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

Chapter 2: The Hudson’s Bay Company and the Organization of the Fur Trade

Chapter 2 The Hudson’s Bay Company and the Organization of the Fur Trade Hearing also some Frenchmen discourse in New England of a passage from the West Sea to the South Sea, and of a great trade of beaver in that passage, and afterwards meeting with sufficient proof of the truth of what they had said, and knowing what great endeavours have been made for the finding out of a north-west passage, he thought them the best present he could possibly make His Majesty, and persuaded them to come to England. —Report attributed to ‘‘George Carr,’’ London, 1665 T he flow of pelts that transformed the English felting and hatting industries in the late seventeenth century was the result of two fortuitous events. The first was the signing of the Treaty of Breda marking the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. England, the United Provinces, France, and Denmark signed the treaty in the Dutch city of Breda in July 1667. England had captured New Amsterdam from the Dutch, and as part of their negotiations the English commissioners had offered to return New Netherlands in exchange for Dutch sugar factories on the coast of Surinam. The Dutch declined. And so it was that the region became British, and New Amsterdam became New York City. In the same negotiations Acadia, the region of present-day New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, was returned to France, although the French territorial boundary was left unspecified. Thus, in the middle of the 1660s, the northern coastal The Hudson’s Bay Company 37 region of North America was divided between France and England. The second event was a chance meeting in New England in 1664 between British commissioners George Cartwright and Sir Robert Carr, and two French Canadians, Médard Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers, and Pierre Esprit Radisson.1 At this time, pelts destined for the felters and hatters of La Rochelle and Paris were sent down the St. Lawrence River to Quebec City for shipment to Europe. Pelts from the New York region, which had previously flowed to the Dutch, now entered the London market. These furs were an important part of the transatlantic trade and were the raw material on which the hatting industry in Europe depended. But fur stocks in the eastern part of North America were declining. That, combined with the knowledge that the best pelts came from more northerly regions, led Europeans to search for new sources of supply. The two French traders Radisson and Groseilliers , who met with the Englishmen in 1664, were central figures in that search. The voyageurs had been looking for a trade route north of the St. Lawrence River that would allow them to access new sources of furs safe from the predations of the Iroquois and their English partners. In the course of his travels, Groselliers accompanied some Huron Indians up the Ottawa River, through Lake Nipissing and down the French River to Georgian Bay at the top of Lake Huron.2 The journey taken in the 1650s was highly signi ficant because it gave the coureurs de bois a relatively direct route from Montreal to the upper reaches of the Great Lakes.3 During these travels he met members of the Cree nation and probably heard talk of a fabulous ‘‘frozen sea’’ to the north, and by the time he returned to Quebec in 1656, he had acquired fourteen thousand livres of furs.4 Subsequent journeys by Radisson and Groseilliers were equally successful as trading expeditions but much less so in terms of the reception these traders received at Quebec. Both were assessed heavy taxes on the furs and then fined for violating the French authorities’ ban on travel to the interior. As E. E. Rich so aptly puts it: ‘‘They [Radisson and Groseilliers] had brought a stream of life-giving furs to the colony; they had proved the wealth of the north and they had pioneered a new and efficient approach to it. Their reward was fines, imprisonment and abuse.’’5 Unhappy with their treatment at the hands of the authorities in Quebec, Groseilliers traveled to France in 1661 to seek redress from the king. He also tried to enlist support for a sea expedition to the north. On both counts 38 Chapter 2 he was unsuccessful. Groseilliers then sailed to New England, again to seek sponsors for a voyage to the north. It was...