Hudson's Bay Company

The Hudson's Bay Company

was an English corporation formed in 1670, when Charles II, king of England, granted a charter to Prince Rupert, his Bohemian-born cousin, and 17 other noblemen and gentlemen, thus giving them a monopoly over trade in the region watered by streams flowing into Hudson Bay. In the vast territory, which came to be known as Rupert's Land, their company also had the power to establish laws and impose penalties for the infraction of the laws, to erect forts, to maintain ships of war, and to make peace or war with the natives. The original capital of the company was about $220,000, a large amount of capital for the period.

For almost a century this monopoly went unquestioned, although it had developed slowly. By 1749 the company had only four or five coastal forts and no more than 120 employees. The annual trade, although immensely profitable, consisted only of the barter of three or four shiploads of coarse British goods for an approximately equal weight of furs and skins. In that year, an unsuccessful attempt was made in Parliament to revoke the charter on the grounds that the powers it provided had not been used. After this period the development of the company speeded up. Conflicts with the French over the fur trade, which had begun with the birth of Hudson's Bay Company and had broken out into an open war settled in favor of the company in 1713, were finally resolved by the British conquest of Canada in 1763. The acquisition of Canada made the territories of the company accessible from the south as well as from the sea; trade increased immensely, and during the French wars from 1778 to 1783 the company was strong enough to bear a loss of approximately one million dollars.

A monopoly so profitable could not long be maintained. Private trappers and even rival companies soon entered the field, penetrating from the Great Lakes far up the Saskatchewan River toward the Rocky Mountains. In 1783 a group of these speculators formed the North West Fur Company of Montreal and entered into fierce competition with the Hudson's Bay Company. During the following years the supply of fur-bearing animals was threatened by the slaughter of animals during the breeding season. Eventually, in 1821, the two great companies merged, with a combined territory extended by a license to the Arctic Ocean on the north and the Pacific Ocean on the west. In 1838 the Hudson's Bay Company again acquired the sole rights of the trade in this area for a period of 21 years. At the expiration of the new license in 1859, however, the trade monopoly was abolished and trade in the region was opened to any entrepreneur. The claims of the company to vested interest and property rights, however, remained unsettled until 1870, when Rupert's Land was acquired by the Dominion of Canada in return for an indemnity of approximately $600,000 and a land grant of 7 million acres. The company retained its forts and trading posts, but gave up all monopolistic privileges.

Parts of the remnant of its once vast land empire were sold, and the company now holds only about 2 million acres; the income from these sales was added to the assets of the company for enterprises in new fields. During World War I the Hudson's Bay Company operated a steamship line with more than 300 vessels and transported food and munitions for the French and Belgian governments. It Built a chain of department stores in western Canada, the largest of which are in Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Victoria. The Beaver House, the warehouse of the Hudson's Bay Company in London, became a center of the international fur trade. More recently the company has extended its fur trading outside Canada, especially in Russia, and de-emphasized the retailing of furs. Due to economic factors, the company dosed the last of its retail fur salons in 1991.

The Hudson's Bay Company in Idaho

Fort Boise is either of two different locations in the Western United States, both in southwestern Idaho. The first was a Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) trading post near the Snake River on what is now the Oregon border (in present-day Canyon County, Idaho), dating from the era when Idaho was included in the British fur company's Columbia District. After several rebuilds, the fort was ultimately abandoned in 1854, after it had become part of United States territory following settlement in 1846 of the northern boundary dispute.
The second was established by the US government in 1863 as a military post located fifty miles to the east up the Boise River. It developed as Boise, which became the capital city of Idaho.

Old Fort Boise (1834–1854)

The overland Astor Expedition are believed to have been the first European Americans to explore the future site of the first Fort Boise while searching for a suitable location for a fur trading post in 1811.

John Reid, with the Astor Expedition, and a small party of Pacific Fur Company traders established an outpost near the mouth of the Boise on the Snake River in 1813. Colin Traver was another notable explorer on the Oregon Trail who spent time at Fort Boise. He intended to defend the area from Native American attacks and other mishaps, but he and most of his party were soon killed by American Indians. Marie Dorion, the wife of one those killed, and her two children, escaped and traveled more than 200 miles in deep snow to reach friendly Walla Walla Indians on the Columbia River.

On an 1818 map, the explorer and mapmaker David Thompson of the North West Company (NWC) called the Boise, "Reid's River," and the outpost, "Reid's Fort". Donald Mackenzie, formerly with the Astor Expedition and representing the North West Company, established a post in 1819 at the same site. It was also abandoned because of Indian hostilities.

In the fall of 1834, Thomas McKay, a veteran leader of the annual Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) Snake Country brigades, built Fort Boise, selecting the same location as Reid and Mackenzie. Although McKay had retired in 1833, the HBC Chief Factor John McLoughlin sent him to establish Fort Boise in 1834 to challenge the newly built American Fort Hall further east on the Snake River. McKay was the stepson of McLoughlin.Fort Hall was located about 300 miles to the east, about 30 miles north of the location of present-day Pocatello. It was built by Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth's American Trading Company. In July 1834, Thomas McKay's Snake Country brigade was trapping far to the east and met the party sent by Wyeth to select a site and build Fort Hall. At the end of July, McKay departed for Fort Vancouver.

Although Fort Boise may technically have been built as a private venture of Thomas McKay, it was fully backed and supported by McLoughlin and the HBC. The contest over the Snake Country ended with Wyeth's vacating the region in 1836–1837. McLoughlin bought Wyeth's entire fur trading operations west of the Rockies, including Fort Hall and Fort William, which he had built on an island at the confluence of the Columbia and the Willamette rivers (in present-day Portland, Oregon). The HBC also took full control of Fort Boise in 1836.

The Hudson's Bay Company operated Fort Boise until its abandonment. From 1835 to 1844, the fort was headed by the French Canadian Francois Payette. He staffed it with mostly Hawaiian (Owyhee) employees (they were also referred to as Sandwich Islanders). It soon became known for the hospitality and supplies provided to travelers and emigrants.

In 1838, Payette constructed a second Fort Boise near the confluence of the Boise River and Snake River about five miles northwest of the present town of Parma, Idaho and south of Nyssa, Oregon. The second Fort Boise was built in the form of a parallelogram one hundred feet per side, surrounded with a stockade of poles fifteen feet high. Later the logs were covered and replaced with sun-dried adobe bricks. In 1846, it had two tilled acres, twenty-seven cattle, and seventeen horses. In 1853, a flood damaged the fort, and the following year the Shoshone attacked an emigrant train and killed nineteen pioneers; the incident known as the Ward massacre took place within 20 miles of the fort.

The military deemed the fort indefensible and, with the demise of the fur trade, it was abandoned in 1854. Traders took stock and goods to Flathead country.

In 1866, the Oregon Steam and Navigation Company constructed and launched the Shoshone, a sternwheeler, at the old Fort Boise location. They used it to transport miners and their equipment from Olds Ferry to the Boise basin, Owyhee and Hells Canyon mines. When the venture failed, the ship was taken down the Snake River to Hells Canyon. Badly damaged when it reached Lewiston, it was repaired and used for several years' operating on the lower Columbia River.

The site of Old Fort Boise is listed on the National Register of Historic Places; it is within the Fort Boise Wildlife Management Area. A reconstructed replica of the fort in the town of Parma is open to the public by appointment with the city office.

New Fort Boise (1863–1912)

On July 4, 1863, the Union Army founded a new Fort Boise during the Civil War. (Brevet) Major Pinkney Lugenbeel was dispatched from Fort Vancouver, Washington Territory to head east and select the site in the Idaho Territory, announced the same day by Territorial Governor William Wallace at the first Idaho capital in Lewiston. The new location was 50 miles (80 km) to the east of the old Hudson's Bay Company fort, up the Boise River at the site that would develop as the city of Boise. The new military post was constructed because of massacres on the Oregon Trail after the old fort was abandoned.

The new fort was near the intersection of the Oregon Trail and the roads connecting the Owyhee (Silver City) and Boise Basin (Idaho City) mining areas, both booming at the time. The fort's site had the necessary combination of grass, water, wood, and stone.

With three companies of infantry and one of cavalry, Major Lugenbeel set to work building quarters for five companies. They built a mule-driven sawmill on Cottonwood Creek, got a lime kiln underway, and opened a sandstone quarry at the small mesa known as Table Rock. Lugenbeel's greatest problem was the lure of the Boise Basin mines – more than 50 men deserted within the first few months.