MtMan-List: Re: Whiskey in the Fur Trade

[agottfre@telusplanet.net (Angela Gottfred)]

 mxhbc@TTACS.TTU.EDU (Henry B. Crawford) wrote :
>There is a good book called _Whiskey Peddler: John Healy, North Frontier
>Trader_, by William R. Hunt (1993), which deals in part with his role in
>the whiskey trade between Montana and Canada.  It wasn't during the
>Rendezvous era, but in the 1860s, after HBC gave up Rupert's Lands in
>Alberta, and left a vaccuum which the Canadian government was unable to
>fill until the (1874) creation of the Northwest Mounted Police.  Until that
>time, the whiskey trade was wide open and unregulated.  American officials
>squelched the trade which had operated out of Fort Benton, but traders
>simply moved to Alberta and established Fort Hamilton (the precursor to the
>city of Calgary) and inticed trading Indians to travel up the Whoop Up
>Trail to trade furs, robes, etc for goods and whiskey (Fort Hamilton was
>also called Fort Whoop Up). 

It's not my period, but it IS my neighborhood, so I have to add a couple of 
notes: the whisky trade started up after the HBC ceded 'Rupert's Land' 
(Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta) to Canada in 1869. 
In May 1873, about 30 Assiniboine Indians were massacred by whites near the 
whisky fort called Farwell's Post (the Cypress Hills Massacre). As a result, 
the NWMP was formed to clamp down on the illicit whisky trade here in 
Alberta. There were a number of other small whisky posts, such as Kipp's 
Post, Standoff, and Slideout, but Fort Hamilton was the big one. It is much 
better-known here as Fort Whoop-up. It was not on the site of Calgary; it is 
a few hundred miles to the south, on the site of the city of Lethbridge.  In 
fact, the recreated Fort Whoop-up is in Lethbridge, and Lethbridge 
celebrates Whoop-up Days every year. Calgary was pretty much bald prairie 
until the NWMP arrived and set up Fort Calgary in 1875. 

Your humble & obedient servant,
Angela Gottfred
agottfre@telusplanet.net