The North Saskatchewan River was an important artery for the fur trade. (File photo/paNOW Staff)

By Alison Sandstrom

Local history

Council supports plan to designate former fur trading post as Heritage Site

Mar 7, 2021 | 8:00 AM

A plan to designate the location of a former fur trading post a Saskatchewan Heritage Site has the backing of Prince Albert city council.

The campaign to have Lower Hudson House recognized by the province is being led by two local history buffs. Peter Burns is one of them and appeared before council on Monday night to ask for a letter of support to include in their application.

Burns explained although the post was only active for nine years, it operated during a period of tremendous change in what is now Treaty 6 territory.

The Lower Hudson House site is located on the north side of the North Saskatchewan River in the R.M. of Shellbrook, approximately 50 km west of Prince Albert.

Established by the Hudson Bay Company in 1779, the creation of Lower Hudson House not only extended the company’s reach further inland but offered it access to valuable bison.

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“The reason that post was put where it was to get in bison country and so it really puts forward the ecology and the nature of this area as having the prairie bison filling this place, something that’s hard to envision today,” Burns told council.

Lower Hudson House was a hub of activity in its early years, with around 50 per cent of the western fur trade moving through it, according to documents Burns submitted to council. Journals kept by the Hudson Bay Company indicate Assiniboine, Cree, and Dakota traders were the primary visitors, along with A’aninin merchants and members of the Blackfoot Confederacy.

From Lower Hudson House, the furs were transported by canoe to York Factory on the shores of Hudson Bay. The voyage could take three to four weeks. The brigadiers were primarily Cree, Assiniboine, and Dakota, Burns said.

Just a few years after the post was established, the small-pox epidemic of 1781-82 devastated local Indigenous nations. The mortality rate among some groups was potentially as high as 95 per cent, according to Burn’s submission. In fact, 24 Indigenous smallpox victims are buried in the vicinity of Hudson House.

“The resulting population vacuum led to in-migration from the south and north dramatically altering the area’s cultural history and make-up, impacting the make-up of those groups entering into the Saskatchewan Treaty signings in later years,” the submission said.

The Hudson Bay Company closed Lower Hudson House in 1787 and it was burned to the ground by rivals four years later.

Today, its former location looks like any other part of the riverbank to the untrained eye. Burns told paNOW it’s completely overgrown with willow and poplar.

The draft Heritage Site application from Burns and Parr recommends a working group be established to oversee the creation of a parking area at an existing road with a signed walking trail to the site. It suggests the placement of a cairn and an interpretive plaque at the site and if possible, identification of the gravesites of the smallpox epidemic buried there.

“I can’t wait to see this facility opened,” Coun. Tony Head told Burns, following his presentation.

Head noted that discussions of the history of the area often begin with the signing of the treaties starting in the late 1800s.

“But there’s a lot of history and a whole other life that existed prior to treaty negotiation [and] treaty-making,” he said. “So I’m glad to see that you’re highlighting that.”

Editor’s note: a previous version of this article incorrectly stated Lower Hudson House closed in 1987 instead of 1787.

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alison.sandstrom@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @alisandstrom