# data[].attributes.body
The First People

# data[].attributes.body
The fur trade which is well known started in eastern where the French built the First fur trade post. First Nations people brought furs from the interiors. They started to trade their furs for European goods like: pots,cloth,and many more. Franceophone coureurs de bois aka runners of the woods. Were from Quebec went to trade fur from the first nations. They sold beaver and other animals furs in Europe. They were made into thin cloth and shiny material for their own fashion purpos.

# data[].attributes.body
The first people of the northern regions of alberta were the Dunne-za, Dene-tha, and the Dene Suline. They were also lots of cree and metis people. Before the Europeans came they were first nation people in the boreal forest in small family groups. The Dene suline hunted fish and caribou in the area that is now Fort Chipewyan. Plants and animals were the only material to make clothing, shelter, tools, and medicine.The Dene Suline observed nature carefully.The lessons were passed on. The Dene Suline preserved food by drying or smoking this kept meat,fish,berries,and herbs from spoiling. In times of need, people often survived  because communities helped each other.

# data[].attributes.headline
First People {Territories}-The Second Event

# data[].attributes.subject
First People {Territories}-The Second Event

# data[].attributes.body
Many first nation people moved acroossed in seasonal patterns. In the summer groups gather for a large hunt. In winter groups are much smaller and spread out. This made hunting easier. Each first nation had their own language, identity,and territory.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a buffalo jump located where the foothills of the Rocky Mountains begin to rise from the prairie 18 km (11.2 mi) west of Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada on highway 785. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home of a museum of Blackfoot culture. Joe Crowshoe Sr. (1903-1999) - Aapohsoy'yiis (Weasel Tail) - a ceremonial Elder of the Piikani Nation in southern Alberta, was instrumental in the development of the site. The Joe Crow Shoe Sr. Lodge is dedicated to his memory. He dedicated his life to preserving Aboriginal culture and promoting the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people and in 1998 was awarded the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for "saving the knowledge and practices of the Blackfoot people."

The buffalo jump was used for 5,500 years by the indigenous peoples of the plains to kill buffalo by driving them off the 11 metre (36 foot) high cliff. Before the late introduction of horses, the Blackfoot drove the buffalo from a grazing area in the Porcupine Hills about 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) west of the site to the "drive lanes", lined by hundreds of cairns, by dressing up as coyotes and wolves. These specialized "buffalo runners" were young men trained in animal behavior to guide the buffalo into the drive lanes. Then, at full gallop, the buffalo would fall from the weight of the herd pressing behind them, breaking their legs and rendering them immobile. The cliff itself is about 300 metres (1000 feet) long, and at its highest point drops 10 metres (33 ft) into the valley below. The site was in use at least 6,000 years ago, and the bone deposits are 12 metres (39 feet) deep. After falling off the cliff, the injured buffalo were finished off by other Blackfoot warriors at the cliff base armed with spears and clubs. The carcasses were then processed at a nearby camp. The camp at the foot of the cliffs provided the people with everything they needed to process a buffalo carcass, including fresh water. The buffalo carcass was used for a variety of purposes, from tools made from the bone, to the hide used to make dwellings and clothing. The importance of the site goes beyond just providing food and supplies. After a successful hunt, the wealth of food allowed the people to enjoy leisure time and pursue artistic and spiritual interests. This increased the cultural complexity of the society.

In Blackfoot, the name for the site is Estipah-skikikini-kots. According to legend, a young Blackfoot wanted to watch the buffalo plunge off the cliff from below, but was buried underneath the falling buffalo. He was later found dead under the pile of carcasses, where he had his head smashed in.

World Heritage Site

Head-Smashed-In was abandoned in the 19th century after European contact. The site was first recorded by Europeans in the 1880s, and first excavated by the American Museum of Natural History in 1938. It was designated a National Historic Site in 1968, a Provincial Historic Site in 1979, and finally a World Heritage Site in 1981 for its testimony of prehistoric life and the customs of aboriginal people.

Opened in 1987, the interpretive centre at Head-Smashed-In is built into the ancient sandstone cliff in naturalistic fashion. It contains five distinct levels depicting the ecology, mythology, lifestyle and technology of Blackfoot peoples within the context of available archaeological evidence, presented from the viewpoints of both aboriginal peoples and European archaeological science.

The centre also offers educational public and school programs which can be booked throughout the year. Each year Head-Smashed-In hosts a number of special events and native festivals known throughout the world for their color, energy and authenticity, including Buffalo Harvest Days, which brings together First Nations artists and craftspeople who display a wide variety of jewelry, clothing, art and crafts. Visitors can witness traditional drumming and dancing demonstrations every Wednesday in July and August at 11 a.m and 1:30 p.m. at the centre.

An exhibition of photography titled Lost Identities: A Journey of Rediscovery, a collection of photographs taken in aboriginal communities, made its first appearance at the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump interpretive centre in 1999. After some time as a traveling exhibit, it was returned permanently to display in the centre. The permanent exhibition is a collaboration of many historical societies and museums to provide interpretations of the collection. The subjects of the photographs had gone unidentified for some time. While it was a traveling exhibit, the aboriginal communities where the photographs were taken provided further background and "voice" to the photographs.

The facility was designed by Le Blond Partnership, an architectural firm in Calgary. The design was awarded the Governor General's Gold Medal for Architecture in 1990.

Archaeology of Native North America, 2010, Dean R. Snow, Prentice-Hall, New York.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump - Wikipedia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a buffalo jump located where the foothills of the Rocky Mountains begin to rise from the prairie 18 km (11.2 mi) west of Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada on highway 785. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home of a museum of Blackfoot culture.

# data[].attributes.body
The Blackfoot people called the Bow river Mohkinsstsisiitahaa
[Moh gin ts ee Tah dah].The Cree called called it Manachabansipi [ach Chap ew wi see pee].It was named after the Douglas fir trees on the river banks.Victoria Calihoo, a Metis woman, referred to the riveras Askkaweseepee [Ask ka We see pee].

# data[].attributes.body
Click here

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Extended: High flow advisory on Calgary rivers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The city says residents need to stay off the Bow and Elbow Rivers for a while because of high flow, low visibility and increased danger.

# data[].attributes.body
Around 1866 George Mcdougall ordered that the Manitou stone be moved. He is a missionary sent by the church to work with the first Nations people. The stone was first sent to Victoroa Mission,east of Edmonton, and placed in the churchyard. It was finally sent to Victoroa Universty in Ontario. Finally it was deliverd to the Alberta Royal Museum in Edmonton in the 1970s. The muesuem had 40 First Nations  communities in Alberta and Saskatchewan

# data[].attributes.body
Powwows are Present day celebrations That bring the First Nations. Powwows are a time to celebrate First Nations cultures and traditions. They are four main  types of powwow dances. Each one has its own special steps and Regalia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
0:00 / 0:25•Watch full video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
46th Annual Denver March Powwow Features Intertribal Dancing, Drums, Storytelling

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The fur trade is a worldwide industry dealing in the acquisition and sale of animal fur. Since the establishment of a world fur market in the early modern period, furs of boreal, polar and cold temperate mammalian animals have been the most valued. Historically the trade stimulated the exploration and colonization of Siberia, northern North America, and the South Shetland and South Sandwich Islands.

Today the importance of the fur trade has diminished; it is based on pelts produced at fur farms and regulated fur-bearer trapping, but has become controversial. Animal rights organizations oppose the fur trade, citing that animals are brutally killed and sometimes skinned alive. Fur has been replaced in some clothing by synthetic imitations, for example, as in ruffs on hoods of parkas.

Russian fur trade

Before the European colonization of the Americas, Russia was a major supplier of fur pelts to Western Europe and parts of Asia. Its trade developed in the Early Middle Ages ( 500-1000 AD/CE ), first through exchanges at posts around the Baltic and Black seas. The main trading market destination was the German city of Leipzig. Kievan Russia, the first Russian State, was the first supplier of the Russian Fur Trade.

Originally, Russia exported raw furs, consisting in most cases of the pelts of martens, beavers, wolves, foxes, squirrels and hares. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, Russians began to settle in Siberia, a region rich in many mammal fur species, such as Arctic fox, lynx, sable, sea otter and stoat ( ermine). In a search for the prized sea otter pelts, first used in China, and later for the northern fur seal, the Russian Empire expanded into North America, notably Alaska. From the 17th through the second half of the 19th century, Russia was the world's largest supplier of fur. The fur trade played a vital role in the development of Siberia, the Russian Far East and the Russian colonization of the Americas. As recognition of the importance of the trade to the Siberian economy, the sable is a regional symbol of the Ural Sverdlovsk Oblast and the Siberian Novosibirsk, Tyumen and Irkutsk Oblasts of Russia.

The European discovery of North America, with its vast forests and wildlife, particularly the beaver, led to the continent becoming a major supplier in the 17th century of fur pelts for the fur felt hat and fur trimming and garment trades of Europe. Fur was relied on to make warm clothing, a critical consideration prior to the organization of coal distribution for heating. Portugal and Spain played major roles in fur trading after the 15th century with their business in fur hats.

Siberian fur trade

From as early as the 10th century, merchants and boyars of Novgorod had exploited the fur resources "beyond the portage", a watershed at the White Lake that represents the door to the entire northwestern part of Eurasia. They began by establishing trading posts along the Volga and Vychegda river networks and requiring the Komi people to give them furs as tribute. Novgorod, the chief fur-trade center prospered as the easternmost trading post of the Hanseatic League. Novgorodians expanded farther east and north, coming into contact with the Pechora people of the Pechora River valley and the Yugra people residing near the Urals. Both of these native tribes offered more resistance than the Komi, killing many Russian tribute-collectors throughout the tenth and eleventh centuries. As Muscovy gained more power in the 15th century and proceeded in the " gathering of the Russian lands", the Muscovite state began to rival the Novgorodians in the North. During the 15th century Moscow began subjugating many native tribes. One strategy involved exploiting antagonisms between tribes, notably the Komi and Yugra, by recruiting men of one tribe to fight in an army against the other tribe. Campaigns against native tribes in Siberia remained insignificant until they began on a much larger scale in 1483 and 1499.

Besides the Novgorodians and the indigenes, Muscovites also had to contend with the various Muslim Tatar khanates to the east of Muscovy. In 1552 Ivan IV, the Tsar of All the Russias, took a significant step towards securing Russian hegemony in Siberia when he sent a large army to attack the Kazan Tartars and ended up obtaining the territory from the Volga to the Ural Mountains. At this point the phrase "ruler of Obdor, Konda, and all Siberian lands" became part of the title of the Tsar in Moscow. Even so, problems ensued after 1558 when Ivan IV sent Grigory Stroganov (ca 1533-1577) to colonize land on the Kama and to subjugate and enserf the Komi living there. The Stroganov family soon came into conflict (1573) with the Khan of Sibir whose land they encroached on. Ivan told the Stroganovs to hire Cossack mercenaries to protect the new settlement from the Tatars. From ca 1581 the band of Cossacks led by Yermak Timofeyevich fought many battles that eventually culminated in a Tartar victory (1584) and the temporary end to Russian occupation in the area. In 1584 Ivan's son Fyodor sent military governors ( voivodas) and soldiers to reclaim Yermak conquests and officially to annex the land held by the Khanate of Sibir. Similar skirmishes with Tartars took place across Siberia as Russian expansion continued.

Russian conquerors treated the natives of Siberia as easily exploited enemies who were inferior to them. As they penetrated deeper into Siberia, traders built outposts or winter lodges called where they lived and collected fur tribute from native tribes. By 1620 Russia dominated the land from the Urals eastward to the Yenisey valley and to the Altai Mountains in the south, comprising about 1.25 million square miles of land. Furs would become Russia's largest source of wealth during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Keeping up with the advances of Western Europe required significant capital and Russia did not have sources of gold and silver, but it did have furs, which became known as "soft gold" and provided Russia with hard currency. The Russian government received income from the fur trade through two taxes, the (or iasak) tax on natives and the 10% "Sovereign Tithing Tax" imposed on both the catch and sale of fur pelts. Fur was in great demand in Western Europe, especially sable and marten, since European forest resources had been over-hunted and furs had become extremely scarce. Fur trading allowed Russia to purchase from Europe goods that it lacked, like lead, tin, precious metals, textiles, firearms, and sulphur. Russia also traded furs with Ottoman Turkey and other countries in the Middle East in exchange for silk, textiles, spices, and dried fruit. The high prices that sable, black fox, and marten furs could generate in international markets spurred a "fur fever" in which many Russians moved to Siberia as independent trappers. From 1585 to 1680, tens of thousands of sable and other valuable pelts were obtained in Siberia each year.

The primary way for the Muscovite state to obtain furs was by exacting a fur tribute from the Siberian natives, called a yasak. Yasak was usually a fixed number of sable pelts which every male tribe member who was at least fifteen years old had to supply to Russian officials. Officials enforced yasak through coercion and by taking hostages, usually the tribe chiefs or members of the chief's family. At first, Russians were content to trade with the natives, exchanging goods like pots, axes, and beads for the prized sables that the natives did not value, but greater demand for furs led to violence and force becoming the primary means of obtaining the furs. The largest problem with the yasak system was that Russian governors were prone to corruption because they received no salary. They resorted to illegal means of getting furs for themselves, including bribing customs officials to allow them to personally collect yasak, extorting natives by exacting yasak multiple times over, or requiring tribute from independent trappers.

Russian fur trappers, called promyshlenniki, hunted in one of two types of bands of 10-15 men, called ''vatagi'' . The first was an independent band of blood relatives or unrelated people who contributed an equal share of the hunting-expedition expenses; the second was a band of hired hunters who participated in expeditions fully funded by the trading companies which employed them. Members of an independent vataga cooperated and shared all necessary work associated with fur trapping, including making and setting traps, building forts and camps, stockpiling firewood and grain, and fishing. All fur pelts went into a common pool that the band divided equally among themselves after Russian officials exacted the tithing tax. On the other hand, a trading company provided hired fur-trappers with the money needed for transportation, food, and supplies, and once the hunt was finished, the employer received two-thirds of the pelts and the remaining ones were sold and the proceeds divided evenly among the hired laborers. During the summer, promyshlenniki would set up a summer camp to stockpile grain and fish, and many engaged in agricultural work for extra money. During late summer or early fall the vatagi left their hunting grounds, surveyed the area, and set up a winter camp. Each member of the group set at least 10 traps and the vatagi divided into smaller groups of 2 to 3 men who cooperated to maintain certain traps. Promyshlenniki checked traps daily, resetting them or replacing bait whenever necessary. The promyshlenniki employed both passive and active hunting-strategies. The passive approach involved setting traps, while the active approach involved the use of hunting-dogs and of bows-and-arrows. Occasionally, hunters also followed sable tracks to their burrows, around which they placed nets, and waited for the sable to emerge.

The hunting season began around the time of the first snow in October or November and continued until early spring. Hunting expeditions lasted two to three years on average but occasionally longer. Because of the long hunting season and the fact that passage back to Russia was difficult and costly, beginning around the 1650s-1660s many promyshlenniki chose to stay and settle in Siberia. From 1620 to 1680 a total of 15,983 trappers operated in Siberia.

North American fur trade

The North American fur trade began as early as the 1500s with Europeans and First Nations and was a central part of the early history of contact between Europeans and the native peoples of what is now the United States and Canada. In 1578 there were 350 European fishing vessels at Newfoundland. Sailors began to trade metal implements (particularly knives) for the natives' well-worn pelts. The first pelts in demand were beaver and sea otter, as well as occasionally deer, bear, ermine and skunk.

Fur robes were blankets of sewn-together, native-tanned, beaver pelts. The pelts were called castor gras in French and "coat beaver" in English, and were soon recognized by the newly developed felt-hat making industry as particularly useful for felting. Some historians, seeking to explain the term castor gras, have assumed that coat beaver was rich in human oils from having been worn so long (much of the top-hair was worn away through usage, exposing the valuable under-wool), and that this is what made it attractive to the hatters. This seems unlikely, since grease interferes with the felting of wool, rather than enhancing it. By the 1580s, beaver "wool" was the major starting material of the French felt-hatters. Hat makers began to use it in England soon after, particularly after Huguenot refugees brought their skills and tastes with them from France.

Early organization

Captain Chauvin made the first organized attempt to control the fur trade in New France. In 1599 he acquired a monopoly from Henry IV and tried to establish a colony near the mouth of the Saguenay River at Tadoussac. French explorers, like Samuel de Champlain, voyageurs, and Coureur des bois, such as Étienne Brûlé, Radisson, La Salle, and Le Sueur, while seeking routes through the continent, established relationships with Amerindians and continued to expand the trade of fur pelts for items considered 'common' by the Europeans. Mammal winter pelts were prized for warmth, particularly animal pelts for beaver wool felt hats, which were an expensive status symbol in Europe. The demand for beaver wool felt hats was such that the beaver in Europe and European Russia had largely disappeared through exploitation.

In 1613 Dallas Carite and Adriaen Block headed expeditions to establish fur trade relationships with the Mohawk and Mohican. By 1614 the Dutch were sending vessels to secure large economic returns from fur trading. The fur trade of New Netherland, through the port of New Amsterdam, depended largely on the trading depot at Fort Orange (now Albany) on the upper Hudson River. Much of the fur is believed to have originated in Canada, smuggled south by entrepreneurs who wished to avoid the colony's government-imposed monopoly there.

England was slower to enter the American fur trade than France and the Dutch Republic, but as soon as English colonies were established, development companies learned that furs provided the best way for the colonists to remit value back to the mother country. Furs were being dispatched from Virginia soon after 1610, and the Plymouth Colony was sending substantial amounts of beaver to its London agents through the 1620s and 1630s. London merchants tried to take over France's fur trade in the St Lawrence River valley. Taking advantage of one of England's brief wars with France, Sir David Kirke captured Quebec in 1629 and brought the year's produce of furs back to London. Other English merchants also traded for furs around the Saint Lawrence River region in the 1630s, but these were officially discouraged. Such efforts ceased as France strengthened its presence in Canada. Meanwhile, the New England fur trade expanded, not only inland, but northward along the coast into the Bay of Fundy region. London's access to high-quality furs was greatly increased with the takeover of New Amsterdam, whereupon the fur trade of that colony (now called New York) fell into English hands with the 1667 Treaty of Breda.

In 1668 the English fur trade entered a new phase. Two French citizens, Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers, had traded with great success west of Lake Superior in 1659-60, but upon their return to Canada, most of their furs were seized by the authorities. Their trading voyage had convinced them that the best fur country was far to the north and west, and could best be reached by ships sailing into Hudson Bay. Their treatment in Canada suggested that they would not find support from France for their scheme. The pair went to New England, where they found local financial support for at least two attempts to reach Hudson Bay, both unsuccessful. Their ideas had reached the ears of English authorities, however, and in 1665 Radisson and Groseilliers were persuaded to go to London. After some setbacks, a number of English investors were found to back another attempt for Hudson Bay.

Two ships were sent out in 1668. One, with Radisson aboard, had to turn back, but the other, the with Groseilliers, did penetrate the bay. There she was able to trade with the indigenes, collecting a fine cargo of beaver skins before the expedition returned to London in October 1669. The delighted investors sought a royal charter, which they obtained the next year. This charter established the Hudson's Bay Company and granted it a monopoly to trade into all the rivers that emptied into Hudson Bay. From 1670 onwards, the Hudson's Bay Company sent two or three trading ships into the bay every year. They brought back furs (mainly beaver) and sold them, sometimes by private treaty but usually by public auction. The beaver was bought mainly for the English hat-making trade, while the fine furs went to the Netherlands and Germany.

Meanwhile, in the English southern colonies, a deerskin trade was established around 1670, based at the export hub of Charleston, South Carolina. Word spread among Native hunters that the Europeans would exchange pelts for the European-manufactured goods that were highly desired in native communities. English traders stocked axe heads, knives, awls, fish hooks, cloth of various type and color, woolen blankets, linen shirts, kettles, jewelry, glass beads, muskets, ammunition and powder to exchange on a 'per pelt' basis.

Colonial trading posts in the southern colonies also introduced many types of alcohol (especially brandy and rum) for trade. European traders flocked to the North American continent and made huge profits from the exchange. A metal axe head, for example, was exchanged for one beaver pelt (also called a 'beaver blanket'). The same pelt could fetch enough to buy dozens of axe heads in England, making the fur trade extremely profitable for the Europeans. The Natives used the iron axe heads to replace stone axe heads which they had made by hand in a labor-intensive process, so they derived substantial benefits from the trade as well. The British began to see the ill effects of alcohol on Natives, and the chiefs objected to its sale and trade. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 prohibited sale by European settlers of alcohol to the Indians in Canada, following the British takeover of the territory after it defeated France in the Seven Years' War (known as the French and Indian War in North America).

Socioeconomic ties

Often, the political benefits of the fur trade became more important than the economic aspects. Trade was a way to forge alliances and maintain good relations between different cultures. The fur traders were men with capital and social standing. Often younger men were single when they went to North America to enter the fur trade; they made marriages or cohabited with high-ranking Indian women of similar status in their own cultures. Fur trappers and other workers usually had relationships with lower-ranking women. Many of their mixed-race descendants developed their own culture, now called Métis in Canada, based then on fur trapping and other activities on the frontier.

In some cases both Native American and European-American cultures excluded the mixed-race descendants. If the Native Americans were a tribe with a patrilineal kinship system, they considered children born to a white father to be white, in a type of hypodescent classification, although the Native mother and tribe might care for them. The Europeans tended to classify children of Native women as Native, regardless of the father, similar to the hypodescent of their classification of the children of slaves. The Métis in the Canadian Red River region were so numerous that they developed a creole language and culture. Since the late 20th century, the Métis have been recognized in Canada as a First Nations ethnic group. The interracial relationships resulted in a two-tier mixed-race class, in which descendants of fur traders and chiefs achieved prominence in some Canadian social, political, and economic circles. Lower-class descendants formed the majority of the separate Métis culture based on hunting, trapping and farming.

Because of the wealth at stake, different European-American governments competed with various native societies for control of the fur trade. Native Americans sometimes based decisions of which side to support in times of war in relation to which people had provided them with the best trade goods in an honest manner. Because trade was so politically important, the Europeans tried to regulate it in hopes (often futile) of preventing abuse. Unscrupulous traders sometimes cheated natives by plying them with alcohol during the transaction, which subsequently aroused resentment and often resulted in violence.

In 1834 John Jacob Astor, who had created the huge monopoly of the American Fur Company, withdrew from the fur trade. He could see the decline in fur animals and realized the market was changing, as beaver hats went out of style. Expanding European settlement displaced native communities from the best hunting grounds. European demand for furs subsided as fashion trends shifted. The Native Americans' lifestyles were altered by the trade. To continue obtaining European goods on which they had become dependent and to pay off their debts, they often resorted to selling land to the European settlers. Their resentment of the forced sales contributed to future wars.

After the United States became independent, it regulated trading with Native Americans by the Indian Intercourse Act, first passed on July 22, 1790. The Bureau of Indian Affairs issued licenses to trade in the Indian Territory. In 1834 this was defined as most of the United States west of the Mississippi River, where mountain men and traders from Mexico freely operated.

Early exploration parties were often fur-trading expeditions, many of which marked the first recorded instances of Europeans' reaching particular regions of North America. For example, Abraham Wood sent fur-trading parties on exploring expeditions into the southern Appalachian Mountains, discovering the New River in the process. Simon Fraser was a fur trader who explored much of the Fraser River in British Columbia.

Role in economic anthropology

Economic historians and anthropologists have studied the fur trade's important role in early North American economies, but they have been unable to agree on a theoretical framework to describe native economic patterns.

John C. Phillips and J.W. Smurr tied the fur trade to an imperial struggle for power, positing that the fur trade served both as an incentive for expanding and as a method for maintaining dominance. Dismissing the experience of individuals, the authors searched for connections on a global stage that revealed its "high political and economic importance." E.E. Rich brought the economic purview down a level, focusing on the role of trading companies and their men as the ones who "opened up" much of Canada's territories, instead of on the role of the nation-state in opening up the continent.

Rich's other work gets to the heart of the formalist/substantivist debate that dominated the field or, as some came to believe, muddied it. Historians such as Harold Innis had long taken the formalist position, especially in Canadian history, believing that neoclassical economic principles affect non-Western societies just as they do Western ones. Starting in the 1950s, however, substantivists such as Karl Polanyi challenged these ideas, arguing instead that primitive societies could engage in alternatives to traditional Western market trade; namely, gift trade and administered trade. Rich picked up these arguments in an influential article in which he contended that Indians had "a persistent reluctance to accept European notions or the basic values of the European approach" and that "English economic rules did not apply to the Indian trade." Indians were savvy traders, but they had a fundamentally different conception of property, which confounded their European trade partners. Abraham Rotstein subsequently fit these arguments explicitly into Polanyi's theoretical framework, claiming that "administered trade was in operation at the Bay and market trade in London."

Arthur J. Ray permanently changed the direction of economic studies of the fur trade with two influential works that presented a modified formalist position in between the extremes of Innis and Rotstein. "This trading system," Ray explained, "is impossible to label neatly as 'gift trade', or 'administered trade', or 'market trade', since it embodies elements of all these forms." Indians engaged in trade for a variety of reasons. Reducing them to simple economic or cultural dichotomies, as the formalists and substantivists had done, was a fruitless simplification that obscured more than it revealed. Moreover, Ray used trade accounts and account books in the Hudson's Bay Company's archives for masterful qualitative analyses and pushed the boundaries of the field's methodology. Following Ray's position, Bruce M. White also helped to create a more nuanced picture of the complex ways in which native populations fit new economic relationships into existing cultural patterns.

Richard White, while admitting that the formalist/substantivist debate was "old, and now tired," attempted to reinvigorate the substantivist position. Echoing Ray's moderate position that cautioned against easy simplifications, White advanced a simple argument against formalism: "Life was not a business, and such simplifications only distort the past." White argued instead that the fur trade occupied part of a "middle ground" in which Europeans and Indians sought to accommodate their cultural differences. In the case of the fur trade, this meant that the French were forced to learn from the political and cultural meanings with which Indians imbued the fur trade. Cooperation, not domination, prevailed.

According to the Fur Institute of Canada, there are about 60,000 active trappers in Canada (based on trapping licenses), of whom about 25,000 are indigenous peoples. The fur farming industry is present in many parts of Canada. The largest producer of mink and foxes is Nova Scotia which in 2012 generated revenues of nearly $150 million and accounted for one quarter of all agricultural production in the Province.

Maritime fur trade

The maritime fur trade was a ship-based fur trade system that focused on acquiring furs of sea otters and other animals from the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and natives of Alaska. The furs were mostly traded in China for tea, silks, porcelain, and other Chinese goods, which were then sold in Europe and the United States. The maritime fur trade was pioneered by the Russians, working east from Kamchatka along the Aleutian Islands to the southern coast of Alaska. British and Americans entered during the 1780s, focusing on what is now the coast of British Columbia. The trade boomed around the turn of the 19th century. A long period of decline began in the 1810s. As the sea otter population was depleted, the maritime fur trade diversified and was transformed, tapping new markets and commodities while continuing to focus on the Northwest Coast and China. It lasted until the middle to late 19th century. Russians controlled most of the coast of what is now Alaska during the entire era. The coast south of Alaska saw fierce competition between, and among, British and American trading vessels. The British were the first to operate in the southern sector, but were unable to compete against the Americans who dominated from the 1790s to the 1830s. The British Hudson's Bay Company entered the coast trade in the 1820s with the intention of driving the Americans away. This was accomplished by about 1840. In its late period the maritime fur trade was largely conducted by the British Hudson's Bay Company and the Russian-American Company.

The term "maritime fur trade" was coined by historians to distinguish the coastal, ship-based fur trade from the continental, land-based fur trade of, for example, the North West Company and the American Fur Company. Historically, the maritime fur trade was not known by that name, rather it was usually called the "North West Coast trade" or "North West Trade". The term "North West" was rarely spelled as the single word "Northwest", as is common today.

The maritime fur trade brought the Pacific Northwest coast into a vast, new international trade network, centered on the north Pacific Ocean, global in scope, and based on capitalism but not, for the most part, on colonialism. A triangular trade network emerged linking the Pacific Northwest coast, China, the Hawaiian Islands (only recently discovered by the Western world), Britain, and the United States (especially New England). The trade had a major effect on the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest coast, especially the Aleut, Tlingit, Haida, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Chinook peoples. There was a rapid increase of wealth among the Northwest Coast natives, along with increased warfare, potlatching, slaving, depopulation due to epidemic disease, and enhanced importance of totems and traditional nobility crests. The indigenous culture was not however overwhelmed, it rather flourished, while simultaneously undergoing rapid change. The use of Chinook Jargon arose during the maritime fur trading era and remains a distinctive aspect of Pacific Northwest culture. Native Hawaiian society was similarly affected by the sudden influx of Western wealth and technology, as well as epidemic diseases. The trade's effect on China and Europe was minimal. For New England, the maritime fur trade and the significant profits it made helped revitalize the region, contributing to the transformation of New England from an agrarian to an industrial society. The wealth generated by the maritime fur trade was invested in industrial development, especially textile manufacturing. The New England textile industry in turn had a large effect on slavery in the United States, increasing the demand for cotton and helping make possible the rapid expansion of the cotton plantation system across the Deep South.

The most profitable furs were those of sea otters, especially the northern sea otter, Enhydra lutris kenyoni, which inhabited the coastal waters between the Columbia River to the south and Cook Inlet to the north. The fur of the Californian southern sea otter, E. l. nereis, was less highly prized and thus less profitable. After the northern sea otter was hunted to local extinction, maritime fur traders shifted to California until the southern sea otter was likewise nearly extinct. The British and American maritime fur traders took their furs to the Chinese port of Guangzhou (Canton), where they worked within the established Canton System. Furs from Russian America were mostly sold to China via the Mongolian trading town of Kyakhta, which had been opened to Russian trade by the 1727 Treaty of Kyakhta.

Bibliography

General surveys

Chittenden, Hiram Martin. The American Fur Trade of the Far West: A History of the Pioneer Trading Posts and Early Fur Companies of the Missouri Valley and the Rocky Mountains and the Overland Commerce with Santa Fe. 2 vols. (1902). full text online

Dolan, Eric Jay, Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010).

Dolin, Eric Jay (2010). Fur, Fortune and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. W.W. Norton & Company. p. 442. ISBN 9780393067101.

Fisher, Raymond Henry (1943). The Russian Fur Trade, 1550-1700. University of California Press. p. 275.

Forsyth, James (8 September 1994). A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony, 1581-1990. Slavic Review. 53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 905-906. doi:10.2307/2501564. ISBN 9780521477710. JSTOR 2501564.

Voorhis, Ernest, Historic Forts and Trading Posts of the French Regime and of the English Fur Trading Companies, 1930 (e-book -with maps.)

Biographies

Berry, Don. A Majority of Scoundrels: An Informal History of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. New York: Harper, 1961.

Hafen, LeRoy, ed. The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West. 10 vols. Glendale, California: A.H. Clark Co., 1965-72.

Lavender, David. Bent's Fort. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1954.

Lavender, David. The Fist in the Wilderness. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964.

Oglesby, Richard. Manuel Lisa and the Opening of the Missouri Fur Trade. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963.

Utley, Robert. A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997.

Economic studies

Allaire, Bernard. Pelleteries, manchons et chapeaux de castor: les fourrures nord-américaines à Paris 1500-1632, Québec, Éditions du Septentrion, 1999, 295 p. (ISBN 978-2840501619)

Bychkov, Oleg V.; Jacobs, Mina A. (1994). "Russian Hunters in Eastern Siberia in the Seventeenth Century: Lifestyle and Economy" (PDF). Arctic Anthropology. University of Wisconsin Press. 31 (1): 72-85. JSTOR 40316350.

Black, Lydia. Russians in Alaska, 1732-1867 (2004)

Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983.

Gibson, James R. Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods: The Maritime Fur Trade of the Northwest Coast, 1785-1841. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992.

Ray, Arthur J. The Canadian fur trade in the industrial age (1990)

Ray, Arthur J., and Donald B. Freeman. "Give Us Good Measure": An Economic Analysis of Relations between the Indians and the Hudson's Bay Company Before 1763. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978.

Rotstein, Abraham. "Karl Polanyi's Concept of Non-Market Trade." The Journal of Economic History 30:1 (Mar., 1970): 117-126.

Vinkovetsky, Ilya. Russian America: an overseas colony of a continental empire, 1804-1867 (2011)

White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

White, Richard. The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment, and Social Change Among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.

Social histories: Native Americans

Brown, Jennifer S.H. and Elizabeth Vibert, eds. Reading Beyond Words: Contexts for Native History. Peterborough, Ontario; Orchard Park, N.Y.: Broadview Press, 1996.

Francis, Daniel and Toby Morantz. Partners in Furs: A History of the Fur Trade in Eastern James Bay, 1600-1870. Kingston; Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1983.

Holm, Bill and Thomas Vaughan, eds. Soft Gold: The Fur Trade & Cultural Exchange on the Northwest Coast of America. Portland, Oregon: Oregon Historical Society Press, 1990.

Krech, Shepard III. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York; London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999.

Krech, Shepard III, ed. Indians, Animals, and the Fur Trade: A Critique of Keepers of the Game. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981.

Martin, Calvin. Keepers of the Game: Indian-Animal Relationships and the Fur Trade. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 1978.

Malloy, Mary. Souvenirs of the Fur Trade: Northwest Coast Indian Art and Artifacts Collected by American Mariners, 1788-1844. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press, 2000.

Ray, Arthur J. Indians in the Fur Trade: Their Role as Trappers, Hunters, and Middlemen in the Lands Southwest of Hudson Bay, 1660-1870. Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 1974.

Vibert, Elizabeth. Trader's Tales: Narratives of Cultural Encounters in the Columbia Plateau, 1807-1846. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.

Social histories: women, Métis, voyageurs

Brown, Jennifer S.H. Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country. Vancouver; London: University of British Columbia Press, 1980.

Brown, Jennifer S.H. and Jacqueline Peterson, eds. The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Métis in North America. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1985.

Giraud, Marcel. The Métis in the Canadian West. Translated by George Woodcock. Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta Press, 1986.

Gitlin, Jay. The Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders & American Expansion, Yale University Press, 2010

Nicks, John. "Orkneymen in the HBC, 1780-1821." In Old Trails and New Directions: Papers of the Third North American Fur Trade Conference. Edited by Carol M. Judd and Arthur J. Ray, 102-26. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980.

Podruchny, Carolyn. Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006.

Podruchny, Carolyn. "Werewolves and Windigos: Narratives of Cannibal Monsters in French-Canadian Voyageur Oral Tradition." Ethnohistory 51:4 (2004): 677-700.

Sleeper-Smith, Susan. Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001.

Van Kirk, Sylvia. Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870. Winnipeg: Watson & Dwywer, 1999.

Regional histories

Allen, John L. "The Invention of the American West." In A Continent Comprehended, edited by John L. Allen. Vol. 3 of North American Exploration, edited by John L. Allen, 132-189. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.

Braund, Kathryn E. Holland. Deerskins and Duffels: The Creek Indian Trade with Anglo-America, 1685-1815. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2008.

Faragher, John Mack. "Americans, Mexicans, Métis: A Community Approach to the Comparative Study of North American Frontiers." In Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America's Western Past, edited by William Cronon, George Miles, and Jay Gitlin, 90-109. New York; London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992.

Gibson, James R. Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods: The Maritime Fur Trade of the Northwest Coast, 1785-1841. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992.

Gibson, Morgan Arrell. Yankees in Paradise: The Pacific Basin Frontier. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993.

Keith, Lloyd, and John C. Jackson. The Fur Trade Gamble: North West Company on the Pacific Slope, 1800-1820 (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 2016). xiv, 336 pp.

Malloy, Mary. "Boston Men" on the Northwest Coast: The American Maritime Fur Trade 1788-1844. Kingston, Ontario; Fairbanks, Alaska: The Limestone Press, 1998.

Panagopoulos, Janie Lynn. "Traders in Time". River Road Publications, 1993.

Ronda, James P. Astoria & Empire. Lincoln, Nebraska; London: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.

Weber, David. The Taos Trappers: The Fur Trade in the Far Southwest, 1540-1846. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971.

White, Richard (27 September 1991). Hoxie, Frederick E.; William L. Clements Library; Salisbury, Neal (eds.). The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. Journal of Anthropological Research. 49. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 283-286. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511976957. ISBN 9780521371049. JSTOR 3630498.

Wishart, David J. The Fur Trade of the American West, 1807-1840: A Geographical Synthesis. Lincoln, Nebraska; London: University of Nebraska Press, 1979..

Papers of the North American Fur Trade Conferences

The papers from the North American Fur Trade conferences, which are held approximately every five years, not only provide a wealth of articles on disparate aspects of the fur trade, but also can be taken together as a historiographical overview since 1965. They are listed chronologically below. The third conference, held in 1978, is of particular note; the ninth conference, which was held in St. Louis in 2006, has not yet published its papers.

Morgan, Dale Lowell, ed. Aspects of the Fur Trade: Selected Papers of the 1965 North American Fur Trade Conference. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1967.

Bolus, Malvina. People and Pelts: Selected Papers. Winnipeg: Peguis Publishers, 1972.

Judd, Carol M. and Arthur J. Ray, eds. Old Trails and New Directions: Papers of the Third North American Fur Trade Conference. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980.

Buckley, Thomas C., ed. Rendezvous: Selected Papers of the Fourth North American Fur Trade Conference, 1981. St. Paul, Minnesota: The Conference, 1984.

Trigger, Bruce G., Morantz, Toby Elaine, and Louise Dechêne. Le Castor Fait Tout: Selected Papers of the Fifth North American Fur Trade Conference, 1985. Montreal: The Society, 1987.

Brown, Jennifer S. H., Eccles, W. J., and Donald P. Heldman. The Fur Trade Revisited: Selected Papers of the Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference, Mackinac Island, Michigan, 1991. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1994.

Fiske, Jo-Anne, Sleeper-Smith, Susan, and William Wicken, eds. New Faces of the Fur Trade: Selected Papers of the Seventh North American Fur Trade Conference, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1995. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1998.

Johnston, Louise, ed. Aboriginal People and the Fur Trade: Proceedings of the 8th North American Fur Trade Conference, Akwesasne. Cornwall, Ontario: Akwesasne Notes Pub., 2001.

External links

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The fur trade is a worldwide industry dealing in the acquisition and sale of animal fur. Since the establishment of a world fur market in the early modern period, furs of boreal, polar and cold temperate mammalian animals have been the most valued.

# data[].attributes.body
The North West Company was run by scottish merchants in Montreal.They hired Francophone voyageurs from Quebec and local Metis voyageurs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Despite the fame surrounding the voyageur, their life was one of toil and not nearly as glorious as folk tales make it out to be. For example, they had to be able to carry two 90-pound (41 kg) bundles of fur over portage.

# data[].attributes.body
Anthony Henday was hired by the hudson's bay company. In 1754, he was sent to paddle up the Saskatchwan river. His goal was to persuade the first nation people who were hun ting buffalo to bring the hides to the trading post owned by hudson's bay. On Anthony's he travlled further west than any European explorer before him. The first nation's were not fond of the idea. Hendays effort's were not seen a sucses in the eyes of the hudson's bay. In 1762 he quit the company

# data[].attributes.body
I have a sash like the ones originally worn by French- speaking Voyageurs from Quebec. Metis Voyageurs also wore sashes. The colours are special.Red is the historical colour. Blue and White Stand for the Metis Flag. Green means growth.And yellow is the colour of the sun .

# data[].attributes.body
Missionaries are people who are apart of a religious group. They are sometimes sent to a specific area to teach people about their beliefs. Robert Rundle was sent from England to Fort Edmonton in 1840.

# data[].attributes.body
David was born in 1770 his dad died when he was two,and his mom was very poor. He attended Grey Coat School of London he was good at math. Hudson's bay would often go to Grey Coat School to  students to work for them in the fur trade. When he was 14 he sailed to hudson's bay and never looked back. His work was difficult. He broke his leg falling down the river bank. There was some concerns that he might not live cause of the infection. He spent some time in cumberland healing. While he was there he was trianing in navigation. Tompson recovered, but he walked with a limp for the rest of his life. He also recived blindness in the right eye. This was probably due by observing the sun without proper eye gear. In 1793 Tompson sailed to sascatchwan river and reached Buckinham House near the present day town of St.Paul. There he saw the NWC fort, fort Gorge. In 1797 He dicided to join the Nwc

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
David Thompson (30 April 1770 - 10 February 1857) was a British-Canadian fur trader, surveyor, and cartographer, known to some native peoples as Koo-Koo-Sint or "the Stargazer". Over Thompson's career, he traveled some 90,000 kilometres (56,000 mi) across North America, mapping 4.9 million square kilometres (1.9 million square miles) of North America along the way. For this historic feat, Thompson has been described as the "greatest land geographer who ever lived."

David Thompson was born in Westminster, Middlesex, to recent Welsh migrants David and Ann Thompson. When Thompson was two, his father died. Due to the financial hardship with his mother without resources, Thompson, 29 April 1777, the day before his seventh birthday , and his older brother were placed in the Grey Coat Hospital, a school for the disadvantaged of Westminster. Thompson graduated to the Grey Coat mathematical school, where he had received an education for the Royal Navy: including mathematics of trigonometry and geometry, practical navigation including using of nautical instruments, finding latitudes and longitudes and making navigational calculations from observing the sun, moon and tides and the drawing of maps and charts, taking land measurements and sketching landscapes. He later built on these to make his career. In 1784, at the age of 14, the Grey Coat treasurer paid the Hudson's Bay Company for the sum of five pounds, upon which Thompson became the company's indentured servant for a period of seven years to be trained as a clerk. He set sail on 28 May of that year, and left England for North America.

Hudson's Bay Company (HBC)

On 2 September 1784, Thompson arrived in Churchill (now in Manitoba) and was put to work as a clerk/secretary, copying the personal papers of the governor of Fort Churchill, Samuel Hearne. The next year he was transferred to nearby York Factory, and over the next few years spent time as a secretary at Cumberland House, Saskatchewan, and South Branch House before arriving at Manchester House in 1787. During those years he learned to keep accounts and other records, calculate values of furs (It was noted that he also had several expensive beaver pelts at that time even when a secretary's job would not pay terribly well), track supplies and other duties.

On 23 December 1788, Thompson seriously fractured his tibia, forcing him to spend the next two winters at Cumberland House convalescing. It was during this time that he greatly refined and expanded his mathematical, astronomical, and surveying skills under the tutelage of Hudson's Bay Company surveyor Philip Turnor. It was also during this time that he lost sight in his right eye.

In 1790, with his apprenticeship nearing its end, Thompson requested a set of surveying tools in place of the typical parting gift of fine clothes offered by the company to those completing their indenture. He received both. He entered the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company as a fur trader. In 1792 he completed his first significant survey, mapping a route to Lake Athabasca (where today's Alberta/ Saskatchewan border is located). In recognition of his map-making skills, the company promoted Thompson to surveyor in 1794. He continued working for the Hudson's Bay Company until 23 May 1797 when, frustrated with the Hudson's Bay Company's policies over promoting the use of alcohol with indigenous people in the fur trade, he left. He walked 130 kilometres (80 mi) in the snow in order to enter the employ of the competition, the North West Company. There he continued to work as a fur trader and surveyor.

Thompson's decision to defect to the North West Company (NWC) in 1797 without providing the customary one-year notice was not well received by his former employers. But the North West Company was more supportive of Thompson pursuing his interest in surveying and work on mapping the interior of what was to become Canada, as they judged it in the company's long-term interest. In 1797, Thompson was sent south by his employers to survey part of the Canada-US boundary along the water routes from Lake Superior to Lake of the Woods to satisfy unresolved questions of territory arising from the Jay Treaty between Great Britain and the United States after the American Revolutionary War.

By 1798 Thompson had completed a survey of 6,750 km (4,190 mi) from Grand Portage, through Lake Winnipeg, to the headwaters of the Assiniboine and Mississippi rivers, as well as two sides of Lake Superior. In 1798, the company sent him to Red Deer Lake ( Lac La Biche in present-day Alberta) to establish a trading post. (The English translation of Lac la Biche: Red Deer Lake, was first recorded on the Mackenzie map of 1793.) Thompson spent the next few seasons trading based in Fort George (now in Alberta), and during this time led several expeditions into the Rocky Mountains.

On 10 July 1804, at the annual meeting of the North West Company in Kaministiquia, Thompson was made a full partner of the company. He became a 'wintering partner', who was based in the field rather than Montreal, with two of the 92 NWC's shares worth more than £4,000. He spent the next few seasons based there managing the fur trading operations but still finding time to expand his surveys of the waterways around Lake Superior. At the 1806 company meeting, officers decided to send Thompson back out into the interior. Concern over the American-backed expedition of Lewis and Clark prompted the North West Company to charge Thompson with the task of finding a route to the Pacific to open up the lucrative trading territories of the Pacific Northwest.

After the general meeting in 1806, Thompson travelled to Rocky Mountain House and prepared for an expedition to follow the Columbia River to the Pacific. In June 1807 Thompson crossed the Rocky Mountains and spent the summer surveying the Columbia basin; he continued to survey the area over the next few seasons. Thompson mapped and established trading posts in Northwestern Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Western Canada. Trading posts he founded included Kootenae House, Kullyspell House and Saleesh House; the latter two were the first trading posts west of the Rockies in Idaho and Montana, respectively. These posts established by Thompson extended North West Company fur trading territory into the Columbia Basin drainage area. The maps he made of the Columbia River basin east of the Cascade Mountains were of such high quality and detail that they continued to be regarded as authoritative well into the mid-20th century.

In early 1810, Thompson was returning eastward toward Montreal but, while en route at Rainy Lake, received orders to return to the Rocky Mountains and establish a route to the mouth of the Columbia. The North West Company was responding to the plans of American John Jacob Astor to send a ship around the Americas to establish a fur trading post of the Pacific Fur Company on the Pacific Coast. During his return, Thompson was delayed by an angry group of Peigan natives at Howse Pass. He was ultimately forced to seek a new route across the Rocky Mountains and found one through the Athabasca Pass.

David Thompson was the first European to navigate the full length of the Columbia River. During Thompson's 1811 voyage down the Columbia River, he camped at the junction with the Snake River on 9 July 1811. There he erected a pole and a notice claiming the country for Great Britain and stating the intention of the North West Company to build a trading post at the site. This notice was found later that year by Astor company workers looking to establish an inland fur post, contributing to their selection of a more northerly site at Fort Okanogan. The North West Company established its post of Fort Nez Percés near the Snake River confluence several years later. Continuing down the Columbia, Thompson passed the barrier of The Dalles with much less difficulty than that undergone by Lewis and Clark, as high water carried his boat over Celilo Falls and many of the rapids. On 14 July 1811, Thompson reached the partially constructed Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia, arriving two months after the Pacific Fur Company's ship, the .

Before returning upriver and across the mountains, Thompson hired Naukane, a Native Hawaiian Takane labourer brought to Fort Astoria by the Pacific Fur Company's ship Tonquin. Naukane, known as Coxe to Thompson, accompanied Thompson across the continent to Lake Superior before journeying on to England.

Thompson wintered at Saleesh House before beginning his final journey back to Montreal in 1812, where the North West Company was based.

In his published journals, Thompson recorded seeing large footprints near what is now Jasper, Alberta, in 1811. It has been suggested that these prints were similar to what has since been called the sasquatch. However, Thompson noted that these tracks showed "a small Nail at the end of each [toe]", and stated that these tracks "very much resembles a large Bear's Track".

In 1820, the English geologist, John Jeremiah Bigsby, attended a dinner party given by The Hon. William McGillivray at his home, Chateau St. Antoine, one of the early estates in Montreal's Golden Square Mile. He describes the party and some of the guests in his entertaining book The Shoe and Canoe, giving an excellent description of David Thompson:

I was well placed at table between one of the Miss McGillivray's and a singular-looking person of about fifty. He was plainly dressed, quiet, and observant. His figure was short and compact, and his black hair was worn long all round, and cut square, as if by one stroke of the shears, just above the eyebrows. His complexion was of the gardener's ruddy brown, while the expression of his deeply-furrowed features was friendly and intelligent, but his cut-short nose gave him an odd look. His speech betrayed the Welshman, although he left his native hills when very young. I might have been spared this description of Mr David Thompson by saying he greatly resembled Curran the Irish Orator...

I afterwards travelled much with him, and have now only to speak of him with great respect, or, I ought to say, with admiration... No living person possesses a tithe of his information respecting the Hudson's Bay countries... Never mind his Bunyan-like face and cropped hair; he has a very powerful mind, and a singular faculty of picture-making. He can create a wilderness and people it with warring savages, or climb the Rocky Mountains with you in a snow-storm, so clearly and palpably, that only shut your eyes and you hear the crack of the rifle, or feel the snow-flakes melt on your cheeks as he talks.

On 10 June 1799 at Île-à-la-Crosse, Thompson married Charlotte Small, a thirteen-year-old Métis daughter of Scottish fur trader Patrick Small and a Cree mother. Their marriage was formalised thirteen years later at the Scotch Presbyterian Church in Montreal on 30 October 1812. He and Charlotte had 13 children together; five of them were born before he left the fur trade. The family did not adjust easily to life in Eastern Canada; they lived in Montreal while he was traveling. Two of the children, John (aged 5) and Emma (aged 7), died of round worms, a common parasite. By the time of Thompson's death, the couple had been married 57 years, the longest marriage known in Canada pre- Confederation.

Upon his arrival back in Montreal, Thompson retired with a generous pension from the North West Company. He settled in nearby Terrebonne and worked on completing his great map, a summary of his lifetime of exploring and surveying the interior of North America. The map covered the wide area stretching from Lake Superior to the Pacific, and was given by Thompson to the North West Company. Thompson's 1814 map, his greatest achievement, was so accurate that 100 years later it was still the basis for many of the maps issued by the Canadian government. It now resides in the Archives of Ontario.

In 1815, Thompson moved his family to Williamstown, Upper Canada, and a few years later was employed to survey the newly established borders with the United States from Lake of the Woods to the Eastern Townships of Quebec, established by Treaty of Ghent after the War of 1812. In 1843 Thompson completed his atlas of the region from Hudson Bay to the Pacific Ocean.

Afterwards, Thompson returned to a life as a land owner, but soon financial misfortune would ruin him. By 1831 he was so deeply in debt he was forced to take up a position as a surveyor for the British American Land Company to provide for his family. His luck continued to worsen and he was forced to move in with his daughter and son-in-law in 1845. He began work on a manuscript chronicling his life exploring the continent, but this project was left unfinished when his sight failed him completely in 1851.

The land mass mapped by Thompson amounted to 3.9 million square kilometres (1.5 million square miles) of wilderness (one-fifth of the continent). His contemporary, the great explorer Alexander Mackenzie, remarked that Thompson did more in ten months than he would have thought possible in two years.

Despite these significant achievements, Thompson died in Montreal in near obscurity on February 10, 1857, his accomplishments almost unrecognised. He never finished the book of his 28 years in the fur trade, based on his 77 field notebooks, before he died. In the 1890s geologist J.B. Tyrrell resurrected Thompson's notes and in 1916 published them as David Thompson's Narrative, as part of the General Series of the Champlain Society. Further editions and re-examinations of Thompson's life and works were published in 1962 by Richard Glover, in 1971 by Victor Hopwood, and in 2015 by William Moreau.

Thompson's body was interred in Montreal's Mount Royal Cemetery in an unmarked grave. It was not until 1926 that efforts by J.B. Tyrrell and the Canadian Historical Society resulted in the placing of a tombstone to mark his grave. The next year, Thompson was named a National Historic Person by the federal government, one of the earliest such designations. A federal plaque reflecting that status is located at Jasper National Park, Alberta. Meantime, Thompson's achievements are central reasons for other national historic designations:

In 1957, one hundred years after his death, Canada's post office department honoured him with his image on a postage stamp. The David Thompson Highway in Alberta was named in his honour, along with David Thompson High School situated on the side of the highway near Leslieville, Alberta. His prowess as a geographer is now well-recognized. He has been called "the greatest land geographer that the world has produced."

There is a monument dedicated to David Thompson (maintained by the state of North Dakota) near the former town site of the ghost town, Verendrye, North Dakota, located approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) north and 1 mile (1.6 km) west of Karlsruhe, North Dakota. Thompson Falls, Montana, and British Columbia's Thompson River are also named after the explorer.

The year 2007 marked the 150th year of Thompson's death and the 200th anniversary of his first crossing of the Rocky Mountains. Commemorative events and exhibits were planned across Canada and the United States from 2007 to 2011 as a celebration of his accomplishments.

In 2007, a commemorative plaque was placed on a wall at the Grey Coat Hospital, the school for the disadvantaged of Westminster David Thompson attended as a boy, by English author and TV presenter Ray Mears.

Thompson was the subject of a 1964 National Film Board of Canada short film David Thompson: The Great Mapmaker , as well as the BBC2 programme Ray Mears' Northern Wilderness (Episode 5), broadcast in November 2009.

He is referenced in the 1981 folk song "Northwest Passage" by Stan Rogers.

The national park service, Parks Canada, announced in 2018 that it had named its new research vessel RV David Thompson, to be used for underwater archaeology, including sea floor mapping, and for marine science in the Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic Oceans, and the Great Lakes. It will be the main platform for research on the Wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror National Historic Site.

The David Thompson Astronomical Observatory at Fort William Historical Park was named to commemorate David Thompson and his discoveries.

1814: Map of the North-West Territory of the Province of Canada

1897: New light on the early history of the greater Northwest: the manuscript journals of Alexander Henry, fur trader of the North West Company, and of David Thompson, official geographer and explorer of the same company, 1799-1814 : exploration and adventure among the Indians on the Red, Saskatchewan, Missouri and Columbia Rivers (edited by Elliott Coues)

1916: David Thompson's narrative of his explorations in western America, 1784-1812[permanent dead link ] (edited by J.B. Tyrrell)

1950: David Thompson's journals relating to Montana and adjacent regions, 1808-1812 (edited by M. Catherine White)

1962: David Thompson's narrative, 1784-1812 (edited by Richard Glover)

1974: David Thompson's journal of the international boundary survey, 1817-1827 : western Lake Erie, August-September 1819 (edited by Clarke E. Leverette)

1993: Columbia Journals (edited by Barbara Belyea)

2006: "Moccasin Miles - The Travels of Charlotte Small Thompson 1799-1812" Contemporary and Historical Maps: Charlotte Small (S. Leanne Playter/Andreas N. Korsos|Publisher: Arcturus Consulting)

2006/2007: "David Thompson in Alberta 1787-1812"; "David Thompson on the Columbia River 1807-1812"; "The Explorations and Travels of David Thompson 1784-1812"; "Posts and Forts of the North American Fur Trade 1600-1870" Contemporary and Historical Maps: David Thompson (Andreas N. Korsos|Publisher: Arcturus Consultin

2010 : Official Documentary of Thompson was released by national geographic, ca.

1. "The Country of Adventurers: David Thompson narrated by Rick Hansen". HBC History Foundation.

2. David Thompson's narrative of his explorations in western America, 1784-1812[permanent dead link ] (edited by J.B. Tyrrell)

3. Thompson/William E Moreau, ^ The Wrtings of David Thompson, Volume 1, The Travels, 1850 version, The Champlain Society, 2009 p.xx

4. ^ Van Herk, Aritha (2007). "Travels with Charlotte". canadiangeographic.ca. July/August. Canadian Geographic Magazine.

5. J. & A. Gottfred, "Art. I. The Life of David Thompson"

6. ^ "Lac La Biche". Atlas of Alberta Lakes. Edmonton, Alberta: University of Alberta. 2004. Archived from the original on 10 June 2015.

7. ^ Meinig, D.W. (1995) [1968]. The Great Columbia Plain (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Classic ed.). University of Washington Press. pp. 37-38, 50. ISBN 978-0-295-97485-9.

8. Thompson, David. ^ Columbia Journals. Edited by Barbara Belyea. McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994, p. 135

9. Bigsby, John Jeremiah (1850). The Shoe and Canoe: or Pictures of Travel in the Canadas; with Facts and Opinions on Emigration, State Policy, and Other Points of Public Interest. Chapman and Hall. pp. 113-114.

10. ^ Nicks, John (1985). "Thompson, David (1770-1857)". In Halpenny, Francess G (ed.). Dictionary of Canadian Biography. VIII (1851-1860) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press.

11. ^ Thompson, David (1916). David Thompson's Narrative of His Explorations in Western America, 1784-1812. Champlain Society.

12. ^ Boychuk, Rick (2007). "David Thompson's living legacy". canadiangeographic.ca. July/August. Vol. 127 no. 4. Canadian Geographic Magazine. p. 13.

13. ^ Thompson, David (1916). Tyrrell, Joseph (ed.). David Thompson's Narrative of His Explorations in Western America, 1784-1812. Champlain Society. doi:10.3138/9781442618114.

14. ^ Thompson, David (1962). Glover, Richard (ed.). David Thompson's Narrative, 1784-1812 (volume II). Champlain Society. doi:10.3138/9781442618237.

Flandrau, Grace (1925). Koo-koo-sint, the Star Man: a chronicle of David Thompson. Great Northern Railway. Available online through the Washington State Library's Classics in Washington History collection

Haywood, Carl W. (2008). Sometime Only Horses to Eat: David Thompson; The Saleesh House Period 1807-1812: Tracking David Thompson Across Western North America. Stonydale Press Publishing Co.

Jenish, D'Arcy (2003). Epic Wanderer: David Thompson and the Mapping of the Canadian West. Doubleday Canada.

McCart, Joyce and Peter (2000). On the Road with David Thompson. Fifth House.

Nisbet, Jack (1994). Sources of the River: Tracking David Thompson Across Western North America. Sasquatch Books.

Andra-Warner, Elle (2010). David Thompson: A Life of Adventure and Discovery. Heritage House Publishing Co. Ltd.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
David Thompson (30 April 1770 - 10 February 1857) was a British-Canadian fur trader, surveyor, and cartographer, known to some native peoples as Koo-Koo-Sint or "the Stargazer". Over Thompson's career, he traveled some 90,000 kilometres (56,000 mi) across North America, mapping 4.9 million square kilometres (1.9 million square miles) of North America along the way.

# data[].attributes.body
John A. MacDonald was the first prime minister of Canada.He wanted to enlarge Canada.He had a vision of a country that went from sea to sea In 1870, the government of canada obtained the North - West Territory from great Britain. This included Rupert's Land, Controlled by the Hudson's Bay Company. Canada had to pay the Hudson's Bay Company 11.5 Million dollars

# data[].attributes.body
The Hudson's Bay Company built the first Fort Edmonton in 1795. Five years later, a new supply of furs were needed. The Fort was moved to a new location along the river. It was moved three more times before the last Fort Edmonton was built sometime between 1825 and 1831

# data[].attributes.body
North America once had millions of buffalo's that helped Aboriginal people meet their basic needs.Between 18830 and 1870 the Hudson's bay Company and American fur traders wanted the buffalo hides for trading. Hundreds of thousands of buffalo were killed each year. Wagon load after wagon loads of hides were moved south to the United States and Eastern canada

# data[].attributes.body
Here is a pic of a buffalo hide

# data[].attributes.body
Nearly 400 men were trained in new force. On July8 1874 the most trained force were sent on mission westward from Duffrin to destroy fort Whoop-up and stop the whisky trade. Some officers went to fort Ednmonton and fort Macleod.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The March West was the initial journey of the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) to the Canadian prairies, made between July 8 and October 9, 1874.

It was the result of the force being deployed to what is now southern Alberta in response to the Cypress Hills Massacre and subsequent fears of a US military intervention. Their ill-planned and arduous journey of nearly 1,400 kilometres (900 mi) became known as the "March West" and was later portrayed by the force as an epic journey of endurance.

Sir John A. Macdonald acquired approval for his new force on May 23, 1873, after Parliament, following a cursory debate, passed the Mounted Police Act into law unopposed. At this point, Macdonald appears to have intended to create a force of mounted police to watch "the frontier from Manitoba to the foot of the Rocky Mountains", probably with its headquarters in Winnipeg. He was heavily influenced by the model of the Royal Irish Constabulary, which combined aspects of a traditional military unit with the judicial functions of the magistrates' courts, and believed that the new force should be able to provide a local system of government in otherwise ungoverned areas. Macdonald had originally also wanted to form units of Métis policemen, commanded by white Canadian officers in a similar manner to the British Indian Army, but he was forced to abandon this approach after the Red River Rebellion of 1870 called their loyalty into question.

In June 1873, around 30 Assiniboines were killed in the Cypress Hills Massacre, creating a national furore. In response, Macdonald used a privy council order to implement the new legislation, formally creating the NWMP with the intention of mobilizing the force and deploying it early the next year. A report then arrived from Alexander Morris, the Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Territories, blaming the massacre on the activities of whisky traders at Fort Whoop-Up; Morris predicted that if action was not taken immediately, there would be a major uprising by the First Nations across the region, into which the United States might choose to intervene. Macdonald was not entirely convinced by the governor's analysis, but nonetheless he agreed to recruit 150 men and send them west to Lower Fort Garry before winter weather blocked the route.

Macdonald's Conservative government then fell from power over the Pacific Scandal and was replaced on November 7, 1873, by the Liberal administration of Alexander Mackenzie, who placed more credence on Morris's reports and had his own moral concerns about the whisky trade. These worries were amplified by calls from Washington for Ottawa to secure the frontier and so prevent American Indians from purchasing whisky in Canada. Mackenzie initially suggested sending a joint Canadian-United States military expedition, but, after Governor General Lord Dufferin and others noted the serious implications of inviting the US Army to deploy into Canadian territory, he instead agreed to deploy the new mounted police to carry out the operation. Another 150 men were recruited in eastern Canada and sent west by railway and river boat through the United States to rendezvous with the first part of the force at Fort Dufferin.

The force was given orders to proceed to Fort Edmonton in order to resolve problems around Fort Whoop-Up, before then dispersing to various posts stretching westwards across the territories. From Fort Dufferin, one option was to trace the southern line of the frontier, following a well-established trail created two years before by the British and United States Boundary Commission. Morris disagreed with this approach, arguing that it might encourage an attack by the Sioux, and encouraged the NWMP to take a more northerly route. French finally agreed with Morris that the expedition would initially follow the trail, but would then steer away from the border and Sioux territory.

The NWMP finally left Fort Dufferin on July 8, 1874. The 275 strong expedition was divided into six divisions, labelled A to F, supported by 310 horses, 143 draught oxen and 187 Red River carts and wagons, stretching out at least 2.4 kilometres (1.5 mi) along the track. The force took two field guns and two mortars for protection, cattle to use as food, and mowing machines for making hay. French had negotiated with the Canadian Illustrated News that the expedition be accompanied by Henri Julien, a journalist whom the Commissioner hoped would write a positive account of the new force.

The teams made only 24 kilometres (15 mi) a day at most, travelling under unpleasant and arduous conditions, made more difficult by the NWMP teamsters having little experience and the horses being unsuitable for draught work. On July 29, the badly depleted A Division, including those men suffering from dysentery, was left behind as the main force turned off the southerly trail and across the much drier and rougher plains to the north-west. Food began to run out and, due to the expedition having failed to bring any water bottles, the men had no option but to drink contaminated local water. Another detachment of the sicker men and livestock were left behind at Old Wives Lake. On August 24 the expedition reached the Cypress Hills, where the weather turned wet and cold, and the expedition's horses began to die.

French had thought Fort Whoop-Up would be found at the junction of the Bow and South Saskatchewan rivers, but when they arrived on 10 September there was nothing to be seen, as the fort was in fact around 121 kilometres (75 mi) away. The NWMP had expected the area to contain good grazing for their horses but it was barren and treeless. French described it as "little better than a desert" and his men were reduced to drinking muddy water gathered from marshland. Having sent out search parties with no success, the expedition now faced the total loss of their horses and imminent starvation.

French abandoned the plan to move further towards Whoop-Up and instead travelled 110 kilometres (70 mi) south towards the Sweet Grass Hills, close to the border, where supplies could be bought from the United States. Yet more horses died from the cold and hunger and many of the men were barefoot and in rags when they arrived, having travelled a total of nearly 1,400 kilometres (900 mi).

After resupplying, French sent divisions D and E back east, before taking B, C and F to travel to Fort Whoop-Up. The expedition had been badly planned and executed, and almost failed; Baker describes it as "a monumental fiasco of poor planning, ignorance, incompetence, and cruelty to men and beasts".

When the police arrived at Fort Whoop-Up on October 9, they were prepared for a battle, but the whisky traders were aware that they were coming and had long since moved on. The NWMP had received new orders from Ottawa to garrison the area and settled down to build Fort Macleod on an island in Oldman River.

Early historians of the force stressed the epic nature of the expedition. The popular historian Arthur Haydon, for example, scorned the newspaper accounts which blamed the officers and men as "incapable", "inexperienced" and "careless", arguing that the march was "truly one of the most extraordinary on record", of which "all Canadians might well feel proud. By 1955, however, the historian Paul Sharp had suggested that the March West almost failed due to "misinformation, inexperience and ignorance" and criticism of the force's performance intensified after 1973. Ronald Atkin concludes that the expedition was "epic in its lack of organisation, in the poor way in which it was conducted and its incredibly close brush with disaster", Daniel Francis condemns it as "a fiasco of bad planning", with R. C. Macleod observing that "the difficulties of the Long March...were largely self-inflicted". Nonetheless, it rapidly became portrayed by the force as epic story of bravery, endurance and determination.

Atkin, Ronald (1973). Maintain the Right: The Early History of the North West Mounted Police, 1873-1900. London, UK and Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan. ISBN 9780333122822.

Baker, William (1998). "Twenty-five Years After: Mounted Police Historiography Since the 1973-74 Centennial of the Force". In Baker, William (ed.). The Mounted Police and Prairie Society, 1873-1919. Regina, Canada: Canadian Plains Research Centre, University of Regina. pp. vii-xvi. ISBN 0889771030.

Francis, Daniel (1997). National Dreams: Myth, Memory, and Canadian History. Vancouver, Canada: Arsenal Pulp Press. ISBN 1551520435.

Haydon, Arthur L. (1926) [1910]. The Riders of the Plains: A Record of the Royal North-West Mounted Police of Canada (6th ed.). London, UK and New York, US: Andrew Melrose. OCLC 25798772.

Horrall, Stanley W. (1973). The Pictorial History of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Toronto, Canada: McGraw-Hill Ryerson. ISBN 9780070773660.

Horrall, Stanley W. (1974). "The March West". In Dempsey, Hugh A. (ed.). Men in Scarlet. Lincoln, U.S.: Historical Society of Alberta and McClelland and Stewart West. pp. 13-26. OCLC 635848375.

Macleod, R. C. (1976). The North-West Mounted Police and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905. Toronto, Canada and Buffalo, US: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0802053335.

Stanley, George F. G. (1974). "The Man Who Sketched the Great March". In Dempsey, Hugh A. (ed.). Men in Scarlet. Lincoln, U.S.: Historical Society of Alberta and McClelland and Stewart West. pp. 27-49. OCLC 635848375.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The March West was the initial journey of the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) to the Canadian prairies, made between July 8 and October 9, 1874. It was the result of the force being deployed to what is now southern Alberta in response to the Cypress Hills Massacre and subsequent fears of a US military intervention.

# data[].attributes.body
During the 1870s there were about 35,000 people in the first nations living western areas that was open to settlement. The Canadian goverment wanted to make sure the settlement stay.  So they made offers to the first nations people. They asked the sign agreements called treaties. These treatise out lined how the land would be handled. All teaties rules were difrrent. The first nations were pomised lots of things,but overall the land expanded by a huge amout. An exsample is farm equipment.

# data[].attributes.body
The railway across Canada was important to the growth of Alberta. People, supplies and the RCMP could more easily travel from Eastern Canada this made settlement in the west more appealing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Construction of the railway across the provinces of Canada and the ensuing industrial development required the contribution of a great many workers. Rural development and the many cities springing up beside the railway lines also depended on new settlers.

The Canadian government, in collaboration with the railway companies, launched advertising campaigns in the immigration and tourism offices of many countries to attract potential immigrants to come and live in Canada.

The positive effects of the construction of the railway in Canada include:

Immigration on a large scale, which contributed to the growth of towns and cities, as well as the Canadian economy.

Increase in passenger travel by train.

Much greater capacity for transporting goods, which allowed for greater trade.

Remote regions could now be colonized and their natural resources exploited.

Railways created jobs in Canadian communities.

Once established, the railway network continued to expand.

Luring immigrants

The Canadian government published promotional posters and information brochures that were translated into several languages. Exhibitions were set up and lectures given to encourage Europeans, Americans and Canadians from other provinces to settle in Western Canada: Good farming land for sale!

This program to lure colonists was highly successful: between the late 1890s and 1914, more than 3 million immigrants settled in Canada.

Every possible means was used to attract immigrants: railway station gardens were beautifully arranged to greet the new arrivals and create an impression of fertile lands. The gardens were maintained by the railway companies, and station employees and their families were strongly encouraged to care for them. Professional gardeners were hired to look after larger grounds.

Chinese workers

It took thousands of workers to build the trans-Canada railway. When the main line was completed in British Columbia, there were still 500 kilometres of track to lay between Port Moody and Eagle Pass. Building a railway through the Rocky Mountains was a dangerous business; to this end, the Canadian Pacific Railway hired more than 15,000 Chinese workers, who were paid $1 a dayhalf the wages of Canadians working alongside them.

Between 1881 and 1885, it is estimated that 4,000 Chinese workers died on the job or from disease. The work was difficult and perilous: many men were injured or killed when tunnels accidentally collapsed during dynamiting. The Chinese workers were nicknamed exploding men. Fearing for their jobs, residents of British Columbia were angered by the arrival of new immigrants, but in reality, Canadians were not willing to take on these treacherous jobs. Chinese workers were victims of discrimination: in addition to receiving lower wages for equivalent work, they did not enjoy the same benefits as Canadian workers. Moreover, they were poorly fed and undernourished.

In addition to Chinese immigrants, European workers were also recruited.

A large labour force was needed to build the railway and its immense support structures (bridges and tunnels). Scottish and Irish workers helped build the Victoria Bridge connecting the South Shore of the St. Lawrence River with Montral.

There was an urgent need for farm workers to cultivate the fertile lands of the Prairies. Trains were used to transport grain and its cultivation would therefore ensure the future of the railway. Between 1890 and 1914, about 170,000 Ukrainian farmers came to Canada and settled in the Prairies.

Italian immigrants also contributed to the Canadian economy and proved to be excellent entrepreneurs. They launched numerous businesses ranging from restaurants and grocery stores to clothing shops and barbershops.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Construction of the railway across the provinces of Canada and the ensuing industrial development required the contribution of a great many workers. Rural development and the many cities springing up beside the railway lines also depended on new settlers.

# data[].attributes.body
The Marquis of lorne, the son in-law of Queen Victoria, repersenting the British crown in Canada went to ask if they can name the new province. Canada exsepted this request so the name was Loise Canada. People in Calgary and Edmonton wanted the name to be Alberta. Those in reddeer, Banff, Medicine hat, and many other city had the idea Vegerville, a population of 78 wanted to commuitty to be selected. Soon Edmonton was chosen, The construction of the Legishlature started in 1907 and finshed in 1912

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We’ve been asked recently about the naming of Alberta Street in north and northeast Portland. The short answer is that it has to do with the British Royal family by way of Canada.

But it’s also a reminder about the development of early Portland.

Alberta was named for Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, the fourth daughter of Victoria, Queen of England. Her husband was John Campbell, Marquess of Lorne and Governor General of Canada from 1873-1883. In September 1882, the couple made a swing up the west coast, traveling by ship from San Francisco to her mother’s namesake: Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Having royals out this way was a very big deal in Canadian and American newspapers of the time.

Princess Louise Caroline Alberta about the time of her visit to the West Coast. Image source: The Royal Collection Trust, object 2903653.

Here’s where the Portland connection comes in.

About that time, our area was booming: the city we think of as Portland today was actually three separate cities, Portland, East Portland and Albina. There were similarities and some connecting common threads, but each had its own street system, addressing system, governance.

Albina, which historian Steve Schreiber reminds us was actually pronounced “al-bean-uh,” was just being platted. For more on Albina, check out Steve’s outstanding history (and his whole website on the legacy of Volga Germans in this area).

One of the developers planning Albina was Portlander Edwin Russell, who had immigrated here from England and was manager of the Bank of British Columbia in Portland. Russell had his own connection to royalty, having descended from the Duke of Bedford.

As Russell planned streets in the new suburb called Albina (and on a plat called Albina Heights), he named one street after himself: Russell; one street after his business partner: Williams; and one street after Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, whose visit to the region was causing a stir, particularly among Queen Victoria’s emigrated loyal subjects. The Princesses’s multiple names were being applied to geographic features all across the western map, including Lake Louise and the Canadian province of Alberta.

Later, as Portland expanded east of today’s Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, the street named Alberta expanded east too.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We’ve been asked recently about the naming of Alberta Street in north and northeast Portland. The short answer is that it has to do with the British Royal family by way of Canada. But it’s also a r…