Fur Companies in the Pacific Northwest

Lewis and Clark accomplished for the United States what Sir Alexander Mackenzie had accomplished for Canada.

Continuing Fur Companies Abolished,
our selection from The Canadian Northwest: Its History And Its Troubles From The Early Days Of The Fur Trade To The Era Of The Railway And The Settler by G. Mercer Adam published in 1885. The selection is presented in six easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Fur Companies Abolished.

Time: 1869

Lewis and Clark accomplished for the United States what Sir Alexander Mackenzie had accomplished for Canada. They opened up an overland route to the Pacific and divested the region of much of its terror to the heart of incoming civilization. Much of the territory opened up by these explorers French enterprise had already traversed. Indeed, to the French and the Scotch belong the honors of discovery over most of the continent. The whole country west of the Great Lakes was early made known by Frenchmen. In 1679 La Salle erected Fort Michilimackinac, at the entrance of Lake Michigan, and followed the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. In the same year Du Luth reached the western extremity of Lake Superior and took pos session of the sources of the Mississippi. About the same period Perrot and Le Sueur journeyed over the region and established forts by order of the French Governor. In 1742 Vérendrye reached the country of the Mandans, in what is now the territory of Dakota, and tracked the upper waters of the Missouri. Later he roamed over the vast plains of the Saskatchewan and probed the continent as far west as the Rocky Mountains.

In the track of the French traders a series of posts was established, extending from Sault Ste. Marie and the Kaministiquia to the distant Saskatchewan and the hyperborean Athabasca. Later still was established the chain of trading-establishments of the Northwest Company, that linked the country from New Brunswick Post, at the source of Moose River, to the distant Fraser, the Thompson, the Peace, and the Mackenzie. Then came the cluster of Hudson Bay posts that figure so prominently in connection with the fur trade in the Northwest.

But in this enumeration we by no means exhaust the enterprise or tell the whole story of Franco-Canadian and Scottish Canadian trade. In addition to Mackenzie’s work on the west of the Rocky Mountains were the labors of James Finlay, another Scotchman, who ascended Peace River four years after Mackenzie, and explored the branch of that river to which he gave his name. In this region the name of another Scot is associated with the waters of the Fraser; while the other great river of British Columbia bears the name of still another Scotchman, David Thompson. All three were employees of the Northwest Company, of Montreal.

On the Walla-Walla and Columbia rivers the Northwest Company had in its service a whole colony of Scotchmen. The area of the company’s trading operations was by no means con fined to the district of Red River. The Nor’westers did a thriving trade on Columbia River, in Oregon, where they had an important and lucrative post. Their business on the coast was also extensive, reaching from California to New Archangel. On the Pacific slope, in 1817, the company had more than three hundred Canadians in its employ. From its ports three or four ships were annually dispatched to London, by way of Cape Horn, freighted with furs. The ships on the return passage brought supplies for the establishments on the coast.

The Northwest Company had here no Hudson Bay rival; its chief competitor was John Jacob Astor. In 1810 this young German trader founded Fort Astoria, the great fur-mart on Columbia River, familiar to readers of Washington Irving’s narrative of the western fur trade. Astor, it appears, was desirous to attach to his service some of the more prominent Scotchmen among the Nor’westers. He even made overtures to the company to join him in partnership. The advantage of an alliance, he pointed out, was his ability to ship furs in American vessels to India and China, which the Northwest Company was unable to do in consequence of the East India Company’s monopoly of trade. The resident agents took the matter into consideration, but after an exchange of views with the wintering partners in the interior the proposition was declined, and it was decided to give Mr. Astor and his Pacific Fur Company a lively opposition in Oregon territory. This, of course, occurred long before international boundaries were determined; indeed, it happened within two years of the breaking out of the War of 1812.

But if Astor could not form an alliance with the Canadian company, he could seduce from its employment the men he sought to aid him in his enterprise. By dint of offers of partnership and rapid promotion he enticed twenty Canadians to enter his service. Placing these men at the head of two expeditions, Astor dispatched one overland, and the other he sent round Cape Horn to the mouth of the Columbia. The breaking out of the war, and the active competition of the Northwest Company, made havoc of Astor’s plans, and ere long broke up the arrangement between him and his Montreal Scotchmen. On the Pacific, Britannia’s “wooden walls” were cruising about, and made trading operations too hazardous to be profitably engaged in. Fort Astoria, in the fortunes of war, and through the cease less rivalry of the Nor’westers, changed hands and became Fort George; but by the Treaty of Ghent, in December, 1814, the post was restored.

With the collapse of Astor’s project, his Scotch partners returned to their former allegiance, and reentered the service of the Northwest Company. Among these Scotchmen, and their countrymen who had remained in the service of the Canadian company, now gathered in the Oregon district, we find representatives of almost all the clans whose patronymics have the prefix of Mac.

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