American History - Competition on the Prairies

The shift of Canada from French territory to British following the French and Indian War, followed by the significant violence in the Great Lakes region during Pontiac’s War soon after, marked the beginning of a period of significant change in the North American fur trade.  Hoping to completely push out their Canadian rivals, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) raised the prices they paid for furs.  Though not entirely successful, due to many of the natives having long-standing and close relationships with the Canadian traders, it did make things extremely difficult for them.  As a result, the Canadian companies began to recognize that they needed to hire better educated staff to deal with the more complex business situation they were facing.  Unfortunately, most of the Canadian traders lacked such an education.  Instead, the companies began hiring Scots, who were immigrating en masse to the newly opened Quebec, many of whom had received a formal education.  As a result, within a few decades these Scots largely ran the Canadian fur trade, the Canadians reduced to hired labor, which totally didn’t cause any deep-seated animosity whatsoever.

Now by the 1770s, the HBC, coming to the realization that their strategy wasn’t going to work, decided on a new strategy of building a series of inland trading posts in what is today Saskatchewan, with the goal of increasing direct trade with the Blackfeet, thus avoiding having to pay the added cost of dealing with the Iron Confederacy which controlled the trade in the Canadian Prairies, both the flow of furs from the Blackfeet and the flow of buffalo meat north to the Chipewyan who controlled the Arctic fur trade.  Now of course this didn’t sit well with the Iron Confederacy, but there was little they could do about it given the HBC was their primary supplier of guns, which they needed to maintain their dominance.  As for the Blackfeet, while they were glad for the direct trade access, they were also mindful that the Iron Confederacy was their main source of guns, which they needed to keep whooping up on the Shoshone, which the Iron Confederacy liked since it kept the Shoshone out of the way.  So yeah, the thing was kind of a complete cluster fuck.

Anyways, this convinced many of the now Scot run Canadian trading companies in Montreal to join forces to form a company large enough to take on the HBC, creating the North West Company (NWC) in 1779.  Building their own inland trading posts in the same region, the NWC competed directly with the HBC.  It was then that things really began to take a crazy shit turn as the smallpox pandemic swept the region in 1782, killing between a third to two-thirds of all the natives and completely upsetting the balance of power.  In the Northern Plains, the once powerful agrarian Siouan nations along the Missouri River suffered greatly, which allowed the Sioux to sweep in and seize control of large amounts of territory.  These Siouan nations were the primary source of horses for the Iron Confederacy, which further weakened them, while the less than friendly Sioux effectively blocked travel through their territory.  As a result, the NWC was forced to focus more of its resources to the Canadian Prairies, which in turn resulted in a new American fur trade based in St. Louis beginning to form further south. 

Now by this time the fur trade had moved deeper into the Rocky Mountains, leaving the Blackfeet just another middleman in the process, one which was increasingly beginning to supplant the Iron Confederacy thanks to all the trading posts springing up in what is today Saskatchewan and Alberta.  Not liking this one bit, the Iron Confederacy began to try and move west to push out the Blackfeet, similar to how they had pushed out other groups in the past.  However, the Blackfeet, having more direct access to guns thanks to the increased trade with the NWC, united with a number of other nations to form the Blackfeet Confederacy in 1790, which proved more than a match for the Iron Confederacy.  The decades of low-key warfare which followed only benefited the HBC and NWC, who suddenly were getting pretty sweet deals on furs, what with the increased demand for guns by both sides.  However, this didn’t stop the NWC from looking for further better deals, with the company sending an expedition overland to the Pacific in 1793, with the goal of exploring how to cut the two confederacies out of the trade all together.  However, lucky for the two native alliances, the distraction of a growing conflict in Europe delayed the implementation of any such plans, at least for the time being.   

American History - Pacific Apocalypse

Thousands of years ago, as the people who would become known as the Native Americans pushed their way south from Beringia, past the receding glaciers, the first part of the New World that they came to was the West Coast.  Though many continued deeper into the North American and South American continents, small contingents of each stayed behind, creating a highly concentrated and diverse mixture of cultures and languages.  The rich fertility of the lands they inhabited allowed for significantly large populations, which along with the limiting climatic conditions of the neighboring Great Basin and Rocky Mountains, protected them and allowed them to build complex societies which largely remained unchanged for thousands of years along the coast, the Columbia Plateau and the Central Valley of California.  These peoples fished, hunted, and gathered as needed.  Often times they purposefully set forests ablaze to create clearings for deer, camas, and other edible plants to thrive.  By and large they did not farm.  They built large towns and raided each other for slaves.  They built societies based on the gathering of wealth which was shown off by the giving as much away as possible as gifts.  They decorated themselves with tattoos, piercings, and body modifications like the flattening of one’s skull.  They established vast trade networks which stretched far to the east, north, and south, developing a unique trade language to better communicate amongst each other.  Some of the larger groups of peoples included the Na-Dene, Wakshan, Salishan, Penutian, Hokan, and Yukian, many scattered throughout the region, all divided into numerous smaller groups with their own unique cultures.  It’s estimated that the region was home to up to a third of all the native peoples living in what is today the United States.

Other than a few Spanish expeditions in late 1500s, these peoples long had little contact with Europeans aside from wrecked or blown off course Spanish ships sailing between Mexico and the Philippines.  Aside from stories and a few European trade goods passed westward, they remained largely ignorant of the monumental changes taking place elsewhere on the continent.  However, things began to change by the start of the 1700s.  The early adoption of horses of the Shoshone allowed them to terrorize the peoples of the Columbia Plateau, and then grow rich trading horses to those same peoples.  By the middle of the century, many of the tribes of the Columbia Plateau were using horses, some even travelling each year to the Great Plains to hunt buffalo.  A few decades later, the Spanish began appearing again, pushing their way north along the coast of California, establishing missions to convert the natives to Catholicism and a European way of life, which largely seemed to involve basically enslaving them.  Though the natives were great in number, they were disorganized into too many small tribal groups, and lacked horses and firearms.  Those which did resist soon found their numbers decimated. 

Further north, things did not go as badly, at least at first.  British, Spanish, Russian, and American ships arrived to trade for sea otter pelts and other furs, which the natives were delighted to give in exchange for wool blankets, metal pots and tools, and glass beads.  Luxury goods to the West Coast peoples just as they had been when first introduced to their East Coast nearly two centuries before.  However, smallpox arrived soon after, spread by the Spanish missions, European trading ships, and Shoshone horse traders.  Having had little to no contact with Old World diseases, it killed thousands, leaving entire towns and villages emptied and the social fabric torn to tatters.  In some areas the death toll is estimated to have been nearly 70 percent, though this was far from a universal figure.  Many of those who died never once saw a European person. 

As the dust settled from the devastation of this first contact, the native societies of the West Coast struggled to survive.  In California, old tribal bonds were broken and the various native groups became scattered, coalescing in the Central Valley and Sierra Nevada mountains to avoid the Spanish along the coast, keeping to smaller familial units.  Further north, in northern California and the Pacific Northwest, the peoples, though reduced in number, retained much of the same cultures and way of life as before the pandemic.  Their reliance on fishing, hunting, and gathering rather than farming allowed them to avoid complete societal collapse and quickly adapt to the new smaller population.  However, amongst the coastal nations, the taking of slaves became more common.  The apocalypse had come, but they were still there, unchanged, at least for now.                            

American History - The End of the Spanish Ocean

For over a century, the Pacific Ocean was in affect a Spanish ocean.  Though in the early 1600s it was also crossed by English privateers, Dutch explorers, and even a Japanese ship sailing to Mexico, by the middle of the century the Spanish had effectively sealed it off via fleets of warships stationed at the Philippines and the Straits of Magellan.  The only ships which sailed across it were Spanish trading vessels, bringing silver and gold from Mexico and Peru to buy spices and other exotic Asian trade goods.  Not interested in anything but profit, they left most of the western coast of what is today the United States and Canada unexplored, only venturing that far north when blown off course on their return journey.  However, as the power of Spain began to wane, so too did their grip on the Pacific.  By the mid-1700s, both the British and French were actively exploring the South Pacific.  However, the northern half of the ocean was left alone.  A nine-to-twelve-month voyage from Europe with no safe ports in between, it was of little interest to the two great maritime powers of the time.

Exploration of the Northern Pacific was first begun by the Russians, who by the middle of the century began regularly trading for furs, primarily sea otter pelts, with the natives of Alaska, establishing their first permanent settlement in 1774.  This shifted their relationship with the natives from trading partnership to straight up extortion and enslavement, but no matter how badly the Russians acted there were always others willing to start trading, European goods being rather new and novel in the region at the time.  This turn of events rather alarmed the Spanish, not because they gave two shits about the natives, but rather because they didn’t want the Russians all up on their turf, and as a result they took a sudden interest in the big blank spot on the map.  As a result, they sent multiple expeditions by sea to map the coast as far north as Alaska and by land into what is today California.  They also founded numerous missions in California, the furthest north being San Francisco.

Unfortunately for the Spanish, the Russians weren’t the only ones taking an interest in the big blank spot on the map.  Fueled by scientific interest and a want to stick a finger in the eye of the Spanish, the British launched a series of expeditions to explore the entirety of the Pacific Ocean soon after.  Led by James Cook, these expeditions not only mapped a good chunk of the South Pacific and eastern coast of Australia, they also ventured as far north as Alaska and the Bering Strait.  Australia was a big find, given that after the American Revolution it proved to be the perfect spot for the British to send their convicts given their former colonies weren’t really down with such having them sent across the Atlantic anymore.  However, most importantly, Cook discovered the Hawaiian Islands, the northernmost Polynesian settlements who were more than down to welcome whomever wanted to land and trade, making them a perfect safe haven for any nation wanting to sail the wide-open waters of the region.  The British expedition was followed by a French expedition, and as they say, the rest is history. 

By the middle of the 1780s, voyages of exploration had given way to more merchant minded endeavors.  Ships from Britain, Spain, Russia, and even the newly created United States began to regularly trade with the natives along the coast of the Pacific Northwest, trading European goods for sea otter pelts which they than took to China to sell for Asian goods which they then took back home.  Not long after, sailing into the Pacific to hunt whales also became quite profitable.  Most definitely not happy at this point, the Spanish decided to take the initiative.  Building a settlement on what is today Vancouver Island in 1789, they began forcefully seizing the ships of other nations which entered the area.  This sparked an international incident, with Britian threatening to declare war if such shit didn’t stop post haste.  Unfortunately, lacking the might to take on the British navy alone the Spanish needed allies, but the Dutch sided with the British and the French were too bankrupt and on the edge of revolution to care.  So in the end the Spanish dismantled their settlement and signed an agreement recognizing Britain had an equal claim to the region.

Britian followed up their diplomatic victory by sending an expedition by sea to better map the coast of the Pacific Northwest while the British owned North West Company, a relatively newly created Canadian fur trading venture, sent an overland expedition which became the first to cross the North American continent north of Mexico in 1793.  However, the British were unable to capitalize on these successes.  The French Revolution and the establishment of the French Republic had thrown Europe into chaos, and the aristocracy of Europe was eager to snuff out this new bastion of democracy as quickly as possible.  The far corner of the world would have to wait.