Category: Compagnie du Nord
Categories: British North America | British America | Fur Trade | Nouvelle-France | Rupert's Land | Exploration and Trade
The Compagnie du Nord (also referred to as the Northern Company) was a French colonial fur-trading company, founded in Québec City 1682 by a group of Canadien financiers with the express intent of competing with the English Hudson's Bay Company. It was founded by Charles Aubert de La Chesnaye with the assistance of Pierre-Esprit Radisson and his brother-in-law Médard Chouart des Groseilliers.
Sometime around 1663, the Ottawa people were driven westward from the area around Georgian Bay to the area around Lake Superior and Lake Michigan by the Iroquois. Settling around Chequamegon Bay, the Ottawa came into contact with tribes such as the Potawatomi, Sioux, Sauk, Meskwaki, Miami, and Illinois, and informed them of European demand for beaver pelts in exchange for European goods, becoming middlemen between these western peoples and the French in the east. The Ottawa enjoyed this position of middleman in trade until the founding of the English Hudson's Bay Company in 1670; this disrupted the French trading scheme, as instead of relying on overland routes from Québec and Ottawa middlemen, western tribes could trade directly with the English at Hudson Bay, offering more goods at much more favourable rates of exchange.
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