Monthly Archives: November 2014

History is a complex dance between continuity and change. Both, however, are deceptive. What appears to be continuity can, from time to time, be the reappearance of a practice or belief, one that had been suspended for a time. A single … Continue reading →

Tranquille Creek pours into Kamloops Lake about 15 kilometres west of the HBC’s fort at the confluence of the two branches of the Thompson River. In the 1850s the Tk’emlúps people retrieved small quantities of gold from the creek and canyon … Continue reading →

Aboriginal trade leaders who would do much to set the tone and character of trade through the first half of the 19th century emerged across the region. The Legaic (or Ligeex) lineage in the Ts’msyan (Tsimshian) territories in the northwest, Kw’eh (or Kwah, … Continue reading →

In the days and months after Seven Oaks, the colony at Red River was more divided than ever. The Métis under the leadership of Cuthbert Grant had taken an important step toward becoming a self-aware and tightly knit nation in … Continue reading →

The Napoleonic Wars, of which the War of 1812 was a part, barely touched the Prairie West. The Battle at Seven Oaks was an entirely separate event, one that reflected the isolation of the region from global events. Having said … Continue reading →

The two companies found themselves increasingly in conflict in the West. NWC forts and trading posts glared across rivers at their HBC opposites, strange mirror images of Euro-Canadian commercial activity in a land dominated by Ojibwa and Cree. Competition between … Continue reading →

The dynamic of the northwestern fur trade was different from what was observed in the south and even around the Great Lakes in several ways. One of these was the contrasting patterns of migration. The wintering partners of the NWC … Continue reading →

Among the transformative forces that jolted the Plains in the 18th and 19th centuries, none was more sweeping than the arrival of horses, which happened on the northern Plains in the 1730s. A Mounted Revolution Horses reached the Iron Confederacy and the … Continue reading →

Hudson Bay represented a commercial zone rather than a colonial environment until the 19th century. The Cree and the Chipewyan brought furs from across the drainage basin of the bay to the HBC’s shoreline posts. The Europeans huddled in their … Continue reading →

The HBC continued to trade in all the lands around the bay but increasingly it pushed into the Prairies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1811 it established a fort and settlement at Red River in response to NWC … Continue reading →