Alexander Mackenzie’s remarkable journey extended the inland fur trade all the way to the Pacific. Simon Fraser and David Thompson, also of the North West Company, followed soon after, and they explored two of the four great coastal rivers of the Pacific north-west: Fraser descended the river that bears his name in 1808, while Thompson followed the Columbia from its source to the ocean in 1811. In their wake the trading frontiers expanded, and the NWC built several posts in east-central and central British Columbia—an area then known as New Caledonia. The coastal trade lay beyond their reach, however, because the distance from Montreal was simply too great given the problems of transportation and supply. New Caledonia remained the western margin of the territory the NWC was able to exploit effectively—and, needless to say, the Hudson’s Bay Company was unable to gain entry.
By this time, however, the fur trade had been well established along the coast for nearly a decade, stimulated by Captain Cook’s visit to the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) of western Vancouver Island. James Cook, the greatest navigator of his time, had already charted part of the Gaspe and had helped James Wolfe’s armada navigate the St. Lawrence River; he had served at the siege of Louisbourg, mapped the treacherous Newfoundland coast, and revealed the wonders of the South Pacific. In 1778 he sailed across the Pacific in search of the Northwest Passage and anchored in Nootka Sound. He obtained sea-otter pelts from the Nuu-chah-nulth for a very nominal expenditure of goods, and later sold them in China at a great profit. Word spread rapidly, and traders rushed to the coast.
The coastal trade of the late eighteenth century differed in some fundamental ways from the inland trade. Initially, four nations were involved: Spain, England, Russia, and America. With the exception of the Spanish, trading was conducted entirely from sailing ships until 1827. After 1795 the Spanish withdrew and English and American merchants became the major competition, although the Russians were active north of the Skeena River. Since the trade was largely restricted to the coast, lasting bonds were not established between the traders and the Aboriginal people and no pressures were exerted on the environment for food or timber.
to the large, ocean-going ships, the volume of goods traded on the coast was substantially greater than it was in the western interior. As many as twenty ships were visiting the coast every year by the turn of the nineteenth century. (In contrast, the HBC and the nwc together managed to carry into the Canadian north-west no more than the equivalent of four shiploads every year.) This represented a bonanza to the trade-oriented and status-conscious Native peoples of the west coast. Not surprisingly, the highly prized European goods received in exchange for sea-otter pelts increased Native trade and gift exchanges along the coast, and control of key routes provided an added incentive for inter-village struggles as it had in the interior.
However, most of the items being traded on the coast were luxuries rather than necessities. This was because West Coast people did not need to rely on European goods; they continued to take the bulk of their food—fish—by traditional means. Indeed, they did so until federal and provincial conservation legislation passed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries denied them that right. Instead, firearms (largely used in warfare) were valued, as were the metal chisels, cloth, clothing, and blankets that became symbolic of wealth, and iron collars and copper bracelets.
Sea otters were ruthlessly hunted in this highly competitive atmosphere. By the turn of the nineteenth century, their numbers had declined sharply, and the trade was headed for trouble; by the late 1820s it was in its final stages of collapse. This posed a serious problem to groups living on the offshore islands, who had few alternative fur-bearing animals to exchange. The Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands addressed the difficulty by creating artefacts specially designed for European visitors. On the mainland, the pelts of land animals—particularly beaver, and marten with its soft, lustrous fur—were increasingly sought. Inland trading connections along the major rivers now became essential and so inter-village conflicts increased.
World History
