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Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 20
by Mary K. Cullen The Hudson's Bay Company Goes to the PacificThe North American fur trade, begun on the shores of the Atlantic, was slowly but relentlessly driven across the continent. In their pursuit of furs, traders travelled in a northwesterly direction after the luxurious pelts of the colder regions and along the waterways of the Canadian Shield which provided a natural highway into the interior. Costly transport and supply lines steadily propelled expansion over wider areas. After 1760 this westward thrust of Montreal traders forced the Hudson's Bay Company to establish posts at greater distances from the bay. The North West Company pushed beyond the Hudson Bay watershed known as Rupert's Land. It founded posts in the fur-rich Athabaska country and along the river systems of the Pacific Slope. Before expanding across the Rocky Mountains, the Hudson's Bay Company determined to undertake a vigorous and expensive campaign in Athabaska, the source of Nor'western prosperity. With the establishment of Fort Wedderburn at Lake Athabaska in 1815, the Hudson's Bay Company began a cut-throat competition designed to extort recognition for its fur trade and settlement in Rupert's Land. The disastrous results for the London company in that violent contest prompted a plan to recoup its Athabaska losses by extending trade to the Pacific.1 By 1821, however, the North West Company was in desperate financial straits and the spectre of continuing, costly rivalry impelled both sides to conclude the struggle.2 On the way out from Fort Wedderburn in the spring of 1821, the "Bay" men were met by North West traders at Lake Winnipeg with news that a coalition had taken place between the companies.3
From June 1821 a 21-year agreement placed the trade of the long-standing rivals in the hands of a remodelled Hudson's Bay Company.4 As a reward for the merger, the British government issued a licence5 dated 5 December 1821 granting the new concern a monopoly, also for 21 years, of the fur trade west of the Rockies and northwest of Rupert's Land. Exclusive rights in Rupert's Land continued to apply by virtue of the 1670 "Charter of the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay." The reconstituted Hudson's Bay Company henceforth controlled an area of more than three million square miles stretching from the Labrador peninsula to the Pacific Ocean.6 The organization which directed the trade of the vast territory was a fusion of North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company elements. By the indenture of March 1821, final authority for policy was vested in a London governor and committee, advised by two members from each company. Administration in North America was initially divided into two departments, each supervised by a governor on the advice of an annual council of field officers who were also shareholders. William Williams was appointed governor of the Southern Department comprising the Hudson Bay watershed south and east of Fort William. The Northern Department, which embraced the monopoly territory from Rainy Lake in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, was placed in the charge of George Simpson.7 The contest between London and Montreal for the entrepôt of the British fur trade had thus ended in Athabaska. The entrance of the Hudson's Bay Company info the Pacific trade in 1821 opened the era of the great London monopoly which dominated the fur trade from Canada to the Pacific. West of the Rockies where that monopoly was most vigorously opposed, the aggressive spirit which had typified the Nor'Westers' transcontinental drive was now united with the discipline and efficiency of George Simpson in one of the most exciting and assertive phases of the British fur trade in North America. In 1821 Britain's principal contestants for the fur trade in Pacific North America were Russia and the United States. Russian commerce was the indirect result of scientific expeditions on the eastern fringes of Asia. Fine peltries brought to St. Petersburg by survivors of the Bering-Chirikov expedition of 1746 prompted several traders to exploit the American coast. Among the more efficient contenders was a group which in 1799 received from Czar Paul I a charter granting their company a 20-year monopoly on the coast of America north of 55° north latitude and authority to extend its control southward into unoccupied territory.8 The chartered Russian American Company began an active program of North American expansion. Alexander Baranov, its chief manager from 1799 until 1818, aimed to develop a new empire on the shores of the Pacific. He established a settlement at Sitka in 1799 (rebuilt in 1804 as New Archangel) and in 1812 he built Fort Ross in California as a fur-trading centre and source of food supplies for the northern colonies. The company maintained a station in the Farallons and it regarded the Hawaiian Islands as a potential field of commerce.9 Counterforce to this regime were both British and American maritime fur traders. After Captain James Cook's exploration of the Northwest Coast between 1776 and 1779, his crew's sale of sea otter in the China market sparked international interest in the maritime trade. At the outset nearly 35 British ships dominated the trade,10 but from 1789 onward, American vessels principally from Boston also culled the coast. When Britain entered the Napoleonic Wars in 1793, the maritime business effectively became the monopoly of the city of Boston.11
The Boston merchants used the sea otter as a medium of exchange to purchase Oriental goods for sale in New England. Their trade never reached the stage of unification, but was merely a series of individual efforts which, as sea otter became scarce and competition keen, changed its focus to sandalwood, land furs and other types of exchange.12 In this latter phase of the maritime fur trade the Yankee petty traders became a particular source of annoyance to the Russian American Company. To meet the decrease in sea otter skins the American ships offered to sell goods to the Russians and freight their furs to China; in their turn the Russian settlements, far from their homeland, came to depend on the Bostonians for many essential supplies.13 Unfortunately, the Americans brought more than Russian supplies north. They also traded liquor, rifles and ammunition directly with northern Indians for sea otter and land pelts. The Russian concern was not only that this unregulated trade debauched the native people and endangered Russian servants, but also that it forced the Russian American Company to pay higher prices for furs.14 When the Russian government renewed the Russian American Company's charter in 1821, it moved to protect the company against the free traders. The revised charter, dated 13 September 1821, extended Russian sovereignty to the "shores of northwestern America... commencing from the northern point of the Island of Vancouver under 51° north latitude to Berhing Straits and beyond them."15 A cordon sanitaire was created around this area by an imperial ukase which warned all foreigners not to approach within 100 Italian miles of the Russian coast.16 The ukase was primarily directed against the Americans, but it also struck deeply at British interests, which since 1805 were firmly established inland on the Pacific Slope. While Russians and Americans canvassed the Northwest Coast, British fur traders returned to the Pacific, not by sea, but overland from Canada. Following the transcontinental journey made by Alexander Mackenzie in 1793, Nor'Westers John Stuart and Simon Fraser established a fort at McLeod Lake, the first British trading post west of the Rockies, in 1805.17 Three years later Fraser descended the river to be named after him while David Thompson explored southward in the Columbia River basin. In an abortive American challenge for the inland fur trade, John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company built Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia in 1811, only to be bought out by the Canadians, who were supported by British naval power during the War of 1812.18 The Montreal traders established headquarters at Astoria (later Fort George) and subsequently dominated trade in the Pacific interior. Under the treaty of Ghent in 1814, which stipulated a return to the status quo ante bellum, Fort George was formally restored to American jurisdiction.19 Since Astor was unprepared to reoccupy the fort and regional sovereignty remained in doubt, the Nor'Westers continued in occupation. The Convention of 1818 accepted the 49th parallel as the boundary east of the Rockies, but British and American negotiators failed to agree on a transmontane partition. The result was a ten-year agreement whereby the territory between California and the indeterminate claims of Russian America was to be left open to the subjects of both nations.20 This joint occupancy west of the Rockies meant the licence of 1821 could not prejudice the trade rights of American citizens.21 It simply concentrated all British rights to the Oregon trade on the reconstituted Hudson's Bay Company. In 1821 the British fur trade on the Pacific Slope therefore faced a dual political situation: on the one hand Russia was encroaching on an area of potential British continental expansion; on the other hand, throughout the vast area north of 42° north latitude the United States competed with the sanction of international treaty. The movements of these two powers were to exert a constant influence in the development of Hudson's Bay Company policy for the Pacific. In its most intimate aspects, however, that policy was initially shaped by the previous enterprise of the North West Company. The Nor'Westers organized their transmontane posts around the two principal water systems of the Pacific Slope — the Fraser and Columbia rivers. In modern terms their activity encompassed an area stretching from California to northern British Columbia. The northern part of this region around the upper Fraser was known as New Caledonia. To the south, with its headquarters at the mouth of the Columbia River, was the Columbia District. New Caledonia was viewed by both North West and Hudson's Bay men as an extension of the rich Athabaska region. At the time of the coalition it was still vaguely defined and poorly exploited. The district included four posts: McLeod Lake, Fort St. James on Stuart Lake, Fraser Lake post and Fort George at the confluence of the Stuart and Fraser rivers. George Simpson, writing in his Athabaska journal, estimated there were about "one hundred packs" taken from New Caledonia annually.22 These fur returns were generally sent across the Rockies to Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabaska, there joining other brigades bound for Fort William and Montreal. District supplies were also transported inland via the long eastern route. The Columbia District, which contained seven posts, embraced the whole vast watershed of the Columbia and extended as far north as the Thompson River. Six establishments were south of the 49th parallel: Fort George, originally Astoria, built by Astor's Pacific Fur Company in 1811; Fort Nez Percés or Walla Walla; Spokane House; Flathead House; Kootenay Fort, and Fort Okanagan. Located northward on the Thompson was Fort Kamloops. The Columbia District sent its furs and received its supplies by ship at Fort George. The immense size of the district made it expensive to maintain and its fur returns were proportionately inconsiderable.23 After 1813 the commanding position of the North West Company in the Pacific inland trade induced some of the Columbia traders to indulge their taste for luxury by importing such fanciful items as ostrich plumes, velvets and silk stockings.24 Their extravagance contributed to substantial losses in the southern district. The profitability of the transmontane venture as a whole was still more acutely limited by the want of an effective system of marketing and transportation. China was the natural outlet for the furs of the Pacific Northwest, but business there was complicated by the exclusive British trading privileges of the East India Company. The North West Company was able to sell furs at Canton but it could not take away a return cargo of tea or other Chinese produce. It tried to overcome this obstacle by employing the Boston firm of Perkins and Company, which under the protection of the American flag would transport supplies to the Columbia and sell the returns in Canton. The system was unsatisfactory since Perkins and Company received nearly one-fourth of the proceeds and the prices paid for Columbia beaver at Canton were less than the London market value.25 Transportation expenses provided the impetus for North West Company expansion to the Pacific and ruined the enterprise thereafter. In searching for a route from Canada to the Pacific, Alexander Mackenzie had hoped to tie the continental fur trade to China and provide the overextended North West Company with access to its more western districts from the Pacific Ocean.26 His overland route and the subsequent water explorations of Simon Fraser failed to produce a navigable communication with the interior.27 Meanwhile, the expansion of posts into New Caledonia prompted by these explorations made a shorter supply system even more essential. The search for a Pacific supply line was continued by John Stuart, who in 1813 discovered a land and water route from New Caledonia to Fort George following the Fraser River 130 miles south, then commencing overland to join the Columbia River at Fort Okanagan.28 For unknown reasons, full-scale use of the western brigade trail was delayed29 until Stuart reassumed charge of New Caledonia in January 1821.30 A few weeks after the union of the two companies (an event of which he was not immediately aware), Stuart established Fort Alexandria at the point of transfer from the Fraser River overland and purchased horses for the journey from Fort Alexandria to Fort Okanagan.31 Within a year the Pacific link was functioning smoothly.32 At the time of the coalition, the North West Company had thus begun to view their Pacific enterprise as a single operation with one centre of administration and transportation. The successful solution to New Caledonia's communication problem promised future savings in labour and expense. Yet in retrospect, a dual system of transportation combined with an uncertain market and extravagant importations had made the Nor'Westers' Pacific venture a costly project, incommensurate in its returns. In the light of North West Company experience, the remodelled Hudson's Bay Company commenced trade in the Pacific cordillera with some caution. There was hope that the Pacific fur trade might eventually be profitable from the Fraser valley northward,33 but the Hudson Bay-oriented Company saw New Caledonia as an extension of Rupert's Land rather than a separate entity in itself. One of the first acts of the Northern Council was therefore to reject Stuart's western supply route in favor of transporting the New Caledonia outfit from York Factory.34 Little was expected in the way of returns from the ill-reputed Columbia department; instead the Company regarded the region as a buffer for the north "as if it does not realize profits no loss is likely to be incurred thereby and it serves to check opposition from the Americans."35 The potential of the Columbia valley as a frontier for the northern posts as well as the prospect of diplomatic advantage impelled the Hudson's Bay Company to take immediate measures to strengthen its Columbia position. The arrangement with Perkins and Company was replaced by a system of supply from England in the Company's ships and the sale of Columbia returns on the European market.36 Fort George was ordered to be abandoned, not only since it had been formally restored to the Americans in 1818, but also because it was situated on the south side of the Columbia River, a region expected to be awarded to the United States in any boundary agreement. In its place the Company ordered the construction of a new post on the north side of the river as a means of firmly establishing title to that area.37 Finally, it proposed to scour the country to the south and east of the Columbia and appointed trapping expeditions under competent leaders "to get as much out of the Snake country as possible for the next few years."38 Long-term policy for the trade of the Pacific Northwest remained to be formulated. The London governor and committee, as directors of a primarily continental enterprise, originally planned their Pacific expansion in terms of an extension of trading posts north and west of the Fraser River.39 Interest in the potential of a coastal shipping trade as well was prompted by the Russo-American convention of 17 April 1824. Through a similar treaty concluded with Britain a year later, Russia agreed to confine its activity north of 54° north latitude and to open Russian coastal waters to British vessels for ten years.40 Anticipating this agreement in July 1824, the governor and committee authorized a ship to explore the trading possibilities along the coast.41 A comprehensive plan of action for continent and coast awaited the visit of young George Simpson and his report on the Pacific. The last stages of the Athabaska campaign had clearly revealed Simpson's potential for leadership. Then just 33 years old42 and with scarcely a year in the service, he had made himself familiar with every detail of the Athabaska trade and still displayed the perspective and imagination required in directing the affairs of a large corporation. As governor of the Northern Department, after 1821 Simpson was influential in the reorganization of the fur trade in Rupert's Land. His complete removal of duplicate trading posts and personnel of the two old companies was followed by an insistence on economy at every turn. He approached his work with an inquisitiveness and fervour which demanded personal contact with problems. Simpson travelled tirelessly across the Company domain, probing and investigating such vital matters as transport and communications. As a master of men and a shrewd judge of character, the governor exercised increasingly autocratic control over his council. Still, he knew his men well and took care to learn from them.43 In 1824 he brought his enthusiastic, revitalizing spirit to Britain's Pacific fur trade. Before his departure from York Factory on 15 August, Simpson prompted the appointment in council of John McLoughlin as chief factor superintending the area west of the Rockies, which the Company referred to as the Columbia Department.44 McLoughlin had served the North West Company since 1803 and had participated in the negotiations for coalition. Physically "the Doctor" (so-called by his colleagues in deference to his early medical training) was an imposing figure; a giant of a man with a rangy mane of white hair, sans toilette he conveyed "a good idea of the highway men of former Days."45 He had strong views and, though occasionally exercising a temper, was nonetheless an experienced trader with considerable administrative ability. McLoughlin left York for the Columbia three weeks before Simpson only to be overtaken by the governor travelling at his usual prodigious pace. Simpson and his new superintendent arrived at Fort George near the mouth of the Columbia on 8 November 1824, a record 84-day journey from Hudson Bay.46 During the next five months the governor examined and assessed the Pacific trade in all its aspects. Many basic improvements he inaugurated unilaterally and these changes together with further recommendations of policy he embodied in a comprehensive report to the London committee.47 Simpson's first impression was one of utter extravagance and mismanagement. In his thorough manner he rapidly moved to put affairs on a more businesslike footing. He insisted that the Columbia supplies must be cut from 645 to 200 pieces,48 that agriculture must lighten the expense of imported provisions49 and that the Columbia staff be reduced from the existing total of 151 to 82.50 Almost nothing was known of the coast, its navigation or resources. Within a few days of his arrival Simpson dispatched Chief Trader James McMillan with a party of 40 men to acquire a thorough knowledge of the communication and country of the Fraser River.51 In the meantime the governor began to take an enlarged view of Company affairs west of the mountains. Though like the London committee he had initially viewed the northern Pacific Slope as a projection of Rupert's Land,52 Simpson's personal visit to the Columbia impressed him with the distinctive merits of the entire Pacific trade. His fascination with the potential of the coast and its interior country led him to speculate that commerce there could "not only be made to rival, but to yield double the profit that any other part of North America does."53 For purposes of administration and supply Simpson now saw the whole Pacific business functioning as a unit. New Caledonia must be joined to the Columbia and a diversified coasting trade run in conjunction with the inland business. Further, to end Russian and particularly American competition, an arrangement must be concluded with the East India Company, tying British trade on the Pacific Slope to the China market.54 At the centre of Simpson's thinking was the idea of establishing the grand Pacific depot at the mouth of the Fraser River. A move north might ultimately be necessary if the Americans should settle at Fort George, but whether they came to the Columbia or not, the Fraser seemed to possess other advantages, Its situation was central for the most lucrative area of the coastal fur trade and for British expansion northward.55 Yet effective inland transportation seemed to be the motivating consideration. During his brief visit in the Columbia, Simpson came to the optimistic conclusion that the Fraser was a navigable river which could serve as New Caledonia's much-needed access to the Pacific. This assumption he apparently based on Indian reports56 and his own personal assessment of the 1808 Fraser-Stuart journey which he stated was executed safely "in the months of June and July when the waves are at their full height and when the Columbia River is impassible."57 Simpson further suggested that McMillan's exploratory expedition to the Fraser River successfully tested its navigability.58
McMillan was a man of experience in the Pacific, having been associated with David Thompson 15 years earlier on the upper waters of the Columbia. The former Nor'Wester became a chief trader of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821 and served at Red River until he was chosen to accompany Simpson to the Columbia.59 On 19 November 1824 McMillan led an expedition of 40 men from Fort George north. The party portaged from the Columbia River to Puget Sound and thence followed the channels and bays of the sound to a small stream which fell into Boundary Bay. Ascending that stream (the Nicomekl), they then made a portage to another small river, the Salmon, which emptied into the Fraser about 20 miles above its mouth.60 At this point the Fraser was a "fine large Stream navigable... by craft of about One Hundred Tons."61 The party travelled, in all, nearly 60 miles upstream in the course of which they saw neither shoal nor rapid. Ice in the upper part of the river prevented them from proceeding much further, but a local Indian tribe62 informed McMillan and his men that the Fraser as far as the Thompson River was "navigable with a strong current."63 The fact that McMillan only managed to examine the lower reaches of the Fraser did not alter Simpson's enthusiasm for that river as his Company's main commercial highway and site of its Pacific depot. In addition to McMillan's favourable report on navigation, the governor submitted other observations made by the reconnaissance party which were conducive to establishing headquarters at the Fraser. Contrary to prevalent fears of the treacherous character of coastal Indians, the peoples inhabiting the lower Fraser proved friendly and seemed "delighted" at the prospect of having the whites settle among them.64 Throughout the river valley the soil was generally rich and fertile, timber was prodigious and good situations for the site of an establishment existed in almost every reach. McMillan particularly recommended the entrance of the small Salmon River falling in from the south which he had followed in gaining the main stream. There an extensive meadow existed where cattle could be raised and food stuffs cultivated and the river alone had salmon and sturgeon sufficient for the maintenance of a post.65 Simpson proposed a scheme for the establishment of the Fraser River depot which was allied with a bold initiative in the coastal trade. A vessel intended for the China trade would leave England in November 1825, reach Fort George in July 1826, deliver the outfit and take on the furs for China. After disposing of the furs in Canton, the vessel would take on a cargo of Chinese produce and sell it in Lima, Acapulco or some other port where it would pick up the English outfit. In July 1827 it would return with the trade goods for the Columbia. Embarking with the furs of the past season, it would then proceed with people, goods and stores in company with a small coastal vessel (to be built in the country) to the Fraser River. The two ships would remain there until 1 November by which time the establishment would be completed. Then the larger vessel would be dispatched for China while the smaller one would proceed along the coast on a trading expedition, touching at the Russian settlement in Norfolk Sound to see if any business could be done there. Finally, with the arrival of the inland brigades in the spring of 1828, the whole machine would be put in motion with the depot at the Fraser River as its focal point.66 The conviction that the Fraser must soon become the nucleus of the Columbia department was reflected in Simpson's interim arrangements for the Pacific trade. According to instructions from the governor and committee in London, Fort George was abandoned and a new depot named Fort Vancouver was built on the north side of the Columbia. Though as a depot the post was inconveniently situated 75 miles from the river mouth and 1-1/4 miles from the riverbank, Simpson insisted Fort Vancouver was merely a "secondary establishment"67 which would serve temporarily as McLaughlin's headquarters but whose greater purpose would be farming.68 Because he felt there were advantages in transacting business from one depot, Simpson instructed his Pacific personnel to re-employ Stuart's brigade trail between New Caledonia and the Columbia "until the mouth of the Fraser's River is established."69 On his return east the governor secured approbation for these arrangements from the annual council at York Factory in July.70 The entire Pacific strategy required the final sanction of the governor and committee in London and after council Simpson departed for England "to give information on many points that might be essential to its future interests."71 December 1825 found Simpson in London conferring with the governor and committee. He had scarcely begun to discuss his Fraser River strategy when he discovered the Company was more immediately concerned with securing a strong case against withdrawal from the Columbia. The joint occupation agreement between Great Britain and the United States would expire in 1828 and it was possible that a boundary might be agreed on before that date. If the Columbia basin was to be used as a frontier for the north, the Company had to obtain the Columbia River as the boundary. Simpson, fresh from his journey to the Pacific, was the obvious person to present the case. Completely reversing his argument in favour of the Fraser as a business highway, he replied to a series of questions from the British Foreign Office by emphatically denying that the Fraser "affords a communication by which the interior Country can be supplied from the Coast, or that it can be depended on as an outlet for the returns of the interior."72 He added that "the only certain outlet for the Company's trade" was the Columbia River; if its navigation was not free, the Company "must abandon and curtail their trade in some parts, and probably be constrained to relinquish it on the West side of the Rocky Mountains altogether."73 Foreign Office requirements postponed consideration of the Fraser river strategy, but did not preclude it. A few weeks after Simpson's testimony, the governor and committee approved his plans for including New Caledonia within the Columbia Department and extending the trade on the coast as well as in the interior.74 They directed the Fraser River settlement to be established "next season if possible," adding "from the central situation of Frazers River we think it probable that it will be found to be the proper place for the principle depot."75 In two respects, however, they qualified Simpson's scheme. First of all, marginally successful consignments to Canton in 1824 and 1825 made the committee wary of using the China market for the whole of its Pacific returns.76 Secondly, since McMillan had explored only the lower reaches of the Fraser, final commitment to a Fraser depot was reserved until the Company had fully ascertained "whether the navigation of the River is favorable to the Plan of making it the principal communication with the interior."77 Without deviating greatly from Simpson's original recommendations, the London discussions thus determined Hudson's Bay Company Pacific priorities to be an establishment at the Fraser and the inauguration of a coasting trade. McMillan was chosen to build the new Fraser River post which was to be named Fort Langley in honor of Thomas Langley, a director of the Company.78 According to Simpson's suggestion, the coasting trade was to be inaugurated with Fort Langley and, to ensure completion of the ship currently on the stocks at Fort Vancouver, the commencement date for both was set for the spring of 1827.79 In the interval new efforts were to be undertaken to determine the navigability of the Fraser. During the summer of 1826 Archibald McDonald,80 clerk and officer in charge of the Thompson River District, went by canoe along the Thompson from Kamloops to the Fraser and examined the main stream by land for about eight miles south. In a pessimistic assessment he suggested "the nature of those two rivers, rolling down with great rapidity in a narrow bed between immense mountains generally speaking render their ascent most laborious, and in places in the main river perhaps impossible but at low water."81 Chief Factor William Connolly, in charge of New Caledonia District, had James Murray Yale explore the Fraser from Fort Alexandria south to the mouth of the Thompson. Yale reported that in some sections of the river which could not be avoided by portage, the water rushed with such impetuosity that bark canoes could not resist its action. Still he considered that "in moderate waters (i.e. before their rise in the Spring and after they have subsided in the Summer) the Navigation would not be attended with much danger."82 These conflicting statements meant the practicability of communication was still in doubt when on 27 June 1827 the expedition set out to establish Fort Langley. In London the governor and committee continued to reserve judgement on the subject of the principal depot. Back at York Factory, however, the indomitable Simpson was confident that his plans for the Fraser could be carried out. He had read the reports of the different parties that had explored the Fraser and had come to the conclusion that "the navigation will be found safe and good if the passage be made at the proper season.83 In July he instructed McLoughlin that New Caledonia should be outfitted by way of the Fraser the following season.84 "Fort Langley," Simpson concluded, "will be the Establishment of the next greatest importance to Fort Vancouver and in the course of a few years I have little doubt it will become our principal Depot for the country west of the Mountains."85
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