6 - The Great Northwest, 1763–1849

Summary

This chapter explores fur trade societies in the British Northwest, including the emergence of a Métis people resulting from “county marriages” between French fur traders and Indigenous women. After 1763, competition between the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) and Montreal-based traders, brought together in the Northwest Company (NWC), resulted in an explosion of posts throughout the interior and beyond the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast, which was also being approached by European explorers by sea. Britain vied with Russia, Spain, and the United States for control of the Pacific Northwest, avoiding wars by negotiating territorial boundaries that were largely set by 1846. Most Indigenous peoples welcomed the opportunities generated by European rivalries but conditions changed after Lord Selkirk sponsored a settlement in Red River (now Winnipeg) in 1812. Escalating violence between the rival companies and a depleted animal population forced a merger of the two companies in 1821. Under George Simpson’s management (1821-60), the HBC streamlined its operations to the disadvantage of their Indigenous trading partners. The HBC held a monopoly of trade in the Great Northwest, but its power and the numerical dominance of Indigenous peoples were increasingly threatened. In 1849, Vancouver Island became a Crown colony and the Métis successfully challenged the monopoly of the HBC