North West Company

   Organized in 1795, by a number of merchants chiefly of Montreal, engaged in the fur trade. The first "partners," or bourgeois, of the Company were Simon McTavish, Joseph Frobisher, John Gregory, William McGillivray, Angus Shaw, Roderick McKenzie, Cuthbert Grant, Alexander McLeod, and William Thorburn. Most of them had previously been in the North-West as independent fur traders. A new agreement was entered into by the then partners in 1802; in 1804 the Company absorbed its vigorous rival, the X Y Company, and in 1821 was itself absorbed by the Hudson's Bay Company.

   Index: MS Early beginnings--Montreal traders enter the North-West, 2; oppose the Hudson's Bay Company, 3; the Frobishers build a post on Sturgeon Lake, 4; penetrate to Lake Athabaska, 5; their aggressiveness, 5; more than a match for the Hudson's Bay Company, 6; Company organized, 1783-1784, 6; opposition (X Y) Company formed, 6; absorbs rival interests, 1787, 6, 16; growth of fur trade, 7; amalgamates with Hudson's Bay Company, 8; rearrangements of partners and stock, 58; operations extended to Hudson Bay, 99; absorbs X Y Company, 1804, 99; opposes Red River settlers, 161-164; resents Miles Macdonell's proclamation, 170-171; sends Duncan Cameron and Alexander Macdonell to Red River, 172-173; breaks up the colony, 174-176. D Influence upon development of Pacific slope, 4; conserves British interests in western America, 17, 18. Hd Establishment of, 261-263. Bk Its headquarters at Montreal, 99. See also Hudson's Bay Company; X Y Company; Montreal Company.

   Bib.: Mackenzie, Voyages; Henry, Travels and Adventures; Henry-Thompson, Journals, ed. by Coues; Harmon, Journal; Narrative of Occurrences in the Indian Country; Sketch of the British Fur Trade; Bancroft, History of the North-West Coast; Bryce, Hudson's Bay Company; Begg, History of the North-West; Masson, Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest; Tassé, Canadiens de l'Ouest; Laut, Conquest of the Great North-West; Burpee, Search for the Western Sea.