The English traders were at a great disadvantage. Unlike the French, they had not had the time to adapt to the country or its residents, and were not inclined to follow the French example in learning Indian woodcraft and exploring the back country. When a young Englishman named Henry Kelsey traveled westward into the interior in 1690, bringing back accounts of distant groups of Indians with more beaver, the officials of the Hudson's Bay Company ignored him.
As a consequence, English goods spread inland at a slower pace than had been the case with French trading along the Saint Lawrence, and the effect on the Indians was not so precipitate. The English remained dependent for their livelihood on friendly Indians and the annual supply ship from home. They were neither prepared nor motivated to resist French attacks. York Factory, established in 1684 where the Hayes and Nelson Rivers entered Hudson Bay, changed hands six times by 1697.
The James Bay people often were able to take advantage of the competition between the European rivals. The Cree had been trading with the Montagnais for many years and knew the value of the various furs. Although the English treated the Cree fairly and offered a reliable supply of high-quality goods, when the French began to appear in Cree country offering better prices on cloth and gunpowder, the Cree used the offers to make greater demands on the English. They then did business with whichever side gave them the best prices.
Other effects of the European rivalry were far from benign. The French, and then the English, began to use brandy as an inducement to close sales. Like other Native Americans, the subarctic Indians were unprepared for the ravages of alcohol, and wherever it came into play, drunkenness, especially in the form of wild binge drinking, became rampant. Sometimes, after the Indians had become dependent on firearms, the supply of ammunition was cut off, with devastating effect. In 1695, for example, the Hudson's Bay Company did not send out a ship because of a temporary glut of furs. In 1713, while the French held York Factory, they suffered a similar interruption. A visitor reported that they spent the winter "not daring to go outside. They had no goods and their trade was at a standstill, with their Indians dying around them for lack of powder and shot."
But such devastating interruptions were the exception, as the English did their best to impose order on the trade. Most important, they established the beaver pelt as an official currency. A beaver's fur was, of course, fuller during winter than it was in summer, and in the trade the "made
Canying his catch, a Cree hunter and his family return to York Factory, a major trading post situated on the western shore of Hudson Bay. Their clothing and accouterments reflect a blending of European and Indian influences.
-the coat of a prime beaver, taken in winter—became the standard by which the values of trade goods and of other furs were defined. The Hudson's Bay Company published an official standard of trade, a catalog that listed the price in made beaver of every item of trade goods and of every kind of pelt. One made beaver, for example, could buy five pounds of shot or tobacco, a dozen needles, eight knives, or two hatchets. It took six made beaver to buy a blanket and 12 to purchase a four-foot-long firearm. Smaller weapons could be purchased with 10 or 11 made beaver.
The standard of trade was official only between the trading posts and the company; the traders kept for themselves any advantage they could gain over the Indians by demanding more furs for specific articles. This profit was called the overplus. These side commissions were eagerly sought but hard to come by, because the Indians were well versed in the going prices and never hesitated to play off one trader against another.
At the Hudson's Bay Company posts, the trading season could not begin until the rivers shook loose their burden of ice, which usually occurred early in March. Then the season began slowly, with the first to arrive at the posts with their winter's take of furs being those who lived closest to the bay, where beaver were less plentiful. Later, larger parties with larger quantities of furs arrived from farther inland.
The English, like the French, were uncomfortable dealing with large numbers of individual Indians and, as a result, insisted on appointing an Indian leader to negotiate for the owners of the pelts. The Europeans selected men who looked to them to be persons of authority, dressed them in European finery, addressed them as "captain," and then demanded to deal only with them. As long as the prices were right, the Indians were content to go along with this routine, but as one British trader noted, they afforded their so-called captains only "trifling respect," which they dropped as soon as they were out of sight of the trading post or camp.
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