Treaty of Utrecht

With conflict abated, the French and English intensified their commercial activities in the Great Lakes and the Ohio Valley. This in turn increased trader activities in the Prairies. In Clearing the Plaines: Disease, politics of starvation, and the loss of Aboriginal Life, James Daschuk writes that "In the second decade of the eighteenth century, political events in Europe brought new momentum to the spread of European influence in western Canada. In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht ended a quarter-century of war between the French and English. Trading posts on the Hudson Bay coast (and access to the western interior of the continent) held by the French for a generation were returned to the Hudson’s Bay Company. With hostilities abated, the French reopened the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley to sanctioned commerce. The re-establishment of their inland networks soon cut into the English trade that depended on the arduous journeys of middlemen for their supply of furs. The reinvigorated French activity in the midwest forced the HBC to look northward for a new supply of furs. Governor James Knight was charged with extending the trade directly to the Dene people on the northern margins of the boreal forest. To succeed, he needed to stabilize relations among the Cree, Chipewyan, and other Dene speakers as far inland as Lake Athabasca who had been at war for decades. 26 In 1715, he sent William Stuart, the Chipewyan woman Thanadelthur, and a party of perhaps 150 Cree men, women, and children inland from York Factory to find the Chipewyan and make peace with them. They returned a year later with a truce. 27 The peace came with a price, however; the expedition had been plagued with sickness, starvation, and violence. The casualties included expedition leader Stuart, who returned a broken man, dying a “lunatic” in 1719. Other inland parties, such as the one sent to the southwestern plains in 1716, simply disappeared, thought to have perished from starvation. 28 ------------- the Cree, Chipewyan, and other Dene speakers as far inland as Lake Athabasca who had been at war for decades. 26 In 1715, he sent William Stuart, the Chipewyan woman Thanadelthur, and a party of perhaps 150 Cree men, women, and children inland from York Factory to find the Chipewyan and make peace with them. They returned a year later with a truce. 27 The peace came with a price, however; the expedition had been plagued with sickness, starvation, and violence. The casualties included expedition leader Stuart, who returned a broken man, dying a “lunatic” in 1719. Other inland parties, such as the one sent to the southwestern plains in 1716, simply disappeared, thought to have perished from starvation. 28 As the British company struggled to augment its fragile trade network, a limited outbreak of smallpox occurred at York Factory in 1720. Sickness did not spread inland, but infection of the local Homeguard Cree marked the first instance of it among them. 29 By the mid-1720s, the tenuous Chipewyan trade was undermined by the resumption of war between them and the Cree. 30 Because the Churchill hinterland was rich in furs, the HBC continued to pursue the difficult but potentially lucrative northern trade." Pg 17-18. The Treaty of Utrecht, ending violence between the Spanish, England, and French, would result in expanded colonial conquests of the English and French in North America. As this database reflects, these colonial conquests would result in widespread violence, discrimination, death, disease, and western expansion.