North West Company
The North West Company was a prominent fur trading enterprise in Canada during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, established in 1779 to challenge the Hudson's Bay Company, which had a monopoly on the fur trade. Based in Montreal and primarily managed by Highland Scots, the North West Company successfully navigated the competitive and often violent fur trade landscape, utilizing the expertise of French-Canadian and Indigenous peoples. The company was instrumental in exploring and mapping vast territories in Western Canada, significantly impacting the region's development.
Throughout the 1790s, the North West Company expanded its influence and managed to control a significant portion of the fur trade, even facing challenges from American rivals. Tensions between the North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company culminated in violent confrontations, notably the "Pemmican War" and the Battle of Seven Oaks in 1816. The rivalry persisted until 1821 when both companies merged, largely due to pressures from the British Parliament. The legacy of the North West Company endures today, not only in its historical significance but also through the revival of its name for a retail chain serving Northern Canada.
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North West Company
The principal industry of Canada for three centuries after the arrival of Europeans was the fur trade, particularly beaver skins. The North West Company was a group of fur traders in the Canadian northwest in the late eighteenth century when Canada was under British rule. It was founded in 1779 to compete with the long-established company that dominated fur trading in the area, the Hudson's Bay Company. The management of the North West Company was dominated by Highland Scots and its headquarters were in Montreal. It was a successful competitor in the lucrative but violent world of the Canadian fur trade. The Company’s separate existence came to an end when they merged with the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821.
Brief History
Montreal-based traders operated in the area formerly worked by French traders before the British conquest, an area outside the effective range of the Hudson’s Bay Company monopoly. The North West Company organized a system, drawing on French-Canadian and Native resources and know-how as well as their own capital and expertise, to exploit the fur resources of Western Canada. The company’s western agent, the American Peter Pond, established Fort Chipewyan as a central trading post in 1788, and it became a center of company activity in the Athabasca country, which became a profitable area of exploitation. It took some time for the North West Company, led by Simon McTavish and the Frobisher brothers, Benjamin and Joseph, to consolidate support among the independent traders. The company merged with its strongest rival, Gregory, McLeod and Company in 1787. In the 1790s, the North West Company began to prevail in its battle with the Hudson’s Bay Company, which was also expanding. By the middle of the decade, it controlled over half of the Canadian fur trade.
In the southern part of its reach, the North West Company was also competing with an American rival, John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company at a time when the border between the United States and Canada in the west was not well-defined. The North West Company used the War of 1812 between the British Empire and the United States to eliminate the Pacific Fur Company as a rival in the Oregon territory, although it suffered a blow when its post at Sault St. Marie was destroyed by the Americans.
By the 1810s the Hudson’s Bay Company was taking a more aggressive approach to the rivalry, under the leadership of Scottish nobleman Thomas Douglas, the Earl of Selkirk. Selkirk was less interested in fur trading than in promoting the settling of the Red River area. The Red River colony would block North West Company access to pemmican, a mixture of dried buffalo meat and buffalo fat that furnished the staple diet of company traders. Selkirk wanted the pemmican and other buffalo products kept in the region for the benefit of the settlers, at least until they could establish a productive agriculture. The enmity of the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company led to violence. The Hudson’s Bay Company destroyed a North West Company outpost, Fort Gibraltar. The most violent confrontation of this "Pemmican War" was the Battle of Seven Oaks on June 19, 1816. Metis, persons of mixed French and Native descent, aligned with the North West Company were carrying a load of pemmican with the intent to sell it to North West Company traders. On the way they encountered a group of settlers and Hudson’s Bay employees led by the territorial governor, Robert Semple. Shooting broke out as Semple was attempting to arrest a Metis leader, and in the conflict Semple and twenty others from his party were killed, while only one Metis died on the other side. Semple’s defeat was followed by the destruction of the Red River colony, but Selkirk responded by taking the North West Company base at Fort William.
The rivalry between the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company was causing serious concern in London, already an arena for the struggle between the Companies as North West interests sought to buy Hudson's Bay stock and both companies lobbied Parliament. The death of Selkirk in 1820 helped open the way for an end of hostilities. In 1821 the British Parliament sought to bring together the two groups in a new and reorganized firm that carried the name of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Impact
The fur trade has a history as long as European settlement in Canada. After the conquest of French Canada by Britain in the Seven Years War, the dominant force in Canadian fur trading was the Hudson’s Bay Company, an English chartered company with a monopoly over fur trading in the Hudson’s Bay region. Many independent fur traders resented the company’s monopoly. There was an ethnic element to this rivalry, as many of the fur traders of Montreal were Scottish and worked with French-Canadian woodsmen and the Hudson’s Bay Company was an English-dominated organization.
The leading agent of the North West Company in the West in the 1790s was Alexander MacKenzie, a descendant of American loyalists and a former employee of Gregory, McLeod and Company. (Pond had left the company in 1788, after being accused of the murder of a rival.) Mackenzie is the namesake of the Mackenzie River, which he explored to its outlet in the Arctic Ocean in 1789. Mackenzie had hoped that the river would reach the Pacific, enabling the North West Company to establish a base for Pacific trade. In 1793 he reached the Pacific overland.
Although it was relatively short-lived, the North West Company helped revitalize the Canadian fur trade. Significantly, it explored, mapped, and claimed a huge territory. The exploration and the establishment of infrastructure in Western Canada is one reason why this territory remained Canadian rather than absorbed by the United States.
The name "North West Company" was revived in 1990 for a northern Canadian retail chain spun off from the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Bibliography
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Gough, Barry. The Elusive Mr. Pond: The Soldier, Fur Trader and Explorer Who Opened the Northwest. D & M, 2014. Print.
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Wallace, William Stewart. Documents Relating to the North West Company. Greenwood, 1968. Print.