A History of the Canadian West to 1870-71: Being a History of Rupert's Land (The Hudson's Bay Company Territory) and of the North-West Territory (Including the Pacific Slope) Arthur Silver Morton

1940 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 354-355
Author(s):  
Donald C. Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Hudson's Bay Company ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pacific Slope ◽  
Rupert's Land ◽  
Hudson’S Bay Company

Chronological list of expeditions and historical events in northern Canada. V. 1790–1821

Polar Record ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 15 (99) ◽  
pp. 893-920
Author(s):  
Alan Cooke ◽  
Clive Holland
Keyword(s):  
Hudson Bay ◽  
Hudson's Bay Company ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Northern Canada ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Rupert's Land ◽  
New Policies ◽  
Hudson’S Bay Company

During the period covered by this instalment of our list, the accomplishments of the North West Company, both in geographical exploration and in the realization of profits were great. It consolidated its position in the fur-rich Athabasca district and, with a few posts along Mackenzie River, began to draw in the furs of that immense territory. Its traders invaded not only the western part of Rupert's Land but even Hudson Bay itself. The Hudson's Bay Company rose only slowly to the challenge of its formidable rival, but, gradually, it began to adopt new policies and new techniques and to meet the North West Company on its own grounds and on its own terms. Finally, after a bitter struggle that was almost the destruction of both companies, the Hudson's Bay Company, in 1821, effectively absorbed the North West Company in a coalition that gave the older company greater strength than ever and a wider monopoly than Prince Rupert had thought of.

Chronological list of expeditions and historical events in northern Canada. IV. 1763–89

Polar Record ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 15 (98) ◽  
pp. 699-721
Author(s):  
Alan Cooke ◽  
Clive Holland
Keyword(s):  
The Arctic ◽  
Hudson Bay ◽  
Minor Importance ◽  
Hudson's Bay Company ◽  
Southern Boundary ◽  
Northern Canada ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Hudson’S Bay Company

If the Treaty of Paris in 1763 secured the Hudson's Bay Company in its monopoly of Rupert's Land, it also, by the Cession of Canada, opened to British enterprise the river-and-lake routes, discovered by the French, from Montreal to the fur-rich country west of Hudson Bay. This instalment of our list covers the years of the Montreal traders' expansion into the North-west, their crossing of the Arctic watershed into the fur trader's Eldorado, the Athabasca district, their organization into the Hudson's Bay Company's formidable rival, the North West Company, and concludes with the climax of their north-westward surge, Alexander Mackenzie's arrival at the Arctic Ocean in 1789. This activity obliged the Hudson's Bay Company to change its policy of waiting for the Indians to bring their furs to posts on Hudson Bay and made them push inland to compete for furs with the pedlars from Montreal. In the meantime, the Moravians had established missions on the coast of Labrador, searches for a North-west Passage were directed away from Hudson Bay to the Pacific coast of North America, the first scientific expedition was sent to Hudson Bay, and the Indians were decimated by smallpox. Toward the end of this instalment, we begin to draw our southern boundary of “northern Canada” both westward and northward and to omit many expeditions and events of peripheral or minor importance, such as activities south of Saskatchewan River, or of regular occurrence, such as annual voyages northward from Churchill.

The Half-Breed “Rising” of 1875

2021 ◽  
Vol 102 (s1) ◽  
pp. s90-s100
Author(s):  
George F.G. Stanley
Keyword(s):  
The South ◽  
Hudson's Bay Company ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
The Government ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Right ◽  
Hostile Attitude ◽  
Hudson’S Bay Company

In July 1875, the Hon. Alexander Morris, lieutenant-governor of Manitoba and the north-west, received a letter from Lawrence Clarke, the Hudson’s Bay Company factor at Fort Carlton, informing him that a serious state of affairs had arisen on the south branch of the Saskatchewan and strongly pressing for a detachment of the mounted police. This letter mentioned the establishment of a permanent half-breed settlement at St. Laurent and stated that the half-breeds had “assumed to themselves the right to enact laws, rules and regulations for the Government of the Colony and adjoining country of a most tyrannical nature, which the minority of the settlers are perforce bound to obey or be treated with criminal severity.” The “president” of this government was Gabriel Dumont, who was alleged to have coerced various “freemen” and Indians on the plains by seizing the property of, and levying fines upon, those who refused to acknowledge his authority. The letter continued with a statement that the Indians, too, were assuming a hostile attitude and urged that “unless we have a certain protective force stationed at or near Carlton, the ensuing Winter, I cannot answer for the result, serious difficulties will assuredly arise and life and property be endangered.”

The ‘Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson's Bay’: A Study of the Founding Members of the Hudson's Bay Company, 1665–1670

1970 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-47
Author(s):  
Barry M. Gough
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Hudson's Bay Company ◽  
North American Continent ◽  
Trading Company ◽  
The North ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Financial Power ◽  
Hudson’S Bay Company

In this year of the tercentenary of the incorporation of the Hudson's Bay Company it is appropriate to examine the founding membership of what may still be called “The Great Company.” It is surprising that the literature which chronicles the early adventures of the Company in the northern reaches of Canada has largely neglected a close scrutiny of the founders. The purpose of this article is to examine the early partnership, note the walks of life and social groups from which the adventurers came, and identfy those who formed the nucleus of leadership in planning and executing the endeavors for which the Hudson's Bay Company became renowned.In general, the men who established the Hudson's Bay Company were representative of the era of extensive oversea expansion that characterized Restoration England. They were essentially promoters and imperialists. Yet they were not the first of their kind, for in the thirteenth century merchants had formed regulated organizations for prosecuting the cloth trade. Nor did they ever possess the financial power or parliamentary lobby of the East India Company. Nonetheless, their interest in the fur trade, in a Northwest passage and in general scientific inquiry prompted these men to lay the basis of a firm that by the height of its influence in the early 1840 was engaged in business throughout most of British North America as well as on the Pacific slope south to San Francisco Bay, in the Pacific islands, and in Canton. Today this organization remains the oldest merchant trading company in the world and the oldest business firm on the North American continent.

Shoes, Canoes, and Lives in Unexpected Archives: Searching in Fur Trade Ledgers beyond the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacy Nation-Knapper
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
North American ◽  
Fur Trade ◽  
Economic Data ◽  
Hudson's Bay Company ◽  
Cultural Information ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hudson’S Bay Company

This article illuminates the existence and utility of fur trade ledgers and account books held in repositories beyond those held in the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives. While the vast holdings of the HBCA are a phenomenal resource for researchers of the North American fur trade, many smaller repositories across the continent hold fur trade sources that can complement research conducted in other institutions. Such sources can, when examined with an eye to the cultural information they contain, reveal far more about the cultural history of North America than simply the economic data for which they were created.

The Retreat of the Hudson's Bay Company in the Pacific North‐West

1937 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 262-280
Author(s):  
Frank E. Ross
Keyword(s):  
Hudson's Bay Company ◽  
North West ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Hudson’S Bay Company

The road to Cathay and the Hudson's Bay Company

Polar Record ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 15 (97) ◽  
pp. 453-462
Author(s):  
E. E. Rich
Keyword(s):  
Baffin Island ◽  
Hudson's Bay Company ◽  
North West ◽  
The Road ◽  
The North ◽  
Davis Strait ◽  
Cumberland Sound ◽  
Royal Charter ◽  
Hudson’S Bay Company

There had been no English expedition to search for the North-west Passage for 40 years before the Hudson's Bay Company received its royal charter on 2 May 1670. Early enthusiasm, generated largely by Sir Humphrey Gilbert and the “Colleagues of the Fellowship for the discovery of the North-West Passage”, had been put to the test by the maritime skills of Frobisher and of Davis. But, although Frobisher had returned from his first voyage, in October 1576, convinced that he had found the passage and had “passed above fiftie leagues therein”, he had in fact crossed westwards from the coast of Greenland to enter Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island (Collinson, 1867, p 72); experience was to prove that no passage lay that way. Davis, too, came back from his first voyage convinced that, in 1585, he had in all likelihood been in “the place and passage by us laboured for” (Hakluyt, 1927, Vol 5, p 333). He had then entered Cumberland Sound, also on Baffin Island. Davis's second voyage brought him to Hudson Strait and convinced him (as Frobisher in turn had thought) that the great “overfall” of the water there betokened a vast sea to the westwards. He was sure that the passage could now be found without further cost. But Davis's third voyage, in 1587, took him, first, north through Davis Strait up the coast of Baffin Island and then, crossing eastwards, up the coast of Greenland as high as lat 73 °N, where he still found the sea open although the wind was contrary. Returning down the coast, he was again impressed by the “great ruttes” of the “overfall” in Hudson Strait and he concluded that, of the four possible openings for the passage, this one was the most likely. The others were to be found due north up Davis Strait, which he thought might be no more than a great gulf, or through Frobisher Bay or through Cumberland Sound, in both of which he had been held by ice (Hakluyt, 1927, Vol 5, p 281–336.)

Industrial Experiments in the Wilderness: A Sidelight in the Business History of the Hudson's Bay Company

1958 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 423-433
Author(s):  
Alvin C. Gluek
Keyword(s):  
Fur Trade ◽  
Business History ◽  
Trial And Error ◽  
American Continent ◽  
Hudson's Bay Company ◽  
North American Continent ◽  
The North ◽  
Industrial Experiments ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hudson’S Bay Company

Development of the North American continent was a halting process, characterized by use and misuse of latent opportunities. The Hudson's Bay Company, giant in fur trade and northern exploration, proved by trial and error experiments that abundant natural assets were not in themselves the magic key to wealth.

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