The Battle of Seven Oaks—also known as the Seven Oaks Massacre and the Seven Oaks Incident—was a violent confrontation of the Pemmican War between the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and the North West Company (NWC) which occurred on 19 June 1816 near modern-day Winnipeg, Manitoba.
In January 1814 Governor Miles MacDonell, appointed by Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk issued to the inhabitants of the Red River area a proclamation which became known as the Pemmican Proclamation. The proclamation was issued in attempt to stop the Métis people from exporting pemmican out of the Red River district. Cuthbert Grant, leader of the Métis, disregarded MacDonell's proclamation and continued the exportation of pemmican to the North West Company. The proclamation overall, became one of many areas of conflict between the Métis and the Red River settlers. Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk had sought interest in the Red River District, with the help of the Hudson's Bay Company as early as 1807. However, it was not until 1810 that the Hudson's Bay Company asked Lord Selkirk for his plans on settling in the interior of Canada.
Fort Espérance was a North West Company trading post near Rocanville, Saskatchewan from 1787 until 1819. It was moved three times and was called Fort John from 1814 to 1816. There was a competing XY Company post from 1801 to 1805 and a Hudson's Bay post nearby from 1813 to 1816. It was on the Qu'Appelle River about 20 km from that river's junction with the Assiniboine River and about 7 km west of the Manitoba border. It was on the prairie in buffalo country and was mainly used as a source of pemmican which was sent down the river to Fort Bas de la Rivière at the mouth of the Winnipeg River.
Fort La Reine was built in 1738 and is one of the forts of the western expansion directed by Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vérendrye, first military commander in the west of what is now known as Canada. Located on the Assiniboine River where present day Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, stands, the fort served as a fur trading post. It was also the base of operations for much exploration north and west. From Fort La Reine, explorers made their way to Lake Manitoba and Lake Winnipegosis, Lake Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan River.
Fort Carlton was a Hudson's Bay Company fur trading post from 1795 until 1885. It was located along the North Saskatchewan River not far from Duck Lake, in what is now the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The fort was rebuilt by the government of Saskatchewan as a feature of a provincial historic park and can be visited today. It is about 65 kilometres (40 mi) north of Saskatoon.
Wawanesa is an unincorporated urban community in the Municipality of Oakland – Wawanesa within the Canadian province of Manitoba that held village status before January 1, 2015. It is the birthplace of The Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Co.
Lt.-Colonel The Hon. William McGillivray, of Chateau St. Antoine, Montreal, was a Scottish-born fur trader who succeeded his uncle Simon McTavish as the last chief partner of the North West Company until a merger between the NWC and her chief rival - the Hudson Bay Company. He was elected a member of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada and afterwards was appointed to the Legislative Council of Lower Canada. In 1795, he was inducted as a member into the Beaver Club. During the War of 1812 he was given the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Corps of Canadian Voyageurs as he was the highest up in the NWC's business hierarchy; the ranks of the Corps reflected one's position within the NWC as the Company had created the Corps under their own volition, and using employees as soldiers. He owned substantial estates in Scotland, Lower and Upper Canada. His home in Montreal was one of the early estates of the Golden Square Mile. McGillivray Ridge in British Columbia is named for him, as well as a handful of elementary schools in Ontario, Quebec, or British Columbia.
The York Factory Express, usually called "the Express" and also the Columbia Express and the Communication, was a 19th-century fur brigade operated by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). Roughly 4,200 kilometres (2,600 mi) in length, it was the main overland connection between HBC headquarters at York Factory and the principal depot of the Columbia Department, Fort Vancouver.
Bas de la Rivière is a geographical area on both sides of the Winnipeg River at and near the mouth where it empties into Lake Winnipeg. It had a storied historical period in the opening of the west and the subsequent fur trade and settlement.
Spruce Woods is a provincial electoral division in the Canadian province of Manitoba. It was created by redistribution in 2008 out of parts of Minnedosa and Turtle Mountain and notably gained parts of the City of Brandon and Arthur-Virden in the 2018 redistribution.
Fort Sturgeon (1776–1780) was the first trading post on the North Saskatchewan River. It was located about 4 miles west of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. It and was also called Peter Pond Fort, Fort Pond, Fort la Prairie, Fort des Prairies, Lower Settlement and Fort Sturgeon River.
Pine Island Fort and Manchester House were trading posts on Pine Island, a small narrow island on the North Saskatchewan River in Saskatchewan, Canada, from 1786 to 1793. Pine Island Fort was a post of the North West Company while Manchester House was a post of the Hudson's Bay Company.
Saskatchewan River fur trade The Saskatchewan River was one of the two main axes of Canadian expansion west of Lake Winnipeg. The other and more important one was northwest to the Athabasca Country. For background see Canadian canoe routes (early). The main trade route followed the North Saskatchewan River and Saskatchewan River, which were just south of the forested beaver country. The South Saskatchewan River was a prairie river with few furs.
Fort Montagne à la Bosse was a North West Company trading post from 1790 until 1805 or after during the Assiniboine River fur trade.
Fort des Épinettes was a trading post or posts on the Assiniboine River from 1768 to 1811. It was also called Pine Fort and is not to be confused with Pine Island Fort. It was the first post on the Assiniboine and was closely associated with Brandon House/Fort Assiniboine/Fort La Souris 18 miles to the west. For background see Assiniboine River fur trade.
Fur trading on the Assiniboine River and the general area west of Lake Winnipeg, in what is now Manitoba, Canada, began as early as 1731.
The Iron Confederacy or Iron Confederation was a political and military alliance of Plains Indians of what is now Western Canada and the northern United States. This confederacy included various individual bands that formed political, hunting and military alliances in defense against common enemies. The ethnic groups that made up the Confederacy were the branches of the Cree that moved onto the Great Plains around 1740, the Saulteaux, the Nakoda or Stoney people also called Pwat or Assiniboine, and the Métis and Haudenosaunee. The Confederacy rose to predominance on the northern Plains during the height of the North American fur trade when they operated as middlemen controlling the flow of European goods, particularly guns and ammunition, to other Indigenous nations, and the flow of furs to the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and North West Company (NWC) trading posts. Its peoples later also played a major part in the bison (buffalo) hunt, and the pemmican trade. The decline of the fur trade and the collapse of the bison herds sapped the power of the Confederacy after the 1860s, and it could no longer act as a barrier to U.S. and Canadian expansion.
The Pemmican War was a series of violent confrontations between the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and the North West Company (NWC) in the Canadas from 1812 to 1821. It started after the establishment of the Red River Colony by Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk in 1812, and ended in 1821 when the NWC was merged into the HBC. The conflict was sparked by the Pemmican Proclamation issued by Governor Miles Macdonell, which forbade any person from exporting pemmican, a key foodstuff for those involved in the North American fur trade, out of the Red River Colony. This was fiercely opposed by the Métis, who were mostly affiliated with the NWC and opposed to both the colony and the HBC's dominance in the region.
Lac Île-à-la-Crosse is a Y-shaped lake in the north-central region of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan along the course of the Churchill River. At the centre of the "Y" is the town of Île-à-la-Crosse, the second oldest town in Saskatchewan. Situated at the confluence of the Churchill and Beaver Rivers, the lake was an important fur trading centre in the 18th and 19th centuries. The lake, and the community of Île-à-la-Crosse, are named after the game of Lacrosse as French voyageurs had witnessed local Indians playing the game on an island in the lake.
The Municipality of Souris-Glenwood is a rural municipality (RM) in the Canadian province of Manitoba.
