Fur
Traders
Shortly
after Europeans began sailing to Canada to explore and to fish, they found
out that Canada was a land with many fur-bearing animals.
When explorers and fishers began trading with Aboriginal Peoples for
fresh food, they learned that the Aboriginal Peoples had furs from the
animals they hunted. The
fur trade in Canada began because many Europeans wanted these furs.
Both the French and the English used furs, especially beaver fur, to
make hats and to trim other clothing. They
became partners in the fur trade with the Aboriginal Peoples.
The French
built trading posts on the St. Lawrence River and traded with Aboriginal
Peoples who came to their posts with furs.
Later on, the French traveled west to find more furs.
The English
traded with the Aboriginal Peoples of Newfoundland and on the Atlantic coast
south of the French settlements. The
English formed the Hudson�s Bay Company in 1670 and built trading posts
around Hudson Bay.
The French
and English competed with each other to get more furs from the Aboriginal
Peoples. The fur trade caused
many changes in the lives of the Europeans and the Aboriginal Peoples.
The fur
traders continued the exploration of Canada as they traveled to new areas to
find more fur. The Aboriginal
Peoples they met helped them survive in the new areas.
The
Beginning of the Fur Trade
The fur
trade in Canada began slowly. At
first, Europeans thought the new land was only a good source of fish.
Many European
fishers arrived each summer to fish the Grand Banks.
Some of them also sailed up the St. Lawrence River to fish.
Fishers met
Aboriginal Peoples who lived near the ocean.
They began to trade metal and cloth goods for furs and fresh meat.
Explorers also met Aboriginal Peoples on their voyages.
As Cartier sailed past the coast of New Brunswick in 1534, he met
Mi�kmaq people who were eager to trade with him.
The
Aboriginal Peoples liked the goods from Europe.
More and more of them began to travel to the coast and the St.
Lawrence River each summer to trade. They
traded their furs for knives, axes, pots and other goods.
The
Europeans began to realize that great wealth could be made by selling furs
from Canada. Furs from Canada
were easy to sell in Europe.
Ships began
sailing to Canada just to trade for furs.
Some fishers stopped fishing and became fur traders instead.
The French traders began sailing farther up the St. Lawrence River
looking for Aboriginal people with furs to trade.
The French claimed this area for France, so only they could trade for
the furs in the region. The
English claimed Newfoundland and the Atlantic coast of what is now the
United States.
The fur
trade grew.
Merchants in France started companies to collect the furs in Canada.
In 1600, one of the French companies built a trading post at
Tadoussac so it could trade there all hear.
The post did not last very long.
The French did not know how to survive the cold, showy Canadian
winters.
In 1603,
the French tried again to build a lasting trading post.
Champlain
started a trading-post settlement on the east coast.
It was a little warmer there, and there were fewer traders competing
for furs. Sixty French settlers
went to the new post at Prot-Royal, on the Bay of Fundy.
Port-Royal was the first French settlement in Acadia.
Acadia included Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and
the Gaspe Peninsula.
The French
settlers met the Mi�kmaq people who lived nearby.
The French traded for furs with the Mi�kmaq and became their
friends, but the furs from the Mi�kmaq were not enough to pay for the
settlement at Port-Royal.
In 1608,
the French tried another spot for their trading post.
This time Champlain chose the spot where Stadacona had once stood, at
Quebec. Later on, the French
built other trading posts along the St. Lawrence River.
The St.
Lawrence valley was a good place for the fur traders.
It was close to a rich supply of furs.
Many rivers in the valley went inland.
The French could easily ship the furs brought from the Aboriginal
Peoples back to France.
Many
Aboriginal Peoples who lived near the St. Lawrence valley, such as the Huron
and Algonquin, became the trading partners of the French.
South of the Great Lakes lived the Iroquois, a group of five
Aboriginal Peoples who had joined together.
The Iroquois became trading partners of the English traders on the
Hudson River.
As the fur
trade grew, the Iroquois wanted to trade more furs with their English
partners. There were no longer
many furs in the Iroquois and Huron lands.
Both groups wanted to trade for furs with other Aboriginal groups
farther west, but the Huron controlled the water-routes to the West.
During the
1600s, the Iroquois fought with the French-Huron trading partnership for
control over the sources of furs. The
Iroquois sent war parties armed with English guns to the St. Lawrence valley
to try to drive the French away. They
attacked Huronia to stop the Huron from blocking the trade routes.
By 1650, many Huron had been killed.
The rest fled to live with other Aboriginal groups.
In 1690, the French defeated the Iroquois and the Iroquois Wars
ended.
Radisson
and Groseilliers
Pierre
Radisson and his brother-in-law, Medard Chouart de Groseilliers, were fur
traders from Trois-Rivieres. They
explored the area north of the Great Lakes, looking for furs.
The Aboriginal Peoples they met told them there were plenty of
beavers farther north, toward Hudson Bay.
The
partners traveled
north and returned from their explorations with sixty canoes filled with
furs. They expected a warm
welcome. However, the officials at Quebec thought too many young men were
leaving the settlement to live and trade with the Aboriginal Peoples.
They had decided that no one could trade furs without a license.
Since Radisson and Groseilliers had no trading licenses, they were
fined and their furs were taken away. Groseilliers
went to jail for a time.
Radisson and
Groseilliers were angry. They
sailed to England, where the king agreed to let them trade for furs around
Hudson Bay. In June 1668, they
set off in two ships. Storms
forced Radisson�s ship to return to England, but Groseillier�s ship kept
going. That year, Groseilliers
built a small trading post on Hudson Bay.
In the sprint, he and his crew traded with a large group of
Aboriginal people. When
Groseilliers� ship returned to England, it carried a large cargo of furs.
The English
merchants were delighted with the rich furs.
In 1670, they started the Hudson�s Bay Company.
The king granted it the right to trade for furs in all the lands
drained by rivers flowing into Hudson Bay.
There were now
three important fur-trading areas in North America.
The English traded on Hudson Bay and on the Hudson River farther
south. The French traded along
the St. Lawrence River and near the Great Lakes.
The
Hudson�s Bay Company
The English
who worked for the Hudson�s
Bay Company built trading posts on the shores of Hudson Bay.
They were called factories because the person in charge was called a
chief factor. The factories were
built where rivers flowed into the bay, so it was easy for Aboriginal
Peoples to bring their furs to the posts.
Many people worked
at the company factories. The
chief factor, the clerk, and sometimes a junior clerk did the trading.
Other people, such as doctors, carpenters, and tailors, also lived at
the posts.
The English
and the French had different ways of trading with the Aboriginal Peoples.
Instead of traveling to trade with them as the French did, the
English company traders stayed in their trading posts.
They waited for the Aboriginal Peoples to bring their furs to the
posts.
The English fur
traders did not try to build lasting settlements as the French did.
The English who came to Hudson Bay were interested only in trading
for furs. The French and the
English competed with each other for furs from the Aboriginal Peoples.
A Cree
Boy Visits York Factory
An
eleven-year-old Cree boy who went with his father on a trip to York Factory
to trade furs for English goods tells this story.
How does he describe the trading ceremony at the post?
I could
smell the sea and knew we must be close to the English trading post.
We had been paddling our canoes, loaded with furs, for many days.
We were glad to arrive.
When we could see
the post, we shouted and fired our guns as a greeting.
A loud boom from the post made me shake.
Father explained that the people at the post had returned our
greeting with a shot from their cannon.
We landed and set
up camp just outside the trading post. I
looked for children my own age, but there were none.
I was proud that
my father was chosen to lead this trading voyage.
I watched as he met the English leader, who was called the chief
factor.
Father and the
chief factor smoked a peace pipe together for about an hour.
Sharing the peace pipe showed the friendship that would exist between
them. Then Father and the chief
factor took turns giving speeches. Father
described our canoes and our furs. The
chief factor told us why the English would always be our friends.
The chief factor
gave Father a fine set of clothing and other gifts too.
The men got tobacco. I
was given a long hunting knife.
The next day,
Father gave gifts of beaver pelts to the English.
He made another speech. He
told the chief factor how far we had come, and he asked the English to trade
fairly with us. We sat in a
circle and the men smoked the peace pipe again.
The chief factor
then took us to the store room of the trading post.
Only Father went inside. The
rest of us stayed in the trading room. We
presented our furs through a window in the wall.
Then we chose knives, kettles, cloth, and guns in return for our
furs. After loading our canoes
with all the goods we had received for our furs, we started the long trip
home.
Henry
Kelsey
Henry
Kelsey joined the Hudson�s Bay Company as a clerk when he was only
seventeen years old. He went to
York Factory to work at the trading post.
Kelsey
worked for the company for forty years.
The Cree who came to trade their furs at York Factory became
Kelsey�s friends. He learned
to speak their language and made several trips with them along the coast of
Hudson Bay.
In 1690, the
Hudson�s Bay Company sent Kelsey south on a trip.
He was sent to invite the Assiniboine people to trade at Hudson Bay.
He traveled with a group of Cree returning to their homeland toward
the southwest. On the long
journey by canoe, the men and women in the group shared the work.
When Kelsey
reached the prairie grasslands, he left his Cree guides and went farther
west to find the Assiniboine. He
met the Assiniboine and spent two years hunting with them before returning
home to York Factory. Kelsey had
opened up a new trading area for the Hudson�s Bay company.
Aboriginal
Women in the Fur Trade
Aboriginal
women played an important role in the fur trade.
Without their skills and hard work, the fur trade would not have been
possible. Many of the fur
traders married Aboriginal women. These
women did a lot of the work at the posts.
Aboriginal women
often went on fur-trading trips with their husbands.
Many acted as guides. They
worked with the men to paddle the canoes and carried heavy loads across
portages. They set up camp when
they stopped, and prepared meals.
Aboriginal women
had many skills important to the fur traders.
They prepared food such as pemmican.
Pemmican is light to carry and keeps a long time without spoiling.
Aboriginal women also knew how to make medicines from plants.
Women made or
helped make many items of value. They
made blankets and clothing, including moccasins.
They helped make snowshoes. The
men made the frames of snowshoes and the women made the webbing for them.
They gathered and split spruce roots used to make birch bark canoes.
They also collected spruce gum, which was used to make the canoes
waterproof. Sometimes
Aboriginal women trapped smaller animals for meat and fur.
The women were skilled at cleaning and preparing pelts and hides.
The fur
traders learned many skills from their Aboriginal wives.
They learned the languages and customs of their wives� people.
If a woman from an Aboriginal group married a trader, she often acted
as an interpreter and peacemaker among her people and the traders.
The women helped their husbands communicate with Aboriginal Peoples.
This improved their trading relationships.
Pierre
de La Verendrye
The
Hudson�s Bay Company controlled the fur trade northwest of the Great
Lakes. The French also wanted to
trade for furs farther west because there were not many furs left in the
Great Lakes area. In 1731, a
French trader and explorer named Pierre
de La Verendrye set out from a French trading post on Lake Superior.
With him were his sons and his nephew.
Aboriginal Peoples helped the French traders find their way.
They
traveled toward the fur country in the west.
It was a hard route, with many portages.
On their journey, the traders built new fur-trading posts for the
French. In 1732, La
Verendrye reached Lake of the Woods, where he built a large post.
In 1734, La Verendrye and his family reached a spot near Lake
Winnipeg, where they built a trading post called Fort Maurepas.
They continued west to explore the Prairies and build new trading
posts. They found that the
Saskatchewan River was the best route west to lands where the furs were
good.
La Verendrye and
his family worked hard to trade with the Aboriginal peoples they met.
They told the Aboriginal Peoples that it was better and easier for
them to trade with the French than with the English at their posts on Hudson
Bay.
The
North West Company
While
the English traded at their posts on Hudson Bay, the French continued to
trade furs along the St. Lawrence River and west of the Great Lakes.
In the 1750s, The
Seven Years� War broke out between France and England.
When the war ended, England had won control of the French
settlements. Some Scottish fur
traders in New York decided to move to Montreal to run the fur trade there.
The St. Lawrence River was the best route to the fur country, and
they believed they could make more money.
The Scots and
French made good partners. The
Scots had money to pay for fur-trading trips.
They knew people in Europe who wanted to buy furs.
The Scots used the
French trading posts and took over the French fur-trading companies.
The Scots hired many expert French traders called voyageurs to trade
with the Aboriginal Peoples. Some
of the voyageurs had learned to speak Aboriginal languages and married
Aboriginal women. The voyageurs
transported the furs back to the merchants.
They knew the routes inland to the best fur country.
Some voyageurs traveled thousands of kilometers by canoe to explore
and trade in areas of Canada were no Europeans had ever been before.
The French had learned the value of canoes from the Aboriginal
Peoples.
By the 1780s,
there were many small fur-trading companies in Montreal.
They competed with one another. Some
of the merchants decided to join together to improve their business.
In 1783, they formed the North West Company.
Many Nor�Westers, as the traders came to be called, spent the
winter collecting furs form the Aboriginal Peoples.
The Montreal
merchants had problems getting supplies and goods to their trading posts in
the West. Canoe travel was
expensive and took a long time. To
solve this problem, the Nor�Westers built a large trading centre on Lake
Superior called Fort William. Each
summer, merchants from Montreal took supplies and trading goods to Fort
William. There they met their
wintering partners, who came with canoes filled with furs from the inland
posts.
The North West
Company and the Hudson�s Bay Company became bitter rivals.
The North West Company was soon getting twice as many furs as the
Hudson�s Bay Company. After a
hundred years of the Aboriginal Peoples coming to its trading posts on the
bay, the Hudson�s Bay Company had to change.
It began to build inland trading posts, too.
Changes
Caused by the Fur Trade
The
Aboriginal Peoples of eastern Canada were the first to meet explorers and
traders from Europe. The
explorers returned to Europe with stories about the new people and lands
they had seen. They brought back
new food that Europeans had never eaten before.
Corn, beans, squash, and tobacco were plants from North America.
The Aboriginal Peoples acted as guides for the explorers.
They taught the Europeans what they knew about the land. They
showed them how to use canoes, moccasins, snowshoes, and toboggans.
Traders came to
get furs from the new lands. They
built trading posts where Aboriginal Peoples could bring their furs.
When the fur trade began, it fit well into Aboriginal ways of life.
The Aboriginal Peoples had always hunted and traded for what they
needed. The fur trade brought
them metal tools and weapons that replaced those of stone and bone.
Iron cooking pots and copper kettles replaced those made of clay,
skin, bark, or wood. Guns
replaced bows and arrows. Hunting
for food became quicker and easier.
As the fur trade
grew, Aboriginal ways of life began to change.
For some groups, such as the Mi�kmaq, hunting and trapping for furs
to trade replaced summer food gathering and other activities.
Aboriginal groups that changed in this way became dependent on trade
goods such as clothing from Europe. The
European clothing was not as warm or well-suited to Canada�s climate as
the clothing the Aboriginal Peoples had made themselves from furs and hides.
The diseases
brought from Europe were new to the Aboriginal Peoples.
Many Aboriginal people became ill and died from European diseases
such as measles. Alcohol
was introduced to the Aboriginal Peoples as part of trade agreements. This
had a negative affect on them
The fur trade
caused changes in Aboriginal Peoples� beliefs.
New beliefs changed the special bond the Aboriginal Peoples had with
the animals they hunted.
The fur trade also
changed some Aboriginal ways of keeping order.
Instead of picking their leaders because of their wisdom, some chiefs
were chosen because of their skill as fur traders.
Competition
between the rival fur-trading companies caused conflict between the Huron
and the Iroquois. The English
made a partnership with the Iroquois, and the French made a partnership with
the Huron. As the English and
French fought, so did their Aboriginal partners.
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