Jeffrey Bisset

The Pemmican War was a series of armed confrontations during the North American fur trade between the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and the North West Company (NWC) in the years following the establishment of the Red River Colony in 1812 by Lord Selkirk. It ended in 1821 when the NWC merged with the HBC. At the beginning of the 19th century, Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk attempted to resettle his fellow Scotsmen and women in North America. By 1808, Selkirk had founded two colonies, one on Prince Edward Island, another at Baldoon in Western Ontario, and was looking to establish a third. The eastern coastline of Canada was already settled and no longer had any tracts of land large enough to support a colony, so Selkirk looked for a location with good soil and a temperate climate far in the interior. He quickly discovered the region best fitting his needs fell within the territory of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). Selkirk began in 1808 buying shares of the HBC in order to acquire the land he needed. Because of the crippling competition with the North West Company (NWC), the HBC’s stock at this time was down from 250% to 50%, and he was able to buy a majority share equalling £100,000 (in comparison the whole of the HBC stock was worth about £150,000). In May 1811 the HBC granted Selkirk 116,000 square miles of company territory which encompassed most of the Red River watershed.[1] Today this region is shared by Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, North and South Dakota and Minnesota. The region was already occupied at that time by numerous tribes of Native Americans and Métis, as well as containing outposts belonging to both the North West and Hudson's Bay companies. For 100 years the London-based Hudson’s Bay Company dominated the North American fur trade operating almost exclusively from their depots along the shores of Hudson Bay (though their charter, granted by Charles II in 1670 gave them exclusive rights to trade along the banks of any connected waterway), but competition from various Montréal merchants and later the North West Company in the 1770s changed this. The North West Company and others generally traded beyond the actual reach of the HBC, but generally still within their territory, easing the burden for natives of those regions to travel the long distance to Hudson Bay to trade. To compete with the North West Company, the HBC began expanding inland. In 1774 they built Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan River delta and soon had outposts situated throughout the northwest, in some cases directly across from their adversaries, sparking a period of intense competition. The Red River region also contained the North West Company’s pivotal provisioning depots.