The Hbc Brigades: Culture, Conflict and Perilous Journeys of the Fur Trade

A lively recounting of the men who faced a gruelling thousand-mile journey and First Nations people who struggled with the desire to resist, or assist, the fur company's attempts to build their brigade trails.

The brigades of the Hudson Bay Company pushed onward over mountains and through ferocious river crossings with their heavily laden packhorse trains to reach the isolated fur-trading posts. This book explores history west of the Rockies and tells the stories of the cultures, conflicts, and cooperation that existed between the many different peoples throughout what eventually became British Columbia and the American Pacific Northwest in the years before the invasion of the American gold miners broke everything wide open in summer 1858.

From the author of The York Factory Express: Fort Vancouver to Hudson Bay, 1826-1849