"Expectations of Grease & Provisions": The Circulation and Regulation of Fur Trade Foodstuffs

On 23 July 1806, thirteen partners of the North-West Company (NWC) sat in a small Georgian council house on the western edge of Lake Superior and earnestly debated the amounts of tea, coffee, and chocolate to be consumed by each man in the Company’s inland fur-trading posts that winter. The matter was decided as follows:

And whereas much confusion and irregularity has hitherto prevailed in the mode of supplying the Gentn in the Country with the articles of Tea Coffee &c. to prevent which in future it was agreed & understood by the parties present, that this matter should be regulated as follows vizt.

Proprietors....................... 6lb Tea 4lb Coffee & 4lb Chocolate

Principal Clerks in charge of Posts..........2lb D^o 1lb D^o & 1lb D^o

Inferior Clerks wintering with others.....1 lb D^o

The above quantities are intended as the Winters supply, and are independent of the consumption at this place and of the usual allowance carried off in Cases & Baskets but it is understood that neither Interpreters or Guides are entitled to any provision of this kind, they being generally fed at the tables of their masters. ¹

Though the substance of this document may seem petty, it transmits a serious and palpable anxiety about class and race. Among the gentlemen who signed this surprising agreement were: Duncan McGillivray, nephew of Simon McTavish, the founder of the North-West Company, and himself a partner in the concern; Roderick McKenzie, witty letter-writer and “cousin” to explorer Alexander Mackenzie; Duncan Cameron, the trader soon to play a key rôle in the Red River affair; and David Thompson, former employee of the rival Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) and the man who eventually mapped over 80,000 square miles of North America. The “Clerks” referred to in the agreement, like its signatories, were largely of Scottish or English origin; the “Interpreters” and “Guides” to be “fed at the tables of their masters” were Canadian (French), native, or Métis.

As this memo of the luxuries enjoyed by the “Lords of the Northwest” indicates, at Fort William, the North-West Company’s inland headquarters at the head of Lake Superior [present-day Thunder Bay], there existed a complex hierarchy of social, racial, and economic relationships both symbolized and enabled by food. The 1806 meeting seems to have been particularly important in terms of governing these relationships for the partners next turned to regulation of the information carried by the “winter express,” the North-West Company’s overland mail courier, which departed the Peace River in January and arrived at Fort William in early April. The “principal Points on which information will be desirable,” wrote Duncan McGillivray, “are the appearance of returns. Mens Engagements, Arrangements of Posts—Expectations of Grease & Provisions &c &c with every kind of general information & remarks regarding the state of the Country” (Documents, p. 219). Consistent provisioning of North-West Company posts and canoe brigades was considered essential, not only to maintaining hierarchies within the company, but also in ensuring successful competition with the Hudson’s Bay Company. When Lord Selkirk, chief shareholder of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and Miles Macdonell, governor of Selkirk’s colony at Red River, restricted the circulation of vital provisions with the “Pemmican Proclamation” of 1814, they initiated a series of events that gave rise to a fur monopoly that exists to this day in Canada. This paper examines the circulation of imported and local foodstuffs within the social, racial, and economic hierarchies of the fur trade; discusses the composition, production, and discursive representation of these foodstuffs; and articulates their impact upon fur trade history to demonstrate that “Expectations of Grease & Provisions” had a significant impact upon “the state of the Country.”

The fashion for beaver felt hats was at its height in early nineteenth-century Europe, and in North America the North-West Company was engaged in a war of commerce with the Hudson’s Bay Company over the skins of that industrious animal. The two companies were well-matched opponents. The Hudson’s Bay Company, established in 1670...