To regulate social relations among the men at the Company's trading posts, the directors of the Company and the men themselves emulated customs, usages and laws associated with the British naval tradition in the early modern historical period. These naval traditions reflected the hierarchy and authority practised in British households of the era and applied to a society consisting solely of adult males. While the Company and its officers and men imitated the British example, their circumstances in the coastal factories of Hudson Bay required adaptations. Traditions associated with social hierarchy and authority, however, appeared to prove functional in the new world. Adult males regulated their behaviour towards each other in terms of the reciprocal privileges and responsibilities associated with each rank. Status alone, however, was not the sole regulator of lives; merit permitted significant movement between ranks. During the eighteenth century most officers were recruited from the ranks of the tradesmen. The image that seemed to define appropriate behaviour was that of a "man of consequence". The individual who crowned the social hierarchy of "men of consequence" in the trading post was the post Governor or Chief Factor.His privileges included more and better food, drink, clothing and living quarters while his responsibilities included not only the profitability of the fur trade but the basic welfare of the inhabitants of the factory and members of the surrounding Homeguard bands. His manner and lifestyle became the epitome of the good life in the trading post. Even the Homeguard Cree came to recognize him as "Uckimow", the Patriarch.
Officially the Hudson's Bay Company banned fraternization with the Indians except for officers at the time of trade. This regulation had a two-fold purpose: it was intended to prevent the development of private trade and to avoid unpleasant incidents that might prove disruptive to a peaceful fur trade. Rather than following the Company's nonfraternization directive, the men of the trading post appear to have regulated their social relations with the Homeguard Cree on the basis of customs associated with the naval tradition in Great Britain. In the trading post only the Governor or Chief Factor was permitted to have an Indian woman as a "country wife". For other officers and servants seeking family bonds in Rupert's Land it was possible only among the surrounding Homeguard Cree bands. Such an arrangement was acceptable to the Homeguard Cree, who perceived the value of having a relation in the trading post who had access to the storehouse. At the same time officers and servants who had families in Homeguard Cree bands depended upon adult male Homeguard Cree kinsmen to see to their families' interests during the extended periods when they could not leave the trading posts. When an officer or servant retired he could neither join his family nor have them accompany him back to Great Britain. One noteworthy result was that over the century 1670-1770 the Homeguard became a biologically mixed people, though culturally remaining Cree.
In spite of effective opposition mounted by the French inland, the coast factory system of trade remained the policy of the Hudson's Bay Company. With practices derived from the traditions of the coureur de bois in the previous century, Canadien traders blanketed the region north of the Great Lakes. En derouine parties visited Indian bands in their trapping and hunting grounds, offering a selection of necessary trade goods. Yet the Hudson's Bay Company was slow to respond. It would abandon its century-old coastal factory trading policy only when it came to realize that the advantages of cheaper transportation costs were not sufficient to overcome the enterprising trading practices of its rivals in the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes trading system.
The St. Lawrence-Great Lakes
Trading System, 1665-1763
By the 1660s the French government had shifted its view of the fur trade from that of a predominantly commercial enterprise to that of an instrument of imperial expansion. Because these uses of the fur trade, as administered by local merchants and government officials, meshed admirably with Indian concepts of their own political and economic interests, the French enjoyed significant success. From a Western European perspective, the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes fur trade system enabled the French to dominate the interior of the continent, as well as to protect the infant settlement of New France from the expansionist energies of much more populous Anglo-American colonies to the south. The fur trade also played a significant role in the process whereby the "Canadien" emerged culturally distinct from the "French" in North America.
Initially the Royal Government saw the fur trade as a major reason for the colony's vulnerability to Iroquois attack. With numbers of young men absent from the colony seeking their fortune in fur trade activities in the interior, New France lacked the socio-economic foundations necessary to resist attack effectively. The Royal Government initiated a compact settlement policy, restricting access to the interior and encouraging economic diversification and population growth.
The personal interests of merchants involved in the fur trade were not in harmony with the compact settlement policy. The system of trading licenses was soon abused as merchants and government officials, for purposes of personal profit, cooperated in circumventing Royal Government dictates. A particularly flagrant example was the joint venture involving the Governor, Count Frontenac, and the merchant adventurer Rene-Robert Cavelier de La Salle. Such partnerships contributed to an increased flow of parchment beaver to French warehouses, eventually leading to the temporary collapse of the trade in beaver pelts in 1696. However, Canadien merchants and local officials, by circumventing official policy, succeeded in sustaining the system of fur trade alliances anchored on Montréal and in maintaining the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes trading system as an instrument of French policy. In 1701 when the Royal Government abandoned its traditional policy in favour of one aimed at hemming the English into regions adjacent to the Atlantic coast and the shores of Hudson Bay, the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes trading system proved effective for promoting such a policy.
Problems in logistics limited French expansion in the Northwest to the Lakehead region on Lake Superior. Supplies of corn and salt pork for the voyageurs ran out in the Lake Superior region, and the exigencies of time did not permit canoe brigades to hunt for their sustenance. The solution to the problem was achieved by Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de la Verendrye, Commandant de poste du nord at Fort Kaministiquia from 1729 to 1743. With Royal Government support, acquired for exploration of the route to the Western Sea, he built a chain of posts westward from the Lakehead, following the water route through Rainy Lake and Lake of the Woods to the Winnipeg River and Lake Winnipeg. While these posts accepted furs from surrounding bands, they encouraged a trade in provisions as well. The wild rice of the region was admirably suited to the needs of the fur trade; harvested by the Indians in autumn, it could be stored and conveyed with ease. Dried meat and fish were traded as well and gardening was pursued with vigour at each post. La Verendrye's success in dealing with logistics enabled the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes trading system to expand into the Great Plains region. His subsequent journey to the agricultural villages of the Mandan Indians along the Missouri River proved unrewarding in terms both of the fur trade and of the search for the Western Sea. His successors emphasized efforts on the Saskatchewan River where opportunities for trading quality pelts, if not for discovering the Western Sea, were more obvious.
The success of the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes trading system on the Saskatchewan River depended on a policy opposite to that of the Hudson's Bay Company. Rather than leaving the Indians to collect furs and transport them to coastal depots, Canadien traders, reflecting the history of their trading system since the destruction of Huronia, utilized small parties going en derouine to trade with the Indians. These parties gathered furs at central locations and with their own crews of engagés transported them to Montréal. The hazards and costs involved in this system of trade were significant. As a result Canadien traders emphasized low-bulk, high-value pelts, discouraging bear and wolf pelts, along with hides of the moose and buffalo. The canot du nord which replaced the canot du maître on northern waters carried only half the capacity of its eastern progenitor so Canadien traders could offer neither the number nor the variety of goods available at Hudson's Bay Company coastal factories. Yet in spite of the higher prices they were required to pay, it is apparent that the Indians of the interior welcomed the presence of the Canadien traders. Immediately the trade at the Hudson's Bay Company's York Factory dropped by two-fifths, and soon it would drop by over half. Convenience was a crucial factor in determining the trade habits of the Indians of the interior.
No doubt some of the family bands of the Cree and Assiniboine trading Indians had misgivings concerning the presence of traders from New France. While traders offered convenience, they reduced the need for paramount trading chiefs by allowing individual band leaders to conduct their own trade negotiations. Some of the great trading chiefs continued their traditional role by carrying furs for which the Canadians had no use to the Hudson's Bay Company's coastal factories. Others, however, abandoned the trading role and turned to the plains and the exploitation of the buffalo on a year-round basis. The cultural evolution of some Cree and Assiniboine towards a "plains" way of life progressed slowly over the half century from 1730 to 1780. Unlike the Montagnais a century earlier, they continued to play a middleman role, not as traders but as politico- military alliance brokers, denying their enemies and permitting their friends access to weaponry derived from Western European products. When Cree and Assiniboine turned to year-round exploitation of the buffalo herds, their interests clashed with those of the Blackfoot Confederacy. The Blackfoot were in the process of acquiring the horse from peoples to the southwest and they were harassed by the better-armed Cree and Assiniboine who also wished to acquire the animal, a technologically superior means of exploiting the buffalo herds. To facilitate their purposes the Cree and Assiniboine sought to regulate the flow of weaponry from the trading posts.
Critical to the success of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence fur trade was the role of commercial and cultural "go-between" or broker. With the expansion of the trade to the Great Plains, a variety of persons filled this role which previously had been associated with the coureur de bois. To succeed, brokers required the graciousness of the diplomat, the showmanship of the performer, the curiosity of the adventurer and the survival instincts of the politician. In several instances Indian trade chiefs had performed this role admirably and would continue to do so. Some bourgeois had acquired such skills by serving as clerks or commis in their youth and leading trading parties en derouine. This activity was the coureur de bois role par excellence. Among the ranks of the engages were those who wished to be "their own boss" but remain in the fur trade. These gens du libre, or freemen , took Indian wives and frequently functioned as brokers in relations with their wives' kinsmen. Both Canadien traders and Indians respected those who performed this coureur de bois role. For an ambitious commis the role could ensure the experience and social contacts with Indians and traders that facilitated a successful career as bourgeois in the Canadien community. For the freeman the role frequently guaranteed better prices for his goods when he traded at the trading post. When living among the Indians the role ensured the freeman a share of their goods as well as a place of respect in their councils. Such circumstances permitted some freemen to move easily between the socio-cultural worlds of the Indian and the Canadien, an ability unknown to many who were tied to unicultural worlds.
Events in mid-eighteenth century Europe, manifesting themselves in North America as battles between conventional military forces, spelled the end of French dominance in the North American interior. The flow of trade goods to the pays d'en haut northwest of the Lakehead slowed to a trickle as the Seven Years' War unfolded in North America. Even before the battle on the Plains of Abraham in 1759, the Hudson's Bay Company believed that developments were vindicating its century-old coastside factory system of trade. In spite of criticism of its policy as the sleep by the frozen sea , the Company believed that, with the fall of Québec and the end of the "French" threat, its traditional policy could continue for another hundred years. Within a decade it would be proved wrong.
Rival Traders in the Interior, 1763-1787
Merchants contracted as suppliers to victorious British forces occupying New France were among the first of the "pedlars" to attempt to revive the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes trading system. Dependent upon Canadien engages and commis, the pedlars quarrelled raucously with the Indians and among themselves. The events of Pontiac's uprising in 1763 demonstrated the ignorance of the British government and British merchants about conducting a fur trade along the Great Lakes. Yet within a few years the pedlars overcame their initial difficulties and penetrated beyond the Lakehead, threatening the Hudson's Bay Company's trade at its coastal factories.
The pedlars conducted their trade through highly effective partnerships. A Montréal partner was responsible for acquiring trade goods and shipping them to the interior and for marketing the previous year's trade in pelts through agents in London. In the interior one or more wintering partners, called bourgeois, were responsible for conducting the trade with the Indians. As the pedlars pressed westward and northward they found it useful to combine partnerships into syndics to provide sufficient logistical support for one wintering partner to further the interests of the others in more distant trading territories. One such syndic enabled Peter Pond, in 1778, to press northward beyond the Saskatchewan and Churchill River systems to the Athabasca River which eventually debouches through the Mackenzie River into the Arctic Ocean. The Athabasca country, centering on Fort Chipewyan, proved to be the "eldorado" of the fur trade, encompassing the trapping grounds of the Chipewyan Indians who, previously, had traded at the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Churchill. The success of the Athabasca syndic paved the way for the formation in 1784 of an even larger syndic known as the North West Company. Three years later the North West Company emerged in a form that would survive for a generation and strongly influence Montréal's commercial development.
The Hudson's Bay Company initially attempted to counter the successes of the pedlars by dispatching "factory representatives" into the interior to encourage the Indians to ignore the pedlars and journey to the coastal factories. This tactic proved ineffective, and the Company in 1773 abandoned its coastside factory system of trade. The next year they established Cumberland House on Pine Lake, close to the Saskatchewan River above the Grand Rapids where the river entered Lake Winnipeg. Some thirty years earlier, at the bottom of the Bay, Henley House had been established on the Albany River, 240 kilometres above Fort Albany. At that time the directors of the Company did not choose to view the construction of the post as a betrayal of their traditional policy. Rather they saw it as a bastion to protect the Indians from the depredations of Canadien en derouine parties and to provision Indians on the last leg of their journey to Fort Albany. The sacking of Henley House in 1755 and in 1759 confirmed to the directors the danger and expense of inland trade. With the construction of Cumberland House, however, the Company abandoned its traditional policy at the bottom of the Bay and began to penetrate the interior there as well.
As the Hudson's Bay Company moved inland one legacy of their "sleep by the frozen sea" became readily apparent. They lacked the technology necessary for travel on the inland waterways. Birch did not grow near the factories on the west coast of Hudson Bay, and bark had to be traded from Indians in the interior. Indian canoe makers who manufactured canoes for the Company emphasized their tradition of two-person craft rather than the six-person canot du nord of the rival North West Company. The "English" servants of the Company lacked the skills required to use canoes, and wars in Europe rendered it difficult to recruit young men who could be trained in these skills. Attempts to use trading Indians failed because they refused to accept the inferior social position of the "tripman" in the Company's service. During the fifteen year period that the Company required to solve its transportation problems the North West Company emerged paramount in the fur trade. It took another generation before the Hudson's Bay Company could challenge successfully its St. Lawrence-based rival.
