“We See Hard Times Ahead of Us”: York Factory and
Indigenous Life in the Western Hudson Bay Region,
1880–1925
Robert Coutts
Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'études canadiennes, Volume 51,
Number 2, Spring/printeps 2017, pp. 434-460 (Article)
Published by University of Toronto Press
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/682841
[ Access provided at 15 Feb 2023 17:34 GMT from University of Ottawa ]
Journal of Canadian Studies • Revue d’études canadiennes
“We See Hard Times Ahead of Us”:
York Factory and Indigenous Life in the
Western Hudson Bay Region, 1880–19251
ROBERT COUTTS
Abstract: Focusing on the community of York Factory and the surrounding region in northern
Manitoba between 1880 and 1925, this article traces the transformation of the Muskego Cree
and Metis peoples of the district from independent traders, hunters, and wage labourers to
a colonized people with diminished economic opportunities. Through evidence gathered from
Hudson’s Bay Company journals, reports, and accounts, as well as from Department of Indian
Affairs records, missionary correspondence, and oral history, I describe how the establishment
of a fur trade mode of production incorporated the Indigenous economy of western Hudson Bay
into an international market of trade and production, making the people of York Factory part of a
global economy based upon a capitalist exploitation of resources. I also suggest that, beginning
in the late nineteenth century, the Hudson’s Bay Company conspired to mitigate the economic
impacts of resource depletion on its profit margin in the York district by pursuing an arrangement with the Canadian government to assume financial responsibility for the Indigenous people
of western Hudson Bay. The article will trace the process through which changing capital interests, both local and global, came to manipulate an age-old pattern of subsistence and labour,
debt and trade, as well as economic interdependence.
Keywords: York Factory, Muskego, life, economy
Résumé : Prenant pour sujet la collectivité de York Factory et ses alentours, dans le nord du
Manitoba, entre 1880 et 1925, cet article suit la transformation des Cris Muskego et des Métis
qui, de commerçants, chasseurs et journaliers à gages indépendants sont devenus un peuple
colonisé disposant de peu de possibilités économiques. En m’appuyant sur des données recueillies tant dans les livres de comptes, les rapports et les comptes rendus de la Compagnie de la
Baie d’Hudson que dans les dossiers du ministère des Affaires indiennes, la correspondance des
missionnaires et l’histoire orale, je décris l’intégration, par l’établissement d’un mode de production axé sur la traite de fourrures, de l’économie autochtone de l’ouest de la baie d’Hudson
au marché international du commerce et de la production, un phénomène qui a rattaché la
population de York Factory à une économie mondiale fondée sur l’exploitation capitaliste des
ressources. Je suggère également qu’à partir de la fin du XIXe siècle, la Compagnie de la Baie
d’Hudson a comploté pour atténuer l’impact économique de la diminution des ressources sur sa
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marge de profit dans le district de York, en cherchant à conclure avec le gouvernement canadien
un arrangement qui ferait endosser à celui-ci la responsabilité financière des peuples autochtones de l’ouest de la baie d’Hudson. J’expose dans cet article le processus par lequel les intérêts
capitalistes en mutation, tant sur le plan régional que mondial, ont agi sur un modèle très ancien
de subsistance et de travail, de dette et de commerce, et d’interdépendance économique.
Mots clés : York Factory, Muskego, vie, économie
The west coast of Hudson Bay in what is now northern Manitoba witnessed some of
the earliest encounters between European traders and the Indigenous populations
of the Canadian Subarctic. It was from here in the late seventeenth century that the
London-based Company of Adventurers Trading into Hudson Bay (hereafter the
Hudson’s Bay Company [HBC]) established a fur trade monopoly that would span
centuries and create a system of commercial exchange that fundamentally altered the
traditional domestic means of production among First Nations across western and
northern Canada. The establishment of a fur trade mode of production integrated
Indigenous economies into an international structure of commodity production and
trade, and introduced these societies into a global economy based upon a capitalist
exploitation of resources.
For the Muskego Cree of the western Hudson Bay region, almost three centuries of contact and commercial exchange not only influenced traditional modes of
production but also affected social and political development, domestic relations, and
seasonal movement. As historian Patricia McCormack (2010, 33–47) and geographer
Frank Tough (1996, 42–3) have argued, the fur trade mode of production represented
the fusion of trapping, wage labour, and the supply of post provisions with a precontact domestic mode of production, or what Arthur Ray (1990a, 82–8) and Tough
have labelled the bush economy.2 Although a domestic mode of production, or the
bush economy, is an etic reference to the production and harvesting of resources
for domestic or household use, other sources argue that the Muskego economy also
maintained long established exchange networks that involved the acquisition of
assets from neighbouring groups and the establishment of a system of barter—both
features of the post-contact era economy and common to most Indigenous groups
in North America (Lytwyn 2002, 81–114). These included such activities as hunting
and gathering, as well as the production of clothing and implements. While the bush
economy, or domestic mode of production, persisted well into the twentieth century,
fur trade mercantilism helped create a system of credit and debt that increasingly
brought the Cree of Hudson Bay into a global capitalist system. Their inclusion, I
will argue, suggests that the western Hudson Bay region saw locally produced goods
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replaced by European commodities, a decline in the resource base of the district,
and the commercialization of social relationships, as well as significant demographic
alterations that manifested themselves in increased poverty, depopulation, and, ultimately, marginalization. As elsewhere, the introduction and articulation of European
capital paved the way for the replacement of Indigenous production, particularly as
wage labour and the production of commodities such as fur and country provisions
for Euro-Canadian traders was established by the HBC in their efforts to accumulate capital (Warburton and Scott 1985, 28). Company profits relied not just upon
the accumulation of furs but also the production of comestibles, clothing, and local
labour.
Through a survey of the HBC and Department of Indian Affairs records, oral
history testimonies, and secondary literature, this article traces the transformation of
a Subarctic First Nation, such as the Muskego Cree, from independent traders, hunters, and wage labourers, once considered collaborators with Europeans in the northern fur trade, to a people with diminished economic opportunities. It outlines how
the HBC policy of fiscal retrenchment at York, which began in the late nineteenth
century and continued into the twentieth, impoverished local peoples, including the
Metis, as the company attempted to shift risk and lobby the federal government to
subsidize its operations in the York district while it continued to reap remaining
resource profits in the region. I trace the conflict (and ultimate co-operation) between
the HBC and the federal government over the subsidization of Indigenous peoples,
notwithstanding the sale of Rupert’s Land to Canada in 1869. Finally, this article
examines the process by which changing capitalist interests, both local and global,
came to manipulate an age-old pattern of subsistence and labour, debt and trade, and
economic interdependence.
A discussion of the impact of the changing modes and forces of production in
the fur trade of the York region is tied to mercantile colonialism and the exploitation
by colonial states of resources in traditional and domestic economies. The overlap
of the domestic mode of production, as outlined above, with a fur trade mode of
production led to a short-term increase in wealth for the Indigenous peoples of the
York region (wealth being defined here as access to imported consumer goods such
as guns, metal products, and other goods), but a long-term dependency upon the
surplus value of finite resources such as fur and country provisions. The increasing
dominance of resource exploitation for export can reference models of dependency
in that the periphery, as defined by dependence theorists, is unable to sustain longterm economic growth or is in fact prevented from doing so through their unequal
relationships with the centre. Regardless, the result is most often the destruction, or
near destruction, of traditional economies.
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Some have maintained that the fur trade in Canada once exhibited a more equal
division of gain between European traders and Indigenous peoples, often characterized as a partnership by historians such as Daniel Francis and Toby Morantz (1983)
and Paul Thistle (1986). Another argument, however, suggests that the realization
of profit and surplus value, and the inelastic demands of First Nations traders, made
for an unequal relationship right from the origins of the trade. Certainly, by the late
nineteenth century, and with the depletion of resources in the bush economy, this
association had become unequal and dependent. The fur trade colonized Indigenous
economies, exploiting their undervalued resources for outside interests and profit.
The history of the York Factory region is in many ways comparable with those colonized areas in the Global South, which have the longest contact with metropolitan
capitalism: both have exhibited a high degree of exploitation and dependence (Amin
2011, 12–49; Tough 1996, 73).
This discussion of the history of the Muskego people of western Hudson Bay
between 1880 and 1925 concentrates upon the York Factory area, a large and indistinctly defined hinterland of an important HBC trading post and distribution depot.
Founded in 1684, York Factory (initially known as York Fort) was the site of some
of the earliest encounters between Indigenous people and European traders in the
region; over the centuries, it became the company’s major entrepôt in the northwest,
or the area the HBC referred to as Rupert’s Land. Until the construction of trading
posts inland from Hudson Bay in the late eighteenth century, York was the exchange
destination of First Nations from as far away as the western plains. Cree, Assiniboine,
Anishinaabe, and Blackfoot peoples travelled the river routes of the western interior,
in the summer months visiting York, where they exchanged their season’s catch of
furs for guns, powder, shot, kettles, knives, and cloth before making the long return
journey to their home territories. During these early years, the Muskego acted as
middlemen in the fur trade, exchanging European commodities at marked-up prices
for the furs of inland First Nations. Later, as trade expanded, York Factory became the
supply and transshipment centre for the whole of the Western fur trade, outfitting
posts and districts from Red River to the Athabasca region. The post reached its peak
by 1860 with over 50 buildings and a surrounding community of Metis and Muskego
labourers, provisioners, trappers, and their families. With the development on the
prairies of new transportation routes and new technologies such as steamboats and
railways, however, York’s role diminished, becoming for a time a district headquarters
and, later, a small regional trading post. Other factors were instrumental in the post’s
long decline, including the impact of falling international fur prices, the company’s
failure to implement a steam launch on the Hayes River, and the effects of independent fur buyers who operated along the periphery of the region (McTavish 1869).
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After decades of cost-cutting and depopulation, the old post closed in 1957. Arguably,
the decline of York Factory—the HBC’s most important centre in western Canada for
two centuries—and the resulting destitution of the regional Muskego population can
reveal a great deal about the fate of single-resource communities in Subarctic Canada.
The Muskego People
Muskego is a Cree-language term of self-designation used by the Indigenous people
who traditionally inhabited the low-lying, poorly drained coast of western Hudson
Bay, from approximately the present-day Manitoba-Ontario border to the Churchill
River in northern Manitoba. Literally translated as “the people of the muskeg,” the
Muskego have been variously known in both historical and contemporary literature
as the West Main, Lowland, or Swampy Cree.3 The term Cree, used to designate
Indigenous peoples of the Canadian Subarctic, comes from a word used by early
French explorers, Kristinon, itself derived from Anishinaabe vocabulary. It was first
employed by French traders in the seventeenth century to identify a small band that
lived south of James Bay. As these traders moved farther west, the term was applied
to a variety of groups who spoke a similar language, and was eventually shortened to
Cree by English-speaking observers and writers. The Muskego of the Hayes-Nelson
region speak the n-dialect, while the Mushkego of southwestern Hudson Bay and
James Bay speak the l-dialect (Pentland 1981, 227–8) (see fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Muskego Cree family camped near York Factory, 1914.
Source: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Archives of Manitoba, 1982/41/4 (N4254).
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For much of York’s history, Muskego peoples traditionally hunted, trapped, and
travelled in the region in search of resources in a largely seasonal round of existence.
By the latter decades of the nineteenth century, the York Factory district of the HBC
geography encompassed a region that stretched from the Winisk River on the southwest coast of Hudson Bay to the Thlewiazai River north of Churchill (where the
company traded with Dene and Inuit peoples) and inland from Trout Lake, west to
God’s Lake (and trade with the Oji-Cree), Oxford House, and Split Lake. The Hayes
and Nelson rivers, along with the Churchill, Severn, and Winisk rivers, served, until
the arrival of the railway to Churchill in the late 1920s, as the primary transportation
corridors for the movement of furs, supplies, and people throughout the region and
inland. Posts at Severn, Trout Lake, and Churchill were subsidiary bases of the district
headquarters at York, as were a number of other smaller establishments throughout
the region.
From almost the inception of European trade at the mouth of the Hayes River
in the late seventeenth century, a population of Muskego peoples had assumed the
role of what HBC traders called the Home Guard, providing provisions and seasonal
labour to York Factory in return for European goods and foodstuffs, and eventually
wages. Home Guard activities during York’s rise to prominence in the Western fur
trade focused on the seasonal supply of the enormous quantity of provisions required
for the daily operation of a large and diverse Bayside establishment. By the latter part
of the nineteenth century, First Nations and Metis had assumed duties at the post as
wage labourers, fulfilling many of the tasks that had once been the exclusive domain
of European servants—mostly young men recruited by the company from Scotland
and the Orkney Islands. Either as part-time or permanent servants, Indigenous
people provided a wide variety of services, including domestic labour involving the
manufacture of clothing and travel items; the traditional supply of country foodstuffs
like caribou meat, geese, and fish; work on the York boat brigades; the repair and
construction of inland boats and post buildings; the loading of furs and trade goods at
ship time; the cutting and hauling of wood and hay; packing fur; whaling and rendering blubber; fashioning fishnets; and assisting post tradesmen in the manufacture
and repair of equipment and trade goods (Payne 1989, 83–90).
The term Home Guard is generally employed in fur trade literature to describe
those First Nations groups living closest to a particular post and engaged in supply and
provisioning activities for European traders. While some First Nations people, including the Muskego of the York region, worked as full- or part-time wage labourers at
the post itself, by the middle of the nineteenth century, much of this work was carried
out by Metis labourers and their families. As the fur trade moved into the latter part
of the century, membership in one group or another became increasingly transitional
throughout much of the Subarctic, although at York, some separation remained until
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Robert Coutts
well into the twentieth century. Treaty adhesions signed by the Muskego in 1910, along
with the granting of scrip to Metis claimants, served to delineate the groups, at least
in the eyes of the government. On paper, those who took treaty and those who took
scrip was a determiner of who was First Nations and who was Metis, but in practical
terms, individuals and families moved between the two, the level of acculturation often
determining self-identification. While this article focuses for the most part upon the
Muskego, it is impossible to entirely separate the Metis of the York region as a distinct
group. Familial relations, cultural connections, and shared histories helped to create
bonds that functioned outside government and company labels.
The Family Unit and Commodity Production
Work at the post involved both men and women, and for much of York’s history,
the family unit formed the nucleus of commodity production, as it did throughout
the fur trade. European traders were not only linked to First Nations by an elaborate
system of credit and debt, but also through the kinship ties that came with country
marriages. The scholarly work of historians such as Jennifer Brown (1980), Sylvia
Van Kirk (1980), Adele Perry (2001), Heather Devine (2004), and others on fur trade
marriage has led to a greater understanding of the relations of production by placing
issues such as women and gender, reproduction, marriage, and family at the centre
rather than at the margins of the colonial discourse. “The marriage of a fur trader and
an Indian woman,” Van Kirk (1980, 42) has suggested, “was not just a private affair;
the bond thus created helped to advance trade relations with a new tribe, placing the
Indian wife in the role of cultural liaison between the traders and her kin.” Kinship
ties did more than just cement cultural loyalties, however; they also facilitated the
integration of women’s labour into the fur trade economy, especially at posts like
York Factory where the demand for local labour and country provisions was high, at
least for the greater part of its history. In communities like York, the overlap of the
domestic or subsistence mode of production and commercial exchange was partly the
result of the intermarriage of men and women of different cultures (Tough 1996, 19).
Citing the significance of fur in Harold Innis’s staples theory of Canadian economic
development, Joan Sangster (2007, 242) has argued that fur and the fur trade had a
central place in the early political economy of the nation, in Aboriginal-settler relations,
in historical mythmaking, and in cultural production; yet, quantifying this work, she
claims, is difficult, given that fur trade records were kept by men; that women’s work was
undervalued (furs trapped by women were usually recorded in post accounts under their
husband’s or father’s names); and that their presence was, according to Hugh Brody
(1981, 196), “concealed.” In the trade’s reliance on country food and the manufacture
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of country provisions, the family (including children) became involved in a fur trade
mode of production, generating surplus value that helped undermine the reciprocal
responsibilities of gendered labour traditionally found in Indigenous societies (see fig. 2).
In the new economy, relations of trade were instead cemented with Indigenous men,
while women were sidelined as “helpmates” or even possessions. (Sangster 2007, 253–4)
At York Factory, women and girls participated in a range of labour activities that
were not just crucial to the operation of the post and the district but helped to create the
surplus value that supported the profit margins of a resource-based economy. Outside
the domestic sphere, their work also involved the skinning and preparation of furs,
the collection of firewood, and the manufacture of local goods such as snowshoes and
clothing. What is generally not known about the fur trade is that women (and girls)
also hunted and trapped. These activities elicited little or no reporting in post journals
and accounts or, subsequently, in most fur trade historiographies, but oral sources have
provided more comprehensive insights into the working lives of Indigenous women
(Ahenakew and Wolfart 1988; Cruikshank 1991; Flannery 1995; Beardy and Coutts
1996). Oral interviews carried out with York Factory elders in the early 1990s provide
a picture of women’s lives at and away from the post. Hunting and trapping was part of
that routine.4 Elder Amelia Saunders described how women “used to hunt for caribou
Fig. 2. Children playing by cannons at York Factory, 1916.
Source: Archives of Manitoba, John Campbell Collection, 143.
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Robert Coutts
too. We hunted a lot, just like the men. We were taught to do this as we were growing
up” (Beardy and Coutts 1996, 44). Catherine Anderson described killing and skinning
a moose, and Abel Chapman noted that “a woman, at that time, worked just as hard as
a man. They, too, hunted. They took good care of him. They snared rabbits and also
set nets for fish” (Beardy and Coutts 1996, 49). Women also had traplines, although
these tended to be closer to the post, because the men used sleds in winter to travel
further afield. Travelling by snowshoe, women visited their traps, usually with their
young children in tow. In the 1920s, Elder Amy Hill recalled the following:
I myself used to snare rabbits. My young child would be in the cradle and
I’d carry the cradle on my back. This way I had the baby with me while I
set rabbit snares. Early the next morning I’d go back and check the snares.
Then I’d have to carry the rabbits back along with my baby. I’d put the rabbits on my back and then put the cradle on top. This is what I did in order
to survive, to have food for the children. (Beardy and Coutts 1996, 11)
As the administrative and supply headquarters of the HBC’s Northern Department, and later a district station and trading post, York Factory remained an important centre for the people of the region. It served as a market for their furs and
country provisions, a source for part-time labour, a place to acquire necessary supplies
and imported foodstuffs like sugar and tea, and, later, as the site to receive treaty payments and relief in times of scarcity. It was a summer gathering place where families
met after a long winter on the trapline.
The seasonal round was an enduring factor of life for Muskego families within
the region. After securing supplies and taking debt from the factory in the early fall,
trappers and their families moved out to their respective hunting territories. Before
the introduction of registered traplines in the 1940s, these territories were informally
regulated by custom and tradition and were organized, for the most part, around
extended family units. Small settlements and camps in the general vicinity of York,
such as those at the mouth of the Kaskattama and Kettle rivers, and at Whitefish
Lake, White Bear Creek, Port Nelson, Wanatawahak, and the Machichi River, were
home to small groups of Muskego families over the winter months. In the early
winter, families trapped and hunted, bringing their furs to York at Christmas before
returning to their hunting grounds after the new year. Some returned briefly to the
post at Easter before leaving for the spring muskrat hunt. York Factory elder John
Neepin, who lived for a time at Wanatawahak and Port Nelson, recalled that
people survived by trapping. Sometimes they would come to York Factory
during the winter if they ran short of supplies. They would bring their furs
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to sell. Then the same person would arrive back at Easter with more furs to
sell. (Beardy and Coutts 1996, 4)
When the river began to break up, usually in May, the York people returned to
the post to trade their winter catch of furs and to settle their debts. Summers were
generally spent in the vicinity of the post, where men often served on the York boat
brigades; fished and hunted for post provisions, as well as for their families; travelled
inland on wooding expeditions; went whaling at the mouth of the Nelson River; or
served as part-time labourers at the factory, especially at ship time. As noted above,
women hunted, processed fur, gathered firewood, foraged for edible plants, managed
family and domestic affairs, and sewed clothing. Amy Hill described how
the women used to sew. They sewed all the time. [I] remember they used
to have a group of women who did sewing … [and] make moccasins and
dresses made of caribou hide … Then after these items were completed we
would sell them. We made money. (Beardy and Coutts 1996, 18–9)
Other features of seasonal life at York were the spring and fall goose hunts
(see fig. 3). Geese were a vital food source for post residents, both First Nations and
Fig. 3. Goose hunters at York Factory, ca. 1940.
Source: Courtesy of Flora Beardy.
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Robert Coutts
Euro-Canadian, and the organized hunts were a part of the seasonal cycle that dated
from the founding of York in the seventeenth century. The return of the geese in
spring was a significant event in the factory calendar: the first sightings were usually
noted in the post journal, and the first hunter to bag a goose received cash or gifts.
Traditional goose hunting areas near the factory were at Marsh Point, Sam’s Creek
north of Port Nelson, and in the marshy area along the Hudson Bay coast, east of
York at the mouth of the Machichi River.
After the signing of an adhesion to Treaty 5 in 1910, the annual payment of treaty
annuities, which generally occurred in late July or early August, was a time for all of
the people to gather at the post. Elder Abel Chapman described seasonal life in the
York area: “Everybody left [their traplines] and stayed for the summer at York Factory,”
he recalled; “nobody stayed at their traplines during the summer, July and August.
People started leaving [York] in September for all different places, to their trapline”
(Beardy and Coutts 1996, 79).
York Factory: Declining Fortunes
While the seasonal cycle appears to have remained virtually unchanged for much of
York’s history, the same could not be said for the economic fortunes of the post. Its
decline resulted in significant changes, both within the region and to the structure
of labour at the factory itself. With the fall-off in the number of European servants
at the post in the latter part of the nineteenth century, Muskego and Metis workers
would eventually take over much of the labour, removing many families from the
subsistence life of the bush economy for the greater part of the year. At the peak of
its role in the Rupert’s Land fur trade around 1860, York Factory employed a fairly
large contingent of European servants. Sixty or seventy men recruited from overseas
were available for work at the factory, with many of these servants destined for inland
posts. As only half of this complement left in the first year, coupled with the 30 to
40 retiring servants who remained at York for a time before leaving for home, the
factory benefited from free labour, in that costs for wages and provisions were not
charged to the accounts at York but instead to the Northern Department overhead (Ray
1990b, 191). As well, the post sale shop registered extra revenue from the men who
spent their wages there. More importantly, as the major depot for inland shipping,
York Factory received cost landed revenue from the large quantity of goods that passed
through its warehouses.5 Such tariffs and customs duties traditionally supplemented
the factory’s overall profitability. At ship time, extra labour was required from the
surrounding district, and many Muskego families gave up their subsistence pursuits
for temporary wage labour at the post (see fig. 4).6 This requirement for extra labour,
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Fig. 4. Arrival of the Hudson’s Bay Company ship, York Factory, ca. 1880.
Source: Picturesque Canada, vol. 1, p. 317, Toronto, 1882.
coupled with the large population of Metis and European servants, increased provisioning needs for the post and drew hunters from adjoining districts to the area, a
development that increased strain upon the resources of the immediate vicinity.
With changes to the company’s inland shipping after 1860, however—an increasing
number of yearly outfits were shipped from Europe via American railways to St. Paul,
and by cart and later by steamboats to Upper Fort Garry in Red River—York’s advantage declined, as did its revenue. By 1872, York Factory was outfitting only those posts
in Manitoba below Norway House, including Oxford House, Nelson House, Severn,
Trout Lake, Split Lake, and Churchill. Along with these organizational and administrative changes came less work for Muskego families at York and at other posts in the
district, although the percentage of the local workforce who were Indigenous temporarily increased, as higher paid European servants were sent home as a cost-cutting
measure (Fortescue 1874). Chief Factor Joseph Fortescue initially resisted the fur trade
commissioner’s attempts to cut expenses at York but eventually relented, reducing the
number of clerks and accountants who had previously managed the business affairs of
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Robert Coutts
the district and in fact much of the Northern Department, as well as deleting some
45 tripmen positions on the boat brigades that travelled inland (Fortescue 1874). The lack
of employment for local people, both Muskego and Metis, affected sale shop revenues,
as well as the post’s overall profitability (Fortescue 1877). Compounding matters was the
Northern Department’s decision in 1874 to end York’s cost landed benefits, the total cost
of local labour being shifted to the post’s books after this date. Not only did traditional
post profits from the tariffs on goods bound for inland districts effectively disappear, but
York was now enduring labour charges for the handling of goods destined for elsewhere.
Monetary losses at York Factory increased into the 1880s, partly exacerbated by
the imposition of new federal import tariffs imposed under the Canadian government’s National Policy. Fortescue managed to stem some of the bleeding, however,
by further reducing the complement of Euro-Canadian servants at the post to a clerk
and a surgeon, four apprentice clerks, and a postmaster, and reducing Indigenous
labour to a total of 33 servants. Fortescue’s successor, Murdoch Matheson, described
by one of his superiors as “overbearing and disagreeable in his manner towards
subordinates,” was determined to turn the factory’s losses into a profit (McDougall
1889). Dealing with the expense of the large number of Muskego families who lived
at or near the post, Matheson wanted to eliminate the company’s traditional practice
of providing rations normally given to retired employees, as well as to sick and destitute Muskego families (Lofthouse 1885).7 Writing to HBC fur trade commissioner
James Wrigley in 1884, Matheson noted that “many Indians … have been allowed and
assisted to remain about the Factory. As a natural consequence,” he added, “families
of children have sprung up; and these having no proper training or employment are
growing into unruly savages” (Matheson 1884). Although seasonal local labour was,
for a short time, used to offset the services that had once been supplied to the factory
by European servants, Matheson’s decision to end the transport of Norway House
fur returns via York in 1885 further reduced employment on the York boat brigades
(Matheson 1885). By 1887, only a surgeon, two clerks, a postmaster, and eighteen
Muskego and Metis servants were engaged at York. The latter group was decreased
even further to a total of seven servants by the end of Matheson’s tenure in 1892, and
to a low of three when York came under the administration of Chief Factor Alexander
Milne (1893). By the turn of the century, York Factory’s decline was virtually complete
when Norway House was made the district headquarters of the newly formed Keewatin District, which included York’s traditional trading and provisioning hinterland.
During this period of rapid reduction, Euro-Canadian servants at York were
redeployed to interior posts or were simply sent home upon the expiration of their
contracts. On the other hand, according to post records, Muskego employees and
their families, a total of 67 between 1884 and 1889, were pressured by the HBC to
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leave the environs of the factory and pursue traditional subsistence activities in the
coastal lowlands and upland forests (Matheson 1890). After centuries of hunting and
trapping, however, the resource base of the region was in crisis. As early as 1887,
Matheson noted, “there is in reality very little fur in the country, and that under no
circumstances can the Indians be self supporting” (Matheson 1887). By the end of the
1880s, game was also scarce in the region. Matheson (1888) commented that “greater
destitution than usual existed here last winter on account of the entire absence of
Deer [caribou], partridges [ptarmigan] and rabbits. Unlike most other posts, there
are hardly any fishing places in this part of the country, so that when the Deer fail
the only resource for the Natives is to endeavour to reach the factory.” Clearly, HBC
records pointed to a major resource crisis in the area. While regional resource shortages had been a part of York’s existence for some time, they were generally transitory
and less severe than what was occurring in the Hayes-Nelson watershed by the end of
the century. The large provisioning demands of a once sprawling post had impacted
the carrying capacity of the region, and when groups who had previously made their
living at York returned to the bush economy, they found little to sustain them.
Credit, Debt, and Scarcity
With previous periodic shortages, Muskego families had been encouraged to travel
to York where they were given advances to help tide them over and to encourage
them to trap rather than to hunt for subsistence. This system of debt and credit had
been a feature of the fur trade for generations and was integral to the shift of First
Nations from a hunting-based economy to one focused increasingly upon the collection and production of furs. Geographer Arthur Ray (1990b, 188–202) has referred
to this system as the “paternalistic fur trade” (188–9) with the company supplying
First Nations, including the Muskego of western Hudson Bay, with the equipment
and a limited quantity of European foodstuffs required to pursue a nonsubsistence
based economy. Arguably, however, the trade was far from paternalistic, as the supply of hunting and trapping equipment—generally referred to in the accounts as
Advances Given to Hunters—was a foundational component of the fur trade and
essential to the realization of profits. Seasonal travel to the post was a crucial part
of this economic arrangement in order for local people to trade furs, take debt, and
replenish their supplies. Over the decades, the social aspect of these visits took on
great importance in the formation of alliances with European traders and, of course,
in the development of a wage labour economy.
Assistance from the storehouses at York Factory during times of scarcity and
when fur returns were poor was based upon an understanding that the successful
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Robert Coutts
pursuit of a fur economy required certain overhead costs. Gratuities or relief during
hard times was part of the social cost, or social overhead, of the industry, as the supply of European foodstuffs were viewed by the company as a necessary expense, in
the same way that it viewed the costs of transport, labour, and infrastructure. As new
factors impacted the business—factors such as resource depletion and overtrapping,
competition from independent fur buyers, and falling international prices—however,
the social contract between traders and trappers came under stress, as a mercantile
economy evolved into a capitalist one.
As time wore on, the situation at York Factory and throughout its hinterland
grew worse. Chief Commissioner Wrigley wrote in 1889 that “the miserable condition of the Indians here … [has resulted in] numbers hav[ing] eaten their starved
dogs, their snowshoes, and the refuse from their dust heaps, while several died from
actual starvation” (Wrigley 1889a). A century earlier, when First Nations traders who
arrived at York spoke of being starved, it was often viewed as an accepted part of the
language of negotiation in order to receive fair treatment and good measure from
the HBC. By the late nineteenth century, starvation was no longer symbolic. In 1891,
Reverend G.S. Winter, a missionary at York, described how “the poor people have
been starving indeed when they begged admission into the ‘Blubber House’ to take
away [and] eat the leavings of the dogs’ food. They even scraped the tanks to get the
putrid meat.” He went on to describe a woman forced to eat her fishing bait, a boy
who ate the bait in his fox trap, and locals who dug up animal bones that had been
thrown away the previous fall in order to boil them for broth (Winter 1891).8 As mentioned earlier, cyclical food shortages had long been a part of the Subarctic fur trade,
but what happened in the York region in the last years of the nineteenth century
easily eclipsed the destitution that had come before.
Government Subsidies for the HBC
By the late nineteenth century, the failure of the bush economy, or the domestic mode
of production, had led to deprivation in the York region. At the same time, changing
HBC policies in the face of declining profits failed to provide security for those people
who had sustained the fur trade for generations. Declining prices and a retrenchment
in its northern operations resulted in considerable poverty and deprivation in the
region; if in the past the company had provided for the Muskego in hard times, it
now seemed entirely focused on cutting expenses and reducing debt. At York Factory,
accounting changes brought into sharp relief the extent to which the interdependent
model of fur trade economics and a fur trade mode of production had given way to
a fully capitalist approach (in Marxist terms, the situation in which workers do not
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Journal of Canadian Studies • Revue d’études canadiennes
control the means of production) and subsequent negative effects upon the region
and its people. For many decades, or at least since the establishment of a co-resident
Home Guard population, the Muskego families who had regularly provisioned York
with geese and caribou meat had been supplied with a variety of items necessary
for hunting and trapping, including guns, ammunition, sleds, and snowshoes. Post
rations for these families were also integral to success on the trapline, as the search
for fur-bearing animals left reduced time for subsistence hunting. Food as social
overhead was more than just an element of reciprocity; it was a part of post business,
an integral component of the advances to trappers and hunters that was critical to
fur trade economics. In addition, food (and medical care) for the sick and destitute
was central to the idea of reciprocity. During much of its history, York Factory accounts listed these types of items under headings such as General Charges or, as
noted above, Advances Given to Hunters. In the late 1880s, Chief Factor Matheson,
with the approval of the fur trade commissioner, first reclassified these expenditures
under titles such as Gratuities and even Native Welfare. Writing to Matheson in the
fall of 1889, Commissioner Wrigley cautioned that “every effort should be made as
near as possible to abolish Indian Advances” (Wrigley 1889b). He strongly suggested
that Matheson “keep the valuation of prices of Country made articles as low as possible,” and that provisions given to the sick and destitute “ought not to be placed
among General Charges” (Wrigley 1889b). That same year, District Manager James
McDougall (1889) wrote that “the rate paid for temporary labour is high as it includes
feeding the wives of those employed. Endeavours should be made to abolish this old
practice, as also the regular rationing of provision hunters and their families.”
These changes represented more than just account ledger semantics. In effect,
the company no longer considered full-time provisioners to be collaborators who
required the necessary tools with which to carry out their work, but rather as independent contractors. Similarly, lodging for full-time servants within the post was no
longer provided by the HBC, and supplies for sick and destitute former employees
and their families were reduced or eliminated altogether. The few provisions that
were given out at York at this time were simply classified as welfare. It was the end
of reciprocity at York Factory and, judging by the correspondence coming from the
commissioner’s office, at fur trade posts throughout much of the Subarctic; and while
treaty adhesions would not be signed at York until 1910, the HBC looked increasingly
to government to take over their traditional role and to help ensure the company’s
profitability in northern Manitoba. If the sale of Rupert’s Land to the federal government in 1869 might have theoretically released the HBC from its responsibilities
regarding trading alliances, it did not change the historical arrangement between
trapper and trader.
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Robert Coutts
Arguably, the HBC exaggerated claims of its support for First Nations, or at least
attempted to recast its social overhead as a form of private welfare. At York Factory,
Chief Factor Matheson (1888) suggested that “the Government be approached and
an annual grant of any amt. up to $4000 be obtained, not to be paid to the Indians
but to us in consideration of the loss we sustain in supporting them.” If, in fact, the
company was sustaining losses at York because of support to local Muskego or, rather,
the result of declining prices, competition from the independents, a failing bush
economy, or simply mismanagement is unclear. Correspondence between the HBC
and the Department of Indian Affairs might tell a different story. Throughout much
of the North, land surrender treaties were the mechanism by which the social costs of
the fur trade were shifted to the public purse; however, even areas like York Factory
that were not under treaty in 1900 benefited from the federal government assuming
some of the costs of relief during periods of deprivation, despite the fact that without
treaty adhesions, the government bore little obligation to do so. An 1888 letter from
the London Secretary of the Company William Armit to Member of Parliament and
former HBC Chief Commissioner Donald A. Smith outlined the objective of the HBC:
The Board [of HBC Directors] are persuaded that on proper representation
to the Government, and in consideration of the altered circumstances of
the Company, the Government will acquiesce in the view of the duty now
attaching to the Government and themselves, and that such reasonable outlays as may necessary have to be made to prevent actual starvation, will be
provided and made good to them out of the public exchequer.
Armit (1888) further argued that extending relief to First Nations “is one [responsibility] now attaching to the Government, the company having no special obligations
resting on them other than those of humanity.” He added that independent traders
who operated in the vicinity of HBC posts did not have the same responsibilities
as the company and could therefore outcompete for the furs of local people. While
Armit hoped that the government would view the company’s actions as providing
welfare to destitute people, the company in fact wanted the taxpayer to take over their
legitimate expenses without touching their profits.
Ultimately, and perhaps predictably, the federal government did acquiesce, and
grants were given directly to the company to meet the needs of the sick and destitute,
notwithstanding Indian Affairs accountant Douglas Campbell Scott’s (1910) later
belief that “by making this grant the Department is assuming the position that was
heretofore held by the Company.” In fact, according to Scott, the company began
submitting bills that went beyond the supply of relief and included overhead costs
related to the extension of credit that involved the government in supporting business
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Journal of Canadian Studies • Revue d’études canadiennes
expenses such as bad debt and even subsidizing the cost of provisions to hunters and
trappers. Scott (1910) argued that the government was in fact “discriminating in the
field of free trade in favour of the Hudson’s Bay Company” and suggested that rivals
to the HBC would “consider it a privilege if they could issue supplies to Indians, the
cost of which would be charged to the Government.” Government payments to the
HBC at York Factory—ostensibly to support the sick and destitute but in reality a
subsidy of company expenses—were further augmented by the payment of treaty
annuities after the signing of an adhesion to Treaty 5 at York in 1910. Critical to the
argument made here is that both before and after the implementation of Treaty 5
in the York region, rather than payments going directly to the destitute people of
the region, the HBC continued to receive subsidies from the federal government. In
defending these subsidies, the HBC fell back upon age-old claims of monopoly, as
new fur companies such as Revillon Frères and Lamson & Hubbard, as well as a host
of independents (often referred to in the York correspondence as Pedlars), arrived in
the western Hudson Bay region to take advantage of a growing cash economy.
Continued Decline in the Twentieth Century
In the twentieth century, the costs at York continued to increase, causing the company to further reduce expenditures at the post and throughout the district. Building
maintenance was irregular, as less infrastructure was required for storage or for
tradesman activities. A number of post buildings were taken down during this period, and some simply fell down, not to be replaced (Donaldson 1981, 76–91). With
the demand for labour and provisions much diminished, many Muskego families
returned to the bush to eke out a marginalized living as either hunters in an area of
much depleted resources or as small-time trappers. Diminished opportunities after
the First World War forced an increased reliance on trapping even though returns
were scarce and international fur prices hovered at an all-time low. Competitive fur
buyers helped raise the value of furs for First Nations trappers, as companies such as
Revillon Frères became well-established on the periphery of the company’s Keewatin
District after the turn of the century. The remoteness of the York region impeded
the establishment of larger scale concerns, however, for without the well-established
transport networks of the HBC, these independents remained at a disadvantage. As
noted above, construction of the Hudson’s Bay Railway from Winnipeg to Churchill
between 1908 and 1929 facilitated independent trade; now these traders could more
easily move their outfits closer to the camps of Muskego traders north of Norway
House.9 Moreover, a growing number of white trappers arrived in the region, competing directly with the Muskego and Metis. Despite these competitive advantages,
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Robert Coutts
the HBC bought out a number of its opponents, including Lamson & Hubbard in
1923 and Revillon Frères in 1936.
For the most part, fur prices remained unchanged in the years between 1900
and the First World War, although year-to-year fluctuations did occur as a result
of changing fashions in the European and North American markets. At York, fur
returns continued to decline, and the resource crisis in the region continued. Post
records from the period mention starvation among Muskego groups both along the
coast and inland. East of York, HBC camp traders (in the late nineteenth century,
the company sent men out to family camps rather than waiting for people to visit the
factory) reported “no deer and no fish … the Indians are starving” (see fig. 5).
Fig. 5. Playing cards at York Factory, ca. 1940.
Source: Courtesy of John Ingram.
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Journal of Canadian Studies • Revue d’études canadiennes
Faced with a continuing resource crisis and low fur returns and prices, Muskego
families went further into debt. Growing debt levels became a problem throughout
much of the Subarctic after 1900, declining briefly during the war because of high
fur prices and then skyrocketing after 1920 (Ray 1990a, 85). Debt could be potentially
ruinous for Muskego families where traditional domestic production had been superseded by production for trade, but was of less consequence for families that relied
more upon hunting and a family level of manufacture. As for the HBC, Arthur Ray
(1990a) contends that bad debt was never the financial burden for the company that
it first appeared to be. The rate of uncollected debt, he maintains, was only about 6%
of the total value of fur returns, and as advances to trappers were given in goods valued at their cost landed price, the actual cost to the company was less than indicated
in the accounts (85–6). Despite these financial realities, the company continued its
policy of limiting advances while at the same time curtailing relief expenses. Writing
to the post manager at York Factory in 1900, company commissioner C.C. Chipman
(1900) instructed that assistance be given only when “absolutely necessary to prevent
starvation, provided there are sufficient resources for the purpose.” Some of the worst
effects of this company’s policy were, however, mitigated by sympathetic post and
district managers who, unlike those in the HBC boardroom, realized that taking debt
was a necessary part of the trade. Risking dismissal for their actions, these managers
engaged in creative bookkeeping in order to hide the small advances given to local
trappers. In his report to the fur trade commissioner in Winnipeg in 1924, Nelson
River District manager Christopher Harding (1924) explained,
The debiting of Indians has come down from olden times and is very difficult to eradicate … We would like to follow instructions and eradicate this
evil if we may call it such but at times we find ourselves helpless for we do
not wish to create suffering or hardships among the Indians especially in
those years when game and fur are scarce.
In the early twentieth century, the most significant event to affect the lives of
the York region Muskego was the signing of an adhesion to Treaty 5 in August 1910.
Treaty 5, signed in 1875, covered the Indigenous people of Manitoba’s Interlake, the
lower Saskatchewan River, and the shield country east of Lake Winnipeg. Muskego
and Dene peoples living north of these districts were not included under the treaty.
Over the next three decades, bands from Oxford House, Island Lake, Split Lake,
Nelson River, Deer’s Lake, Churchill, and York Factory petitioned the federal government for adhesion to the treaty. Requests from the York Factory people began
as early as 1876 but were rejected by the federal government, which had no interest in extinguishing Aboriginal claim in order to facilitate Dominion settlement in
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Robert Coutts
the lowlands region. Despite the plea of York Factory Chief Kicheekesich in 1884
for treaty and material aid from the government, “because we are getting poorer
every winter,” it wasn’t until 1910 that an adhesion was signed with Chief Charles
Wastasecoot (York Factory Chief and Councillors 1915). Well aware of the changing
economy of northern Manitoba after 1900, the York people ceded their Aboriginal
title to the area in return for guarantees of reserve lands (160 acres per family), access
to subsistence resources, provisions such as ammunition and supplies, and a yearly
gratuity amounting to $5 per person, with the chief receiving $25 and each of his two
councillors $10 (Coates and Morrison 1986; Tough 1988). Metis title in the region
was extinguished through the distribution of scrip, although as Frank Tough (1996,
114–42) reveals, only 37 scrip claims were issued at York Factory at the time of the
1910 treaty adhesion. Treaty adhesion had a stabilizing effect for the Muskego. Not
only did it provide material assistance—the cash to buy company goods and trapping
and hunting equipment—but it also stopped the out-migration of people that had
begun as some left prior to 1910 for the ceded lands to the south. Only 277 people
took treaty at York in 1910, but over the next few decades, this population began to
rise due to natural increase, better medical care, and the return of some people from
York who had previously moved to inland districts.
In 1911, York Factory’s decline was arrested for a time by its selection as the
headquarters of the HBC’s newly created Nelson River District. Based at York, the
Nelson River District manager supervised the distribution of supplies and trade
goods, as well as the collection of furs over an area stretching from Chesterfield Inlet
in the North, Oxford House and Trout Lake in the South, to Winisk along the eastern
coast of Hudson Bay. The post’s new responsibilities offered increased wage labour
and seasonal provisioning opportunities to area residents who continued to inhabit
small settlements and camps near the factory. After 1910, a number of Muskego
families moved back to York where they could find increased labour and treaty annuities, but the strain upon the resources of the region only increased the dependence
of the people upon a resource economy that was becoming increasingly precarious.
The disruption of international trade caused by the onset of war in 1914 and the
collapse of some overseas markets resulted in plummeting fur prices. The poverty of
the 1880s and 1890s returned, and in 1915, the Muskego of the York area petitioned
the federal government to make good on its treaty promises for food and tools: “We
see hard times ahead of us,” they wrote; “do not neglect us now at this time … we only
ask for what we need for bare existence” (York Factory Chief and Councillors 1915)
Although fur prices rose after the war, trapping incomes in the 1920s continued to fall throughout the Subarctic, including in the York district. Despite an influx
of non-Aboriginal trappers, many Indigenous people were able to sell their furs at
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relatively good prices—white fox fur, for instance, was selling at peak price; but over
time, the cost of supplies and trading outfits were much inflated by the HBC (Ray
1990a, 200). Overall returns from York and throughout much of northern Manitoba continued to fall, however, as the fur-bearing population of the region declined
through overtrapping, and the HBC looked for new ways to trim expenses, usually
to the detriment of its trappers and customers. Arguably, the company’s search for
profits in the North and their desire to keep cutting expenses was part of its larger
investment strategy in the South as land sales revenues gave way to the development
of their retail business in urban areas. In the mid-1920s, the HBC was still maintaining, and even enlarging, its considerable infrastructure in the Arctic districts of Mackenzie, Franklin, and post-1912 Keewatin; however, as Subarctic areas like York Factory
declined after centuries of trapping and hunting, the HBC would soon abandon those
groups that had for generations helped it reap enormous (and monopoly) profits.
In the twentieth century, the Muskego separated into three distinct bands: the
Fox Lake First Nation, the Shamattawa First Nation, and the original York Factory
First Nation. The Fox Lake and Shamattawa bands formally broke away from the
main York band after the Second World War—although they had operated separately
for many decades—and were officially recognized by the federal Department of
Indian and Northern Affairs in 1947. Each had been part of the York Factory people
who signed an adhesion to Treaty 5 at York in 1910. Shamattawa is located on the
God’s River about 130 kilometres south of York, while the Fox Lake First Nation is
located about the same distance southwest of the old post along the Nelson River at
Gillam and at Bird on the Hudson Bay Rail line. The present reserve at York Landing
on Split Lake, approximately 250 kilometres inland from York Factory, is the home
of the York Factory First Nation and the location chosen for resettlement after the
closing of the Bayside post in 1957.
Conclusion
The history of the Muskego of the York region during the latter part of the nineteenth
century and the early decades of the twentieth provides insight into the evolution of a
single-resource economy in Subarctic Canada. Throughout the pre-Confederation era,
the mercantile relationship between trapper and trader can be characterized, with some
caution, as one of reciprocity (although not as a partnership). In return for furs, country
provisions, seasonal labour, and commercial loyalty, the Hudson’s Bay Company at York
provided the Muskego with trade goods, supplies, food, and relief in times of scarcity.
As company restructuring shifted costs to York Factory and, ultimately, to the
federal government, and as the resources of the region came increasingly under
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Robert Coutts
strain, the Metis’ and Muskego’s choices narrowed. Changes to the way the company
managed its accounts at York underscored the end of reciprocity as much of its traditional overhead was shifted to the category of welfare, and Indigenous peoples were
left without adequate subsistence. Correspondence from the commissioner’s office
suggests that what occurred at York Factory also took place throughout the Subarctic
as the company transferred the focus of its business to the Arctic, as well as to urban
areas in the South. Beginning in the late 1880s, the HBC came to rely upon a compliant federal government to subsidize its operations in northern Manitoba.
The underdevelopment that had characterized communities such as York Factory would ultimately bleed the country of resources, while the fur trade mode of production that brought the Muskego into a global economy would, in a capitalist mode
of production, leave them marginalized and impoverished. The closing of the post
in 1957, and the dispersal of the York Factory First Nation to inland reserves, ended
almost three centuries of commerce on western Hudson Bay; but if Kihciwâskâhikan
(the place of the Great House) is now a lonely and deserted place (although it was
designated a national historic site in 1936), the history of the Muskego and Metis
peoples of that community and that region still speaks to the historical centrality of
Indigenous people as kin, as labourers, and as consumers at the places that were
colonized.
Robert Coutts worked as a historian with Parks Canada for 32 years and is now a Research
Fellow at St. John’s College at the University of Manitoba where he is completing a doctorate in
History. He is also the editor of the journal Manitoba History.
NOTES
The author would like to thank the editors and the anonymous reviewers who made a number
of helpful suggestions in the editing of this article. Also of note, this essay was the 2017 winner
of the J.W. Dafoe Writing Award in the Humanities at the University of Manitoba.
1. This article builds upon my earlier work on the Cree of the York Factory region published in the British Journal of Canadian Studies. Where much of that article focused on
changing community life at the post in the first half of the twentieth century, the current piece describes how economic opportunities at the post and the surrounding area
contracted in the years around the turn of the century and how a fur trade mode of production came to overlap with domestic production. As well, in this article, I document
how the Hudson’s Bay Company pursued government subsidies to help offset regional
resource depletion and declining profits after 1880. For the earlier work, see Coutts
(1998).
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2. Frank Tough (1996) has argued that the notion that Subarctic peoples worked in two
separate modes of production is erroneous, suggesting instead that the domestic and
capitalist modes coincided with production for use and production for exchange. Viewing
Indigenous life in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth, he suggests that “a single economy allocated labour time and applied the means
of production to generate both life-sustaining subsistence and commercial income …
Bush activities defy neat classification,” Tough believes, “because often a single task could
simultaneously generate commercial and subsistence returns” (42–3).
3. For a discussion of the origins of these terms of outsider naming, see Victor Lytwyn
(2002, 6–7) and Flora Beardy and Robert Coutts (1996, xvi–xviii). While the term Muskego describes the people of the Hayes-Nelson region, Mushkego refers to the people of the
Peawanuck, Fort Severn, Attawapiskat, Kashechewan, Fort Albany, and Moose Factory
area in present-day Ontario. Occasionally, the term Omushkego appears in some sources;
however, the O translates simply as the definite article.
4. Although many of the oral testimonies from York Factory elders quoted in this article
date to the 1920s and 1930s, an argument can be made that daily life in the region had
changed little over a half century of hunting, travelling, and domestic production. The
handful of sources that exist from an earlier era, such as the mid- to late nineteenth
century—primarily the private journals of fur traders like Robert Ballantyne (1879)—
support this claim and describe Indigenous life in the bush (albeit from a non-Native
perspective) not unlike those cited here.
5. Cost landed revenue described profits made from charging inland districts—not just the
costs of the goods shipped through York but tariffs related to handling fees, as well.
6. Unloading goods at ship time, while a major component of post routine in the midnineteenth century, was still a part of life at York in the twentieth century. Elder David
Massan recalled how in the 1930s, “[they] would work hard when the ships came in,
unloading. That was hard work and the pay wasn’t very much” (Beardy and Coutts 1996,
17). Women and children also unloaded boats during this period.
7. In October of 1885, Reverend Lofthouse wrote in his journal: “We have only two families of
Indians staying near the place; many of the homes in our Indian village are empty this year,
Mr. Matheson having forced them away by refusing to give them any assistance whatever.”
8. If the 1880s and 1890s witnessed the greatest period of deprivation in the York area,
starvation was not unknown in the decades that followed. Describing his childhood in
the 1920s, Elder Alex Ouscan told the story of when his family travelled to York in the fall
without food. They could not find game, and Alex described how they
were getting pretty hungry and desperate. My old grandfather before our trip
had trapped and skinned a beaver. He had the beaver skin with him and we all
ate that … He hadn’t dried the pelt; it was just rolled up frozen. At one point my
late mother tracked a ptarmigan and followed the tracks to where the ptarmigan
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Robert Coutts
awoke from. As she was following the tracks she was picking up the ptarmigan’s
droppings. We stopped and made a fire and boiled some water. She then put the
droppings into the boiling water and stirred it. That is what she gave me to drink.
(Beardy and Coutts 1996, 69–70)
9. First suggested in the 1870s, a railway connection between Winnipeg and Hudson Bay
was considered by business and agricultural interests in the West as an alternative to
eastern transportation domination and as a necessary outlet for prairie grain bound for
Europe. Begun in 1908, the railway had reached the Kettle Rapids on the Nelson River
before construction was interrupted by the war. In 1912, Port Nelson was selected as
the terminus for the railway on Hudson Bay, though it was later abandoned in favour
of Churchill because of the latter’s advantages as a deep water port. This decision had
major implications for York Factory, which would inevitably have been shut down earlier
had Port Nelson remained the Bayside terminus as originally planned. None the less,
York Factory people continued their winter settlement at Port Nelson, and a North-West
Mounted Police detachment remained at the site until 1934. The completion of the Hudson Bay Railway greatly facilitated the movement of independent traders into northern
Manitoba, including the western Hudson Bay region and the District of Keewatin.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS:
LAC: Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, ON
AM, HBCA: Archives of Manitoba, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Winnipeg, MB
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