An important circumstance now transpired which was not without effect upon the Company's trade; and which, for a time, gave the Adventurers great uneasiness.
In 1727 Burnett had been appointed to the Governorship of New York. Finding that the French in Canada were in possession of all the Indian fur-trade of the north and west, which was not in the Hudson's Bay Company's hands, and that the New Englanders and Iroquois were trafficking with the Iroquois, he determined to take a bold step with a view to crippling the French.
Attempt of New England to secure the fur-trade.
It had long been understood that the chief support of New France was in the fur commerce; and upon enquiry it was found that the traders, of Quebec and Montreal, were chiefly supplied with European merchandise for barter from the New York merchants, from whom they procured it upon much easier terms than it could possibly be got from France. With this knowledge, the Governor resolved to foster the fur-trade of his colony by inducing direct transactions with the Indians. He procured an Act in the Assembly of the colony, prohibiting the trade in merchandise from New York. The colonial merchants were, not unnaturally, up in arms against such a measure; but Burnett, bent upon carrying his point, had their appeal to King George set aside and the Act confirmed by that monarch.
Contemporary French Map of the Bay and Vicinity.
By this measure, trade at once sprang up with the Western Indians, since the French had no goods to offer them in any way to their liking at a reasonable price. Intercourse and familiarity ensued moreover in consequence; a fortified trading post was built at Oswego, which not only drew away trade from the French, at Michilimackinac and St. Marie, but from Albany and Moose as well.
Boundaries between French and English territory.
It has been observed that the ancient boundaries of Canada or New France were circumscribed by the Treaty of Utrecht, and that it is difficult to determine precisely the new boundaries assigned to it. The general interpretation adopted by the British geographers, as the country gradually became better known from that time up to the final cession of Canada, was that the boundary ran along the high lands separating the waters that discharged into the St. Lawrence from those that discharge into Hudson's Bay to the sources of the Nepigon River, and thence along the northerly division of the same range of high lands dividing the waters flowing direct to Hudson's Bay, from those flowing into Lake Winnipeg, and crossing the Nelson, or (as it was then known) the Bourbon River, about midway between the said Lake and Bay, thence passing to the west and north by the sources of Churchill River; no westerly boundary being anywhere assigned to Canada. This and other measures could have but one result: to make the French traders and the Government of New France perceive that their only hope to avert famine and bankruptcy lay in penetrating farther and farther into the west, in an effort to reach remote tribes, ignorant of true values and unspoilt by a fierce and ungenerous rivalry.