History of Moose Factory
In 1664 the King’s commissioners arrived in Boston from England. Here they encountered two renegade French explorers Des Groseilliers and Radisson. Disgusted with corruption and ineptitude in New France these two men had come to Boston with the purpose of enlisting capital for financing adventures to Hudson Bay, reputedly rich in beaver fur. In the midst of the Plague and just before the Great Fire they arrived in London to speak with the newly restored Charles II and his cousin, Prince Rupert. English capital was spoiling for new enterprises and both capitalists and men of scientific bent were so impressed by the tales of these two men that in the spring of 1668 they were actually able to set sail in two tiny vessels across the North Atlantic bound for Hudson Bay. Radisson in the Eaglet was forced to return to England because of a storm which all but sank her, but Des Groseilliers in the Nonsuch was able to reach Hudson Bay and winter at Rupert River nearly at the tip of James Bay where a fort was built and contact made with the Indians. The following year the Nonsuch returned to England with a fine cargo of furs. Meantime the Hudson’s Bay Company was forming, composed of goldsmiths, bankers, merchants, courtiers and other prominent men of London and its vicinity. On 2nd May, 1670, the final and permanent charter to the "Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay" and the great seal, incorporating eighteen men into "one Body Corporate and Politique". Thus came into being the Hudson’s Bay Company.
On 31st May, 1670, the second expedition to the Bay set forth. The two vessels, the Prince Rupert and Wivenhoe, carried, besides Des Groseilliers and Radisson, the first overseas Governor of the Company, Charles Bayly.
A manuscript account of this expedition survives in the journal of one of its members, Thomas Gorst. From him we have mention of Moose River. According to him, Radisson went from Rupert River on 29th January, 1671, "to Moose Cebee (Moose River) a broad river about 18 leagues off the banks whereof are well furnished with straight and tall trees of Pine and Spruce fit for masts, some of them being near 60 inches circumference", and that he returned on 14 March to Rupert River but even then ".. could give no account of the depth of ye River, it being frozen over all ye while..". Later in the same year Radisson accompanied Governor Charles Bayly to Moose Ceebe where they "traded with ye People of that place and from thence had all ye Beaver which was brought home in ye Wivenho" (in 1671). At that time Radisson and Bayly merely traded with the Indians of Moose River and did not establish a trading post there.
In February, 1672, the Governor and Committee resolved to build their second fort at Moussebee: "That concerning the place of trade in the Countrey for the Shippes to procede unto Monssebae is the place resolved upon for that purpose, and a forte there to bee built, the Wivenhoe is agreed to be sent tither with Some brickes and nayles to serve for erecting the forte…".
Although Bayly was reappointed overseas governor after the success of his first voyage, and returned to the Bay in 1672, he wintered again at Charles Fort at Rupert River, and it was not until the following year that he built a small house for occasional occupation on Hayes Island about a mile from its western end. A satisfactory trade was established, and a treaty made with the Indians by which the English trading rights and possession of the soil were recognized.
In 1674, a trading party was sent from Rupert River to Moose. One thousand seven hundred and fifty skins were obtained, and, according to Bayly’s judgement, Moose or Fort Mousipi was soon to become the principal fort at the "bottom of the bay". The winter of 1674 to 1675 Governor Bayly spent at Moose and, from this time, until 1683, when it was superceded by Albany as the chief factory, Moose fort seems to have been permanently occupied and to have become the most important post. In their instructions to Governor John Nixon, Bayly’s successor, on the 29th May, 1680, the Governor and Committee stated: "wee judge it fit to keep our grand Factory where it now is upon Hayes Island in Moose River and there to keep our chief strength, to prevent the incroachment of the French too far upon the West Main".
According to all that we know of his previous history, the man, under whom Moose Factory was founded, seems a curious choice for overseas governor on the part of the new corporation. Charles Bayly was a renegade Quaker who, in his early days, had been imprisoned in Rome as a result of a mission, the aim of which had been to convert the Pope. Bayly’s zealousness also led him into trouble in England where he was, like many of his fellow believers, imprisoned many times. Finally he was released from imprisonment in the Tower on condition that he took "himselfe to the navigation of Hudson’s Bay, and the Places lately discovered and to be discovered in those parts". It must have been through Sir John Robinson, the lieutenant of the Tower, and one of the original adventurers, and first deputy Governor of the Company that Bayly obtained his appointment, and the fact that he was sent out to the Bay with experienced men of northern trade as his subordinated shows that he must have inspired respect and trust.
Bayly was finally recalled to England in 1679, and died early in 1680, before being able to clear his name of certain charges which had been brought against him. These cannot have been very serious, since the Company "bestowed an honourable buryall on him" by torchlight in the Church of St Paul’s, Coven Garden, and invited the Committee, members of the Company and some ship’s officers to attend the Corps". Apart from his burial in a steeple house there is one other confirming piece of evidence that Bayly was a backslider from Quakerism. George Fox regarded music as being almost worse than gunpowder, and an entry in the Company’s Journal shows that "a violl and shells and strings" were sent out to Bayly in 1678 presumably to relieve the monotony of what a later writer called "the Cold Days and Long Winter Nights" in a "Dosconsolate part of the world".
In 1686, Moose Fort was captured by a French expedition from Montreal led by Chevalier de Troyes. Retaken by the British in 1694 and captured again by the French in the same year, it was occupied by the British for a short time in 1696; but after its cession to Great Britain again by the Treaty of Utrecht, it was not re-established by the Company until 1730. In the summer of 1727, six canoes of Indians arrived at Albany expressing a desire for the company to re-establish its settlement at Moose. A party was sent to survey the district and after recommendations had been made to the Governor and Committee, a sub-committee was appointed "to consider about the Erecting a New Fort at Moose River", (partly with a view to drawing trade from the French). This course was unamiously approved by the sub-committee, and in 1730 the Governor and Committee wrote to Albany sending "a Draught and Model" of their proposed fort. They had not "fully Determin’d what part of the River the sd Fort shall be erected but must leave that to the Judgement and Direction of yourself and Council, but in case the place where the Old Factory formally stood be as commodious and as proper as any other place, You can discover, then it is our order that the same be built on that Island".
On 13th September, 1730, Thomas Rander and a party from Albany sailed into Moose River and the following day "went ashore to pitch upon a place most Convenient to build the Factory in where was agreed upon was 1 mile above the old factory.
By the 28th November, 1730, the first house was completed and the men living in it.
The building of a Factory commenced in 1731, and the work seems to have continued until 26th December, 1735, when a disastrous fire destroyed the fort.
Hearne’s chart of the mouth of the Moose River shows, dated 1774, Moose Fort near its present location on Factory Island, and it was probably after this fire that the factory was moved from Hayes Island though the Factory journal records that by 3rd January, 1736, the felling of timber and clearing of ground had already commenced for the foundation of the new factory without any mention being made of a change in site.
Life at Moose Factory is recorded in the Factory journal which makes colourful reading. An 18th Century entry refers to a certain Indian "Captn Esqua-wee-Noa, alias Snuff ye blanket, from his delicate taste of holding his germent to his nose when he enters ye Factory to avoid ye ill scent, and from his refusing to eat any Victuals dres’d in any Utensils of ours".
In the 1747-48 Journal, Jno Potts writes: "Spent the day in Religious Exercise and to prevent hard Drinking I did read over to them one of the Little Books Your Honrs was pleased to Send us last year, which is a Dissivasive from the Sin of Drunkness".
With a reorganization of the Company, in 1810, Moose became headquarters of the "southern factories". After union with the North West Company in 1821, Moose Factory was the residence of the Governor in Chief of the Southern Department of Rupert’s Land. Governor William Williams lived there during the years 1822 to 1826; and meetings of the council and the department were held there several times between 1822 and 1843. When the department was discontinued about the turn of the century, Moose became the headquarters of the district. At the same time, ships from London, which had called there every year since 1730, began to deliver cargoes, instead, at Charlton Island, for distribution to the James Bay posts. In 1931, the railway from North Bay reached Moosonee, across the river from Moose Factory, and it was no longer necessary to bring trade goods in, by way of Hudson Strait. The district office was moved to Winnipeg three years later, and Moose Factory reverted to the status of fur trade post.