The Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company Including that of the French Traders of North-Western Canada and of the North-West, XY, and Astor Fur Companies — Context and Discussion

Rivalry and Violence on the Red River

The excerpts reveal a colony in crisis. Bryce recounts how in 1816 'subjects of the realm, divided into two parties, should be virtually carrying on war against each other on British soil.' The conflict between Hudson's Bay Company settlers and the North West Company's Métis allies (the 'Bois Brûlés') is documented through speeches Bryce includes from Indigenous chiefs. L'Homme Noir of the Assiniboines tells Lord Selkirk, 'we were often harassed with solicitations to assist the Bois Brûlés in what they have done against your children, but we always refused.' Grandes Oreilles, an Ojibway chief, offers a more ambiguous testimony: 'When our young men are drunk they are mad; they know not what they say or what they do; but this must not be attended to.' These passages show Bryce using direct testimony to illustrate the pressures on Indigenous communities caught between fur-trade factions.

The Charter as a Legal and Political Instrument

Bryce emphasizes the Hudson's Bay Company's original Charter as the foundation of its authority. The Company 'governed a vast domain in the northern part of the American Continent, and preserved to the British Empire the wide territory handed over to Canada in 1870.' This legal framework is contrasted with the 'daring French soldiers and explorers who disputed the claim of the Company in the seventeenth century.' The excerpts do not detail the Charter's terms, but Bryce's repeated references to 'British pluck and daring' and 'patient industry' suggest he views the Company's corporate structure as a vehicle for national expansion. The tension between monopoly rights and competitive free trade—embodied by the North West and X Y Companies—is a recurring structural theme.

Personal Artifacts and the Texture of Travel

Bryce occasionally steps back from grand narrative to offer intimate details. He mentions possessing 'a note-book with, in Lord Selkirk's writing, an itinerary of his journey from Red River Colony,' listing place names like 'Rivière Sale, Rivière Aux Gratias, Pembina' and including the entry 'lost on the Prairie.' Bryce adds, 'Every traveller over the Manitoba prairie will take a feeling interest in that entry.' Such moments ground the history in physical experience. Similarly, the account of Selkirk's final departure from the colony—'having thus restored order, infused confidence in the people, and given a certain aid to their activity'—is followed by a quiet detail: Selkirk 'hastens back to Upper Canada, without even visiting his family in Montreal, though he had been absent from them for upwards of a year.' These human touches counterbalance the book's institutional focus.

Readers should note that Bryce writes as a late-Victorian Canadian nationalist, his sympathies clearly with the Hudson's Bay Company's imperial role. The excerpts do not include his treatment of the Astor or X Y Companies, nor the full arc of the 1819 trials he calls 'The Blue-Book of 1819.' The book's value lies in its compilation of primary documents—speeches, itineraries, and official reports—woven into a narrative that reflects the author's own position as a scholar and public figure in Manitoba. Approach the text as a period piece of historical writing, rich in firsthand material but shaped by its era's assumptions.

That Bryce history stayed with me like a long winter dusk—all those rival fur traders, their grudges and fragile alliances, circling the same frozen rivers. It reminded me of something quieter I read later, A narrative of the mutiny, on board His Majesty's ship Bounty — A Reader’s Guide, where isolation also turns men inward, until loyalty becomes a strange, sharp thing.