One of the earliest works dealing with the fur trade in western Canada and the Great Lakes region. Umfreville’s work appeared at a difficult time for the Hudson’s Bay Company, and added to the criticism that it was “concealing the existence of a Northwest Passage and … reports that its chief Canadian rival, the North West Company, was hoping to convince the government that its own explorations entitled it to an exclusive trade in the north-west” (Williams). Umfreville himself was upset at not obtaining a command at the Company.
Umfreville Hudson’s Bay Company, for whom Umfreville worked from 1771 to 1782 when he was captured by La Pérouse at Fort York. After his release through an exchange of prisoners, he explored and traded in the region west of Lake Superior in the employ of the North West Company until 1788, when he went to New York. The text includes a printing of his journal, written during a trip from Montreal to New York, containing many references to Native languages, as well as the climate, soil, and natural history of the area.
Pilling notes that the Native languages references include: “Names of the months in the language of the Hudson’s Bay Indians, with signification, pp. 54–55.—Nehethawa names of the moons, pp. 191–192.—“A Specimen of sundry Indian Languages spoken in the Inland Parts of Hudson’s Bay, between that Coast and the Coast of California,” being a vocabulary of 44 words (on folding sheet facing p. 202) of the following languages: Nehethawa, or Ka-lis-te-no; As-sin-e-po-e-tuc, or Stone Indians; Fall Indians; Blackfoot Indians; Snake Indians [column blank]; Sussee Indians.”
Arctic Bibliography, 18187; Howes, U10 “b”; Lande, 1493; Pilling, 3951; Sabin, 97702; Williams, G., “The Hudson’s Bay Company and Its Critics in the Eighteenth Century” in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. 20 (1970), p.170.
