John Work of the Hudson's Bay Company
Leader of the California Brigade of 1832-33
By Alice Bay Maloney
JOHN WORK was an active participant in the fur trade of the Pacific slope during its peak years.1 His geographical range was wide, and he served the Hudson's Bay Company in many capacities: from his enrollment in 1814 as a writer he advanced through the ranks of steward, clerk, trader, and factor, and finally served as a member of the Legislative Council of Vancouver Island.2
From York Factory, headquarters of the company on Hudson's Bay, John Work's progress continued westward until he reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean in 1824.3 As leader of trapping and exploring parties he traveled with his men east to the Rocky Mountains and as far south as the Stanislaus River in central California. For many years he was stationed at Fort Simpson on the Northwest Coast. He explored the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Skeena River4 and other mainland streams in pursuit of his duties. His travels by canoe and horseback through numerous friendly and hostile Indian tribes gave him an intimate knowledge of a vast terrain and schooled him in the rough diplomacy which characterized the dealings of a great fur company with savage peoples drawn by the fur trade into the international network of world commerce.
The fur trade of the Pacific Northwest had a maritime inception, but from 1793, when Alexander McKenzie, of the North West Company of Montreal, broke through the barrier of the Rocky Mountains and spanned the continent from coast to coast, the land fur trade began its slow development toward the high point reached in the 1830's. Simon Fraser and John Stuart established posts on the lakes of New Caledonia, in what is now British Columbia, in 1807, and heard from the Indians stories of the Americans, Lewis and Clark, who had reached the mouth of the Columbia River in 1805. Fraser descended, in 1808, the river which bears his name but found the stream unnavigable and with no site suitable for a fur trade post.
Two great fur companies, the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company, were competitors for the furs of the northern portion of the North American continent, but prior to 1821 the Hudson's Bay Company did not extend its activities west of the continental divide. The North West Company sent David Thompson on several trips of exploration and trade promotion, and his maps and journals are witnesses to the extent of his travels and knowledge of the region now covered by the states of Washington, Montana, and Idaho. He traced the course of the Columbia River to its mouth, which he reached in 1811.
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