Fort Langley National Historic Site of Canada

History

The New Fort Langley is Built

The Hudson's' Bay Point Blankets in the Fur Trade

Blankets were a very important item in the fur trade. The native peoples grew to value them for several reasons - they were warm, durable, lightweight, and easily sewn into capotes, mittens or leggings. The bright colours were popular, but the white blankets also sold well in the winter when they were useful for camouflage in the hunt. As for the traders, they were happy to see natives use blankets instead of animals skins, because they hoped more furs would then be given in trade, and more time freed to spend on trapping.

Point blanket
© Parks Canada / John Gordon Photography

Hudson Bay Company point blankets were made of high quality wool and came in various colours, including those we often see now - red or green with a black stripe, and white with bands of black, yellow, scarlet and green (also known as the "chief's blanket"). The "points" are the small stripes, usually of black or indigo, marked right into the weave of the blanket.

In the 19 ^th century account books, blankets of 1, 1½, 2, 2½, 3, 3½ and 4 points are listed. The points were originally intended to indicate the value or price of the blanket. That is, each point represented one beaver pelt that would be exacted in trade for the blanket. Of course the value was predictably linked to the quality of the blanket - the larger the size and corresponding weight of the blanket, the higher the value. However, because of inflation, competition, and varying transportation expenses, the prices could not be fixed, and a three point blanket could not cost three Made Beaver at all places and all times. Today, the Hudson's Bay Company still sells the point blankets.

In his article, Charles Hanson Jr. (1976) writes that point blankets are often referred to as "Hudson's Bay blankets," because the HBC has marketed them continuously since about 1780. However, he says, they didn't invent them. It appears that the French first sold "pointed blankets" and the HBC began ordering them in 1780 to better meet the competition from the Montreal traders. The HBC did especially well selling blankets because, as the fur trade correspondence shows, their specifications to the manufacturers came from the natives' own complaints and suggestions.

Thomas Empson of Witney in Oxfordshire made the first Hudson's Bay Company point blankets in 1779, and they have been manufactured in Whitney continuously to this day. The vast majority of the fur-trade blankets were hand-woven, as the power loom was not generally used until after 1850, and hand weavers were still active in many factories until 1900. The woven material was beaten with mallets (as in a felting process) to keep the blanket from shrinking.

CPS research in the 1970's shows that in the HBC Columbia Department the following varieties of blankets were available in the period 1824-54:

• Blue Blankets, 3 points
• Green Blankets, 4 points
• Blue Bar Green Blankets, 3 points
• Makina Blankets, 1½, 2 points
• Best Blue Bar Plain Blankets, 1, 1½, 2, 2½, 3, 3½ points
• Inferior Blue Bar Plain Blankets, 1, 1½, 2, 2½, 3, 3½, 4 points
• Inferior Red Bar Plain Blankets, 2, 2½, 3, 3½ points
• Blue Bar Rosed Blankets, 10/4
• Scarlet Blankets, 2½ points
• G & B Striped Blankets, 3 points
• B & Y Striped Blankets, 1, 3 points
• BG & YB Striped Blankets, 3 points

Several companies are known to have supplied the HBC with blankets in the mid-1900s, including Hagues, Cook & Wormald; John Early & Sons; Alexander & Henry Co.; Thomas Long; and Horatio W. Collier & Sons.

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