Bartering with the Inuit from Hudson's Bay Company Ships.
The Arctic was the last frontier of the Canadian fur trade. Previous to the twentieth century there were occasional contacts with the Inuit in Hudson Strait, as this watercolour painting by Robert Hood (1796-1821) in August 1819, demonstrates. Two Hudson's Bay Company ships, the Prince of Wales and the Eddystone, on their annual voyage into the Bay, were approached by "Esquimaux" off the southern tip of Baffin Island "according to their usual custom, to barter with the ships". Hood recorded in his journal that the ships annually "receive several tons of oil, and a great quantity of sea-horses teeth (walrus tusks)" from the "Esquimaux". The painting shows kayaks and a much larger umiak containing women and old men. As the nineteenth century progressed these contacts became more frequent but a post was not established in the region until 1909. The great expansion in arctic posts came after 1920. The most important fur obtained from the region was arctic fox, a trade which continues to the present day.
Courtesy: Picture Division, Public Archives of Canada (C-40364)
