They were even at times so inhospitable as to deal with the Indians through an open window of the fort.

This was in striking contrast to the "Nor'-Wester" who trusted the Indians and lived among them with the freest intercourse.

For the one hundred years spoken of, the Indians from the Red River Country, the Saskatchewan, the Red River and Lake Winnipeg, found their way by the water courses to the shores of the Hudson Bay.

But the enterprise of the Montreal merchants in leaving their forts and trading in the open with the Indians, prevented the great fleets of canoes, from going down with their furs, as they had once done to Churchill and York.

The English Company felt the necessity of starting into the interior, and so within six years of the time of the expedition of Thomas Curry, appeared five hundred miles inland from the Bay, and erected a fort--Fort Cumberland--a few hundred yards from the "Nor'-Westers'" Trading House, on the Saskatchewan River.
By degrees before the end of the century almost every place of any importance, in the fur-producing country, saw the two rival forts built within a mile or two of each other.