By Randy Freeman -- Fort Yukon was the Hudson’s Bay Company’s most remote and lucrative trading post. Too bad it was on Russian soil.
In the summer of 1847 a bold young Scotsman named Alexander Hunter Murray was building an unusually fortified trading-post for the Hudson’s Bay Company. “Fort Youcon” would be the company’s most remote post ever, Its walls were almost four-and-a-half metres tall, 20 centimetres thick, and considered “(musket)-ball proof.” Its roomy bastions were scored with numerous gun slots, which suggested the place had a more sinister purpose than for simply fur-trading. It was 230 kilometres from modern-day Fairbanks, Alaska, on the Yukon River near its junction with the Porcupine – deep within Russian territory. “When all this is finished,” Murray wrote in his journal, “the Russians may advance when they damned please.”
Between 1733 and 1867 Alaska and the Aleutian Islands were officially Russian colonies, made desirable because of lucrative fur-trading opportunities. In 1799 the Tsar chartered the Russian-American Company, which erected trading posts throughout its American region. To prevent overlap between that company and the HBC, in 1825 the Russians and Brits drew a boundary along the 141st meridian. They agreed that any land west of this meridian, plus the Alaskan panhandle, was Russian territory, while anything to the east was British. Both parties agreed not to cross the border. It would be decades before anyone realized the Brits had no intention of keeping their promise.
In retrospect, though, westward encroachment by the Hudson’s Bay Company seemed perhaps inevitable. In the early 1800s it was quickly advancing down the Mackenzie Valley. By 1840 chief trader John Bell had built Fort McPherson on the Peel River, just south of the Mackenzie Delta, and in 1844 word of the rich fur-country over the mountains to the west lured Bell up the Rat River, across McDougal Pass, down the Porcupine River – and across the 141st meridian into Russian Alaska.
Bell could see the huge profit potential from this virgin country, not yet marked with a trading post. As his report circulated through the upper echelons of HBC offices in Montréal and London, a plucky plan began to take shape. But first they would need a bold fur-trader, one who would not only build a post on Russian soil but would also be willing to defend it. Company management would do its part by keeping the location of the new post secret, using fuzzy maps, obscure reports and a little geographic slight-of-hand,
The HBC didn’t have to look far to find their man. Twenty-seven-year-old Alexander Hunter Murray had just signed on as a clerk at Fort Garry, Manitoba. Murray had already spent almost 10 years learning the fur-trading business at posts in Louisiana, Texas and Missouri before moving north. The HBC sent him to Fort Simpson, headquarters of the Mackenzie District, then down the Mackenzie River to Fort McPherson. Murray spent the winter of 1846-47 preparing to cross the mountains to Lapierre House on the West Rat River (now the Bell River) with instructions to proceed down the Porcupine to find a suitable location on the Yukon River to build a well-fortified trading post.
By the end of June 1847, construction was underway at a site almost five kilometres up the Yukon from the mouth of the Porcupine. Word about a trading post quickly spread and local Gwich’in began showing up. Murray had many questions for them – about the nature of the surrounding country, the people who lived there, and most importantly, where the Russians were.
The locals offered up both good news and bad. The area, as reported by Bell, was indeed rich in fur-bearing animals, and there were plenty of Gwich’in trappers willing to trade pelts for beads and guns. But on the downside, a large Russian boat had been up the river the previous summer. According to Murray’s journal entry a Gwich’in chief told him that the Russians were “all well armed with pistols, their boat was about the same size as ours, but, as he thought, made of sheet iron, but carrying more people.” The really bad news was that the Russians had promised to return the next summer with two boats and even more well-armed men. “This was not very agreeable news to me, knowing that we were on their land,” Murray wrote. “But I kept my thoughts to myself, and determined to keep a sharp lookout in case of surprise.”
Two days later Murray awoke to the sound of gunfire. Thoughts of a Russian invasion crossed his mind, but it turned out the local Gwich’in were shooting into the air as they always did when they approached a stranger’s camp. According to locals it was a signal for peace, not war. A very jumpy Murray never quite got used to this tradition.
While construction of the trading post was well underway, Murray had to bone up on his sales pitch. He told the Gwich’in that even though the British and the Russians were both white, they were very different people. When it came to trading, Murray told them Russians had a reputation for cheating, their trade goods were shoddy and overpriced, and they only came into the country once a year. According to Murray the British, on the other hand, were honest, friendly people with quality goods offered at fair prices. And they would soon have a post that would be open year-round.
The promised Russian boats never did materialize on the Yukon River that summer, but that winter Murray learned this was only because they’d had trouble building suitable vessels in time for the summer trade.
Meanwhile, word from Gwich’in trappers who’d returned from a Russian trading post on the lower Yukon River wasn’t good. The Russians had somehow gotten wind of the HBC trespassers on their land. Their first reaction was to launch a public-relations campaign, first dramatically lowering their prices before telling the Gwich’in that Brits were bad people carrying diseases only the Russians had medicine for.
The propaganda war continued through the winter of 1847-48, and in the spring Murray learned that the Russians were armed with more than just rhetoric. They had apparently launched an overland expedition the previous winter, planning to attack Fort Yukon. Mercifully for Murray, severely cold weather had sent them back – though only temporarily. Murray later learned the rival traders were planning to sail up river in a cannon-mounted boat in the summer. They meant business. Unfazed, Murray dryly wrote in his post journal: “Well, the Russians are to be here, and with a cannon, and I suppose with the intention of blowing us all to hell.”
Yet over Murray’s four-year command of Fort Yukon the attack by “those damned Russians” never occurred. The 600-kilometre trek up the Yukon River proved insurmountable. And besides, their trade along the Alaskan coast, though perhaps less profitable than in the interior, was far less trouble. This suited the Hudson’s Bay Company just fine; their profit was high during the mid- and late-1800s, with Fort Yukon leading the way.
In 1867, when the Americans purchased Alaska from Russia, U.S. diplomats questioned the HBC’s creative geography and in 1869 sent a naval captain to take a look. The jig was finally up. The HBC had to beat a hasty eastward retreat up the Porcupine River, but only went as far as Rampart House – still on American soil. The HBC managed to hang on, conducting trade on U.S. turf, until 1890, when the Americans found out and finally kicked them back across the border.
