Factory (trading Post) - North American Factories (1697 To 1822)

North American Factories (1697 To 1822)

The American factories often played a strategic role as well, sometimes operating as forts, providing a degree of protection for Indians and allied colonists from enemy Indians and colonists. Later factories established by the United States often served to protect Indians from American citizens.

York Factory was founded by the chartered Hudson's Bay Company in 1697. For a longtime it was headquarters of the company, that was once the de facto government in parts of North America, like Rupert's Land, before European-based colonies and nation states existed. It controlled the fur trade throughout much of British-controlled North America for several centuries, undertaking early exploration. Its traders and trappers forged early relationships with many groups of First Nations/Native Americans and a network of trading posts formed the nucleus for later official authority in many areas of Western Canada and the United States.

The early coastal factory model contrasted with the system of the French, who established an extensive system of inland posts and sent traders to live among the tribes of the region. After war broke out in Europe between France and England in the 1680s, the two nations regularly sent expeditions to raid and capture each other's fur trading posts. In March 1686, the French sent a raiding party under Chevalier des Troyes over 1,300 km (810 mi) to capture the company's posts along James Bay. In 1697, Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, commander of the company's captured posts defeated three ships of the Royal Navy in the Battle of the Bay on his way to capture York Factory by a ruse. York Factory changed hands several times in the next decade and was finally ceded permanently in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. After the treaty, the Hudson Bay Company rebuilt York Factory as a brick star fort at the mouth of the nearby Hayes River, its present location.

The United States government sanctioned a factory system from 1796 to 1822, with factories scattered through the mostly territorial portion of the country.

The factories were officially intended through a series of legislation called the Indian Intercourse Acts to protect Native Americans from exploitation. However, in practice numerous tribes conceded extensive territory in exchange for the trading posts as happened in the Treaty of Fort Clark in which the Osage Nation ceded most of Missouri at Fort Clark.

Usually a blacksmith was assigned to the factory to repair utensils and build or maintain plows. Frequently the factories had some sort of milling operation associated with them.

The factories marked the United States' attempt to continue a process originally pioneered by the French and then by the Spanish to officially license the fur trade in Upper Louisiana.

Factories were frequently referred to as "forts" and often had numerous unofficial names. Legislation was often passed calling for military garrisons at the fort but their de facto purpose was a trading post.