The Fort and the Village

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas C. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Historical Archaeology ◽  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Spatial Segregation ◽  
Hudson's Bay Company ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Fort Vancouver ◽  
Archaeology Of Colonialism ◽  
The Village ◽  
Hudson’S Bay Company

Fort Vancouver, located in southwestern Washington (USA), was the administrative headquarters and supply depot for the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) in the Pacific Northwest, essentially its colonial capital between ca. 1825 and 1845. The documentary record for Fort Vancouver suggests a spatial segregation between the fort and the village along class lines which separated the elite managers of the company from its employees (engagés). Archaeological and ethnohistoric data, however, tend to blur these sharp lines between the fort and the village as artifacts, pollen, and other data reveal a more complex colonial milieu tied to the unique multicultural nature of the settlement and ties to indigenous and other non-Western communities. The historical archaeology of colonialism at Fort Vancouver helps the modern descendants of these people, as well as others tied to the fort, reconnect to their history and heritage and develop a dialogue regarding past and current identities.

Tracing the Fur Trade

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Cromwell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
Historical Archaeology ◽  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Fur Trade ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The World ◽  
Interethnic Relationships

The origins of historical archaeology in the Pacific Northwest of North America in the mid-twentieth century concentrated on the excavations of British terrestrial fur trade forts, but little synthesis and inter-site comparisons of available data has been completed. This chapter presents a comparative typological analysis of these early-nineteenth-century British and Chinese ceramic wares recovered from the Northwest Company’s Fort Okanogan (ca. 1811–1821), Fort Spokane (ca. 1810–1821), Fort George (ca. 1811–1821) and the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort Vancouver (ca. 1825–1860). This study helps to reveal the extent that early Victorian ideals gave precedence to the supply of British manufactured goods to these colonial outposts on the opposite side of the world and what the presence of these ceramic wares may reveal about the complex interethnic relationships and socioeconomic statuses of the occupants of these forts and the Native Americans who engaged in trade with these forts.

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 ‘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.

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