The systemization and regularization of trading practices instituted by George Simpson in the years after 1821 made the trade more profitable for shareholders and officers of the Company who shared its profits. However, it also tended to colonialize the relationship between trader and trapper. Forms of material assistance and gifts had varied considerably in the past and when Simpson standardized all of these the result was less flexibility for the individual trader and increasing dependence by the Indians on the Company for their physical well being. Woodland peoples were the first to feel the effect but by the 1850s it had spread to the plains and coastal tribes as well.
The familiar seasonal rhythm of the trade continued, however. The illustration, a watercolour by the Toronto artist William Armstrong (1822-1914), depicts a group of Indians at the end of a portage. Supplies stamped with HB markings and a cask (possibly gunpowder) are arriving over the portage; presumably the Indians have finished their trading and are returning to their hunting grounds. In a fashion typical of canoe travel, one canoe has been turned on its side to create a shaded shelter under which three individuals are resting from their heavy work. In the left background a much smaller north canoe is being portaged by two men.
Courtesy: Picture Division, Public Archives of Canada (C-19041)
