N. M. W. J. McKenzie

Nathaniel Murdock William John McKenzie
N.M.W.J. McKenzie
Born	1856
Died	1943
Occupation	Fur trader; Hudson's Bay Company manager

Nathaniel Murdock William John (N.M.W.J.) McKenzie (1856 - 1943) was a fur trader and manager with the Hudson's Bay Company who spent over forty years in the company's service and later became a member of the Thunder Bay Historical Society.

Career

• Served for over forty years in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company.
• Held the position of ex-manager of the Eastern Districts of the Hudson's Bay Company.
• By 1913 had retired from the company.
• During the Riel Rebellion of 1885, managed Indigenous peoples under his charge and kept them on their reserves, for which he received the thanks of the Lieutenant-Governor of the Northwest Territories and an official government cheque, as well as the formal thanks of the Hudson's Bay Company.

Thunder Bay Historical Society

• On an unspecified date in 1913, attended the unveiling ceremony at which Sir George Foster appeared, representing the Hudson's Bay Company alongside J. D. McKenzie, at the invitation of N. H. Bacon, the fur trade commissioner of Montreal, who wired asking the two McKenzies to represent the company.
• Present on the special platform at the unveiling alongside Mayor Murphy, Peter McKellar, Don McKellar, Rev. J. Dyke, F. S. Wiley, and John King.
• On 27 February 1920, gave and read a paper titled "Hudson Bay Reminiscences" before a regular meeting of the Thunder Bay Historical Society.

24~ This N.M.W.J. McKenzie was Clerk in Charge at Touchwood Hills HBC Post from 1895 to 1909 when the post closed. So he was the last HBC man at Touchwood. In his book, McKenzie reiterated the importance he perceived of the root to the First Nations while at the same time betraying his lack of understanding of the people’s situation: “The Indians did not require to be short of anything, [he wrote] all they had to do was to go outside of their tent and dig snake root, yet it was surprising how many lazy ones were among them and these could not be induced to make a living this way. Work of any kind was beneath their dignity; they would not hesitate to crib a few pounds of what some old cripple woman had dug, washed, dried and prepared if they saw a favourable opportunity.”[1] McKenzie’s unflattering opinion of the “lazy ones,” appears to apply to some Indian men, the contrast being the hard-working old woman (a stereotype that appears in many earlier fur traders’ accounts, too). Their reasons for not picking the root were apparently beyond McKenzie’s understanding, he just made his own assumptions as to why. I could speculate on a few reasons, for example, the fact that they might be hungry, or perhaps they had already seen what a great market demand did to a resource. McKenzie’s perception of the value of the root, whereby the Indians did not need to be short of anything, might have been overstating the business, though Carl Beal’s comparisons of earnings on reserves from 1890 to 1896 show that seneca root was quite significant in the Crooked Lakes agency. Perhaps this was a remnant of McKenzie’s interest in it, or more regional availability, but it seems to have been more important there than in any other agency in comparison to the other sources.** All of the other agencies reported it as one of the commodities, however, along with beef, miscellaneous manufactures, lime and charcoal, labour, fish, furs and hunting, grain, cattle and sheep, and wood and hay. On the Peepeekisis Reserve about 50 miles away from Gordon’s, in the File Hills, Eleanor Brass described selling seneca root: "Jobs were at a minimum so we dug seneca roots to sell; it brought a good price at that time and everybody was out digging. I remember one morning we had nothing to eat for breakfast, but we had a big bag of roots for sale. So we hooked up our horses, loaded our bag of roots, and left for Abernethy where the market was good. When we arrived there, we sold the roots and immediately went to a café for breakfast. … Then we spent some of our money on groceries and saved the rest for my husband’s tobacco and papers."*** The similarities with Gordon’s are strong in this respect and others. In this case, the work was shared among the family as were the profits derived from the sale of the dried roots. To be continued.

• N.M.W.J. McKenzie, The Men of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1670 A.D. – 1920 A.D. (Fort William, ON: Times-Journal Presses, 1921), 93-94, accessed 18 August 2014, http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/bibliography/4620.html .
  • Carl Beal, “Money, Markets and Economic Development in Saskatchewan Indian Reserve Communities, 1870-1930s,” PhD Dissertation (Winnipeg, MB: University of Manitoba, 1994), 218.
    • Eleanor Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds (Calgary, AB: Glenbow Museum, 1987), 37.

He wrote a book