3Trade and Colonial Rivalries

The fur trade was one of the earliest forms of sustained contact between Indigenous peoples and European newcomers. The Toronto Carrying-Place Trail linked fur traders with regions to the north, especially the fur-bearing region of Muskoka. French fur traders and those of mixed Indigenous and French heritage (and, later, British traders) sought beaver fur because felt hats had become fashionable in Europe and beaver fur could be turned into waterproof felt. In exchange, Indigenous peoples gained access to metal knives, copper pots, needles, mirrors, blankets, woven cloth, ribbons, and guns and ammunition.

French Trade on the Humber, 1660s–1759

The main route of the fur trade was from Georgian Bay to the French River through Lake Nipissing to the Mattawa River and then down the Ottawa River to Montreal. But the two portage routes along the Humber and Rouge Rivers allowed Indigenous traders to send furs to the French in Montreal (via Lake Ontario) or to the English at Albany (on the Hudson River) and, later, Fort Oswego (on Lake Ontario) depending on who offered the best prices and highest-quality trade goods—usually the English. Because beaver was extirpated in their territories south of Lake Ontario, the Seneca established themselves on the Humber and Rouge Rivers to access the Canadian Shield’s best fur-bearing regions.

The French began trading with the Seneca at Teiaiagon in the 1660s. The introduction of sailing vessels on Lake Ontario in 1678 promoted the use of the portage route along the Humber River since it had good anchorages near its mouth for larger vessels.¹ The principal trade good on offer was alcohol.

In 1720, after the Mississaugas gained control of the area, the French established their first trading post, the Magasin Royal, at the site of Teiaiagon, but it was short-lived. Competition from the English on the lake’s south shore led the French, in 1750, to build a larger trading post, known as Fort Toronto, at the mouth of the Humber. It was soon relocated to the east (at the site of today’s Exhibition Grounds) and described, in 1757, as “Toronto, or Saint-Victor, a small fort made of stakes on Lake Ontario, to sell l’eau de vie [brandy] to the [Mississaugas] in order to counterbalance the trade that happens at [Oswego].”²

Competition between France and Britain resulted in a series of intercolonial wars in the eighteenth century that extended through much of eastern North America. In addition to regular troops and militia, both colonial powers relied on the military service of their Indigenous allies. The Anishinaabek (including the Mississaugas), the “Canadian Iroquois” of the St. Lawrence Valley,³ and others fought on the side of the French, and the Six Nations and others fought on the side of the British—though these Indigenous warriors were often reluctant to fight each other. Towards the end of the Seven Years War, in 1759, the French abandoned and destroyed Fort Toronto (also known as Fort Rouillé). Although the British and Haudenosaunee defeated the French in 1760, France’s Indigenous allies were not conquered.

After 1760, the Mississaugas traded exclusively with the English, who claimed the region as their own.

And things were going more or less fine until the French were expelled by the British . . . Because the French never wanted our lands. They wanted a trading post here or a chapel there or some small thing, and they more or less were friendly to us. They intermarried with us. Learned the language. And they weren’t greedy for anything except beaver pelts.

—Darin Wybenga, Mississaugas of
the Credit⁴

After Britain’s defeat of New France in 1760, Toronto Mississauga Chief Wabbicommicot and most local Mississaugas chose not to fight with Pontiac in the Indigenous resistance to the British that broke out in 1763; in fact, Wabbicommicot helped bring about a peaceful resolution. Wabbicommicot then attended the massive 1764 Council at Niagara, which extended the existing Covenant Chain alliance between the Haudenosaunee and English to France’s former allies, including the Anishinaabek. The Treaty of Niagara laid the foundation for peaceful relations in what became Canada. The British promised that Indigenous peoples would never live in poverty and could call on the British in times of need—promises still recalled today.⁵

The British Trade after 1760

The Council at Niagara also set British exchange rates for trade goods and furs and restored trade that had been disrupted by Pontiac’s War. As the British extended control over the Toronto area, fur traders, licensed and unlicensed, returned to the Humber. They mostly traded alcohol, but they also sold more useful trade goods.⁶ Jacques Duperon Baby (of the Detroit fur-trading Baby family) received a licence to trade in 1762, but the extent of his trade is unknown. (Sometime after 1816, his son James Baby—a politician, judge, wealthy landowner, slave owner, speculator, and member of the Family Compact—would buy fifteen hundred acres on the east bank of the Humber and build a large home at the site of Teiaiagon, now Baby Point, north of Bloor Street.⁷ In 1830, he was appointed one of the trustees for the Six Nations of the Grand River trust funds. He was later removed from that office.)⁸

The first legal fur traders of note under the British were French traders Jean-Bonaventure Rousseau and his son Jean-Baptiste Rousseau. In 1770, Jean-Bonaventure Rousseau received a licence to trade at the Humber River. The merchandise in his first trading expedition included 80 imperial gallons (360 litres) of rum, 15 imperial gallons (73 litres) of wine, four fusils (light flintlock muskets), 300 pounds of gunpowder, and 16 hundredweight (approximately 1,792 pounds or 813 kilograms) of shot and balls.⁹ In 1774, Rousseau Sr. delegated the trade on the Humber to his son Jean-Baptiste, known as St. John Rousseau to the English. The river became known as St. John’s River.

Another trader who may have been trading on or near the Humber as early as 1775 was Joseph Shepard, a Loyalist who came from the United States in 1774 and became a “roving Indian trader in the vicinity of York.”¹⁰ He married (Maria) Catherine Fisher, sister of Elizabeth Fisher Cummer and an aunt of Elizabeth Fisher Stong, who lived at the farm that forms the nucleus of The Village at Black Creek.¹¹ Shepard settled on Lot 16, northwest of Yonge and Sheppard (the street was named after him).

Impact of the Fur Trade

The fur trade began as an exchange for mutual benefit. It depended on Indigenous labour and alliances with Indigenous people and provided Indigenous people with access to highly valued, labour-saving European trade goods. It built on networks of exchange and reciprocity already established between Indigenous Nations over great distances. It mimicked Indigenous practices of reciprocal gift giving central to their cultures, governance, and spiritual practices, and bonds of trust and amity, including marriage and other forms of kinship, formed between Indigenous and European peoples. For example, in 1771, Nanebeaujou, one of the Head Chiefs of southern Georgian Bay, came to trade on the Humber and adopted English fur trader Ferral Wade as his son. The trading relationship was enhanced through fictive kinship, ensuring that both Wade and his followers acted responsibly—as relatives. Wade described his adoption in a letter to his employer, Sir William Johnson:

He told me to sit by him that he wanted to speak to me. he then pulled Out ten strings of Wampum & spoke as follows, It gives me and my people great pleasure that you Intend to Continue among Us. now that we know where to [obtain] supplies to our Liking. keep up your Spirits and be Assured My people will Look on this house as their Own then taking me by the hand he now took me as his Child, and All the Indians should Look on me as such. then holding up the Strings those is Like your Writing they don’t tell Lyes. you may depend on having a Great Many Indians this fall & Winter treat them kindly when they Come.¹²

Over time, the fur trade’s negative impacts became clearer. Contact with Europeans exposed Indigenous peoples to lethal European diseases to which they had no acquired immunity. Trade also incorporated Indigenous peoples into wider European economic relations, ensnaring them in relations of credit and debt, in a market system in which prices could fluctuate considerably according to distant and capricious economic forces beyond their control—but usually to the advantage of Europeans. As a result, they also became increasingly subject to European law.

The fur trade imported an exploitative form of resource extraction that contradicted the Indigenous practices of conservation and maintaining balance in ecological relationships. It undermined the spiritual relationship between Indigenous peoples and fur-bearing animals. The drastic reduction in beaver populations changed water levels, which altered the relationships between other plant and animal species. The trade also altered the balance of power between Indigenous Nations, between those who had easy access to pelts and those who didn’t, and between those who had early access to guns and those who didn’t. Within communities, the intensification of the fur trade along with intermarriages between European fur traders and Indigenous women altered relations between Indigenous men and women.

Although historians have labelled it the “fur” trade and highlighted the useful goods exchanged for furs, a key trade item was alcohol, an intoxicant previously unknown to Indigenous peoples. Its use—for a variety of reasons—appears to have led to addiction for some and widespread social disruption, which many Indigenous leaders tried to stop. From a fur trader’s point of view, alcohol was an ideal trade good because it could be consumed quickly and could be addictive, fuelling demand. In the 1670s, French fur traders from Fort Cataraqui (present-day Kingston) got the entire village of Teiaiagon (including children) drunk for three days.¹³

The Mississaugas complained frequently that the fur traders only sold alcohol. In the 1820s, they complained that fur traders were forcing alcohol on them and threatening them with violence if they became sober. Alcohol was absolutely central to the trade—and intimately connected to colonial processes.¹⁴

According to historian Peter Schmalz, the highest officials in the British Indian Department made their fortunes through the alcohol trade, even though they were witness to the destruction it wrought. Both Europeans and Indigenous people commented on the havoc created in Indigenous communities by the alcohol traders at York, and the appeals of abstinence-focused Christian movements such as Methodism can only be understood in relation to this devastation. Alcohol also became a source of friction between the Mississaugas close to York and other Anishinaabek from Lakes Huron and Simcoe, who were initially less affected by its ravages.¹⁵ As Europeans despoiled Indigenous fishing and hunting grounds, and as diseases killed huge numbers of Indigenous peoples, alcohol misuse became a marker and symptom of Indigenous trauma. Yet its continuing presence in the fur trade was complex. Indigenous peoples demanded that fur traders make it available to them and favoured traders who did.

The provision of alcohol enmeshed local peoples in global systems of human exploitation, notably the slave trade. The alcohol that traders offered to Indigenous peoples was increasingly produced by enslaved African peoples on Caribbean sugar plantations, generating immense wealth for British slaveholders and investors. Later, alcohol would be a factor in the development of a local sex trade.

Paradoxically, local fur traders often had good relations with Indigenous people or were part Indigenous themselves. Many learned Indigenous languages and had at least a rudimentary understanding of Indigenous culture and protocol. They learned to use Indigenous technologies such as canoes and snowshoes to meet Indigenous trappers in their own world. They certainly had far more contact with Indigenous peoples than most settlers.