The End of the Fur Trade Monopoly
Governor Stevens moves to ban the Hudson’s Bay Company from trading with local Indigenous tribes, signaling a shift toward American commercial dominance.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Governor Stevens has given official notice to the Hudson’s Bay Company, trading within this territory, that their commercial intercourse with the Indians must cease on the first of the present month. It is certainly time that this powerful monopoly should confine itself to the legitimate business guaranteed to the company under our treaty with Great Britain of 1846. It is time that the Chief Factors should know that, as foreigners operating under a charter from a foreign government, they cannot and will not be permitted to transgress the laws of the United States. Furthermore, the Indians should be made to understand that it is the government of the United States, and not the Chief Factors of the Hudson’s Bay Company, to whom they are to look for protection. Every person who is informed on the subject knows that there is a large majority of the Indians of the territory who are more under the influence and control of the British Hudson’s Bay Company than that of our American authorities. Let this undue influence have a termination.
“It is time that the Chief Factors should know that, as foreigners operating under a charter from a foreign government, they cannot and will not be permitted to transgress the laws of the United States.”
This reflects the mid-19th-century geopolitical struggle over the Pacific Northwest, where American settlers fought to dismantle the economic power of the British-chartered Hudson’s Bay Company. It marks a transition from a colonial fur-trade economy to the American model of land settlement and private corporate competition.
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