fina;;

Phase Two (Westward Expansion)

Part One – Nations at War

Phase two of the fur trade was initiated through the movement inland of both the HBC and the French and mixed blood traders from the St. rence and Great Lakes.

After the French defeat in 1713, British traders – not affiliated with the HBC – moved into the trade niches the French had been forced to abandon.

The French and mixed blood traders [French, Huron, Montagnais, Ojibwa, and Mohawk] began to move further and further inland – with the HBC traders closely following on their heals as the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) attempted to maintain control over trade in its Chartered territory.

The first place the HBC established a headquarters as it moved out from the Bay was Fort Nelson at the mouth of the Nelson River; then Cumberland House (1774) in Saskatchewan was next – built 61 years after the Treaty of Utrecht and 104 years after the creation of the HBC.
This system of building forts at strategic points on the river systems in expectation that Indian traders would bring in their furs contrasted shapely with the French system of sending traders to Indian camps and settlements and trading directly on site.

From the end of the War of Spanish Succession (1713) until 1754, the fur trade continued to advance with varying degrees of conflict between traders.

When New France attempted to regain territory under the guise/activities of its traders by moving into the Ohio River valley, conflict with the British colonies was triggered. Two years (1754-1756) of fighting between the 13 colonies and New France – with both sides supported by military units from their parent countries and respective Indian allies, led to an official British declaration of war in 1756 against France. The Seven Years War, 1754-1763 (or French and Indian War for the North American theatre (referred to in Canadian history as the War of the Conquest) began.

Hostilities ended in 1763 by the

Treaty of Paris
(France, Britain, Spain) France had to choose whether to hang on to New France or its Caribbean island colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique and it’s sugar trade – chose the islands. This suited the British – they now controlled all of North America east of the Mississippi. Through the treaty, France gave Spain its Louisiana territories, and Spain gave Britain Florida.

First Nations on either side of the conflict could not have foreseen the impact France’s surrender would have. One chief, allied to the French, on meeting the British in council is reported to have stated… “Although you have conquered the French, you have not conquered us. We are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods and mountains were left us by our ancestors and we will part with them to no one”.

Britain now faced the delicate task of pacifying its new French-Canadian subjects, as well as the Indian and Métis allies who had supported France. In recognition of Indian territorial rights King George III passed the Royal Proclamation, October 7, 1763.

The Proclamation created a ‘line’ (the Proclamation Line) between the British colonies on the Atlantic coast and Indian lands west of the Appalachian Mountains.

The Royal Proclamation

a) recognized Indian people as ‘Nations or Tribes of Indians’
b) Indian people who “lived under British protection, should not be molested or disturbed in the possession of such parts of our dominions and territories that were not ceded to or purchased by us, are reserved to them as their hunting grounds”
c) forbid “warrants or patents for any lands beyond the heads/sources of any of the rivers which fall into the Atlantic Ocean from the west and north-west, or upon any lands not having been ceded to or purchased by us as they are reserved to the said Indians”
d) further declare to reserve under our sovereignty, protection and dominion, for the use of said Indians, all the lands and territories not included within the limits of our governments or within the territories granted to the HBC”
e) prohibited private purchase of Indian land – land purchases had to be made by Crown officials “at some public meeting or assembly of the said Indians”
The Proclamation established that all lands not yet ceded or purchased by Britain, but yet a part of British North America, were ‘reserved lands’ for Indians.

Proclamation did not apply to the Arctic, British Columbia, Rupert’s Land, or Quebec.

“The Crown reserved to itself the right to extinguish Indian title, resurrecting a policy legislated in Virginia in 1655 but not in use. The legal terminology of the day, Indian title meant rights of occupancy and use, not ownership. Britain assumed that she held underlying sovereign title.
This established an important precedent – Indian peoples’ rights to use the land through rights of occupancy – they had usufructuary rights. Usufruct – right of enjoying all the advantages from the use of something that belongs to another.

The Royal Proclamation of 1763 is embedded in Section 25 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,
Constitution Act, 1982.

25. The guarantee in this Charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed so as to abrogate or derogate from any aboriginal, treaty or other rights or freedoms that pertain to the aboriginal peoples of Canada including
· (a) any rights or freedoms that have been recognized by the Royal Proclamation of October 7, 1763; and
(b) any rights or freedoms that now exist by way of land claims agreements or may be so acquired.

The Thirteen Colonies, angered by the limitations set upon them by the Royal Proclamation and then Britain’s passing of the Quebec Act, 1774 – to bring the Ohio Valley and region around the Great Lakes under the jurisdiction of Quebec led to conflict. The Thirteen Colonies took up arms against Britain in 1775; once again Indian people were drawn in as military allies. [Remember – the War of Spanish Succession (1703 – 1713) began over from conflict over the French trading presence in the Ohio River Valley and now the French have this region through the passing of the Quebec Act.]

France joined the war as an ally to the Colonies in 1778, Holland and Spain followed – Spain, threatening to attack Great Britain. The American War of Independence, 1775 to 1783 ended with the Treaty of Paris, 1783. [France had no territorial control but had remained a strong presence as part of the fur trade.]

Britain ceded the Ohio Valley – completely ignoring the Indian people and land rights promised them through the Royal Proclamation.

This is the point of divergence between the experiences of Indian people here in Canada to those faced by Indian people in the United States – as an independent nation the US did not have to/choose not to follow relational precedence’s set out through the Royal Proclamation

.

History of the North West Company [
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_West_Company]

There are historical references to a North West Company as early as 1770, involving the Montreal-based traders Benjamin Frobisher, Isaac Todd, Alexander Henry the elder, but the standard histories trace the Company to a 16-share organization formed in 1779.

For the next four years, it was little more than a loose association of a few Montreal merchants who discussed how they might break the stranglehold the HBC held on the fur trade. In the winter of 1783-84, the North West Company was officially created with its corporate offices in Montreal. It was led by businessmen Benjamin Frobisher, his brother Joseph, and Simon McTavish, along with investor-partners who included Robert Grant, Nicholas Montour, and George McBeath.

The death of Benjamin Frobisher opened the door to a takeover of the North West Company by Simon McTavish, at the time the company consisted of 23 partners, but “its staff of Agents, factors, clerks, guides, interpreters, more commonly known today as voyageurs amounted to 2000 people. Simon McTavish dominated the company until his death in 1804. His nephew William McGilivray ran it until the merger of 1821 with the Hudson’s Bay Company.

In 1787 the North West Company merged with a rival organization, Gregory, McLeod and Co., which brought several more able partners in, including John Gregory, Alexander Mackenzie, and his cousin Roderick Mackenzie. The 1787 Company consisted of twenty shares, some held by the agents at Montreal, and others by wintering partners, who spent the trading season in the fur country and oversaw the trade with the aboriginal peoples. The wintering partners and the Montreal agents met each July at the Company’s depot at Grand Portage on Lake Superior, later moved to Fort William (Thunder Bay, ON).

Numerous French Canadians played key roles in the operations both in the building, management, and shareholding of the various trading posts scattered throughout the country, as well numbering among the voyageurs involved in the actual trading with Indigenous peoples.

By 1800, the Northwest Company had established posts as far west as Lake Winnipeg, with trading posts at the juncture of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. And monopolized the fur trade over an extensive region to which the HBC had legitimate claim through the Charter.

The Metis consolidated themselves as a cultural group on the western prairies, with Métis families using two-wheeled Red River ox cart trains to travel into the Plains where the men would hunt buffalo and women would process the meat, skins and bones. Their regular routes became known as the Red River Trails.

In the northwest, the NW Company expanded its operations beyond the Rocky Mountains but despite its efforts, the NWC was at a distinct disadvantage in competing for furs with the Hudson’s Bay Company. The NWC tried to persuade the British Parliament to change arrangements, at least so they could obtain transit rights to ship goods needed for trading to the west via Hudson’s Bay. The requests were refused.

A few years later, McTavish and his group organized an overland expedition from Montreal to James Bay and a second expedition by sea. In September 1803, the overland party met the NWC’s ship at Charlton Island in what is now Nunavut Territory. They lay claim to the region, inhabited by the Inuit, in the name of the North West Company. This bold move caught the Hudson’s Bay Company off guard.

Simon McTavish brought several members of his family into the company – his nephew William McGillivray was groomed to succeed him as Director and by 1796 he had effectively done so, acting as Montreal agents’ representative at the annual meetings at Grand Portage, and later at Fort William.

Simon McTavish was an aggressive businessman and his ambition and forceful positions caused disagreements between him and some of the shareholders, several of whom left the NWC in the 1790s and formed the “XY Company”, allegedly because of the mark they used on their bales of furs.

There was intense competition between the rivals. When Simon McTavish died on July 6, 1804, William McGillivray set out to put an end to the four years’ rivalry – successfully putting together an agreement with the XY Company in 1804. It stipulated that the old North West Company partners held 75 per cent of the shares, and the former XY Company partners the remaining 25 per cent. Alexander Mackenzie was excluded from the new joint partnership.

Under William McGillivray, the Company continued to expand, and apparently to profit until the NWC and HBC merged in 1821.

2

1

Phase Two

(

Westward Expansion

)

Part One

–

Nations at War

Phase two of the fur trade was initiated through the

movement inland of both the HBC and the

French and mixed blood traders from the St. rence and Great Lakes.

After the French defeat in 1713, British traders

–

not affiliated with the HBC

–

moved into the

trade niches the French had been forced to abando

n.

The French and mixed blood traders [French, Huron, Montagnais, Ojibwa, and Mohawk] began

to move further and further inland

–

with the HBC traders closely following on their heals as the

Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) attempted to maintain control over

trade in its Chartered

territory.

The first place the HBC established a headquarters as it moved out from the Bay was Fort

Nelson at the mouth of the Nelson River; then Cumberland House (1774) in Saskatchewan was

next

–

built 61 years after the Treaty of

Utrecht and 104 years after the creation of the HBC.

This system of building forts at strategic points on the river systems in expectation that Indian

traders would bring in their furs contrasted shapely with the French system of sending traders to

Indian

camps and settlements and trading directly on site.

From the end of the War of Spanish Succession

(1713) until 1754

, the fur trade continued to

advance with varying degrees of conflict between traders.

When New France attempted to regain territory und

er the guise/activities of its traders by

moving into the Ohio River valley, conflict with the British colonies was triggered. Two years

(1754

–

1756) of fighting between the 13 colonies and New France

–

with both sides supported by

military units from their

parent countries and respective Indian allies, led to an official

British

declaration of war in 1756

against France

. The

Seven Years War, 1754

–

1763

(or

French and

Indian War

for the North American theatre (referred to in Canadian history as the

War of the

Conquest) began.

Hostilities ended in

1763

by the

Treaty of Paris

(France,

Britain, Spain) France had to choose

whether to hang on to New France or its Caribbean island colonies of Guadeloupe and

Martinique and it’s sugar trade

–

chose the islands. This suited the British

–

they now controlled

all of North America east of the Mi

ssissippi. Through the treaty, France gave Spain its Louisiana

territories, and Spain gave Britain Florida.

First Nations on either side of the conflict could not have foreseen the impact France’s surrender

would have. One chief, allied to the

French, on meeting the British in council is reported to have

stated… “Although you have conquered the French, you have not conquered us. We are not your

slaves. These lakes, these woods and mountains were left us by our ancestors and we will part

with the

m to no one”.

1

Phase Two (Westward Expansion)

Part One – Nations at War

Phase two of the fur trade was initiated through the movement inland of both the HBC and the
French and mixed blood traders from the St. rence and Great Lakes.

After the French defeat in 1713, British traders – not affiliated with the HBC – moved into the
trade niches the French had been forced to abandon.

The French and mixed blood traders [French, Huron, Montagnais, Ojibwa, and Mohawk] began
to move further and further inland – with the HBC traders closely following on their heals as the
Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) attempted to maintain control over trade in its Chartered
territory.

The first place the HBC established a headquarters as it moved out from the Bay was Fort
Nelson at the mouth of the Nelson River; then Cumberland House (1774) in Saskatchewan was
next – built 61 years after the Treaty of Utrecht and 104 years after the creation of the HBC.
This system of building forts at strategic points on the river systems in expectation that Indian
traders would bring in their furs contrasted shapely with the French system of sending traders to
Indian camps and settlements and trading directly on site.

From the end of the War of Spanish Succession (1713) until 1754, the fur trade continued to
advance with varying degrees of conflict between traders.

When New France attempted to regain territory under the guise/activities of its traders by
moving into the Ohio River valley, conflict with the British colonies was triggered. Two years
(1754-1756) of fighting between the 13 colonies and New France – with both sides supported by
military units from their parent countries and respective Indian allies, led to an official British
declaration of war in 1756 against France. The Seven Years War, 1754-1763 (or French and
Indian War for the North American theatre (referred to in Canadian history as the War of the
Conquest) began.

Hostilities ended in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris (France, Britain, Spain) France had to choose
whether to hang on to New France or its Caribbean island colonies of Guadeloupe and
Martinique and it’s sugar trade – chose the islands. This suited the British – they now controlled
all of North America east of the Mississippi. Through the treaty, France gave Spain its Louisiana
territories, and Spain gave Britain Florida.

First Nations on either side of the conflict could not have foreseen the impact France’s surrender
would have. One chief, allied to the French, on meeting the British in council is reported to have
stated… “Although you have conquered the French, you have not conquered us. We are not your
slaves. These lakes, these woods and mountains were left us by our ancestors and we will part
with them to no one”.