The Establishment of Fort Kilmaurs, October 1822
In October of 1822 Hudson’s Bay Company Trader William Brown cleared the portage between Stuart and Babine Lakes landed on present day Old Fort as the location for the HBC post in ‘Babine Country’. Brown was relatively new to the region west of the Rocky Mountains, having served most of his career on the plains to the east. Only a few of the early records from Fort Kilmaurs remain, but these are filled with Brown’s observations about the Babine people, the trade networks, and the country as it appeared to him in the early 1820s. Brown describes the location of Fort Kilmaurs as:
Our Establishment is about eighty miles from the Portage, and thirty five from the River below—Situated on the North shore of a Large Bay, which stretches for a considerable distance to the North West—A small river falls into the head of this Bay, where those Indians who do not hunt in the spring resort to work the Carp—The Salmon mount this River in considerable numbers, but they have not been wrought there for these several years—
Although the Hudson’s Bay Company had high hopes for the fur returns that they would receive by expanding into this region, they were largely disappointed in their initial profits. The problem was two-fold. First, Brown was forced to trade a large amount of salmon that was then sent to the other posts in New Caledonia, such as Fort Fraser and Fort St. James. The Babine had a much more consistent supply of salmon than the areas where these other posts were located so Brown was forced to trade a lot of salmon to supply the other posts. This meant that the Babine could get the things they needed without giving up any of their furs. Brown’s second problem was the very strong trade relations that the Babine had with the Wet’suwet’en and the Gitksan. Through these connections they had access to European goods that were being traded along the coast. Because these goods were brought to the coast on ships, they were traded at a far lower rate than the goods the HBC was trading. The HBC supplies had to be carried in canoes and by men and dogs all the way from Hudson Bay meaning that they cost more by the time they got to Babine Lake. Basically, Brown was being outcompeted by old trade networks that also carried eulachon oil and seaweed inland, and berries and furs to the coast.
