Trading Beyond the Mountains

The British Fur Trade on the Pacific 1793-1843

Richard Somerset Mackie (1997)

 

Mackie’s story is how the workings of the fur trade created a new Pacific coast economy. My purpose in reviewing it is to ask specifically about changes in the North Coast area. How an area fur trade dominated by “Boston Men” was so quickly transformed into HBC (Hudson Bay Company) territory dominated by Fort Simpson and the steamship Beaver.

 

CEO as Hero—Restructuring the Northwest Company into HBC

Mackie’s book reads as if it were formed as PhD thesis work. One goes into the archives, returns with lots of dusty data, and then transforms it into a “story”. Of course one takes along one’s own cultural baggage and for Mackie that seems to be our present fixation on the CEO as visionary and prime mover of large business organizations.

 

Thus George Simpson comes over from London every few years; journeys out to BC via HBC bateaux and canoes. Looks around, and then sets the whole enterprise in a new direction. We would call it “restructuring today.

TRANSPORTATION IS THE KEY

 

Here is What Simpson and the HBC found when they merged with the Northwest Company in 1821.

 

An efficient but expensive transport system reaching across Canada and ending in the Columbia River system. The Forts in New Caledonia (Fort St. James etc.) are linked to the Columbia via a packhorse brigade through the Caribou to the Okanogan area.

 

The entire BC coastal area has been left to the Russians and the American “Boston Men” traders as a legacy of the sea otter trade.

 

These sailing ships did not want to come too near the coast and thus places like Kaiangi became important rendezvous and trading centers.

 

As the sea otter slid closer to extinction from over-hunting, the sailors  were forced to seek alternatively the beaver furs from interior BC.

 

The Nass River took on prominence.

Simpson saw it would be easy to take this trade by planting permanent Fur trade posts in strategic locations along the BC and AK coasts. A tried and true HBC strategy

 

 

 

An aside—NWC as Riverine

There was a logic in the NWC transportation system

As in so much Canadian history the land is ultimately controlling events. Linking the huge Mackenzie Basin to the Columbia basin allowed Montreal based fur traders to race across the continent and attempt to out flank both the English HBC which “staid” behind at its forts on Hudson Bay, and the Americans whose Mississippi river drained South,

 

But HBC stayed in its Hudson Bay forts so long because it was cheaper to allow “natives” to bring the furs to Forts located on tide water where supplies and trade items could be cheaply stock piles.

 

The smaller watersheds like the Skeena and Stikine and even the Fraser were thus prime locations for Forts after the initial settling in of the East coasters.

But that is to get ahead of the story as Simpson and company were not to sure of the geography on the west coast. Aemilius Simpson (said to be related or a nephew of Sir George), was hired on as a ‘hydrographer and surveyor’ in 1826. He chose the future Fort Simpson, which was named after him, not his uncle.

 

 

 

By 1843 the HBC had transformed the BC economy

Forts were built on the Nass/ Skeena (Fort Simpson 1831); in the Bella Bella area (Ft. McLoughlin 1833) and Fort Stikine (1834) and Fort Taku (1840). And seeing the politics in Oregon were moving towards US annexation Fort Victoria (1843).

By 1837 the American’s had completely abandoned trying to trade on the north Coast.

 

Central to this routing the Boston Men was the importance Simpson gave to coastal trading. The five dedicated ships of the HBC fleet were soon joined by the steamship Beaver. Sailing ships were unable to navigate the inside passage and up the headwaters of the intricate fjords as could the wood burning harbinger of the industrial revolution then fomenting in England.

Transportation is the key

Of course all good stories come to an end. Unfortunately for the new Fort system was the dramatic fall in value of the beaver on the London market (where silk hats became the new fashion) which became evident to all by early 1840s. Thus Sir George has to make another trip to North America in 1841-2. More restructuring. The Forts have to go. The Americans are gone. The forts have outlasted their usefulness, except Fort Simpson (which remained the ‘lynch pin’ of the HBC in northern BC).

 

The Beaver was much more cost effective than maintaining year round forts. Close them. So spoke the CEO of a hundred and fifty years ago.