Portrait - Fabulous Western Canada: Capture the Excitement of the Great West! - page 9

Hudson's Bay Company, which took
over the economic and political admin-
istration of the region.

West lay in the fur trade, which con-
tinued unabated, even receiving a boost
when the North West and Hudson's
Bay companies merged in 1821. By
the late 1860s, however, beaver stocks
had begun to dwindle, and merchants
turned their attention to buffalo. After
only 10 years of buffalo hunting and
trading, there were almost no more of
these majestic animals which had once
roamed wild.

The Hudson's Bay Company con-
trolled trade in Rupert's Land, which
encompassed all land that drained
into Hudson Bay, much of present-
day Canada. Hudson's Bay Company
traders, however, accused French fur
trappers or voyageurs of unfair com-
petition because they headed inland to
the source of the fur instead of waiting
for the natives to bring the pelts to the
trading posts.

THE MARCH WEST

The fur-trading companies were only
interested in fur and offered nothing
in the way of law enforcement. Whisky
traders from the United States were thus
drawn north to this lawless land. With
dwindling buffalo herds, Aboriginal
peoples were exploited and generally
taken advantage of by the Americans,
not to mention the deleterious effect
the whisky trade had on them. Various
uprisings, including the Cypress Hills
Massacre, prompted the formation of
the North West Mounted Police and set
the stage for the March West. Heading
out from Fort Garry in Winnipeg, the
police crossed the plains, led by James
Macleod. Their presence got rid of the
whisky traders at Fort Whoop-Up in

In 1691, Hudson's Bay Company em-
ployee Henry Kelsey was the fi rst
to set sight on the eastern boundary
of Alberta. Encouraged by favour-
able reports, independent fur traders
in Montréal formed the North West
Company in 1787, and then founded
the fi rst trading post in Alberta, Fort
Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca.

These trading posts eventually came
to serve as bases for exploration, and
in 1792 Alexander Mackenzie crossed
Alberta by the Peace River, becoming
the fi rst European to reach the Pacifi c
overland through North America. The
trading companies' sole interest in the

6 North West Mounted Police detachment at Fort Macleod. © Archives Canada; NMC-141864