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The history of Alberta from
1821 to 1870 is the history of the fur trade. There was no settlement
except a few retired Hudson's Bay Company servants in the vicinity of
Edmonton, who assisted the Company in the limited agriculture pursued at
this post. The only centres of settlement in the whole North-West were
within the old district of Assiniboia. Settlement advanced in the Red
River and the buffalo became scarce in that region. The Cree and
Assiniboine Indians followed them westward to the Plains of Saskatchewan
and Alberta. War between the Blackfeet nations and the invaders became
frequent and made settlement impossible. Apart from the Minutes of the
Hudson's Bay Company, and the meagre references in the books and diaries
of travellers, such as Gabriel Franchére, Ross Cox, Alexander Ross, Paul
Kane, Milton and Cheadle, Southesk and Butler, there are few records
available. Of course there was very little to record. It was not until
the Canadian Government sent S. J. Dawson and Henry Yuill Hind to the
North-West in 1857 that the people of the eastern portion of the
Dominion began to learn of the resources of the North-West and its
suitability for colonization and agriculture. The reports of these
eminent men made a profound impression in Canada and as soon as
Confederation was consummated the eyes of the Dominion were turned to
the west and active steps were inaugurated to annex the Empire ruled
over by the Hudson's Bay Company. The facts of this chapter will,
therefore, deal with the activities of the great fur trading
corporation; only indirect reference will be made to the relations of
the Company to the growing colony at Red River. Although this was the
storm centre of the period and the events that took place there led to
the surrender of the Hudson's Bay Charter, it properly belongs to the
history of Manitoba and has been well told in other works on the
North-West.
After the coalition the
territories of the new company were organized into four departments—The
Montreal, Southern, Western and Northern. The Montreal had control of
the fur trade in the Canadas and Labrador. The Southern Department
embraced the territory between the Hudson's Bay and the Montreal
Department. The Western Department included all the territory west of
the Rocky Mountains. The Northern Department, the one in which we are
now concerned, included the vast district lying between the Hudson's Bay
and the Rocky Mountains and between the United States and the Arctic
Ocean. It was the largest and the most important of the four. The
government of these territories was entrusted to the Council of Rupert's
Land which was composed of all the Chief Factors. These officers
attended ex-officio while the chief traders were generally invited to
attend the meetings of the Council and when so attending they had the
same right to discuss and vote as the Chief Factors in all matters
except the promotion of officers. The Chief Executive officer was called
the Governor of Rupert's Land. This Council must be carefully
distinguished from the Council of the Assiniboia which was the body that
ruled over that part of the Hudson's Bay Territory granted in 1811 to
Lord Selkirk. It was subordinate to the Grand Council of Rupert's Land
and many of its decisions and enactments were over-ruled by the superior
council. In fact the governmental organization of the west at this time
suggests to us the analogy that exists between the Federal and
Provincial governing bodies in Canada at the present time.
We get a good idea of the work of the
Council of Rupert's Land from the testimony of Edward Ellice in his
evidence before the Parliamentary Committee of 1857 in the following
statement: "A
Council is composed, in the interior, of the Chief Factors, the higher
class, which meets every year. It has met at different places but it
meets generally at the Red River. The trade is directed, first of all,
by the Board of Directors at home, but, like the East India Company,
they have their Council in the interior, which regulates the local
concerns of the Company. That Council, which meets every year, takes
into consideration the accounts of the preceding year, audits the
ensuing year's trade, stations the various servants of the Company at
such posts as the Council may think they are best qualified to occupy,
and if vacancies occur in the service, recommends to the directors at
home the fit persons then being in the service to succeed to those
vacancies. So that, in fact, the whole affairs of the Company, so far as
the fur trade is concerned, are conducted by that Council, subject to
the control and superintendence of the Board of Directors at home. . . .
The Council consists of as many as can conveniently assemble, who act
for the whole body. . . . All appointments are made by the Government at
home; the Council only recommend. . . . They have no power, except with
the consent and concurrence of the Board at home." Q. 5793.
The Minutes of the Meetings of this Council
is the official history of the North-West for 50 years. These with the
standing rules and regulations comprised the legal and commercial system
of the land. A great many of these minutes have never been published,
but we are fortunate in having the minutes from 1830 to 1843 printed by
the Canadian Archives, Publication No. 9, edited by Professor E. H.
Oliver of the University of Saskatchewan. An introduction to the Minutes
written by Mr. Isaac Cowie, formerly a Commissioned officer of the
Hudson's Bay Company, is reproduced here because it presents a splendid
bird's eye view of the work of the Council for the period under review.
"The data contained in these minutes furnish
a skeleton history, during that important period, of those parts of the
old 'Hudson's Bay Territories,' held under both Royal Charter and
License, in the countries now comprising New Ontario, the three Prairie
Provinces, the North West and Yukon Territories, and the Province of
British Columbia, besides throwing light upon the operations of the
Company in Russian America and in the States of Washington, Oregon and
California, also in the Sandwich Isles.
"The main purpose of these annual meetings
was to receive reports upon the operations of the previous year and to
make arrangements for carrying on trade during the next, and, often, for
many future years. Following the waterways, the chief means of
communication in a country so favoured by nature in that respect, and,
when these were interrupted, the lines of least resistance overland,
pointed out by the tracks of wild animals and the trails and portages of
the Indians, they solved the greatest problem set before them and their
chief difficulty, in a land of magnificent distances, by means of the
birch bark canoe, the 'inland' boat, and the main strength and skill of
the voyageurs who manned them. The feats performed by these men in the
battle with the wilderness and in the fight against immense distances
have never been surpassed, if ever equalled. And the wise men who sat in
Council and planned these campaigns in transportation so admirably a
year or years in advance, so that 'brigades' starting from places as far
apart as the lower Mackenzie River and from Red River District: and
others from Fort Vancouver, at the mouth of the Columbia, and from York
Factory on Hudson's Bay, were so nicely timed to meet at fixed points
and exchange freight and passengers that they rarely failed to connect
on schedule time. And this in a time when swift mail and telegraphic
communication did not exist.
"The same wise foresight which regulated
their system of transportation was displayed in every other detail of
their business as traders. The interests of the fur trade were
paramount; indeed fur was the only exportable product of the country
before the railway age, and affected the life of every one in the
Territories, including the settlers upon the Red River. There Thomas,
fifth Earl of Selkirk, had made an attempt to found a colony, in
opposition alike to the opinions of his enemies of the North West
Company and of his friends of the Hudson's Bay Company. But, upon the
cessation of hostilities between these rivals, when they became a united
company, the old plan of the North Westers to form a settlement on the
Rainy River for their retired servants (from which possibly may have
originated Selkirk's subsequent colonizing idea) was carried out on the
Red River, where their supernumeraries and those of the Hudson's Bay
Company came to the number of 1,500, far exceeding all the settlers ever
brought 'under the auspices of the Earl of Selkirk.' Hence Sii' George
Simpson, in his journey round the world, states that the real settlement
on the Red River began in 1821, when the union of the Companies led to
the disbandment of their forces, many of these retiring to become
settlers on the Red River, provided with means to start and experience
in the country, including, in many cases, that gained by raising crops
at the trading posts, where these were necessary to eke out the
uncertain produce of the chase and fishery.
"It was only natural that a settlement
composed chiefly of men who had served with them as companions in the
wilds should be viewed with favour by the Councillors of Rupert's Land,
many of whom contemplated spending the evening of their days, with their
native children, surrounded by the comforts and conveniences afforded at
Red River; where, moreover, the company's employees were each entitled
'for past services' to receive free grants of land out of the one-tenth
reserved for that purpose in the original grant to Selkirk. Consequently
the Minutes record from time to time the grant of money and allowances
of imported 'luxuries' (as they were called in that time of expensive
and difficult transportation) consisting of tea, sugar, rice, raisins,
wines and liquors, to the Missionaries in the Colony; funds in aid of
public works; and the establishment of experimental farms, for which
fine live stock was imported.
"Besides being a convention on the business
of the fur trade, the Governor and Council of the Northern Department of
Rupert's Land (which exercised control over the minor Councils of the
Southern and Montreal departments—in what are now the Provinces of
Ontario and Quebec— as well as those of Columbia and New Caledonia
beyond the Rocky Mountains) had, under the Royal Charter, power to make
laws and act in a judicial capacity for and in the chartered
territories. In these the only other legislative and executive Council
was that of the Municipality of Assiniboia, which was composed of that
portion of the great District of Assiniboia, granted to Lord Selkirk,
extending fifty miles from the Forks down by the Red and up along the
Red and Assiniboine rivers, and two miles back on each side of these
rivers. "In its
legislative capacity the Northern Department Council was supreme over
that of Assiniboia, whose enactments were on occasion disallowed by it,
in fact the two councils stood in nearly similar relations as do the
Dominion Parliament and Provincial Legislatures today. When the Governor
of Rupert's Land was present the Governor of Assiniboia left the chair
and became one of the Council. When a Chief Factor from another part of
the territories visited Red River he, as a Councillor of Rupert's Land,
took a seat by right as such in the Council of Assiniboia; but a
Councillor of Assiniboia had no seat or right in the Council of Rupert's
Land. "During the
early period when the Governors of Assiniboia were the nominees and
agents of Selkirk, but appointed as Governors by the Company under their
charter, much friction arose between such Governors and the Chief
Factors and Councillors of Rupert's Land who were in command of the fur
trading 'Red River District.' But, afterwards, when the officer in
charge of the 'Red River District' became ex-officio the Governor of
Assiniboia also, this source of trouble ceased, and no Council of
Assiniboia so presided over was likely to enact any regulation which the
Governor knew would be objected to by the Council of the Northern
Department of Rupert's Land, or the Governor and Committee in London. On
this limitation reference may be made to the 'Report of the Law
Amendment Committee' submitted to the Council of Assiniboia by Recorder
Thom in May, 1851, which says:
'Our local legislature owes allegiance to
the Governor and Council of Rupert's Land . . . and has no right to
control any one of the Company's chartered powers.'
"To review or even briefly summarize all the
acts of the Council of the Northern Department would require space not
available in this publication. But from a rough general index the
following headings to subjects of probable interest to the reader and
student are taken: From Standing Rules and Regulations—Sale Tariff of
Merchandise, Buffalo Robes and Leather to Settlers. Freight rates to and
from York Factory. Freight and Passenger Rates on Ocean—to and from
Hudson's Bay and Fort Vancouver (at end of series of Minutes). In the
Minutes of each year would be found money grants for Red River gaol and
police; to surgeons, surveyors, schools and clergymen; orders for
colonial produce required by the Fur Trade and prices to be paid
therefor; regulation re imports by settlers from England; engagement and
wages of boatmen; freight rates by Company's boats; employment of boats
owned by settlers to freight to and from York Factory; the employment of
indians from outside the settlement to man such contractors' boats
prohibited; and the establishment of Lower Fort Garry, the post at
Portage la Prairie, and the Experimental Farms presided over by Chief
Factor McMillan and Captain Cary.
"Outside of the colony, grants were given to
Wesleyan Missions at York Factory, Norway House and Edmonton, and to the
Roman Catholic mission on the Columbia. The making of a winter road,
between the head of the tracking ground on Hayes' River and Norway
House, was persisted in for several years, but was finally abandoned as
more expensive than boating. Besides the regular mails by annual ship,
summer brigades and winter expresses, one to Canada by Fort William and
Saulte Ste. Marie, and another to St. Peters (near St. Paul, Minn.) were
established. The sale of spirituous liquors to Indians was prohibited
throughout the country, except at points where the fur trade was exposed
to competition with American spirit dealers. Resolutions were yearly
passed confirming the Standing Rule for the preservation of the beaver,
and limiting the output of their skins from depleted districts. The
Indians were to be compensated for abstaining from hunting these
animals. By Standing Rule No. 38 the Company's employees were enjoined
always to treat the Indians with kindness and humanity, and to invite
them to attend the Sunday services, which the commandant of each post
was directed to read by Rule No. 1. Annual lists of the Indians attached
to each post were to be sent to headquarters, and a General Census was
taken in 1837. "One
of the most interesting features of the Minutes to their descendants and
other friends living in the North-West is the names, ranks, movements
and emoluments of the Company's Chief Factors, Chief Traders, Clerks and
Postmasters given from year to year. These are all of historical, and
occasionally of legal value.
"The Company's activities covered a wide
range of subjects, from meteorological observations and zoological
collections for the British Museum, to general banking and receiving
employees' savings on deposit at interest. But it is impossible within
the allotted space to do justice to all the subjects mentioned in the
Minutes; neither is it possible for one who has not derived his
knowledge from other sources to read between the lines of the
resolutions for the causes of which the resolutions were the result.
"Each Council was opened with the reading of
the General Letter of the Governor, Deputy Governor and Committee (who
subscribed themselves as 'Your Affectionate Friends to their trusty and
well beloved partners in the Fur Trade')—the Chief Factors and Chief
Traders In the absence of copies of these letters and of the reports
made annually to the Council by each officer in charge of a district, it
is impossible to fully understand the resultant resolutions of this
Council. All such documents are still kept private by the Company,
although the time is long past when their publication could do any harm
to their trade by divulging its secrets. Indeed, judging from the highly
creditable exposure made by these Minutes of their mode of doing
business and the laudable interest taken in the general well-being of
their territories, the publication of these well preserved records would
only redound to the credit of the Company's rule and to the confusion of
their detractors. For it must be noted that the Minutes here for the
first time published, were never intended when they were recorded for
the eyes of the outside public, although each district and commissioned
officer was entitled to a copy for their use and guidance. Few of the
Chief Factors and Chief Traders, however, took precautions for the
preservation of their copies, and we are indebted for these important
revelations to the care of an exception to this rule, who handed them
down to his children, who unlike too many others into whose hands such
documents have fallen, have carefully preserved them.
"But they cover only a limited, though
glorious, period in the history of that great company, whose officers
and men in North America, serving With conspicuous 'courage and
fidelity' succeeded by their effective occupation of the territories in
preserving them for the British Crown until their union with Canada." |
