A Behavior I Have Never Seen Before 

      The other night I awoke in the middle of the night to a horrid noise.  It was the squealing of some animal.  At first I thought that it was maybe my cat killing some kind of small creature.  My cat does that.  In fact I sometimes think that the cat food I give him is merely a supplement for his regular diet of small creatures.  At least he's not wasting his kills, nor is he killing for fun.  Usually when I go out in the morning to see what he has done I just find a little tuft or so of fur, or a tail, foot or something.  
      This squeaking though, went on and on.  It was loud and wouldn't quit.  So I got up, grabbed a flashlight and went to one of the windows to see what this commotion was.  As I shone the light through the window, my disgust and possibly also horror was magnified.  I was simultaneously mildly perplexed.  

      What I saw was a large skunk.  This sucker was huge.  He was about 18 inches long and about a foot wide.  The disgusting part (besides being a skunk right outside my window by the door of my back porch) was that this large skunk was on top of another much smaller skunk and attacking it viciously.  
      The smaller skunk was on its back and screaming, while the monster skunk was tearing into it with its sharp teeth.  I could hear the tearing sounds as he dug in.  I could also hear the sound of tooth against bone.  Eventually the smaller skunk died.  The large skunk continued to tear into the other one.  I realized that this was an act of cannibalism.  The large skunk was actually eating the smaller skunk.  My disgust level shot right through the roof.  This is also what perplexed me though.  
      I have lived in the woods all my life, and have never once seen nor even heard of cannibalism in skunks.  My brain tried to think logically through all possible explanations.  Was it a territorial killing?  If it was, it would have stopped when it accomplished killing the intruder to his feeding grounds.  Was it killing the offspring of a female?  I never heard of that among skunks, and again, if it was it would have stopped once the smaller skunk was dead.  Was it starving?  Not at all.  I had a freezer quit working, and lost a lot of food.  It stunk to high heaven, so it was not going into my garbage can to gag me for a week until garbage day, so I dumped it all out at the end of my field.  The skunk right now has plenty to eat.  The only answer I had then was that this skunk is a complete freak.  Maybe it was rabid or something. 
      I grabbed my '22 and headed out to the back porch (as I can't have a rabid skunk out at large).  I took a big chance at opening that porch door.  This fight and cannibalism was only a foot outside the door.  I was afraid that as soon as I opened the door the large beast would spray me, or at least spray inside of the porch. 
      When I swung the door open it had to swing right out and over the skunk's head.  It was so absorbed in the activity of eating one of its own species, that it never even paid ant attention to the door or me, nor even the porch light I had turned on.  The skunk took no heed to me at all, but just continued to eat the other one. 
      When I shot I made sure to hit it along the back, so it wouldn't be able to lift its tail and spray.  The little one however, had already sprayed the entire contents of its stink gland all over the walls, the door of the porch and even the ground back there was soaked by the spray.  I'm gong to have to buy about fifteen gallons of vinegar and get some kind of a spray gun to apply it.  

      If you have ever heard of cannibalism in skunks, please let me know in a comment. 

Doggerland - The Civilization Beneath the Waves

Science Fridays

      Many people have never heard about Doggerland.  Even though I only learned of it within the last couple of years, scientists have known about Doggerland since about 1931.  What Doggerland is, or rather was, was a large landmass in what is now the North Sea, between the coasts of England, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands.  For thousands of years people lived and traveled in Doggerland, and then it eventually sank beneath the sea. 
      The knowledge of this land mass began when fishing trawlers began to pull up giant bones with their nets.  These bones included mammoth, reindeer, horses, and other animals common at the end of the last glacial maximum.  The fishermen who pulled up the first bones thought they had found dinosaur bones (or so they hoped), but they were quickly identified as belonging to mammoths.  It was when the trawlers started pulling up Mesolithic and Neolithic tools and artifacts, that an interest in studying this region really took off. 
      They wrote off the first finds of tools as a fluke, attributed to a sunken boat or something.  As more and more finds came in, from all over the area, they knew that this was not because of sunken boats.  Since then they have found evidence of villages beneath the waves, and have even found fossilized foot prints made in the mud flats as people crossed back and forth.  

                                 A map showing the extent of Doggerland

      England and even Ireland were not always islands.  At one time they were part of great peninsula jutting out of north west Europe.  Previous to the last glacial maximum hunter gatherers roamed there along with the animals they hunted.  During glacial maximum the whole region was under a thick sheet of ice (this was during the time that the Solutreans were hemmed into the south west coast of France).  During the Boller Interstadial Warming Period (when the ice age was over - the technical terms for some of these things are just nuts) animals and the people who hunted them once again populated this peninsula.  During this warming period, as the ice melted some of the lower lying lands became marshy (this is when some of the fossilized foot prints were made).  This warming period is the same time that the Natufians, in Israel and the whole Fertile Crescent discovered the wild cereal grains, and altered the course of mankind forever. 
      To get a more complete global view of things, this is also the same time that groups of people from Asia, and specifically from Siberia migrated across Beringia and into North America, and joined the Solutreans who had been living there in isolation for about five thousand years (as you see it's all connected - again and again, and again).  Now before you get an image in your head of a bunch of light skinned people with feathers stuck in various shades of brown, light brown, red, and blonde hair with big bushy beards, dressed in animal skins and a stone spear in hand, running around in Europe, DON'T.  That genetic mutation (diminished pigment of hair, eyes, and skin) hadn't happened yet.  It didn't occur till some thousands of years later in western Siberia - the same place that some of the Asians came from, who migrated to North America (one specific group of people still there today speaks a language recognizably related to Athabaskan [Dene, Tlingit, Chinook, Athabaskan, Navaho, Apache, and others), and they still live in Tipis).  This was also the same time that people from the hunter-gatherer Jomon culture of ancient Japan walked back across to China, and elsewhere, and some wandered all the way along to the west coast of North and South America.  Also very important to human history and development, wherever these Jomon people went they took their invention of ceramics with them.  Globally, this was a very active period in history.  

                      An artist's conception of life on the coast of Doggerland

      This warming period lasted a few thousand years, and was followed by what is called the Younger Dryas.  The Younger Dryas was a time when the ice sheets returned, which in turn caused massive droughts in warmer locations, such as in the Fertile Crescent.  Doggerland was not completely covered this time, but the climate there was still pretty harsh.  During the Younger Dryas the people who were collecting wild grains in Eastern Asia, Meso-America, and the Fertile Crescent were forced to either starve, return to nomadic life (and still starve), or move to the river valleys with their grains and basically invent farming.  
      The Younger Dryas lasted about 1500 years, and was followed by the final warming period.  The glacial sheets began their slow melt, and grasses and trees returned to north west Europe.  Doggerland, and the British Hills were rich in wildlife and edible plants and berries.  The lower lying areas became marshy again, but life in the Dogger Hills was high and dry, and life there was abundant.  In about 7000 to 6000 BC, due to overcrowding (from a population bloom, due in turn from a large, ready supply of food) farmers from the Fertile Crescent began to wander into Europe and build scattered colonies of farming communities.  They walked all the way to what became the Orkney Islands (then they were just the Orkney Hills), and into Doggerland, specifically the Dogger Hills.  These immigrants also brought with them that wonderful Jomon invention of ceramics. 

                             Doggerland very slowly sank beneath the waves.


      The Ice sheets continued their slow melt.  In about 6200 BC a massive underwater landslide occurred off the coast of Norway releasing a huge tidal wave that washed over much of Doggerland.  The devastation and loss of life would have been tremendous.  Only the Dogger hills would have been safe.  People bounced back though.  Eventually, as the ice continued to melt the Dogger Hills became Dogger Island.  A few hundred to a thousand or so years later, Dogger Island finally washed underneath the rising waves.  The remaining inhabitants of Dogger Island would have climbed into their skin boats (or curraghs) with whatever possessions and livestock they could take with them and sailed away to start life anew somewhere else.  Dogger Island became the Dogger Banks.  Today the Dogger Banks are only about 50 feet under the water.  

                             Eventually all the was left was Dogger Island.

               Map showing the present location of the Dogger Banks outlined in red

      Scientists researching Doggerland are using sonar, satellites, and other resonance imaging to get a clearer picture of this lost land.  They have found ancient riverbeds, and lakes.  The Rhine River used to flow into the Thames, and then flow out of the western end of the English Channel.  The Baltic Sea used to flow into the Baltic River, and around and between the northern part of Denmark and the southern end of Norway and Sweden, and out towards Scotland.  
      As trawlers continue to scoop up more artifacts, they turn these in (and often get paid for their finds) to the researchers.  The more they study this mysterious sunken civilization, the less mysterious it becomes, and a clearer picture emerges.  
      Another point of note concerning this is that as Doggerland was sinking beneath the waves, so also were the land masses that became both the Canary Islands and the Azores Islands respectively.  The extreme trauma of these related events became the real life basis and the first installment for the Atlantis Legend.  The final real life event that was the final installment for the story was the volcanic explosion of Santorin, many thousands of years later.  But we will save this for a different post. 

The Richat Structure

      What is known as the Richat Structure is truly one wonderment.  So what is a wonderment, you may ask?  And why is that the name of my blog?  Before I get into today's wonderment, I'll answer that question.  A wonderment is something that makes you pause and reflect on things.  It is something that makes you think.  It is something that makes you go "huh."  I got the word itself from an obscure source.  It came from Cliff Robertson's portrayal of Cole Younger in the movie "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid."  The movie was about the James-Younger gang's ill fated attempt to rob the bank in Northfield, Minnesota.  A couple of the brothers were killed, and the rest were captured, except for Jesse and Frank James, who dressed as (ugly) old ladies to slip away.  Throughout the film every time Cole Younger saw something, like a new invention, a new or better technique for doing something, or even an awesome sunset, he would say, "now that's truly a wonderment."  
      No, I am not endorsing Cole Younger's behavior, his political sentiments, nor any of his actions.  I just like the word.  Cole Younger was actually a fairly intelligent man.  He was an avid reader, and kept up on the latest advances in technology.  After he got captured in Northfield, he spent the remainder of his life in Stillwater Prison.  One of the first things he did when he got there was to start a newspaper and he published that newspaper for the rest of his life.  The newspaper he started is still being published.  Now that's a wonderment (and I guess that is one thing he did that I do actually endorse - but that's all).  
      And of course "sundry" means sundry; various, a plethora of.  

      Now onto the Richat Structure.  The Richat structure is about 50 miles in diameter, and sits in the Saharan part of Mauritania.  The name "structure is somewhat misleading (at least it is for me), because that makes it sound like something that someone built.  It was actually created by natural causes, but no one seems to agree on what those causes were.  
      When I first read about it in an article about space (NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day website) I looked up more on the subject (that by the way is what I do with most of my articles, or posts - I read up all I can on them, condense it down to the basic gist, and then start writing.  I figure that if you find it interesting, you will read up more on it too).  When I read about how big it is, I turned on Google Earth, spun the globe to West Africa, zoomed in and started looking.  It is so big that I found it in only a couple of minutes.  

                  The Image of the Richat Structure that I took from Google Earth

      Some people say that it is a meteoric impact, I and I would have to agree with that theory.  The perfect circle, and what looks like ripples in a pond, frozen in place.  Around a couple of the "ripple" rings are what appear to be splash marks, also frozen in place.  It looks like whatever hit the earth there made so hot that it was temporarily molten, and then cooled down again instantly while it was still in mid splash.  .  
      The people who disagree with the impact theory declare that the walls surrounding the "structure" are not high enough to be a crater.  In fact there are no walls, and it isn't a crater.  
      Other people claim that this is volcanic in nature, except that there is no dome.  The official statement concerning this is that it is still a mystery.  To me that doesn't sound like a very scientific statement.  It sounds more like a statement of, "We give up." 
      I'm sure that the fans of alien stuff and related conspiracy theories have their own ideas about this phenomenon.  I'm sure they're pretty weird ideas too.  
      Personally, I am still going with an impact, and I think that when they figure this out, it will also be discovered that not all impacts make a crater.  It could be that the typical crater is what happens in normal type soil, or sedimentary soil, and that different types of ground make different types of impact marks.  That is merely a hypothesis though - a well educated guess. 

The Quest For the Perfect Cup of Coffee 

      This post isn't about using a drip coffee maker at home, or a coffee press, or even an espresso machine.  No, I'm talking about that most elusive of the coffee species - a good cup of camp coffee.  Making good boiled coffee takes a special skill set. 

      I spend about ten weekends a year out in my tent (or my wigwam), and have done so for about twenty years.  I know that for some people's standards that's not really all that much, and for others that's "like really hardcore, man."  I camp at places with as little as ten camps (or lodges) set up, and at places where there are about 300 camps.  During my time I have tasted a LOT of coffee. 
      At all the places I camp, everyone is so friendly, that I can't walk twenty feet without some one calling me out from my "walkabout" to say, "Hey, come on over here and sit down for a while, ... Get up kids and let this guy sit in that chair, you're young enough to sit on the box, or on the ground, ... let this guy sit there,..." Then they pour me a cup of coffee and we sit and chat for a while.  And I do the same thing to them when they get out and about. 
      Sometimes the coffee isn't really all that good, but I love it anyway, because I really enjoy the camaraderie, and the people who have offered me the coffee.  Some people make decent coffee, some make good coffee, and a few people make great coffee.  So what's the trick?  How can you make a great cup of coffee when you're cooking it over a wood fire. 
      The first thing is - Don't be stingy with the coffee.  Weak coffee isn't much more than hot colored water.  When my brothers and I were kids our grandparents, great uncles and great aunt used to take us out camping a couple times every summer.  Of course it wasn't in wigwams or even white canvass tents, but it was like living in a brochure for the Coleman Company.  Coleman stoves, Colman lanterns, Coleman coolers, and even the tents were Colman.  And of course we had to use that Coleman gas, and then to use anything we had to pump up that thing forever and a half before we could light it, and pump it two more times while we were cooking.  Their coffee was lousy though.  They had a stove top percolator (which was also Coleman), but they never used enough coffee.  They were too stingy with it.  There wasn't even enough coffee to mask all the weird flavors that would get into the water.  There was the taste of the aluminum from the percolator, the taste of stagnancy in the water (for the first couple of days because we always brought about ten gallons with us from home), or the taste of iron (we did most of our camping in way northern Minnesota - up beyond the Iron Range, and sometimes the local water was just orange from the high iron content), and there was sometimes a faint taste of the fumes from the Coleman stove.  Their coffee at home wasn't very good either, though.  It was really just hot, colored water. 
      Then there's the method for brewing.  I find that there are more methods for brewing coffee than there are people out there brewing it.  Some folks take the whole bean approach.  They just throw in a handful of whole beans and boil them for three days or so.  Many people who use this method just don't use enough beans to begin with.  Then a lot of folks just keep adding water all weekend.  They say that it still has a lot of flavor, but compared to what?  That's like trying to reuse tea bags, or like someone trying to reuse snuff.  I'm pretty sure the flavor's mostly gone after the first use.  Besides, using the whole bean defies the logic of brewing coffee.  When it is ground up, there is more surface area to come in contact to the hot water. 
      The thing is, a lot of people don't like getting the grounds in their mug, cup or flagon.  they don't like the "prize" at the bottom.  I think that avoiding grounds in their cup is why some people use the whole bean method.  Others use the egg method.  when the coffee is done they will crack a raw egg into the coffee pot to coagulate all the grounds away.  You'll never catch me doing that.  Egg is hard enough to clean out of things.  besides, after sitting for a few hours in the sun, or next to a fire, and there are lots of little bacteria that just love to feed on that high protein albumen. 
      There is the cold water approach.  Make the coffee a little stronger than you really want it, and when it's done, pull it off the fire, and pour a little cold water into the pot.  The grounds will instantly settle to the bottom.  My friend Barry, "Papa Bear/Noos Makwa," (who I camp with most of the time - he's like a second father to me) finally beat the grounds by purchasing a strainer from Backwoods Tin. 

                                   Barry

      Then there is the method of cooking the coffee.  Butch, the Honey Man, used to have a complicated process of sorts.  He said, "Start out with an extra cup of grounds, then boil it till it boils over (that's why all the extra grounds) and almost puts out the fire.  Then add an egg and follow that with cold water." 
      The main idea is to get all the "go juice" out of that coffee, as well as to get all the flavor out.  You heat it slowly over the fire, and then when the grounds form a shell of sorts on top watch it carefully, so that it doesn't boil over.  Raise it higher from the heat and let it simmer a a low roll for a few minutes.  Pull it from the heat (set it on the ground next to the fire), and the grounds will settle.  Then pour it carefully and slowly. 
      Another way is to heat it up and watch it.  When the grounds start to form that covering and it looks ready to blow (boil over), stir it quick with a metal spoon, or even your knife.  The grounds will drop right then.  Then allow it to simmer, for a few minutes, and put it on the ground to cool, etc. 
      I have to say though that the following method makes the very best coffee, but it takes all night to brew it.  Twelve years ago after getting super cold at the fall events (and the evenings at the spring events aren't all that warm either) I finally bought myself a "two dog" wood stove for my tent.  (I use a fire pit inside the wigwam)  While I was at it I also bought a heat exchanger to go with it.  With the heat exchanger I have that air opening barely cracked and it gets quite comfortable in there.  I only have to refill with wood once, and not until about 4:30 to 5:00 am.  The heat exchanger gets pretty hot to the touch, but I can touch it without leaving a piece of burnt skin stuck to it.  That, as it turns out is the perfect temperature to brew a pot of coffee.  I fill the iron coffee pot with cold water and then throw in the grounds.  I put it up on top of the heat exchanger and go to bed.  It never gets hot enough to boil.  It basically steeps all night long.  When I wake up it is not only warm and comfortable enough to crawl out from under the blankets, but I have a delicious, strong, yet mellow tasting cup of coffee waiting for me.  And the grounds are sitting at the bottom of the pot.  It's a great way to wake up. 

"Mountain Men" - A Book Review

      A good friend of mine gave me a book entitled "Mountain Men - Frontier Adventurers Alone Against the Wilderness" by Tony Holliman.  This book is a collection of short (very short) biographies of seven different American trappers, guides and woodsmen of renown.  It is a short book of only about 230 pages.  It is not by any means a text book, as it is not annotated at all.  There is however, a list of sources at the end of the book.  Nevertheless, it is a good read for gaining a general understanding of the lives of these men.  It has been my "bathroom book" for the last several months.  I think you know what I mean by a "bathroom book."  If you have no idea what that means, then we truly live in two different worlds.  

      The "mountain men" included in this book are Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Jim Bridger, Jim Beckworth, Jedediah Smith, Peter Skene Ogden, Kit Carson, and John George "Kootenai" Brown.  Each biography consists of about 20 to about 30 or 35 pages, so it is not a book you will use to write a thesis.  As noted above, it will give you a general understanding of these men.  There are enough details that if you are ever sitting around a campfire, or a living room and someone starts talking about one of them you will have something to say, rather than just stare at the fire and drool.  You might even be the one to bring it up and get to sound smart in front of your friends!  
      Thirty five pages isn't much for a biography, as compared, for instance with the book on Lord Selkirk I took information from for the post the other day on the business practices of the HBC compared to the NWCo.  That book was over 500 pages long and was fully annotated.  Unfortunately for anyone wanting to check on that book, I can't even remember the name of the author.  I spent about five hours reading through it at a mid-winter rendezvous craft and trade fair one day at someone's book table.  I took plenty of notes, and wrote down the name of the book on a separate piece of paper to try and find a copy for myself, as this book was no longer in print, and therefore not for sale (I thought I might find it on E-Bay).  Of course I lost that piece of paper.  I read every part of the book concerning Selkirk's "hostile takeovers" of many of the NWCo fur posts.  I was specifically looking for information regarding his attack on Fort St. Louis which used to sit on the edge of the Duluth-Superior Harbor.  That story is not for here though - back to the "Mountain Men."  
      Each of the biographies has a section on the man's early life.  Although each one came from different backgrounds, a couple things were true for all of them.  (the following is a series of GENERAL statements)  They were set up for a successful career by their parents, whether as an apprentice, or in a school, or something of the like.  They all chose to leave that profession, and were often a big disappointment to their parents because of this. 
      After reading through them one common thing I saw is that they had itchy feet.  They couldn't stay in one place for very long.  Settling down for a lifetime was not a part of their thinking.  In many cases this wanderlust came from working somewhere where they heard stories from travelers, particularly those of the trappers.  They heard these stories when they were in their mid teens, and in most cases they were nowhere near the supervision and advice of their parents (because of our modern society's much delayed adulthood and accompanying independence, today that happens to a lot of kids in college - from the wild parties and arrests to becoming an out of work artist, author, or field researcher who exclusively studies diatoms from the late Carboniferous Period in the tundra of Central Canada - "But we sent you to college so you could become an accountant and work right here in the firm with me."). 
      When these men left their parentally chosen professions to pursue adventure and travel (yes, that was their teen age induced motive), their feet seemed to never be able to stop after that.  Some of them would become big wigs in the HBC, or for Astor, or run very successful posts of their own, and would suddenly get the "I gotta get the heck outta here" bug.  They would leave all their accomplishments behind to go chasing off into the hills again.  
      Many of them got married and had children, but were what I would call terrible husbands and fathers.  They would up and leave for years at a time.  Their wives would have to fend for themselves, and try to raise their kids alone.  Then suddenly they would show up again on their doorstep full of badly healed wounds and maybe a pocketful of money.  Then after about six months to a few years, they would leave again for a few years.  Once in a while they would take their families with them to some new place. 
      As I said before, these short biographies are not something to use as a major source for a thesis, but they are perfect for writing an occasional post in a short daily blog.  Over the next unspecified while I will write an occasional post highlighting one of these men. 

A Real Brain Scrambler

      No, this isn't a post about some brain puzzle or anything like that.  This post is related to the one on Science Friday.  A researcher named Rebecca Saxe is working on a project and is having some success using new technology to affect people's thoughts.  For real.  To accomplish this the subject requires a bunch of electronic equipment be used on the subjects' heads.  

                                         Dr. Rebecca Saxe

      Just like the work done in Kyoto, the work involves looking at the brain's activities and pinpointing its active zones during specific thought processes.  
      The title of the article about this is misleading, because it says, "Reading People's Thoughts."  This is because the 15 or so minute video is a lecture by Rebecca Saxe, wherein she talks about how people are always trying to read or understand what a person is thinking about any given subject matter.  Specifically she was discussing how people judge the motives of others.  She goes on to show via an accompanying video how this motive judging is natural for people, and she shows how this ability develops in a person over time. Through her machinery, she has pinpointed the exact spot in the brain where the judging of others occurs.  

       Here's where the twist happens.  She has developed a method that can scramble that specific portion of the brain.  It's like hitting the reset button.  Subjects to whom this brain scrambler was used would make judgments opposite those they would normally make.  

      In a test case subjects were asked to make a judgment of guilt or innocence of a person in a hypothetical matter.  Under the scrambler they made an opposite finding of guilt.  This machine has the ability to alter a person's moral judgments.  

      Now imagine this technology in the wrong hands.  I specifically imagine it being used on a jury, since that is sort of how it was applied in the experiments.  "We the jury find the defendant, ....what were we supposed to say again?" 
      Dr. Saxe also demonstrated how the machine could create involuntary muscle movements when applied to specific areas in the brain for motor control.  When being interviewed she was asked whether or not she was being contacted by the government or the military.  She said it happens on a regular basis, but she just ignores their pleas. 

The Difference Between Two Companies

      To understand the history of the latter part of the of the North American Fur Trade, one must understand the major policy differences between the two chief companies.  The two companies that dominated the fur trade were the Hudson's Bay Company, and the North West Fur Company. 
      The Hudson's Bay Company was the oldest of the two, and was established in the early 17th century.  Its charter placed it under the direct control of the British crown.  Those who ran it were usually members of the extended royal family.  A fine example of this was Lord Selkirk, one of the more famous chief executives of the company.  It had a long history of fighting for British interests in the fur trade.  
      It was the Hudson's Bay Company that fought first during the Beaver Wars (using invested crown monies to fund this war, and British soldiers to do much of the actual fighting).  They also paid/bribed certain groups of natives to fight for them too.  A few trinkets and a barrel of booze went a long way.  

      By the time of the treaty of 1703 they had pretty much lost their control in North America, but Louis XIV got afflicted with a bout of religiosity and threw his victory away.  He was convinced by the Jesuits that the fur trade was having an irreversible moral effect on the native population, and was making conversion impossible.  For this reason Louis threw away his victory and allowed the HBC (Hudson's Bay Company) to gain control over the entire fur trade (the Dutch had already ceased to be major players - a couple of costly wars saw to that). 
      The British, under control of the HBC had full control over the fur trade until Cadillac's folly, Ft. Detroit.   He built one single fur post/fort in North America there.  It had long been French policy to bring the trading to the native, rather than make the natives travel long distances to them.  Before Louis' religious epiphany the French had smaller posts all over the place.  In about 1721 however, Louis was convinced to allow trading again, but only one fort would be allowed.  Cadillac was only using the resources he was allowed to use, but his folly came in inviting every tribe within 800 miles to come and live in the region around the fort.  In a short time the nations that hated each other really hated each other.  Trade guns were fired and tomahawks were crossed.  Due to their aggravating ways the Sauk and the Fox were almost completely annihilated.  Also it didn't take too long before every animal there was completely hunted out.  It became hard to even find a mouse.  Detroit was such a failure that it was abandoned.  
      By the latter 1740's a different Louis was on the throne, and this one believed in the monetary advantage of investing in the fur trade.  French forts were popping up all over the place.  This of course created a great deal of tension with the British.  British policy in North America was primarily that of settling, and colonization, and to have a place where they could get rid of the people they didn't like for whatever reason.  Although they liked the money they got from it, the fur trade was a secondary goal.  They were actually trying to settle matters diplomatically with the French when an upstart British Colonel from the colonies tried to make a name for himself, and due to his actions plunged the North American colonies into the Seven Years War (a previous provision between the two combatant nations was that the war should never spill over into the colonies, as that would bring too much suffering to the colonies which were struggling to survive as it was - but Col. Washington's attack on Ft. Duquesne nullified that agreement).  Along with British regulars, and colonial militia the HBC fought hard for the British interest in North America.  
      After the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, and the war was over, the British under the HBC had full control over the fur trade again.  They then operated as they always had.  They had one fort for the entire continent located on James Bay on the southern end of Hudson's Bay.  They figured as always, according to their policy, that "if the Indians want to trade, they can come and trade."  For many native populations this would mean a 1500 mile journey, one way and across territories controlled by people with whom they had a hostile relationship.  
      Throughout this period there were Coureur de bois (pronounced Coor de bwah) - unlicensed traders who had posts set up in various places in the interior.  For most of these if the HBC would hear of them they would send out a bunch of their best thugs to go destroy the place and seize all the furs and trade goods.  If in the process they happened to kill the Coureur de bois, that was quite acceptable.  One of the longest standing of these was the post at La Pointe, near present day Ashland, Wisconsin.  La Pointe was founded in 1675 by a French Monsignor, who gave up his chastity and poverty vows.  He married an Ojibwe woman and became a successful fur trader.  His sons also married Ojibwe women, and his grandsons, great-grandsons, and so forth down the line married Ojibwe women too.  By the end of the 1700's their family was almost full blood Ojibwe with only a French name to remind them of their European past.  
      In the Late 1700's most of the remaining Coureur de bois, along with other investors (primarily of Scottish descent) banded together and formed a rival fur company - the North West Fur Company (the NWCo).  

      The HBC didn't allow its employees to be married at all (they were supposed to be married to their work), and especially not to a savage which they felt was only a half step above that of a common beast.  The NWCo operated the opposite.  They encouraged their employees, the voyageurs to go out and find themselves native wives.  This kept their men happy, brought ties of allegiance and loyalty to the company from the native populations, and meant they didn't have to feed them or clothe them during the long cold winters.  
      They NWCo built many posts all over the place, and brought the fur trade to the natives.  In other words they adopted all the French policies to their multinational corporation.  And that was another major difference between the two companies.  The HBC was purely Georgian British and operated purely Georgian British.  Their noses were so high in the air they could have flown a Union Jack from them.  The NWCo had shareholders who were Scottish, Brittish, British Colonials who later became Americans, and a couple of Ojibwe with French surnames.  Their employees were primarily French, and also Scottish, Americans, and there were even some Swiss and Germans.  Languages spoken within the company were English, French, Scots Gaidhlig, and Ojibwe which was the official trade language.  
      The NWCo became way more successful than the HBC because of their policies, especially the policies of building many smaller posts right where the natives lived, and marrying into the native populations.  This success eventually created jealousy and hatred in the HBC.  Lord Selkirk finally started to build more forts around the continent, but when he saw that as an expense he sent out mercenary armies to take over the NWCo fur posts by military force.  Yes he used British crown money to hire soldiers to fire upon other British citizens purely for financial gain.  He ran into a hitch with this plan though, when he sent soldiers into US held lands - one year after the Crown had signed a peace treaty that ended the War of 1812.  In Fact, he got arrested by the Sheriff of Detroit for his exploits.  
      All NWCo possessions north of the American border became HBC property, and all on American soil changed hands a few times until John Jacob Astor owned them all.  The HBC ended up adopting the policies of the NWCo, and gained success. Astor didn't do too bad either, as he also operated like the NWCo.  

      In addendum to this post:  While watching some other documentaries of a different subject entirely, I saw a link for a BBC documentary about "The Company That Created a Country", and I knew immediately it must be about the HBC.  It's a good documentary, and used some fur trade reenactors, and had interviews with the official historian of the HBC.  Below is a link to part six of the documentary.  In this part the HBC historian talks about some of the very things mentioned in this article - comparison of business models and tactics, the physical violence that occurred between the two companies, and the eventual uniting of the two companies on the Canadian side of the border.  

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=ao06-GrVFYw&feature=endscreen