Exploration and Fur Trade

BC's location on the far edge of North America kept it from being visited by Europeans long after most other areas of the world were claimed by them. It was Russian exploitation of present-day Alaska to the north and Spanish colonization of Mexico to the south that brought the first intrusions. Vitus Bering, a Danish sea captain in the Russian naval service, may have reached as far south as BC during a 1740 expedition intended to determine whether North America was a separate continent from Asia. Spanish expansion resulted in three expeditions between 1774 and 1779, which nominally claimed the coast for Spain. Britain had long sought to locate a water route, a Northwest Passage, to facilitate its lucrative trade with Asia. Attempts to do so from eastern North America failed, and so the English national hero Capt James Cook was dispatched to find a route inland from the West Coast. Cook anchored near Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island in the spring of 1778 and then sailed north along the coast before turning away toward Asia. Although he did not find a Northwest Passage (not surprisingly, since none existed), his voyage had two important consequences. Most immediately, Cook's expedition triggered the first economic intrusion into the Pacific Northwest. His men acquired a few sea otter pelts in trading with local people, and these found a ready market in China. A maritime fur trade quickly developed in which New England merchants from the newly independent United States soon beat out their competitors. More than 170 ships from several countries visited the coast during the peak years of exploitation between 1785 and 1825, by which time the sea otter was essentially trapped out. The future BC's first resource-based boom collapsed, much as would a series of others over the next two centuries. The second consequence of Cook's visit was a growing controversy with Spain over the sovereignty of Nootka, perceived as the entryway to the BC coast. A diplomatic resolution of 1790-94 gave trading rights to both countries without determining ownership. Each country sought to support its position by acquiring as much information as possible, and it was in this connection that Capt George Vancouver mapped much of the coast for Britain in 1792-94. Thereafter Spain turned its attention elsewhere.

The future BC faced east as well as west. The first intrusions from this direction were by fur traders also in search of a water route, in their case one through which the North West Company, based in Montreal, could take furs to market. In 1793 Alexander Mackenzie travelled Interior rivers to the inlet at Bella Coola. In 1808 Simon Fraser reached the mouth of the river that bears his name, and David Thompson was exploring areas to the south at about the same time. Although none of these men located the much sought water route, several small trading posts were established. The agreement ending the War of 1812 between Britain and the US established a loose joint occupation of the Pacific Northwest, which still did not much interest any country apart from the immediate economic advantages to be got from trading for pelts.

A land-based fur trade developed in the early 19th century across the central Interior of today's BC, an area dubbed New Caledonia, and south to the Columbia River in Washington and Oregon. In 1821 the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), based in London, took over the last of its rivals and thereafter managed the Pacific Northwest fur trade through a series of posts at which newcomers lived year-round while trading with local peoples for pelts. Overall this trade was a minor intrusion into aboriginal societies. Trade goods entered local economies and a few women cohabited with newcomers, but for the most part lives continued much as they always had. The fundamental shift for aboriginal peoples came when Europeans decided to stay and thereby to compete for land and resources rather than merely exploit a specific resource and then move on. This shift began in the 1830s, at a time when Americans increasingly believed they had a "manifest destiny" to occupy the continent from ocean to ocean. Trekking overland, American families settled near the principal HBC trading post of Fort Vancouver, sited near the mouth of the Columbia R, in such growing numbers that the HBC decided, in order to ensure its future well-being, to establish a new post on Vancouver Island to the north. Fort Victoria was built in 1843 under the supervision of an HBC fur trader named James Douglas. Agitation by American settlers caused the US and Britain to sign the Treaty of Washington in 1846, extending the existing international boundary of 49º N west from the Rocky Mountains circling around the southern tip of Vancouver Island to the Pacific Ocean.

The Treaty of Washington not only gave the future BC its southern boundary, it ceded the territory to Britain. In 1849 Britain officially colonized Vancouver Island. A governor, Richard Blanshard, was appointed, but that was about all. Britain was not much interested in this remote corner of North America, and handed over everyday administration of its new possession to the HBC on condition that it encourage colonization. The HBC moved its centre of operations north to Fort Victoria, put James Douglas in charge, and gradually closed its posts in American territory. On Blanshard's departure in 1851, Douglas took on the additional responsibility of governor, which ensured that the links would remain close between colony and fur trade. In practice, as Douglas recognized, "the interests of the Colony, and the Fur Trade will never harmonize." To the extent that newcomers took up land, they altered the existing order of things, making it less likely that local First Nations would continue to collect furs. The HBC's encouragement of colonization was never more than lukewarm, the minimum needed to keep the British government from revoking the agreement. The HBC did get into the business of mining coal, and brought over a handful of English miners to settle at Nanaimo. The few newcomers and the unwillingness of Great Britain to spend much money on its fledgling colony meant that little attention was given to making treaties with aboriginal people. Douglas did negotiate 14 small treaties covering the area around Victoria and the coal mines in the years 1850-54, but thereafter lacked the resources to do more. Britain became briefly interested in Vancouver Island with the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854, whereupon its Royal Navy contingent stationed on the west coast of North America was moved north from Chile to Esquimalt. As of 1855 the non-aboriginal population of Vancouver Island did not much exceed 700, with another handful at the various posts scattered across the mainland.