Canadians at Table. Dorothy Duncan
The fur merchants in Europe had learned from explorers such as Jacques Cartier that when he sailed into the Baie des Chaleurs in 1534 he was met by members of the Mi’kmaq nation waving furs on sticks to let him know they wanted to trade. In addition, the fishermen harvesting the Grand Banks confirmed that when they went ashore to dry their catch the First Nations continued to barter fine pelts with them. When the fishermen returned home, they often made more money from the pelts than from the fish. The pelts from Canadian beaver 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]
This fascination with beaver pelts, to the exclusion of the rest of the animal, must have surprised the First Nations. They, too, coveted the beaver, because every part of it was important to them. The meat was tasty, with beaver tails a special treat. They skimmed off the fat as it cooked to be used as medicine. The teeth and claws were polished for ceremonial wear, and the Natives used the bitter orange-brown substance known as musk to reduce fevers and treat aching joints. Modern science has shown that Aspirin, which is used for the same purpose, contains some of the same ingredients.[2]
Alexander Henry, an experienced English trader, travelled up the Ottawa River in 1761 and observed the simple, compact rations of the voyageurs, and the way in which they were absolutely fundamental to the whole fur-trading system for, as he explains, regular food would have taken up too much space in the canoes:
The village of L’Arbre Croche [twenty miles west of Fort Michilimackinac] supplies, as I have said, the maize, or Indian corn, with which the canoes are victualled. This species of grain is prepared for use, by boiling it in a strong lie, after which the husk may be easily removed; and it is next mashed and dried. In this state, it is soft and friable, like rice. The allowance, for each man, on the voyage, is a quart a day; and a bushel, with two pounds of prepared fat, is reckoned to be a month’s subsistence. No other allowance is made, of any kind; not even salt; and bread is never thought of. The men, nevertheless, are healthy, and capable of performing their heavy labour. This mode of victualling is essential to the trade, which being pursued at great distances, and in vessels so small as canoes, will not admit of the use of other food. If the men were to be supplied with bread and pork, the canoe would not carry a sufficiency for six months; and the ordinary duration of the voyage is not less than fourteen. The difficulty which would belong to an attempt to reconcile any other man, than Canadians, to this fare, seems to secure to them, and their employers, the monopoly of the fur-trade…. I bought more than a hundred bushels, at forty livres per bushel…. I paid at the rate of a dollar per pound for the tallow, or prepared fat, to mix with it.[3]
Free traders (as the competitors of the Hudson’s Bay Company were called) became involved in this lucrative business, and many combined forces by forming partnerships and companies, but it was the North West Company that for many years challenged the powerful Hudson’s Bay Company and their decision to build their forts around the bay and let the First Nations come to them. The North West Company realized the importance of building their trading posts in the interior of the country, where the First Nations lived, trapped, and hunted. The rival company also recognized the importance of adequately provisioning the men involved in the trade, and not leaving their survival and the survival of the business to chance.
The North West Company partners dined in fine style every evening as they travelled by canoe between Montreal and the organization’s inland headquarters at Fort William in today’s Ontario. Fort William Historical Park, Thunder Bay, Ontario
To accomplish this, the company formed one of the most innovative partnerships ever seen in Canada, including an unlikely combination of Scottish and English merchants, French Canadian voyageurs, First Nation guides, canoe-makers, advisers, suppliers of survival foods, and Métis (offspring of a mixed white-Native marriage) labourers, trappers, traders, and voyageurs. This partnership solved the slow, complicated business of buying or bartering for furs from the First Nations in the northwestern regions of Canada and moving them to ships on the East Coast, by which they could then be shipped to markets overseas. The North West Company developed, and maintained, a long supply route that stretched from today’s Montreal to the Pacific Ocean, with an inland headquarters between the two. This plan was unique, and just as complex as the operation of a modern airline. A modern airline depends on gasoline, while the North West Company relied on specific provisions for each of the groups involved in the trade — all of which expected and enjoyed quite different fare. Their success also depended on the goodwill and cooperation of everyone involved to provide the fare in a timely manner.
The first inland headquarters for the North West Company was built at Grand Portage, and when the boundary between the United States and British territories was redrawn by the Treaty of Versailles in 1785, it moved to Fort William (at today’s Thunder Bay) on the north shore of Lake Superior. Fort William became the company’s trans-shipping centre, with forty-two buildings set in a rectangle and its own farm adjoining the fort to provide provisions such as grain, herbs, fresh vegetables, milk, and meat for both the regular staff and the Rendezvous that was held there annually during the summer months. The land behind the fort and on both sides of it was cleared and under tillage. Barley, peas, oats, Indian corn, potatoes, as well as other grains and vegetables were grown there. Seven horses, thirty-two cows and bulls, and a large number of sheep were kept on the farm, as well.[4]
How did this unique system work? To overcome the short summers and long winters in Canada, many of the partners of the company wintered in Montreal, spending their time 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 and the far Northwest, 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, which could be paddled by six men and portaged by two, and which held two tons of pelts and provisions for the thousand-mile journey. The Montreal merchants used Montreal canoes, or canots du maitre, which were large freight canoes, holding four tons of freight and each requiring ten French Canadian or Métis voyageurs as paddlers to cover approximately the same distance.
They [the canoes] 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 birch bark 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 to 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, wine bottles were uncorked.[5]
American author Washington Irving, one of the guests of the North West Company, described the journey from Montreal:
They ascended the river in great state, like sovereigns making a progress, or rather like Highland chieftains