The North West Company and the Fur Trade: Montreal Scots Who Mapped Canada

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

The company's history is well documented. Not all its leading figures were Scottish: David Thompson was born in London of Welsh parents, and the workforce was largely French-Canadian. Exploration relied heavily on Indigenous guides and knowledge.

Montreal Scots

established After the British conquest of New France in 1763, Scottish merchants moved into the Montreal fur trade, joining French-Canadian traders. In the 1770s and 1780s, partnerships combined into the North West Company, led by Simon McTavish, a Highlander from Stratherrick, and later by his nephew William McGillivray. Many partners came from the Highlands.

established The historian T. M. Devine, in To the Ends of the Earth (2011), describes the company as a loose confederation of small firms run by "adventurers and gamblers". It widened in 1787 after the murder of John Ross, a Scottish trader caught up in the rivalries of the north-west, when the principals of several firms decided to unite rather than fight. Of the 225 men active in the firm in the early nineteenth century, 62 per cent came from Inverness-shire, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire, usually from military, farming or minor landed families. One writer quoted by Devine said the partners' names sounded "like a roll-call of the clans at Culloden". The Scots of Montreal were not united, though: the company itself was nearly torn apart by vendettas between its leading Highland families, and its war with the Hudson's Bay Company was, in Devine's words, a struggle between "different groups of Scots", the Bay's Orcadian servants against the Gaels of the North West Company.

Voyageurs and partners

established The company's canoe brigades were paddled by French-Canadian voyageurs, who carried trade goods and furs thousands of miles between Montreal and the interior. Each summer partners met at Grand Portage, and later at Fort William on Lake Superior. Trade depended on relationships with Indigenous peoples, who supplied furs, food and guidance, and many traders married Indigenous women.

Explorers

established Alexander Mackenzie, born in Stornoway, travelled down the river now named after him to the Arctic Ocean in 1789, and in 1793 crossed the Rocky Mountains to reach the Pacific, the first recorded crossing of North America north of Mexico. Simon Fraser, born in the colony of New York to Scottish parents, descended the Fraser River to its mouth in 1808. David Thompson, born in London, mapped huge areas of the west.

Rivalry and violence

established Competition with the Hudson's Bay Company grew fierce. The Nor'Westers' method of sending traders deep into the interior forced the HBC to abandon its older practice of waiting at its bayside posts for Indigenous trappers to bring furs. An English pedlar described the Montreal company as "overrun with Scotchmen".

shared The wording varies between sources. Devine quotes an Englishman complaining that "the country is over run with Scotchmen", referring to Montreal and its trade rather than to the company alone. The American writer Washington Irving, who mocked the partners as "Hyperborean Nabobs" holding court like Highland chieftains, still called them "the lords of the lakes and the forests".

established When the Earl of Selkirk, a Scottish HBC shareholder, founded the Red River Colony in 1812, the Nor'Westers saw it as a threat to their supply routes and to the pemmican on which their brigades depended. Selkirk had invested heavily in HBC stock from 1808 and, with his brother-in-law, held a controlling interest by 1811, when the company granted him the land in return for recruiting both servants and settlers. The North West Company's Simon McGillivray, nephew of Simon McTavish, publicly attacked the recruiting in Stornoway, and a military recruiter obstructed the sailing of Selkirk's first ships in June 1811. Settlers from Kildonan in Sutherland followed in 1813–15, sailing from Stromness to Fort Churchill. In 1816, at the Battle of Seven Oaks, Métis allied to the North West Company killed the colony's governor and about twenty settlers. Selkirk restored control in 1817 with the help of hired Swiss and German soldiers, but the struggle ruined him, and he died in 1820.

Indigenous partners, rum and disease

established The trade depended on Indigenous people at every point. Devine notes that they hunted the animals, paddled many of the canoes, guided the explorers and supplied local knowledge, while Scots and Métis traders supplied goods and the link to world markets. Intimate relationships between traders and Indigenous women were part of the system, not an exception to it, and many Nor'Westers raised families "according to the custom of the country".

shared Devine also sets out the cost. Imported diseases devastated peoples with little resistance to them, over-hunting stripped the wildlife on which their economies depended, and competition between the companies flooded the north-west with alcohol. Trading without rum became almost impossible, and drinking bouts at the forts often ended in violence and death. Scots traders, it was said, divided Indians into "those who have furs and those who have none". One trader wrote that a nation addicted to drinking would become "excellent hunters". Not every Indigenous community was affected, but for those that were, Devine concludes, the consequences were often tragic. He quotes the historian Colin G. Calloway's judgement that Highland traders were "probably just as likely" as English or American ones to exploit and cheat Indians.

shared Historians still disagree about the company's leaders. Marjorie Wilkins Campbell's admiring biography of William McGillivray drew a furious review, quoted by Devine, which called him a greedy "Scots clerk" who owed his success to nepotism, and the North West Company's success "primarily to rum". Both views are partisan; the company was a ruthless business that also produced some of the greatest feats of exploration in Canadian history.

Merger

established Exhausted by conflict and costs, the two companies merged in 1821 under the Hudson's Bay Company name, ending the North West Company. Many Nor'Westers continued in the united company. Scots kept their hold: Devine reports that between 1824 and 1870, 64 per cent of the company's employees were Scots-born, with Canadians the next largest group at 12 per cent.

shared Marjory Harper, in Adventurers and Exiles (2003), describes the merger as effectively a defeat for the North West Company, while noting that it brought valuable wilderness survival skills into the enlarged HBC, which now stretched from Hudson Bay to the Pacific. Scots continued to dominate the new company. Its governor, George Simpson, born in Lochbroom, had joined the HBC only in 1820 and been sent straight into the Athabasca country at the height of the conflict. His private "Character Book" of 1831–32 was merciless about former rivals: he dismissed Colin Robertson, a Perth weaver's son who had served the North West Company before rejoining the HBC, as "a frothy trifling conceited man".

• Before Red River, Lord Selkirk settled about 800 Highlanders on Prince Edward Island in 1803, against the wishes of the Highland Society. His Observations on the Present State of the Highlands (1805) defended emigration as a "salutary drain" and helped change Malthus's mind on the subject (Jonsson, 2013).
• Alexander Mackenzie reached the Pacific in 1793.
• The Mackenzie River is named after a Stornoway man.
• The Beaver Club was a Montreal dining club for fur traders.
• The company's workers were mostly French-Canadian voyageurs.
• The North West Company merged with its rival in 1821.
• Of 225 men active in the company in the early nineteenth century, 62 per cent came from Inverness-shire, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire.
• The company's 1787 enlargement followed the murder of a Scottish trader, John Ross, in the north-west.
• A contemporary English pedlar complained that the North West Company was "overrun with Scotchmen".

• Myth: the North West Company was entirely Scottish. Not all its leading figures were Scottish: David Thompson was born in London, and the workforce was largely French-Canadian.
• Myth: the Nor'Westers "discovered" the land they explored. Exploration relied heavily on Indigenous guides and knowledge, and the trade depended on Indigenous people at every point.
• Myth: Highland traders treated Indigenous peoples better than other Europeans did. T. M. Devine rejects the idea, and he quotes Colin Calloway's judgement that Highland traders were "probably just as likely" as English or American ones to exploit and cheat Indians.
• Myth: the Scots of the fur trade were a united community. The company was nearly torn apart by vendettas between its leading Highland families, and its war with the Hudson's Bay Company set the Gaels of the North West Company against the Bay's Orcadian servants.
• Disputed: how to judge the company's leaders. An admiring biography of William McGillivray drew a furious review calling him a greedy "Scots clerk" who owed his success to nepotism, and the company's success "primarily to rum". Both views are partisan.
• Disputed: whether the 1821 merger was a defeat. Marjory Harper calls it effectively a defeat for the North West Company, though it brought the Nor'Westers' wilderness skills into the enlarged Hudson's Bay Company.