[MUSIC] First Nations of the Plain were bison hunters. The Blackfoot became important suppliers for food for the traders, specifically pemmican, a food made of dried fat, dried meat, and berries like saskatoons, strawberries, or blueberries. It stored well and provided highly concentrated nutrition. There is approximately two to 3,000 calories in every pound of pemmican. This food supply literally fuelled the fur trade, so that traders can move northwest into the Athabasca region. Indigenous women were key to the success as they were the ones that made the pemmican and later prepared the hides when the demand for buffalo ropes took in the 1850s. After 1821, the Métis buffalo hunters came to dominate the supply of pemmican to the Hudson's Bay Company. Métis bison hunters and their families created a valuable economic niche in the fur trade economy. Suddenly, in 1811, Hudson's Bay Company sold over 74 million acres to majority shareholder Thomas Douglas, Lord Selkirk. This new invasion, the Selkirk settlement, lay in the middle of the already established area called the Red River Valley, where there was a major concentration of Métis people, who had a thriving economy. This Métis presence also straddled the Northwest Company route and various forts. The Selkirk settlement land had been designated by Lord Selkirk for dispossessed immigrant Scottish highlanders to begin new lives in subsistence-based farming. [MUSIC] >> We are not only willing, but very anxious after being paid for our lands, that the whites would come and settle among us, for we have already derived great benefits from their having done so, that is, not the traders, but the farmers. The traders have never done anything but rob us and keep us poor, but the farmers have taught us how to farm and raise cattle. [MUSIC] The manufacturing and distribution of pemmican became a valuable and essential staple for many posts as well as the Selkirk settlement. Selkirk governor, Miles McDonald, turned to the local Indigenous populations of Ojibwa and Métis to supply the new influx of helpless settlers with meat, grease, and pemmican. The influx of strangers on the land surrounding and intersecting an already established Métis Red River settlement created great tension and challenges as the surveyors and the new settlers did not recognize any Métis claims to the land. As a result the Métis and the Nor’westers became an allied front in their economic and land struggles against the Hudson's Bay Company. On January 8th, 1814 the Selkirk governor, Miles McDonald, in a bid to exercise his authority over the settlements, issued a decree that would galvanize the nationalistic aspirations of a new people. The Pemmican Proclamation of 1814 occurred when McDonald issued a ban on the export of pemmican or any other provisions. This development did not go over well with the Métis or the Nor’westers who are both economically dependent on the pemmican. Six months later, McDonald banned the running and use of horses on any buffalo hunts. The Métis in particular were already frustrated and began to resist. Rising tensions between the colony and the Métis and acts of Métis resistance culminated in the Battle of Seven Oaks in 1816 which resulted in the death of 21 male Selkirk colonists. The Métis' success in this conflict contributed to the development of Métis nationalism. But it was not the last time that the Métis would take on the Hudson's Bay Company. Escalating conflict, especially in the Athabasca district, was costly to both the Hudson's Bay and Northwest companies. Subsequently, economic costs and political legal pressures from the colonial office forced these companies to merge in 1821. For the next 50 years, a reasonable stability was maintained in the Hudson's Bay Company territory under this monopoly. During this competitive period, say 1783 to 1821, the value of furs tended to go up while the value of goods declined. These prices were an incentive to over-trap. In order to maintain profitability, the Northwest Company and Hudson's Bay Company briskly traded alcohol. After 1821, the newly formed company had to address the resource shortages created by the fierce competition and efforts to manage and conserve beaver populations was made. The trade in the alcohol declined. This monopoly gave the Hudson's Bay Company greater control over their interactions with Indigenous producers. While this monopoly allowed for more sustainable trapping of fur bearing animals, beginning in the 1850s bison populations declined largely because of over harvesting. French traders, by adapting to Indigenous cultures, conducted their trade somewhat differently than the British. The French went further inland and often pushed their canoe routes to the edge of the expanding commercial frontier. As a means to facilitate trade, First Nations hosted the French in their villages and camps during the winter. Rivers were the highways for many Indigenous peoples which meant that boats were often the most efficient way to travel. The birchbark canoe is original Indigenous technology, and was an easy way to move goods and materials between trading posts and communities. Along both the Hudson's Bay Company and Northwest Company trading routes, Indigenous people sold materials such as birch bark, cedar root, birch rind, and tar to build and repair these canoes. The Northwest Company's Canoe du Nord was an enlarged version of this vital piece of Indigenous technology. The merger and consequent restructuring of the Hudson's Bay Company and Northwest Company in 1821 had several longterm effects on Métis and First Nations populations. Without the fierce competition of the Northwest Company, the Hudson's Bay Company was able to create and enforce strict rules and regulations on hunting and trapping. During this period, in 1820, Sir George Simpson was appointed governor in chief by London Hudson’s Bay Company headquarters and acted as a Hudson's Bay Company head of operations for all North American trade. Governor Simpson eliminated or restructured many of the expensive trading practices that had been a critical underpinning of Indigenous trade. One key change involved the streamlining of the transport systems. York Factory was the Hudson's Bay Company’s command centre and primary port of entry. Keep in mind that during the mercantile era, factory meant a place of commerce. For more than two centuries, York Factory imported trading goods and exported furs, and under Simpsons's reorganization, its importance only increased. In the interest of efficiency, Simpson replaced the canoe with the York Boat on major river corridors. This sturdy, locally built York Boat became the preferred mode of transportation, as it could carry larger amounts of cargo, and reduced manpower requirements, although it was a brutal form of work. Over time, Europeans adapted to the environment and the interdependence based on the skills and knowledge of the Indigenous populations shifted to favour the Europeans. In a bid to accumulate wealth, the Hudson's Bay Company made a decision that reverberated throughout the history. Otipemisiwak, literally, people who are their own bosses or free men, developed in the fur trade as Métis and others broke away from the consigns of the Hudson's Bay Company and North West Company. They became free agents, trapping, hunting, trading, and selling furs, and providing provisions to the posts as opportunities presented. Significantly, these free men groups lived outside the authority of the bands. When discussing the effects of the fur trade we have to remember that different Indigenous groups experienced the changes it brought in various ways at different times. The early, middle and late stages of the fur trade occurred earlier for Indigenous peoples living in the eastern parts of what is now Canada than for those living in the Western parts. The fur trade as the dominating relationship endured longer in the west and north than in the east. As we mentioned at the start of this lesson, the early stages of the fur trade are characterized by Indigenous peoples as crucial and forceful players in the game. During the middle of the fur trade, Indigenous peoples still had some influence and control but as things progressed the benefits of the trade shifted to the European sphere of control. The most damaging for Indigenous communities was an economic dependency on the consumption of European goods. Consumption of these goods required a willingness to trade or work for wages. This dependency weakened many aspects of traditional Indigenous economies and eventually European interests won out. They gained the upper hand both economically and politically. By the 1800s, beavers were almost hunted to the extinction in many parts of Canada. And by the late 1800s, the fur trade in the subarctic regions crashed and stagnated. After 200 years, the problem of overhunting was compounded by declining fur prices on the London market. Coincident with low fur prices, overhunting reduced the availability of bison as a food staple. The year 1879 marked the end of the Plains buffalo economy. A shortage of bison meant that pemmican ceased to be a readily available economy. This development contrasts sharply with the situation at the start of the 19th century, when the bison population was estimated to be around 30 million bison on the Plains. By the early 1900s, only 1,000 bison were left. The fur trade deeply affected the social organization of Indigenous communities. For example, many Indigenous peoples over time established themselves in permanent communities near trading posts. This created very different social arrangements than what they traditionally followed. The increasing population of Europeans, and the intense interactions resulted in the Indigenous populations being affected by disease outbreaks, for which they had not built up immunity. When the Europeans arrived, they carried germs and viruses to which Indigenous peoples here in Canada had never been exposed. Smallpox came with the French in the early 1600s and over the next several hundred years caused catastrophic devastation to Indigenous communities throughout the western hemisphere. One small pox epidemic alone, ravaged the west coast. It is estimated that as many as 20,000 Indigenous people, or approximately one third of the total population, died. >> The takeover of the HBC by the International Financial Society in 1863 signalled the certain demise of the fur trade and its eventual replacement with an agricultural economy. Settlers, large scale immigration, railroads, and telegraph lines, the internet of the 19th century, and private property, drastically altered the regional economy. On the ground, the diminished possibilities of the fur trade and the perception of pending changes was the perfect setup for treaties. The desperate economic circumstances many Indigenous peoples in western and northern Canada found themselves in, at the end of the fur trade were often those under which the many treaty negotiations were conducted. You will see that the perception of the pending changes was a major motive for negotiating treaties with the Canadian government. The terms of the treaties reflected the only viable economic option for community survival. [MUSIC]
