Rocky Mountain Fort: Archaeological Research and the Late Eighteenth-century North West Company Expansion into British Columbia

A recent BC Studies article by K. F. Fladmark ( 1985 ) provides a summary overview of early fur trade history along the upper Peace River in British Columbia. This history begins with Alexander Mackenzie's voyage to the Pacific coast in 1793, and continues to 1823 when the occupants of St. John's, a post at the Beatton River mouth, were murdered by Beaver Indians. For all but three of these years ( 1820-23 ), the North West Com­ pany exercised monopolistic control. Fladmark notes that primary docu­ ments relating to this period are few, and confusion exists over the origins and location for the sites. This is particularly so for the earliest post, Rocky Mountain Fort; a number of provincial histories have failed to recognize it altogether (e.g., Ormsby 1958). Through the diligent efforts of Fladmark, this no longer can be the case. In 1975, Fladmark (1985; also Fladmark, Finlay and Spurting 1977) rediscovered the location of Rocky Mountain through descriptions left in David Thompson's journal for the year 1804. The site was situated on the south shore of the Peace River near its confluence with the Moberly River (figure 1). Test excavations in the 1976 field season (Spurting, Finlay and Fladmark 1976), combined with archival research (F. Finlay 1976), conclusively verified Fladmark's identification. Rocky Mountain had been established by the North West Company in the last decade of the eighteenth century, and it was the earliest land-based fur trade site in British Columbia. Of equal importance, as Fladmark also notes, was the availability of a published journal (O'Neil 1928). The Journal of the Rocky Mountain Fort had been kept by an anonymous author for the trade season of 1799/1800 (O'Neil 1928). Descriptions in this docu­ ment potentially facilitate the interpretation of archaeological remains and allow for a more complete understanding of Peace River fur trade history. Since the publication of Fladmark's 1985 article, we have conducted two seasons of archaeological excavation at Rocky Mountain Fort. In the following paper we summarize the results of this work and place these data within a historical framework for the fur trade of the upper Peace River region. 3

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.