Family life was an integral and important part of fur trade society. As Chief Factor Douglas explained, life at an inland fur trade post would have been unbearably monotonous and lonely without "the many tender ties, which find a way to the heart." Pictured here are a group of half-breed families living at York Factory in the late nineteenth-century. It is likely that they were descended from several generations of Hudson Bay traders. Fur trade society was close-knit, cemented by a complicated network of inter-marriage. The mixed-bloods, particularly the MÄtis of North West Company descent, formed a distinct ethnic group in early Western Canada, with a culture derived from both their Indian and white heritage.
