DCHP-1 Online

home-guard (Indian) Fur Trade, Hist.

• 1a n. an Indian, usually a Cree, living in or near a fur post on Hudson's Bay and employed by the traders. See 1965 quote.

  See also: half home (guard) Indian  Home Indian  upland Indian  

  • 1743  (1949)  . . . a remnant [of Crees] remain'd about the Factories and at present constitute what we call the Home-guard Indians who are become dependant on the English and retain'd by them to procure provisions and perform any other Services. . . .
  • 1784  (1954)  Some few of my Homeguard whom have been in have done tolerably well & others as bad indeed the bad outweighs the good.
  • 1959  . . . there had also arisen a considerable body of Indians dependent on the posts in a different manner, 'home-guard' Indians who hunted in spring and fall to provide geese and partridges for the English to live on.
  • 1965  The traders divided the Indians into two broad classes, the "Home Guards" and the "Uplanders." The Home Guards, as Samuel Hearne put it [1795), were "certain of the natives who are immediately employed under the protection of the Company's servants, reside on the plantation and are employed in hunting for the Factory."

• 1b n. any Indian who lived in or near a fur post, especially those employed as hunters.

  See also: home hunter  post native  

  • 1849  (1932)  "Home Guards,"--a term generally applied to the Indians attached to a trading post.
  • 1957  The "home guard" Indians who lived in or near a post became the constant friends and familiars of the trader and his staff, and the Indian women helped with the daily chores.

• 2 n. a Cree Indian from the vicinity of the fur posts on Hudson Bay.

  See also: Home Indian  

  • 1777  (1954)  To me it appears a matter of much consequence to our Welfare as it may happen & Time may prove us only to be fighting about a few Home Guards or Shore Indians, rather confounding the Company's Interest more than we annoy the Inland Pedlars.
  • 1783  (1954)  A family of home guard Indians came in, paid their debts in Rabbits and brought only 5 Martin skins.
  • 1795  (1911)  However, the Northern Indians had address enough to talk my home-guard Indians out of all they had: so that before we left them, they were as cleanswept as myself, excepting their guns, some ammunition, an old hatchet, an ice-chissel, and a file to sharpen them.
  • 1908  Indeed, he says the [Crees] were called by the Hudson's Bay Company's officers at York Factory "their home guards."
  • 1938  . . . the place was alive with . . . the "home guard Indians," as the Crees were called, in fringed leggings and bright capotes. . . .