"Opposition on the Coast": The Hudson's Bay Company, American Coasters, the Russian-American Company, and Native Traders on the Northwest Coast, 1825–1846 ed. by James R. Gibson (review)

The Champlain Society adds to its respected series of primary source collections Opposition on the Coast, edited by historian James Gibson. The volume features twenty-seven documents that chart the evolution of the Northwest Coast fur trade between 1825 and 1846. The documents consist primarily of correspondence and reports from the Hudson's Bay Company (hbc) and the Russian American Company (rac) collected by Gibson from the hbc archives in Winnipeg, the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, and the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC. Gibson arranges the sources to show how the hbc came to know, manage, and dominate the coastal trade after its merger with the North West Company in 1821. An extensive introduction narrates the major developments, geographies, and players in this twenty-year period. At the heart of the company's new venture in the Columbia Department was the hbc's attempts to control the trade between detached American "adventurers" and a jealous rac towards extending its monopoly into the region. Through all their manoeuvring, company officials contended with the demands and prerogatives of the Northwest Coast's Indigenous leaders and communities around whom the "coasters'" trade pivoted.

Geographically, the documents refer to the portion of the coast that would eventually become British Columbia and partially the southeast corner of present Alaska. Although hbc activities in the Columbia Department ranged from the lower Columbia River to beyond the Stikine River, Gibson limits his attention to the section that later became part of Canada. The hbc dispatched company men to the far north coast's islands, harbours, and inland rivers to gather intelligence on trade practices and possibilities. Through the 1820s and 1840s, ship captains and chief traders such as Peter Skene Ogden and James Douglas ventured from Fort Vancouver and Fort Langley to survey Haida Gwaii, Millbank Sound, the Nass and Stikine River watersheds, and as far north as the Taku River.

The European, Canadian, and American fur trade on the Northwest Coast boasts a rich historiography. Monographs by Gibson, Richard Mackie, Mary Malloy, and more recently, Lloyd Keith and John Jackson, tell of attempts by British companies and American traders to capture the marine and land-based fur industries on the Pacific slope in the early nineteenth century. By contrast, one of Gibson's goals in this volume is to restore Russia's presence in Northwest Coast history. Just fewer than half of the documents derive from or are in response to Russian sources at rac outposts. From New Archangel, rac administrators corresponded with company headquarters in St. Petersburg, and with hbc and American traders. These communications conveyed diplomatic tensions, supply lines, fort locations, competition for furs, and relations with Indigenous traders in the vicinity of New Archangel. Governor Ferdinand von Wrangell was particularly suspicious of Ogden's overtures and encroachments into rac territory north of 54'40', and Wrangell made no secret of his distrust of hbc intentions. In other negotiations, the rac weighed the advantages of securing food stuffs and other supplies from the British rather than the Americans. Decisions of this nature demonstrated New Archangel's daily concerns and the rac's bottom line, common topics in company histories.

Though the documents were produced by well-connected white men of means, as Gibson acknowledges in a disclaimer, they do contain informative ethnographic details on Northwest Indigenous peoples associated with the fur trade. The letters and reports, which must be evaluated in the context of their production, touch on or narrate the diverse economic and social activities of several Indigenous communities. These descriptions include trading patterns, village locations, cultural customs, and inter-tribal relations and conflict. The documents reference Tlingit, Nisga'a, Tsimshian, Haida, Kwakwaka'wakw, and, to a lesser extent, Nuu-Chah-Nulth, and Coast...