure. Five hundred pounds, twice told, have passed through my hands; although now I have not a spare shirt to my back, nor a penny to buy one. Yet, were I young again, I should glory in commencing the same career. There is no life so happy as a voyageur's life; none so independent; no place where a man enjoys so much variety and freedom as in the Indian country. Huzza! Huzza! Pour le pays sauvage!
