North West Company

North West Company, the company of fur traders set up in opposition to the Hudson's Bay Company. In the 18th century the Hudson's Bay Company had a virtual monopoly on the hugely profitable trade in beaver furs in North America through its exclusive title to the area known as Rupert's Land (all the land draining into Hudson's Bay, about 1.5 million sq mi). Individual fur traders based in Montreal, and operating on the periphery of this territory, banded together in 1783 as the North West Company, and established a network of trading posts and supply depots which were serviced by regular convoys of canoes taking trade goods and supplies from Montreal to the main headquarters on Lake Superior at Grand Portage (or, from 1805, Fort William, on the site of present-day Thunder Bay, Ontario), from which they fanned out through a huge network of waterways to their remote posts. Always more at home in the landscape than their Hudson's Bay Company rivals, the mainly French-Canadian traders, known as voyageurs, often settled among and intermarried with the local tribes, leading to the creation of a new ethnic group known as the Metis.

Constantly attempting to open up new areas to trade, the North West Company organized the great explorations of Alexander Mackenzie, who in 1789 navigated to the Arctic Ocean down what is now the Mackenzie River (the second-largest river system in North America), and in 1793 made the first overland crossing of North America. The prize of opening up the bountiful forests of the Pacific coast to the fur trade encouraged the company to continue exploring: Simon Fraser was sent in 1808 with instructions to navigate the Columbia River to its mouth, but on reaching the ocean found it to be a different river altogether (the one now called the Fraser); in 1811 the great surveyor David Thompson succeeded in locating the Columbia and navigating to its mouth, and the company began to establish its dominance in the Oregon territory, as the whole Pacific coast region was then known.

However, trade in this area was also open to the Hudson's Bay Company, and the two companies fought a long and sometimes bitter war of attrition throughout the north-west, continually seizing each other's supplies and furs, and often leading to violence. This became particularly intense after 1812, when the establishment of HBC-sponsored settlers in the Red River area of Manitoba threatened to cut off the NWC's trading routes. Ultimately, the Hudson's Bay Company's greater resources of capital, shorter supply lines and more secure trading routes prevailed, and the two companies amalgamated in 1821, under the name and charter of the Hudson's Bay Company. Although the outcome was effectively a defeat for the North West Company, their resources incalculably strengthened and enriched the amalgamated company, as well as providing the basis for British claims to the Pacific coast.