By the late 1660s, the French pretty much held a monopoly over the North American fur trade. Though the Iroquois continued to be an extremely troublesome force south of the Great Lakes, French traders were buying a huge number of furs from the Ojibwe and Cree who lived further north. As well, though the trade was increasingly becoming dominated by voyageurs, who were licensed by the government officials in New France, many independent coureurs continued to trade as well, venturing deep into unknown territory. In 1658, two of these coureurs were told of a frozen sea further to the north by the Cree, where some of the most premium beaver pelts could be found. Correctly guessing the Cree were talking about Hudson’s Bay, which had been discovered in 1610 by Henry Hudson, they went back to Quebec with the idea of establishing a trading post on the coast of the bay to save on the costs of moving the furs overland. The French governor politely told them to fuck off, so the following year they travelled north overland, returning with the best quality beaver pelts ever seen, to which the governor responded by arresting them for trading without a license.
Decidedly done with dealing with morons, the two coureurs travelled to the English colony of Boston and convinced some merchants to finance an expedition in 1663. However, the voyage was unsuccessful due to running into pack ice. Despite this setback, the two coureurs remained convinced they had a great idea, travelling to England in 1665 to secure further funding. Though the fact that an outbreak of the bubonic plague was killing a quarter of the population of London at the time, the two coureurs managed to befriend Prince Rupert, the cousin of the king, who was more than happy to supply funding for a new expedition. This expedition departed in 1668, returning the following year with a cargo of beaver pelts worth nearly half a million bucks in today’s money, which probably made freezing one’s ass off in the Arctic seem totally worth it. Not surprisingly, it should go without saying that this excited the shit out of everyone. The king of England granted Prince Rupert control of the entirety of Hudson’s Bay drainage basin, which he promptly named Prince Rupert’s Land, and told him to get off his ass and get more pelts post haste. To fund the venture, they created a joint stock company creatively named the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC).
The first trading post built by the HBC was Rupert House along the southeast coast of Hudson’s Bay. Unlike the French, who liked to send traders deep into the interior to set up relations with local tribes, often marrying native women to cement alliances, the HBC instead went with the Dutch approach, which was basically set up a trading post with a few dozen traders and a shit ton of European goods, let it be known that they were willing to trade for beaver pelts, and wait for the locals to come to them. The Cree, an Algonquian people, were HBC’s primary trading partner. The Cree would trap beaver in the winter and fall, travel to Hudson’s Bay via canoe to trade in the spring, and then ships would take the pelts to England in the summer when the pack ice was gone. The venture was so successful that new trading posts were built around the bay, the largest of which was the York Factory, built on the western shore of the bay in 1684. The York Factory traded not just with the Cree, but also with a Na-Dene people known as the Chipewyan who lived across what is today northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
It should go without saying, that the success of the HBC totally pissed off the French, who suddenly found the Cree much less interested in trading with them since they could get better prices moving pelts north to Hudson’s Bay. In 1686, a French raiding party travelled overland to the bay, capturing one trading post which it used as a base of operations for raids on the others for the next eight years until it was recaptured in 1694. Three years later, the a French naval force defeated an English naval force in the Bay and seized control of most of the trading posts, including York Factory until 1713. However, despite this significant setback, the HBC continued operations in the bay throughout this period.
Though the HBC was overall more than happy to keep its operations to the coast of the bay, it did send some employees further inland to make contact with tribes there, not fully trusting that word of mouth would be enough to let everyone know about the sweet beaver deals they were offering. One of the more prominent of these was a young man named Henry Kelsey, who in 1690 was sent up the Nelson River where he found much conflict amongst the various tribes he encountered. In an attempt to monopolize the trade with the English, many groups of Cree were moving westward from their traditional homelands, bringing them into conflict with not only the Chipewyan, but also each other. Kelsey eventually found his way to the Great Plains in what is today Saskatchewan, becoming the first European to see the vast flat grasslands, as well as buffalo and grizzly bear. He also met the Assiniboine, a Siouan speaking people who had been recently pushed northwestward onto the plains by both the Ojibwe and Sioux to the southeast. Kelsey returned to York Factory in 1692, his mission largely a failure as the Cree continued to actively block other tribes from trading directly with the HBC. No further expeditions were sent into the interior for decades.
