FUR TRADERS' FARE
Dorothy Duncan
Executive Director, The Ontario Historical Society
Country Fare Editor, Century Home magazine
In the late 18th century, when the demand for prime beaver pelts was at its height in Great Britain and Europe, many fur trading companies were competing for supremacy in the wilderness of what is today called Canada, and the northern region of what was to become the United States of America. Prime beaver pelts were in demand to satisfy the needs of the nobility for robes, jackets, capes and muffs, but particularly for the gentlemen who could afford a fine felt hat made of the soft downy undercoat of the beaver. For 150 years, from 1750 to 1890, the demand for these hats, often called "beavers", raged. European beavers had been trapped out, but the fur merchants knew from European fishermen who had fished on the Grand Banks (off the coast of Newfoundland) that, when they came ashore to dry their fish, the First Nations bartered fine pelts with them. When the fishermen returned home they made more money from pelts than from fish and many turned to the fur trade. These pelts were particularly desirable because:
| To be of good quality, thick and heavy, the beaver-pelt must come from an animal taken during the winter, and taken in as hard a climate as possible. Then the skin carries two kinds of fur; close to the skin is a thick mass of beaver-wool, down or duvet as the French called it; on top is a glossy fur of long guard hairs. It was the beaver-wool above all which the felters wanted but it was difficult to get the beaver-wool out from a prime winter's skin without also tearing out the guard hairs and thereby completely destroying the skin. English and French felters liked to get their beaver-wool from skins from which the guard-hairs had already been removed and this made them dependent on coat beaver. These were skins which the Indians had worn for a season and in the process lost their guard hairs and become thoroughly greasy. The custom of wearing beaver, an art of doing so in such a way as to impart a maximum of grease, was particular to the northern Indians of Canada.[1] |
Many individual trappers and traders became involved in this lucrative business, and many combined forces by forming partnerships and companies including the Pacific Fur Company, Hudson's Bay Company, Jacob Astor's Great American Fur Company, the XY Company and the North West Company. The North West Company formed one of the most innovative partnerships that we have ever seen in Canada, including an unlikely combination of Scottish merchants, French Canadian voyageurs, First Nation guides, canoe makers, advisors, and suppliers of survival foods and MÚtis (offspring of a mixed marriage) labourers, trappers, traders and voyageurs. They formed the company out of frustration and an attempt to solve the slow, complicated business of buying or bartering for furs from the First Nations in the north-western regions of this continent and moving them to ships on the east coast where they could then be trans-shipped to market overseas. There were two major reasons for the North West Company to develop their unique plan, which was as complex as the operation of a modern airline. A modern airline depends on gasoline, while the North West Company depended on provisions for each of the cultural groups, all of whom expected and enjoyed, quite different fare. Their success also depended on the good will and co-operation of all the cultural groups involved.
They were forced to develop this plan because, since 1662 English merchants had monopolized Hudson's Bay and on May 2, 1670 King Charles granted his cousin, Prince Rupert and 170 others a Royal Charter giving them trading rights to the area known as Rupert's Land under the name "Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson's Bay." This was quite a gift, almost 40% of modern day Canada, and territory that is now part of the United States. The second factor was the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, and by 1779 Britain had placed an embargo on private shipping on the Great Lakes to ensure that guns, goods or ammunition could not reach the rebels in the Thirteen Colonies.
Merchants were desperate to reach the lucrative furs in the west. A coalition of trappers, traders and merchants formed one big partnership that could maintain a long supply route that stretched from present day Quebec to the west coast, with an inland headquarters midway between the two.
The first inland headquarters was built at Grand Portage, and when the boundary was re-drawn by the Treaty of Versailles in 1785, moved to Fort William (at present day Thunder Bay), on Lake Superior. Fort William was now the trans-shipment centre, with 42 buildings set in a rectangle and its own farm adjoining the fort to provide provisions. Stretching out to the west for about 1,000 miles were the small posts where wintering partners would barter and trade for the pelts. To the east stretched the waterways to Montreal, also 1,000 miles distant, and the ships to transport the furs to market.
How did the system work? To overcome the short summers and the long winters, many of the partners of the company wintered in Montreal assembling the trade goods, supervising the warehouses along the St. Lawrence River and preparing for the year ahead. The rest of the partners manned the inland posts in the west, trading and bartering directly with the First Nations for the pelts. They too, were preparing for the year ahead. As soon as the ice was gone from the lakes and rivers, both groups started for Fort William. The inland traders used small canots du nord, that could be paddled by 6 men, carried over a portage by 2 and would hold about 2 tonnes of pelts and provisions. The Montreal merchants used Montreal canoes or canots du maitre, which were large freight canoes, holding four tonnes of freight and each requiring 10 French Canadian or MÚtis voyageurs as paddlers.
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They reached lengths of forty feet, with a six-foot beam and a depth of two feet. The bow and stern curved upwards, often painted with animal or other designs. They weighed only five hundred pounds but they could carry as many as sixty men or fifty barrels of flour. They could be manufactured from cedar and pine and birchbark for as little as fifty dollars and would last for five or six years. First time travellers blanched when they saw their intended craft loaded with the gunwales perhaps a scant six inches from the water, but the Nor'westers calculated losses on voyages as low as one-half of one percent. The canoe fleet carried a mess tent, 30 feet by 15 feet, and a separate sleeping tent and comfortable bed for each partner, carpets for their feet, beaver robes for their knees. The transport canoes went on ahead so that when the gentlemen reached the selected site for the night camp, a great fire was leaping, meat was sizzling, the wine bottles were uncorked.[2] |
Washington Irving, one of their guests, describes the journey from Montreal:
| They ascended the rivers in great state, like sovereigns making a progress, or rather like Highland chieftains navigating their subject lakes. They were wrapped in rich furs, their huge canoes freighted with every convenience and luxury, and manned by Canadian voyageurs, as obedient as Highland clansmen. They carried up with them cooks and bakers, together with delicacies of every kind, and abundance of choice wines for the banquets which attended this great convocation. Happy were they, too, if they could meet with some distinguished stranger; above all, some titled member of the British nobility, to accompany them on this stately occasion, and grace their high solemnities. |
Meanwhile, the French Canadian canoemen's rations are described in 1817 by a Dublin-born fur trader, Ross Cox, who later became the Irish correspondent of the London Morning Herald:
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I know of no people capable of enduring so much hard labour as the Canadians, or so submissive to superiors. In voyages of six months' duration, they commence at day-break and from thence to night-fall hard paddling and carrying goods occupy their time without intermission... Their rations at first view may appear enormous. Each man is allowed eight pounds of solid meat per diem, such as buffalo, deer, horse, etc., and ten pounds if there be bone in it. In the autumnal months, in lieu of meat, each man receives two large geese, or four ducks. They are supplied with fish in the same proportion. It must, however, be recollected that these rations are unaccompanied by bread, biscuit, potatoes, or, in fact by vegetables of any description.
At Christmas and New Year they are served out with flour to make cakes or puddings, and each man receives half a pint of rum. This they call a rÚgale, and they are particularly grateful for it.[3] |
Hearing the songs of the voyageurs beginning their long passage up the Ottawa to Fort William, the Irish poet Thomas Moore, a guest of the North West Company at the peak of his fame, wrote his memorable "Canadian Boat Song"-"Row brothers, row/the stream runs fast/the rapids are near and the daylight is past." Set to lilting music, it became one of the nineteenth century's best-known ballads.
The Nor'Westers coming to Fort William from the inland posts also had to provision their teams. Dried meat and fish, berries and greens from the forest all took space in the canoes and precious time was wasted hunting and fishing. The First Nations introduced the newcomers to pemmican, made from dried buffalo, elk or deer meat, pounded into a powder, mixed with dried berries, poured into a leather bag, then sealed with grease. Light, durable and highly nourishing, packed in bags that were easily stored in a canoe, pemmican became the staple diet of the canoeman. Small amounts of pemmican replaced large amounts of regular food, freeing up precious time and precious space to carry more furs and more trade goods in both directions.
| Pemmican was used on voyages in the far interior. This was a kind of pressed buffalo meat, pounded fine, to which hot grease was added, and the whole left to form a mold in a bag of buffalo skin. When properly made, pemmican would remain edible for more than one season. Its small bulk and great nutritional value made it highly esteemed by all voyageurs. From it they made a dish called 'Rubbaboo,' says Kennicott, it is a favorite dish with the northern voyageurs, when they can get it. It consists simply of pemmican made into a kind of soup by boiling water. Flour is added when it can be obtained, and it is generally considered more palatable with little sugar.[4] |
In July the two groups began to assemble at the inland headquarters-the fur brigades from the west and the merchant partners from the east. It is not surprising then that the annual Rendezvous became a legendary time of feasting and celebration. The population of Fort William grew to about 2000 persons and included the Scottish merchants and their clerks, the French Canadian and MÚtis canoemen, men and women of the First Nations who were guides, advisors and often providers of specialized needs such as survival food for the chain of forts and posts stretching into the interior.
The central building at Fort William was the Great Hall and these two descriptions give us an insight on how it appeared to travellers of the period:
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In the middle of a gracious square rises a large building elegantly constructed, though of wood, with a long piazza or portico, raised about five feet from the ground, and surmounted by a balcony, extending along the whole front. In the centre is a saloon or hall, sixty feet in length by thirty in width, decorated with several pieces of painting and some portraits of the leading partners. It is in this hall that the agents, partners, clerks, interpreters and guides, take their meals together, at different tables. The kitchen and servants' quarters rooms are in the basement.
The dining hall is a noble apartment, and sufficiently capacious to entertain two hundred. A finely executed bust of the late Simon McTavish is placed in it, with portraits of various Proprietors. A full-length likeness of Nelson, together with a splendid painting of the Battle of the Nile also decorate the walls.[5] |
From accounts of other fur trading posts we have descriptions of meals as reported by travellers, and this one helps us to picture a dinner at Fort Vancouver in the Oregon Territory:
| At the end of a table twenty feet in length stands Governor McLoughlin (known as the Father of Oregon) directing guests and gentlemen from the neighbouring posts to their places, and chief traders, the physician, clerks and the farmer slide respectfully to their places, at distances from the governor corresponding to the dignity of their rank in service. Thanks are given to God, and all are seated. Roast beef and pork, boiled mutton, baked salmon, boiled ham, beets, carrots, turnips, cabbage and potatoes, and wheaten bread, are tastefully distributed over the table among a dinner set of elegant Queen's Ware, furnished with glittering glasses and decanters of various coloured Italian wines.[6] |
During the month of the Rendezvous dignity appears to have been set aside once the sun began to set. Days were spent in the Committee house at meetings where the business of the trade was carried out in great secrecy, but the nights were spent dining and roistering in the Great Hall. Dinners of "buffalo tongue and hump that had been either smoked or salted, thirty pound lake trout and whitefish that could be netted in the river at the gates to the Fort, venison, wild ducks, geese, partridge and beaver tails would be augmented with confectioners' delicacies that had been packed all the way from Montreal in those great canoes."7 Traditionally five toasts honoured the fur trade, and these were given in the following order: Mary, the Mother of all saints; the King; the fur trade in all its branches; the voyageurs, the wives and children; and absent brethren. A classic ritual marked the peak of these memorable evenings. Armed with a paddle, everyone sat on the floor in two long rows and singing lustily, paddled an imaginary great canoe across the floor. This must have been one of the sights of Canadian history that should be permanently recorded.
| With the ten gallon kegs of rum running low and dawn fingering the windows of the Great Hall to find the partners of the North West Company, names that mark and brighten the map of Canada, leaping on benches, chairs, and oaken wine barrels to "shoot the rapids" from the tilted tables to the floor, and singing the songs of home. Mounting broad bladed paddles, the gentlemen in knee breeches and silver buckled shoes pounded around the hall in impromptu races, shoving boisterously, piling up at the corners, breaking off only to down another brimming bumper of spirits.[8] |
Meanwhile, in the First Nations encampment at the gates of the fort, their diet had changed the least to accommodate this unique transportation system. The coveted beaver that they trapped, hunted and exchanged for the trade goods was highly respected by the First Nations. The meat was tasty, with beaver tails a special treat. The fat they skimmed off as it was cooked was used as a medicine. The teeth and claws were polished for ceremonial wear, and the bitter, orange-brown substance known as musk was used by them to reduce fevers and treat aching joints. Modern science has shown that aspirin, used for the same purpose, contains the same elements.
The Rendezvous was soon over and by the first of August both groups of men left for home so they would not be caught on the frozen waterways. For the partners returning to Montreal to winter there was the fellowship and feasting of the Beaver Club to look forward to. It was founded in February 1785 with 19 members, all of whom had explored the north west. The object of the club was "to bring together at stated periods during the winter season, a set of men highly respectable in society who had passed their best days in a savage country and had encountered the difficulties and dangers incident to a pursuit peculiar to the fur trade of Canada."
Only those men who had spent one season in the "upper country' as the North West was known could become members. Despite this restriction, 19 additional members had joined by 1803, and several distinguished Americans such as Benjamin Franklin, John Jacob Astor and Washington Irving were guests.
The Club did not have its own headquarters but met every fortnight from December to April in one of Montreal's famous eating establishments. It did have its own china, crystal and plate marked with its insignia. At the meetings the members themselves had to wear their insignia if they wanted to avoid a fine. This was a gold medal bearing the words "Beaver Club of Montreal instituted in 1785" with a beaver gnawing the foot of a tree and the inscription "Industry and Perseverance." The reverse side carried the name of the member, the date of his first voyage of exploration and a canoe with 3 passengers in top hats being guided through rapids by a canoeman with the motto "Fortitude in distress."
Colonel Landman, a guest of Sir Alexander Mackenzie and William McGillivrary gives us a vivid description of one of the Beaver Club dinners:
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At this time, dinner was at four o'clock and after having lowered a reasonable quantity of wine, say a bottle each, the married men withdrew, leaving a dozen of us to drink to their health. Accordingly, we were able to behave like real Scottish Highlanders and by four in the morning we had all attained such a degree of perfection that we could utter a war-cry as well as Mackenzie (sic) and McGillivray. We were all drunk like fish, and all of us thought we could dance on the table without disarranging a single one of the decanters, glasses or plates with which it was covered.
But on attempting this experiment, we found that we were suffering from a delusion and wound up by breaking up all the plates, glasses and bottles and demolishing the table itself; worse than that, there were bruises and scratches, more or less serious, on the heads and hands of everyone in the group.....It was told to me later that during our carouse 120 bottles of wine had been drunk, but I think a good part of it had been spilled.[9] |
Other guests confirmed that description:
| They served bear meat, beaver, pemmican and venison in the same way as in trading posts to the accompaniment of songs and dances during the events; and when wine had produced the sought-for degree of gaiety in the wee hours of the morning, the trading partners, dealers and merchants re-enacted the "grand voyage" to the Rendezvous in full sight of the waiters or voyageurs who had obtained permission to attend. For this purpose, they sat one behind another on a rich carpet, each equipping himself with a poker, tongs, a sword or walking stick in place of a paddle and roared out such voyageurs' songs as Malbrouck or A l½ Claire Fontaine, meanwhile paddling with as much steadiness as their strained nerves would permit.[10] |
The Beaver Club went out of existence in 1817, and the Hudson's Bay Company took over the North West Company in 1821. With that merger the Hudson's Bay Company controlled the fur trade from Newfoundland to Oregon.
The Beaver Club has been resurrected in this century. The Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal brought it to life in 1959 and it now has 900 members around the world. Once a year they dine on a 5 course dinner with appropriate wine. Each course is paraded through the club led by costumed coureurs de bois, voyageurs, musicians and First Nations from the Kahnawake. Now as then, five toasts are proposed: to the Mother of All Saints, the Queen, the fur trade in all its branches, the women and children of the fur trade (heaven preserve them!) and absent brethern.
Just over a decade ago the North West Company was reborn through a restructuring of the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1996 the North West Company created a national Aboriginal Relations Council composed of Aboriginal leaders from across Canada. Today, the North West Company is the largest employer of Aboriginal people in the north, excluding the Canadian government. It employs over 2,100 Aboriginal people in a chain of nearly 200 retail stores serving communities with as few as 350 people.[11]
Beaver hats have been forgotten by the fashion world, fur trading empires are a thing of the past, but everyday customers still shop at North West Company stores and once a year hundreds of men and women still gather to pay tribute to an unlikely team of people who ruthlessly pursued a small animal across this continent, and in doing so, confirmed the size, complexity and diversity of the country we today call Canada. They came from different origins, languages, cultures, and standards, but they found a common cause, and until 1821 they became a legend in their own time.
ENDNOTES
1Rich, E.E. "Pro Pelle Cutem," The Beaver, Spring , 1958, p. 12.
2Harmon, Leslie F., Forts of Canada, Toronto, 1969, p. 205.
3Cox, Ross, Adventures on the Columbia River, London, 1831, p. 279.
4Nute, G.L., The Voyageurs Highway, St. Paul, 1951, p. 54.
5Franchere, G., A Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America, Chicago, 1954, p. 266.
6"The Oregon Territory," The Builder, 1844, Vol. II, p. 9.
7Harmon, Forts, p. 205.
8Ibid., p. 205.
9Campbell, M.W., McGillivray, Lord of the Northwest, Toronto, 1962, p. 93, and Burpee, L.V., "The Beaver Club," Canadian History Association Report, 1924, p. 73-92. Ibid., p. 73-92.
10Town, Florida, The North West Company: Frontier Merchants, Toronto, 1999, p. 109 and 114.
