<P> The Chipewyan began trading fur in exchange for metal tools and instruments with the Hudson's Bay Company in 1717, which caused a drastic change in their lifestyle, going from a people engage in daily subsidence activities to a people engaging in far - reaching trade as the Chipewyan become the middlemen between the Hudson's Bay Company and the other Indians living further inland . The Chipewyan guarded their right to trade with the Hudson's Bay Company with considerable jealousy and prevented peoples living further inland like the Tłı̨chǫ and Yellowknives from crossing their territory to trade directly with the Hudson's Bay Company for the entire 18th century . For the Chipewyan, who still living in the Stone Age, metal implements were greatly valued as it took hours to heat up a stone pot, but only minutes to heat up a metal pot while an animal could be skinned far more efficiently and quickly with a metal knife than with a stone knife . For many Chipewyan bands, involvement with the fur trade eroded their self - sufficiency as they killed animals for the fur trade, not food, which forced them into dependency on other bands for food, thus leading to a cycle where many Chipewyan bands came to depend trading furs for European goods, which were traded for food, and which caused them to make very long trips across the subarctic to Hudson's Bay and back . To make these trips, the Chipewyan traveled though barren terrain that was so devoid of life that starvation was a real threat, during which the women had to carry all of the supplies . Samuel Hearne of the Hudson's Bay Company who was sent inland in 1768 to establish contact with the "Far Indians" as the company called them, wrote about the Chipewyan: </P> <P> "Their annual haunts, in the quest for furrs (furs), is so remote from European settlement, as to render them the greatest travelers in the known world; and as they have neither horse nor water carriage, every good hunter is under necessity of having several people to assist in carrying his furs to the company's Fort, as well as carrying back the European goods which he received in exchange for them . No persons in this country are so proper for this work as the women, because they are inured to carry and haul heavy loads from their childhood and to do all manner of drudgery". </P> <P> Hearne's chief guide Matonabbee told him that women had to carry everything with them on their long trips across the sub-arctic because "...when all the men are heavy laden, they can neither hunt nor travel any considerable distance". Perry cautioned that when Hearne traveled though the sub-arctic in 1768--1772, the Chipewyan had been trading with the Hudson's Bay Company directly since 1717, and indirectly via the Cree for at least the last 90 years, so the life - styles he observed among the Chipewyan had been altered by the fur trade, and in no way can be considered a pre-contact life style . However, Perry argued that the arduous nature of these trips across the sub-arctic together with the burden of carrying everything suggests that the Chipewyan women did not voluntarily submit to this regime, which would suggest that even in the pre-contact period that Chipewyan women had a low status . </P> <P> When fur traders first contacted the Gwich'in in 1810 when they founded Fort Good Hope on the Mackenzie river, accounts describe a more or less egalitarian society, but the impact of the fur trade lowered the status of Gwich'in women . Accounts by the fur traders in the 1860s describe Gwich'in women as essentially slaves, carrying the baggage on their long journeys across the sub-arctic . One fur trader wrote about the Gwich'in women that they were "little better than slaves" while another fur trader wrote about the "brutal treatment" that Gwich'in women suffered at the hands of their men . Gwich'in band leaders who became rich by First Nations standards by engaging in the fur trade tended to have several wives, indeed tended to monopolize the women in their bands, which caused serious social tensions as Gwich'in young men found it impossible to have a mate, as their leaders took all of the women for themselves . Significantly, the establishment of fur trading posts inland by the Hudson's Bay Company in the late 19th century led to an improvement in the status of Gwich'in women as anyone could obtain European goods by trading at the local HBC post, ending the ability of Gwich'in leaders to monopolize the distribution of European goods while the introduction of dogs capable of carrying sleds meant their women no longer had to carry everything on their long trips . </P>

When did the french established a fur trade in canada