Northern North America (1684–1827 CE); Empires Contested, Nations Born, Frontiers Pushed

Geography & Environmental Context

Northern North America includes the modern United States and Canada, excluding the West Indies. It is divided into three subregions:

• Northeastern North America: east of 110°W, from New England and the Maritimes through the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay to Virginia, the Carolinas, most of Georgia, and the Mississippi Valley above Little Egypt.

• Northwestern North America: west of 110°W, from Alaska and the Yukon to the Pacific Northwest and northern California north of the Gulf line.

• Gulf and Western North America: the wedge south of the Montana diagonal, encompassing the plantation South, the Mississippi Valley below Illinois’ Little Egypt, the Plains, the Southwest, and California south of the Oregon border.

Together, these lands embraced a mosaic of boreal forest, prairie, Appalachian highlands, arid plains, subtropical deltas, and Pacific fjords. Each subregion developed distinct lifeways, but all were drawn into the same imperial rivalries and revolutionary transformations.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

The Little Ice Age persisted into the 18th century, bringing harsh winters to the northeast, erratic salmon and root harvests in the northwest, and drought cycles to the Southwest. Hurricanes battered the Gulf coast, while floods shaped the Mississippi delta. Resource pressures mounted: beaver populations declined from overtrapping, forests receded around port towns and plantations, and horse herds spread across the Plains.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Indigenous nations maintained diverse economies: maize horticulture in the northeast and southeast, bison hunting on the Plains, salmon fisheries along Pacific rivers, and seal and whale hunting in the Arctic.

• Colonial settlements took different forms: French Canada and Louisiana, Spanish missions in the Southwest and California, British seaboard colonies, and Russian posts in Alaska.

• The United States, born of revolution, expanded westward into Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Ohio Valley, while Loyalists and Acadians reshaped Canada’s demography.

Technology & Material Culture

Indigenous technologies — birchbark canoes, snowshoes, horse gear, cedar plankhouses, irrigation systems — persisted alongside European imports: muskets, iron tools, plows, mills, sailing ships, and missions. Hybrid cultures emerged, such as Métis in the fur trade, African-descended Gullah in the Carolinas, and Spanish-Indian ranching lifeways in the Southwest.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

• Rivers: the St. Lawrence, Great Lakes, Mississippi, and Columbia were arteries of commerce and war.

• Maritime networks: Atlantic ports linked to Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa; Gulf and Pacific ports tied into global markets.

• Overland corridors: mission trails, fur brigades, and horse trade networks tied regions together.

• Migration: enslaved Africans carried to the South, European immigrants to the seaboard and interior, Loyalist refugees to Canada, and Indigenous nations displaced westward.

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

Indigenous diplomacy — wampum belts, council fires, potlatch ceremonies, and Green Corn rituals — remained central. European religions spread: Catholicism in French and Spanish zones, Protestantism in the British colonies, syncretic traditions among African and Native peoples. Symbols of sovereignty proliferated: forts, flags, treaties, missions, and plantations marked territorial claims.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

Indigenous nations diversified subsistence, shifting to fur trapping, mounted bison hunting, or blending ritual with Catholic observance. Colonists adapted to hurricanes, droughts, and floods with new architecture, irrigation, and crop rotations. Food storage, trade alliances, and hybrid practices allowed resilience in a volatile climate.

Political & Military Shocks

• Imperial wars: Nine Years’ War, Queen Anne’s War, and the Seven Years’ War reshaped borders and alliances.

• Revolutions: The American Revolution created the United States; the Haitian Revolution reverberated through the Gulf; Indigenous uprisings, from Tecumseh’s confederacy to Pueblo resistance, challenged colonial regimes.

• Territorial transfers: Louisiana Purchase (1803), Florida cession (1821), Russian America consolidations in Alaska.

• War of 1812: Britain and the U.S. contested Great Lakes and Gulf coasts, leaving Native confederacies weakened.

Transition

Between 1684 and 1827, Northern North America was transformed from a patchwork of Indigenous nations and rival empires into a continental stage of settler republics, expanding frontiers, and Indigenous dispossession. The fur trade, cod fisheries, plantations, and salmon runs tied its subregions into global markets, while revolution and war redrew its maps. By 1827, the United States was pushing across Appalachia, Canada remained in Britain’s orbit, Russian America and Spanish missions dotted the Pacific, and Native nations, though battered, continued to anchor economies and cultures from the Arctic to the Gulf.

Thomas Douglas, 5th earl of Selkirk, had in 1811 obtained from the Hudson’s Bay Company an extensive grant of land in Canada’s valley of the Red River of the North (the area around present-day Winnipeg, Manitoba).

Selkirk had become interested in the concept of settling the area after reading Alexander Mackenzie's 1801 book on his adventures in what is today the west of Canada.

At the time, social upheaval in Scotland due to the introduction of sheep farming and the ensuing Highland and Lowland Clearances have left a number of Scots destitute.

In purchasing a controlling interest in the Hudson's Bay Company and setting up the land grant, his objective is to gain control of the area to take control of the West from the company's rival, the Montreal-based North West Company.

Selkirk had sent out a small group of Scots to the area in 1811, but they were forced to pause for the winter in York Factory.

When they finally arrived in 1812, they built Fort Douglas, but by the time it was done, the growing season was over.

When farming started the next spring, the results were less than expected.

In 1814, Miles MacDonell, Governor of the Red River Colony, had issued the Pemmican Proclamation, which prohibited the export of pemmican from the colony for the next year.

This may have been to ensure food for the colony, or a business move to cut off the Nor'Westers.

Either way, the move touched off the Pemmican War.

The Nor'Westers, who rely on pemmican supplied to them by local Métis, were so upset that they destroy Fort Douglas and burned down all the buildings around it.

The fort was later rebuilt and relations settled down for a time.

Later in 1815, after several conflicts and apparently suffering from "severe emotional instability", MacDonell had resigned as governor of the Red River Colony.

Selkirk, hearing of the problems, has sent out a new governor, Robert Semple, an American businessman with no previous experience in the fur trade.

In 1816, a band of mostly Métis but including some French-Canadians, English, and Native American employees, led by Cuthbert Grant and working for the North West Company, seizes a supply of Hudson's Bay Company pemmican (that was stolen from the Métis) and are traveling to a meeting with traders of the North West Company to whom they intend to sell it.

They are met by Semple and a group of HBC men and settlers south of Fort Douglas along the Red River at a location known to the English as Seven Oaks, or la Grenouillière (Frog Plain) by the Métis.

The North West Company sends a French-Canadian, François-Firmin Boucher, to speak to Semple's men.

He and Semple argue, and a gunfight ensues when the English try to arrest Boucher and seize his horse.

Semple and his men have no chance against the Métis, who are skilled sharpshooters and outnumber Semple's forces by nearly three to one.

The Métis repulse the attack, killing twenty-one men, including Governor Semple.

Although early reports will state that the Métis had fired the first shot and begun the fray, Royal Commissioner W.B. Coltman will determine with "next to certainty" that one of Semple's men had fired first. (The Metis: Memorable Events and Memorable Personalities, by George and Terry Goulet, published 2006)

Simon Fraser, who is among the Nor’Westers charged by Selkirk with complicity in the previous year’s massacre, had retired soon after and settled in St. Andrews, Upper Canada.

Lord Selkirk reestablishes the Red River Settlement in 1817, sending in a force of about one hundred soldiers from the British Regiment de Meuron to enforce the peace (who will eventually become settlers themselves), while also capturing the Northwest outpost at Fort William.

There, Selkirk arrests numerous significant managers of the North West Company including Chief Director William McGillvray.

Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, leading the United States Exploring Expedition, surveys the west coast of North America, including the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Puget Sound, the Columbia River, San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento River, in 1841.

He lands at Fort Nisqually, an important fur trading and farming post of the Hudson's Bay Company in the Puget Sound area, part of the Hudson's Bay Company's Columbia Department, on May 11, 1840.

Wilkes holds the first American Independence Day celebration west of the Mississippi River in what is now Dupont, Washington on July 5, 1841.

The Pugets Sound Agricultural Company (PSAC) had been formed in 1840 as a subsidiary of the HBC to meet its contractual obligations with the Russian-American Company in the RAC-HBC Agreement.

Fort Nisqually and Cowlitz Farm are attached to the new venture, though it remains staffed and managed by HBC personnel.

In 1841 mostly Métis families from the Red River colony are hired by the PSAC to become pastoralists and farmers upon its two stations.

After traveling overland to Fort Vancouver by James Sinclair, fourteen Métis emigrant families from the Red River colony choose Fort Nisqually as their final destination.

Canada assumes control of Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory to form the Northwest Territories, where the Métis' grievances ignites the Red River Rebellion and the creation of the province of Manitoba in July 1870.

British Columbia and Vancouver Island (which had been united in 1866) join the confederation in 1871, while Prince Edward Island joins in 1873.

Louis Riel, like other Red River Métis who had left Manitoba, heads further west to start a new life.

Traveling to the Montana Territory in 1879, he becomes a trader and interpreter in the area surrounding Fort Benton.

Observing rampant alcoholism and its detrimental impact on the Native American and Métis people, he engages in an unsuccessful attempt to curtail the whisky trade.

Riel had been primarily concerned with religious rather than political matters during his time of exile.

Spurred on by a sympathetic Roman Catholic priest in Quebec, he had been increasingly influenced by his belief that he is a divinely chosen leader of the Métis.

Modern biographers have speculated that he may have suffered from the psychological condition megalomania.

His mental state had deteriorated, and following a violent outburst, he had been taken to Montreal, where he was under the care of his uncle, John Lee, for a few months, but after Riel disrupted a religious service, Lee had arranged to have him committed in an asylum in Longue Pointe on March 6, 1876 under the assumed name "Louis R. David".

Fearing discovery, his doctors soon transferred him to the Beauport Asylum near Quebec City under the name "Louis Larochelle".

While he suffered from sporadic irrational outbursts, he had continued his religious writing, composing theological tracts with an admixture of Christian and Judaic ideas.

He had consequently begun calling himself Louis "David" Riel, prophet of the new world, and he prayed (standing) for hours, having servants help him to hold his arms in the shape of a cross.

Nevertheless, he had slowly recovered, and had been released from the asylum on January 23, 1878, with an admonition to lead a quiet life.

He had returned for a time to Keeseville, where he had become involved in a passionate romance with Evelina Martin dit Barnabé, sister of his friend, the oblate father Fabien Barnabé, but with insufficient means to propose marriage, Riel had returned to the west, hoping that she might follow.

However, she had decided that she would be unsuited to prairie life, and their correspondence soon ended.

In the fall of 1878, Riel had returned to St. Paul, and briefly visited his friends and family.

This is a time of rapid change for the Métis of the Red River—the buffalo on which they depend are becoming increasingly scarce, the influx of settlers is ever-increasing, and much land is sold to unscrupulous land speculators.