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Mountain Man, Alberta foothills, 1785
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The Hudson's Bay Company was in the business of buying furs. In the beginning their real competitors were independent traders and the competition was cutthroat. In 1787 the North West company was formed and they became the Hudson Bay Company's real competition. Other competitors were the American Fur Company and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, mainly south of the border. Jim Bridger, Jedediah Smith, Jim Clyman and Edward Rose, among many others, were names that, to this day, are still associated with this tough, romantic era in history. Indian trappers were sometimes employed by the trading companies but many times these trappers simply "sold to the highest bidder". A new breed of man slowly emerged, the Mountain Man. This individual was usually a loner, sometimes married to an Indian "squaw". They were a hardy, individualistic lot, and many a myth and folklore has sprung up around this period of romantic American and Canadian history. The heyday of the Mountain Man actually only lasted to about 1846. These were the days when Canadian fur traders "ruled with bullets and whiskey", their Rocky Mountain Empire stretching from California up to British Columbia. Many of these free trappers were disenchanted voyageurs. They would trap beaver or barter with the Indians and then sell the pelts to the highest bidder. They traveled by horse and by foot, often using snowshoes in the winter. |
