Mapping the Interior Plains of Rupert's Land By The Hudson's Bay Company To 1870

• Main Author: Ruggles, Richard I.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln 1984
• Subjects: Other International and Area Studies; Hudson Bay; Indian; Hudson; Northwest Passage; Hudson Strait; Hayes; Rupert; Lone; Prince Rupert
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1806; https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/context/greatplainsquarterly/article/2805/viewcontent/Ruggles.pdf

By royal charter, Charles II in 1670 granted to a small coterie of London entrepreneurs, united in a joint stock company, exclusive trading privileges in a vast territory of then unknown dimensions. The group was the "Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay," the Hudson's Bay Company. The territory was Rupert's Land, named for Prince Rupert, cousin of the monarch, who graciously consented to act as the first governor of the company. By charter, Rupert's Land included "all the Landes Countryes and Territoryes upon the Coastes and Confynes of the Seas" lying within Hudson Strait, that is, the area drained by waters flowing into Hudson and James bays and Hudson Strait. The new enterprise erected trading factories at the mouths of several of the large rivers, Rupert, Moose, Albany, and Nelson-Hayes, and established a trading system based on the annual journeying of Indian customers to these export posts. The executive committee of Hudson's Bay Company urged employees to accompany Indian groups inland from the factories at the bay shore to winter among the tribes and to encourage them at river break-up time to return to the factories with their furs and other trade items. Not only would this policy allow the company winterers to recruit customers, but it would also develop a cadre of experienced travelers. For many years, no one accepted this challenge, except for Henry Kelsey-a young scamp to some, a young hero to others-who undertook a lone journey onto the Saskatchewan plains between 1690 and 1692. Kelsey, who eventually became a senior trader in the company, operating mainly out of the York and Churchill factories, was certainly the company's first winterer and the first European to journey onto the northern plains of North America. Regrettably, he did not draw a map depicting his route or the extent of his penetration of the plains. Therefore, there is no cartographic memorial to the commencement of the Hudson's Bay Company's long involvement with the Canadian western interior. After Kelsey's ...