Control of Canada was transferred from the French to the English in 1760. According to Lyle Stone and Donald Chaput, in their chapter in the Handbook of North American Indians: Volume 15: Northeast:
“The British were interested not only in pursuing the fur trade but also in expanding the colonization and settlement of new areas of North America and in acquiring and developing other types of resources and products, such as mining interests and forest and agricultural products. The British interest in native religious practices was relatively limited.”
Briefly described below are come Canadian Indian events of 1774, 250 years ago.
Quebec Act
In 1774, Parliament enacted the Quebec Act which set off Quebec as a distinct territory. The Act legalized the Roman Catholic religion. The Act also brought trade with the Indians under government control.
Hudson’s Bay Company
The fur trade was an important part of the economic history of North America and incorporated American Indian economies into a larger world economy. Furs were valuable, easily portable, and renewable resources. The prime furs—marten, otter, fox—were sold at high prices in the European and Chinese markets. Of less value, but still profitable, were pelts from buffalo, beaver, muskrat, and squirrel.
The London-based Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), was founded in 1670. Although it dominated the Canadian fur trade in 1774, it was facing competition from the newly formed, Montreal-based North West Company (the Nor’Westers”, also known as pedlars). While HBC took a passive approach to the fur trade by expecting the Indian trappers to come to its trading posts on Hudson Bay, the Nor’Westers, following more of the French model, took a proactive approach by going to the Indians. Each spring, they would load up their large birchbark canoes with goods in Montréal and then paddle to Fort William at the western end of Lake Superior. Here they would meet other brigades of canoes coming down from the Northwest. Their cargoes would be exchanged: the furs would be transported east and the European goods west.
To meet the Nor’Wester competition, HBC had begun establishing trading posts inland from Hudson Bay. In 1774, HBC established the Cumberland House in Saskatchewan to encourage trade with the Blackfoot and to counter the competition with the Nor’Westers from Montreal.
Samuel Hearne and ten men had been sent out to establish HBC’s first inland trading post. After a lengthy search, they selected Pine Island, a place of towering spruce trees, and constructed a crude double lean-to as a post. According to R.G. Robertson, in his book Rotting Face: Smallpox and the American Indian:
“Located 700 canoe-miles from York Factory, this first Cumberland House was a dank log cabin, but it was closer to the western tribes than the competing Pedlar trading posts at The Pas, sixty miles east.”
In their book Exploring the Fur Trade Routes of North America, Barbara Huck et al write:
“It was no longer enough to set, as the HBC had for more than a century, and wait for the Cree, Ojibwe and Assiniboine to make the long journey to the bay. Now the competition was damming the flow of beaver pelts as effectively as the beaver themselves obstructed tens of thousands of streams across the great unknown north.”
Spanish Exploration
The Spanish, of course, had a long history of exploring, exploiting, and colonizing the southern Pacific Coast of North America and by the end of the eighteenth century were pushing north.
In 1774, Juan Pérez sailed north along the coast with instructions to take possession of all places suitable for European settlement in the name of Spain. At the northern end of Queen Charlotte Island in what is now British Columbia, Pérez was ceremonially welcomed by three Haida canoes. One of the ship’s officers threw a present (a cracker wrapped in a kerchief) into one of the canoes. The next day, trade began with the Haidas who offered him furs and fine wool blankets. In his chapter in North American Exploration. Volume 2: A Continent Defined, geographer James Gibson writes:
“He was met in ceremonious and friendly fashion by some Haidas, who were eager to trade, wanting mostly iron in exchange for Chilkat robes.”
On the return voyage, Pérez stopped at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island and traded with the Nuu-chah-nulth. The Indians offered furs in return for Monterey shells and iron knives. James Gibson writes:
“The great eagerness of the Haidas and Nootkas for trade and the high quality of their trade goods (furs) told the Spaniards that there was considerable potential for commercial relations between the coastal Indians and European mariners, and that therefore the situation should be closely monitored; unlike Cook, however, they failed to recognize the real value of sea otter skins, perhaps because they did not yet know that these were prized by Chinese customers.”
More Indian Histories
Indians 101: Canadian First Nations 200 years ago, 1824
Indians 301: Canadian First Nations and Jacques Cartier, 1534-1542
Indians 101: Canadian First Nations 150 years ago, 1873
Indians 101: Champlain and the Canadian First Nations
Indians 101: Outlawing the potlatch in Canada
Indians 101: The Northwest Coast Potlatch 100 years ago, 1921
Indians 101: Jesuit Relations in New France, 1632-1635
Indians 101: The Nez Perce in Canada