North-West Company

In 1779, nine small trading companies got together and created the North-West Company.

They did not like the Charter that said the Hudson's Bay Company was the only company that could get furs from most of Canada. They want to get the furs anyway so they get sneaky. The Hudson's Bay Company had first on the Hudson Bay. The Aboriginal people brought the furs to them from all across the Prairies. The North-West Company set up their forts closer to where the furs were so the Aboriginal people would bring the furs to them instead.

They spent the winter with the native tribes. This made the Hudson's Bay Company really, really mad!

The North West Company
After the England –France war in which France was defeated, many British people joined with French people in the fur trade business. They became independent traders, Kind of traveling salesmen. They would travel to the Indian camps with trade goods to exchange for furs. These Peddlers, as they were called, would travel into the west by canoe, stay and trade for the winter and travel back out to a post about halfway between Saskatchewan and Montreal to drop off their furs. Another group of voyageurs would take the furs on to the merchants in Montreal. These peddlers were a free spirited lot, they were at home traveling up and down the rivers living off the land and visiting with the Indian people. They followed few rules, they traded things like whiskey, they took Indian wives, and they went where they pleased. The Hudson Bay rules about no trade allowed were ignored, after all, the Hudson's Bay Company people were sitting at their forts or factories on Hudson’s Bay waiting for furs to come to them. Who was going to stop them? These peddlers were out to make money for themselves. They went where they thought Indians would supply them with furs. They did not have to follow the more strict rules of the Hudson's Bay Company. These fur peddlers eventually joined into the North West Company in 1779. This let them coordinate their trade. Their fur-trading route started in Saskatchewan and traveled the river systems to Lake Winnipeg, on to Lake of the Woods and then on to Montreal. The North-West Company was very successful in taking trade from the Hudson’s Bay Company. In a few years they had cut trade to the Hudson's Bay Company to one fifth of it’s normal trade. This meant a trade war. The HBC had to start building forts inland as well. They also had to start trading things like whiskey to get back some of the trade they had lost.

In Ille-a-la-Crosse there are Hudson's Bay Company and North-West Company forts.