Commerce by a Frozen Sea: Native Americans and the European Fur Trade

Introduction: Native Americans and Europeans in the Eighteenth-Century Fur Trade

Introduction Native Americans and Europeans in the Eighteenth-Century Fur Trade We therefore beg your Majesty to accept these two elks and two Black Beavers which we now offer to You in terms of the Charter and in the same manner in which they were offered to your illustrious Father King George VI on the occasion of his visit to these territories in May, 1939. —Address of Hudson’s Bay Company governor William Keswick to Queen Elizabeth II, Winnipeg, July 24, 1959 V isiting heads of state are routinely offered gifts. One unusual giftgiving ceremony took place on July 14, 1970, at Lower Fort Garry, the site of an old fur trading post, on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth ’s visit to Manitoba. In the course of the ceremony, Queen Elizabeth was presented with a quantity of poplar along with a tank holding two live and very frisky beaver. When the Queen ‘‘bent over the tank to inspect her new possessions, she turned to the Hudson’s Bay Company governor, Viscount Armory, and asked ‘Whatever are they doing?’’’ In the best diplomatic tradition, the governor replied, ‘‘Ma’am, it’s no use asking me. I am a bachelor.’’1 The incident, while amusing, was much more than that. The ceremony highlighted a relationship that spanned continents and centuries. The gift to the Queen of England symbolized a commitment set out in a royal charter written three hundred years earlier during the reign of Charles II. The charter granted the ‘‘Company of Adventurers Trading into Hudson Bay’’ ‘‘sole Trade and Commerce’’ over what was then known as 2 Introduction Rupert’s Land, named after Prince Rupert, cousin of the king. Although not known at the time, Rupert’s Land was a vast area that encompassed the entire drainage basin of Hudson Bay. Embedded in the charter, and among the conditions relating to the operation of the company, was the requirement : ‘‘to be holden of Us, Our Heirs and Successors . . . yeilding [sic] and paying yearly to Us, Our Heirs and Successors . . . two Elks and two black Beavers, whensoever, and as often as We Our Heirs and Successors, shall happen to enter into the said Countries, Territories and Regions hereby granted.’’2 It was to be 257 years before the company had to make good on the provision. On August 9, 1927, in a ceremony in Winnipeg, the company presented to the Prince of Wales on behalf of his father, King George V, two black beaver pelts and two mounted elk heads. The Hudson’s Bay Company fulfilled this condition of the 1670 charter three more times: in 1939, when King George VI came to Canada, and in 1959 and 1970, when Queen Elizabeth II visited. The timing of the payments highlights the extraordinary longevity of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Moreover, the ceremonies symbolize not just the link between the company and the English Crown but also the intertwining of state policies and decisions in Europe with the trade environment of the New World. The two frisky black beaver given to Queen Elizabeth in 1970 are reminders of the basis of the trade and of the vast array of connections that brought the native peoples of the Canadian subarctic into the Atlantic economy. Even the site of the event, the former trading post of Lower Fort Garry, reminds us of the physical locations where exchanges between native and European traders took place, while the gift-giving nature of the ceremony brings to mind the structure of trade relations between Native Americans and Europeans, which included the aboriginal practice of exchanging gifts before the actual trading began. And, although the Hudson’s Bay Company did not literally meet its charter obligation at the ceremony in 1970, those present must have been grateful that young poplar trees were substituted for the two elk.3 The earliest interactions between Europeans and the native groups who occupied the North American subarctic had elements that were social, cultural , and religious, but theirs was primarily a commercial relationship. From the isolated exchanges between natives offering pelts to European fishermen, who, in turn, beckoned these same individuals with metal items, grew a broadly based trade. Native Americans had raw materials that were valued in Europe, and Europeans could supply a wide variety of goods not The Eighteenth-Century Fur Trade 3 available in North America. This bilateral exchange provided new technologies that improved the natives’ ability...