On This Day in History: May 2

Hudson's Bay Company Point Blanket

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Why are those blankets so fucking expensive? I don’t know, but they have a complicated history, as does the Hudson’s Bay Company. HBC played a critical role in the conquering and administering of Canada. Also, those blankets might have been purposely infected with smallpox. The fuck?

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: May 2, 1670--

The company was founded on May 2, 1670, by English royal charter. Conquering other lands was often aided via such capitalism, and HBC was all about accumulating wealth via racist exploitation. For almost two centuries the company controlled much of the fur trade in North America. Because beavers are waterproof, and Europe had snuffed and skinned their beavers, and now it was time to slaughter some Canadian beavers. But it’s okay. Later we put the beaver on our money so it’s all good now. 

The history of the Hudson’s Bay Company involves way too much fuckery to cover in this short post, so let’s focus on the blankets. The blanket style is called the Hudson’s Bay point blanket. It’s cream colored with indigo, red, yellow, and green stripes, and it has a proud Canadian history. So long as you’re not Indigenous. 

The blanket was created in the early 18th century, and such wool blankets were immensely popular trade items. Indigenous brought in furs, and often got such blankets in return. Sometimes, the blankets were made into hooded coats. And some historians say no way the blankets were intentionally infected with smallpox, because it made no economic sense. Why would you try to kill the people who supplied your company with furs and also bought your blankets? That’s a solid argument, but some disagree. I mean, in the middle of the 18th century the British were proven to have weaponized smallpox as biological warfare against Native Americans in what is now Pittsburgh. 

What’s important is that smallpox ran rampant through North American Indigenous communities, and many in those communities believe the transmission was intentional. And the iconic blanket plays a role in that history. Jeffrey Amherst was the British Commander-in-Chief of North America from 1758 to 1763, and he was very public in his desire to use smallpox as a method to exterminate the Indigenous via various methods including the gifting of infected blankets. If I wasn’t clear in that previous sentence, Amherst was a piece of shit who can rot in hell. 

But were the Hudson’s Bay blankets intentionally infected? That’s unknown. However, many blankets were almost certainly were infected simply by being transported from Europe on potentially disease-ridden ships then sold to the First Nations. Beyond that, with smallpox ravaging the continent at the time, some have made accusations that blankets were taken from smallpox hospitals and gifted to Indigenous with malicious intent, whereas others say the infections were accidental. 

Regardless, it’s worth noting the allegedly “proud” history of the point blanket is not without its festering sores. 

The book is now available! Get On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.