The result was the forming of the English Hudson Bay Company, and the grant of Charles II over the region in which the company intended to operate. A New England captain connected with the Newfoundland trade was the first to sail to Hudson Bay to further the interests of the new-formed company. Presently a governor was despatched to establish and take charge of a fort on the Rupert River and one on the Nelson. By the year 1686 the Hudson Bay Company had organized five trading-posts round the shores of James Bay and Hudson Bay. These were known as the Albany, the Moose, the Rupert, the Nelson, and the Severn factories. The right to establish these posts was actively combated by the French, who sent contingents from Quebec, by the Ottawa and by Lake Superior, to harass the English in their possession of them. For several years a keen conflict was maintained between the two races, and the forts successively changed hands as Fortune happened to favor the one or the other. Possession was further varied by the treaties of Ryswick and Utrecht.
Meanwhile the French were active in the lower waters of the continent; for in 1672 La Salle had discovered the Mississippi, Joliet and Marquette had traced the outline of the Georgian Bay and Lake Superior, and Father Hennepin had seen and made a chart of the Falls of Niagara. Afterward M. Du Luth and M. De la Verendrye penetrated into all the bays of Lake Superior, and the latter, in 1632, constructed a fort on the Lake of the Woods. At the period of the Conquest the French had done far more to discover and open up what is now the Canadian Northwest than the English. Up to 1763 they had gone as far west as the Assiniboine and the Saskatchewan. They had established Fort Maurepas on the Winnipeg, Fort Dauphin on Lake Manitoba, Fort Bourbon on Cedar Lake, and Fort a la Corne below the forks of the Saskatchewan. The Hudson Bay Company, on the contrary, had done little to invade the continent. The trade of the company hardly extended beyond the shores of Hudson Bay, or, at most, a short distance down the Albany River and the Churchill. They were inactive in their work, and for a time found their charter ineffectual to prevent interlopers from sharing the profits of the growing fur-trade. Petitioning Parliament, they now and again got a confirmation of their title and increased powers of trade; though one of the objects for which the company had originally secured its charter, the prosecution of discovery in the Arctic regions, had been little promoted. Hence enemies in Parliament repeatedly tried to limit the company's privileges and to annul its charter. Instigated by these enemies rival traders fitted out expeditions to Hudson Bay to embarrass the company and seize some portion of its trade. The fate of these expeditions was, however, adverse to rivalry; for no better sport was found for the employees of the privileged company than to board the vessels, capture their crews, and wreck the craft on the shores of the Bay.
But not thus could the Hudson Bay Company suppress competition from the interior
. The French in the south were materially interfering with its trade, and the company found that to retain it its employees had to organize corps of traders and voyageurs, who would ascend the rivers and establish posts in the valleys of the Red River and Saskatchewan and the region of the Great Lakes. This was a matter that entailed no little difficulty and risk. To the "Hudson Bays" the interior was an unknown wilderness; and as yet they had not learned the craft of the Indian woodsman or the skill of the French coureur de bois. But they had more to contend with than the tyranny of nature and the perils of the way. The colony of New France by this time had grown to considerable proportions, and the French trader was to be met with all over the country. M. De Vaudreuil gives the population of New France in 1760 as 70,000, exclusive of voyageurs and those engaged in trade with the Indians. The French, moreover, held the two great waterways to the West -- the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. From these inlets their countrymen had spread far to the northwest; and in their traffic with the Indians of the Red River and Saskatchewan districts they had cut off much trade that previously had found its way to the Hudson Bay posts on the Albany, the Nelson, the Churchill, and the Severn. Presently war with the English again broke out, and from across the Atlantic came the invading forces of Britain and contingents from her colonies on the coast. To some extent this withdrew the French traders to their posts on the meadows of the Mississippi and to those on the Ohio and the Alleghany. The time was therefore favorable to the Hudson Bay Company employees in again diverting the fur-trade to the old posts by the northern sea. More effectually to secure this trade, the company sent its servants to establish posts in the south, and by the year 1774 Cumberland House was founded on the Saskatchewan, and at a somewhat later day an extensive circle of forts, tributary to that at York Factory, was established and equipped.
“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
– John 3:17