"Opposition on the Coast"

"In the middle 1820s, as the sea otter trade of the Northwest Coast was fading, George Simpson, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) in North America, resolved to enter the "coasting trade" with both ships and posts. He intended to out-compete the New England trading vessels for the coast's land furs--especially beaver skins coming from the interior--by offering the native traders more goods. This volume examines the HBC's efforts to establish an "opposition on the coast" to both the transient Yankees and the Russians at Sitka by securing suitable vessels, sober captains, saleable goods, and safe ports. These efforts culminated in an agreement with the Russian-American Company that in effect gave the Honourable Company a monopoly of the coast trade but at a time when the market for beaver was waning and the American shipowners were shifting to rosier Pacific prospects. This volume brings together the key documents that bear witness to that evolving relationship at a critical juncture in both the HBC's history and that of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Coast, and describes and analyzes the people and events in a period that marked an important turning point in Settler-Indigenous relations."--