From Labrador to Leipzig: Film and Infrastructures Along the Fur Trail

Background: Since 1919, the Hudson’s Bay Company has sponsored films to document and advertise its trading operations. Films such as Hudson’s Bay Company Centenary Celebrations (1919), The Heritage of Adventure (1920), and Leipzig Exhibition footage (1930) offered views of North American landscapes and Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts and department stores alongside ethnographic footage of Indigenous Peoples. Analysis: Drawing on archival research conducted at the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives and textual film analysis of these “fur films,” this article theorizes their production and circulation within settler visual culture. Conclusions and implications: Tracing the films’ paths from the Eastern Arctic to Montréal, and from London, England, to Leipzig, Germany, this article demonstrates how these moving pictures participate in the entanglement of settler and infrastructural projects that characterize early twentieth-century Canada. Contexte : Depuis 1919, la Compagnie de la Baie d’Hudson a commandité des films pour rendre compte de ses opérations commerciales et pour faire connaître celles-ci. Des films comme Hudson’s Bay Company Centenary Celebrations (1919), The Heritage of Adventure (1920), et Leipzig Exhibition Footage (1930) offrent des perspectives sur des paysages nord-américains et sur les postes de traite et les magasins à rayons de la Compagnie ainsi que des scènes de peuples autochtones à valeur ethnographique. Analyse : Cet article se fonde sur une recherche menée aux Archives de la Compagnie de la Baie d’Hudson et sur une analyse textuelle de « films à fourrures » pour examiner la production et la circulation de ces derniers dans un contexte de culture visuelle colonisatrice. Conclusions et implications : Cet article retrace les parcours de ces films de l’Arctique de l’Est jusqu’à Montréal, et de Londres, Angleterre jusqu’à Leipzig, Allemagne, en démontrant comment ceux-ci contribuent à l’enchevêtrement de projets coloniaux et infrastructurels qui caractérise le Canada au début du 20e siècle.

The Half-Breed “Rising” of 1875

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.”

Trapped?

This article re-evaluates the nature of Indigenous labor at Central California’s New Helvetia colony. The fur trade in Central California was not simply a vehicle for settler exploitation of Indigenous labor but a dynamic trade network shaped by Plains Miwok– and Valley Nisenan–speaking trappers and traders, Mission San José, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and white settlers. Analysis of the financial aspects of trade for the Indigenous trappers and ethnohistorical examination of their motives for engaging in the trade suggest that the fur trade was not a source of degradation and dependency, but a vehicle by which they creatively and purposefully engaged colonial forces and markets. This article orients the histories of Plains Miwok– and Valley Nisenan–speaking communities into the larger story of the North American fur trade and suggests New Helvetia and its fur trade can be better understood as what historian Lisbeth Haas calls “Indigenous colonial” creations.