Fur Trade and Exploration: Opening the Far Northwest, 1821-1852

In nineteenth-century North America the beaver was "browngold." It and other fur-bearing animals were the targets of anextractive industry like gold mining. Hoping to make their fortuneswith the Hudson's Bay Company, young Scots and Englishmen lefttheir homes in the British Isles for the Canadian frontier. In the FarNorthwest -- northern British Columbia, the Yukon, the westernNorthwest Territories, and eastern Alaska -- they collaborated withIndians and French Canadians to send back as many pelts as possible inreturn for an allotment of trade goods. For profit more than fame the traders risked dangerous rapids insummer, starvation in winter, and hostile Indian tribes year round todiscover new river routes "westward of the mountains." Inpursuit of a Northwest Passage or a Great River of the West, successiveexpeditions were dispatched to the Far North by Sir George Simpson, theviceroylike governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. Exploration wasprofitable and necessary because more furs could be traded for fewergoods in the virgin lands where the white man had never been. The extraordinary achievements of the trader-adventurers -- such menas Samuel Black, John Bell, and Robert Campbell -- have been overlookedby previous historians because their way was so difficult and theirsuccesses were so meager. Isolated at the end of 3,000 miles of canoetrails, in fierce competition with Russian and Indian traders, theyalways worked against the odds while at every turn the Bay Companywithheld its support in order to conserve profits. This lively account of the unsung heroes of the Hudson's BayCompany provides new information about the traders who tested themapmakers' misconceptions of the Far Northwest. Besides quotingliberally from Governor Simpson's infamous "CharacterBook" (in which he recorded his private opinions of colleagues andsubordinates), the author has culled the explorers' own journalsfor the best examples of the Scottish wit that never failed them. Hehas himself canoed and backpacked along their trade routes. The resultis a book that will appeal at once to historians and lovers of thewilderness.