File contains 2 documents (copies) from the beginning of the North West Company. One document is a copy of the preamble and signatures from the 1790 North West Company articles of agreement signed at the company's many depot in Grand Portage on the shores of Lake Superior. This document outlines the division of the shares among the various NWC partners. The other document is a copy of the 1792 business agreement between the North West Co. and the Grant Campion Co.
The collection consists of documents amassed by Roderick Mackenzie. Among the Masson manuscripts there are other series of letters; as well as journals kept by North-Westers and various business documents. Some of this material exists as originals; others are contemporary copies - the George Keith letters for example are contemporary copies on paper watermarked 1827. The collection also includes some duplicate texts - contemporary copies or later nineteenth-century copies that in some cases represent edited versions of the texts. Samuel Wilcocke's account of the death of Benjamin Frobisher exists in a draft original (or contemporary copy) and in a late nineteenth-century clean copy. Of course Benjamin Frobisher did not die in the dramatic circumstances as recorded by Wilcocke, but peacefully in Quebec City in 1821.
