| |
Fur Trade
Despite its royal charter, the Hudson's Bay Company
did not enjoy unrestricted trading rights over
the lands under its domain. Prior to 1763, the
company's struggle with the French for control
of the trade along the Hudson Bay and James Bay
coasts resulted in a series of naval and land
engagements. After the fall of New France (1759)
and the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1763),
the French challenge was eliminated but replaced
by the more formidable, Montreal-based, North
West Company.
The two trading companies aggressively extended
their trading empires beyond Rupert's Land to
the Pacific slope and to the Athabasca and Mackenzie
watersheds. At times, their intense economic rivalry
led to violence, such as the bloody incident at
Seven Oaks.
With both trading companies near economic collapse,
a merger in 1821 brought a small measure of peace
to the western fur trade.
In the midst of this bitterness, Thomas Douglas,
the 5th Earl of Selkirk, obtained a land grant
from the Hudson's Bay Company consisting of 116,000
square miles (300,400 square kilometres, or five
times the size of Scotland) centred at the junction
of the Red and the Assiniboine Rivers (present-day
downtown Winnipeg). Selkirk wanted to build a
self-sufficient farming community and proceeded
to settle his grant with displaced families from
Scotland and Switzerland.
Unfortunately, grasshoppers, floods, winters,
and ineffective management by the Hudson's Bay
Company limited the colony's usefulness and often
pitted the Selkirk colonists against the long-established
Red River
residents, in particular the Métis
free traders and employees of the North West Company.
Coming under increasing criticism for its ineffective
administration of Rupert's Land, the Hudson's
Bay Company agreed to a visit to the Northwest
by Toronto painter Paul
Kane. Touring Rupert's Land as the company's
guest, Kane sketched the landscape and its indigenous
inhabitants. His paintings celebrated the concept
of the "noble savage" and provided a
visual confirmation of the land as inhospitable
to European settlement.
The discovery of gold on British Columbia's lower
mainland and the growing realization that the
Hudson's Bay Company was not interested in seeing
its territories incorporated into the British
Empire, prompted the British House of Commons,
in 1857, to create a Select
Committee to investigate the company's trading
privileges. The company's assertion to the committee
that "no part of the territories...is well
adapted for settlement" came at a time when
British-backed and Canadian-backed expeditions
to Rupert's Land were saying the opposite. The
committee recommended that at least part of the
territory should be ceded to Canada. The stage
was now set for the transfer of Rupert's Land
and Canada's westward expansion.
Further
Readings
See also
> Next Theme: Scientific
Expeditions
< Previous Theme:
Northwest Passage
|
 |
