Exquisite pelts from various native animals attracted, in the 19th century, the first outsiders to the subarctic north. Russian fur traders made their way from Western Siberia across the Bering Sea to Sitka, Alaska and points south along the Alaska Panhandle.
Link to another story “A Sailor Named Bering”
From the south the North West Company dispatched traders into Canada. As early as 1805 they had trading posts at Fort Simpson and Fort Good Hope on the Mackenzie River.
From the southeast the long-established Hudson Bay Company explored and mapped and located another string of trading posts. In 1821 the Hudson Bay Company absorbed the North West Company and the new Hudson Bay Company expanded throughout the Mackenzie Valley as far north as Fort McPherson and into the Yukon River Valley.
Exquisite pelts kept the traders coming in a slow but steady stream from all directions.
A trader and several assistants would make their way over the old First Nations trails to build a trading post at a location that offered access for trappers and a way to haul the pelts back to the rest of the world for sale. Trails evolved from the long established trail systems of the First Nations.
As fur traders and explorers led the penetration of the North Country, other people with other objectives soon followed them. Missionaries came to save the souls of the natives. Russian Orthodox in Alaska, Catholic and Anglican in the interior, the missionaries lived at or near the trading posts.
And the trading posts and the traders offered opportunity and ultimately changed the lives of the First Nations. The implements and tools—everything from pots and pans to rifles – that their furs could purchase at the trading posts became part of their life and culture and changed both in the process.
More on the Fur Trade in Canada
If the trails between the posts had evolved from those established by their native forbears’ migratory patterns, the posts changed those patterns and the trail systems. Getting to the posts to trade became as important as getting to the right place for hunting and fishing.
