UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES THE CONQUEST OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST Collier's famous picture of Hudson's Last Hours. \ THE CONQUEST OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST Being the story of the ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND known as THE HUDSON'S BAT COMPANY. New pages in the history of the Canadian North-west and Western Stater BY AGNES C. LAUT Author of " Lords of the North" " rathfinders of the West" et:. TWO VOLUMES IN ONE NEW YORK MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY MCMXIV ' - 33023 Copyright, 1908, by THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England All Rights Reserved NEW EDITION IN ONE VOLUME OCTOBER, igu THE QUINN A BODCN CO. PRESS HAHWAV, H. J. TO G. C. L. and C. M. A. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I PART I CHAPTER I PAOE Henry Hudson's First Voyage ..... 3 CHAPTER II Hudson's Second Voyage . . . . . .16 CHAPTER III Hudson's Third Voyage . . . . . .26 CHAPTER IV Hudson's Fourth Voyage . . . . . -49 CHAPTER V The Adventures of the Danes on Hudson Bay Jens Munck's Crew . . . . . . 72 PART II CHAPTER VI Radisson, the Pathfinder, Discovers Hudson Bay and Founds the Company of Gentlemen Adventurers . 97 CHAPTER VII The Adventures of the First Vovage Radisson Driven Back Organizes the Hudson^s Bay Company and Writes his Journals of Four Voyages The Charter and the First Shareholders Adventures of Radisson on the Bay The Coming of the French and the Quarrel . . . . . . . . .in IX Contents CHAPTER VIII PAGE "Gentlemen Adventurers of England" Lords of the Outer Marches Two Centuries of Company Rule Secret Oaths The Use of Whiskey The Matrimonial Offices The Part the Company Played in the Game of International Juggling How Trade and Voyages Were Conducted ....... 132 CHAPTER IX If Radisson Can Do Without the Adventurers, the Adven- turers Cannot Do Without Radisson The Eruption of the French on the Bay The Beginning of the Raiders . . . . . . . . 162 CHAPTER X The Adventurers Furious at Radisson, Find it Cheaper to Have him as a Friend than Enemy and Invite him Back The Real Reason Why Radisson Returned The Treachery of Statecraft Young Chouart Out- raged, Nurses his Wrath and Gayly Comes on the Scene Monsieur Pere" Scout and Spy . . .180 CHAPTER XI Wherein the Reasons for Young Chouart Groseiller's Mysterious Message to Our Good Friend "Pe're'" are Explained The Forest Rovers of New France Raid the Bay by Sea and Land Two Ships Sunk Pe"re", the Spy, Seized and Sent to England . . .198 CHAPTER XII Pierre le Moyne d'Iberville Sweeps the Bay . . .211 CHAPTER XIII D'Iberville Sweeps the Bay (continued) .... 228 CHAPTER XIV What Became of Radisson? New Facts on the Last Days of the Famous Pathfinder . . . .256 PART III CHAPTER XV PAGE The First Attempts of the Adventurers to Explore Henry Kelsey Penetrates as far as the Valley of the Saskatchewan Sanford and Arrington, Known as " Red Cap," Found Henley House Inland from Albany Beset from Without, the Company is also Beset from Within Petitions Against the Charter Increase of Capital Restoration of the Bay from France . 277 CHAPTER XVI Old Captain Knight, Beset by Gold Fever, Hears the Call of the North The Straits and Bay The First Harvest of the Sea at Dead Man's Island Castaways for Three Years The Company, Beset by Gold Fever, Increases its Stock Pays Ten Per Cent, on Twice Trebled Capital Coming of Spies Again . . .298 CHAPTER XVII The Company's Prosperity Arouses Opposition Arthur Dobbs and the Northwest Passage and the Attack on the Charter No Northwest Passage is Found, but the French Spur the English to Renewed Activity . 320 CHAPTER XVIII The March Across the Continent Begins The Company Sends a Man to the Blackfeet of the South Saskatche- wan Anthony Hendry is the First Englishman to Penetrate to the Saskatchewan The First Englishman to Winter West of Lake Winnipeg He Meets tin- Sioux and the Blackfeet and Invites them to the Bay 334 CHAPTER XIX Extension of Trade toward Labrador, Quebec and Rockies Hearne Finds the Athabasca Country and Founds Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan Cocking Proceeds to the Blackfeet Howse Finds the Pass in Rockies ..... 355 xi Contents CHAPTER XX PAGE "The Coming of the Pedlars" "A New Race of Wood- rovers Throngs to the Northwest Bandits of the Wilds War Among Themselves Tales of Border War- fare, Wassail and Grandeur The New Northwest Company Challenges the Authority and Feudalism of the Hudson's Bay Company 389 All FOREWORD IT HAS become almost a truism to say that no complete account of the Hudson's Bay Adven- turers has yet been written. I have often wondered if the people who repeated that statement knew what they meant. The empire of the fur trade Adventurers was not confined to Rupert's Land, as specified by their charter. Lords of the Outer Marches, these gay Gentlemen Adventurers setting sail over the seas of the Unknown, Soldiers of Fortune with a laugh for life or death carving a path through the wilderness were not to be checked by the mere fiction of limits set by a charter. They followed the rivers of their bay south to the height of land, and looking over it saw the unoccupied territory of the Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi. It was American territory; but what did that matter? Over they marched and took possession in Minnesota and the two Dakotas and Montana. This region was reached by way of Albany River. Then they fol- lowed the Saskatchewan up and looked over its height of land. To the north were MacKcnzic River and the Yukon; to the west, the Fraser and xv Foreword the Columbia. By no feat of imagination could the charter be stretched to these regions. Canadian merchants were on the field in MacKenzie River. Russians claimed Alaska. Americans claimed Ore- gon down as far as the Spanish Settlements; but these things did not matter. The Hudson's Bay Adventurers went over the barriers of mountains and statecraft, and founding their fur empire of wild- wood rovers, took toll of the wilderness in cargoes of precious furs outvaluing all the taxes ever collected by a conqueror. All this was not enough. South of the Columbia was an unknown region the size of half Europe California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho. The wildwood rovers of the Hudson's Bay Adven- turers swept south in pack-horse brigades of two- and three-hundreds from the Columbia to Monterey. Where Utah railroads now run, their trappers found the trail. Where gold seekers toiled to death across Nevada deserts, Hudson's Bay trappers had long before marched in dusty caravans sweeping the wil- derness of beaver. Where San Francisco stands to- day, the English Adventurers once owned a thousand- acre farm. By a bold stroke of statecraft, they had hoped to buy up Mexico's bad debts and trade those debts for proprietary rights in California. The story of why they failed is theme for novelist or poet rather than historian. Suffice to say, their Southern Bri- xvi gades, disguised as Spanish horsemen, often went south as far as .Monterey. Yet more! The Hud- son's Bay Adventurers had a station half way across the Pacific in Hawaii. In all, how large was their fur empire? Larger, by actual measurement, much larger, than Europe. Now what person would risk reputation by saying no complete account had yet been written of all Europe? The thing is so manifestly impossible, it is absurd. Not one complete account, but hundreds of volumes on different episodes will go to the making of such a complete history. So is it of the vast area ruled by the Hudson's Bay Company. The time will come when each district will demand as separate treatment as a Germany, or a France or an Italy in its history. All that can be attempted in one volume or one series of volumes is the portrayal of a single movement, or a single episode, or a single character. In this account, I have attempted to tell the story of the Company only as adventurer, pathfinder, em- pire-builder, from Rupert's Land to California- feudal lord beaten off the field by democracy. Where the empire-builder merges with the colonizer and pioneer, I have stopped in each case. In Manitoba, the passing of the Company was marked by the Rid Rebellion; in British Columbia, by the mad gold stampede; in Oregon, by the terrible Whitman xvii . Foreword massacres; in California, by the^ fall of Spanish power. All these are dramas in themselves worthy of poet or novelist; but they are not germane to the Adventurers. Therefore, they are not given here. Who takes up the story where I leave off, must hang the narrative on these pegs. ' Another intentional omission. From the time the Adventurers wrote off ^100,000 loss for search of the North- West Passage, Arctic Exploration has no part in this story. In itself, it is an enthralling story; but to give even the most scrappy reference to it here would necessitate crowding out essential parts of the Adventurers' record such as McLoughlin's transmontane empire, or the account of the South Bound Brigades. Therefore, latter day Arctic work has no mention here. For the same reason, I have been compelled to omit the dramatic story of the early missions. These merit a book to themselves. Throughout with the exception of four chapters, I may say altogether I have relied for the thread of my narrative on the documents in Hudson's Bay House, London; the Minute Books of some two hundred years, the Letter Books, the Stock Books, the Memorial Books, the Daily Journals kept by chief factors at every post and sent to London from 1670. These documents are in tons. They are not xviii Foreword open to the public. They are unclassified; and in the case of Minute Books are in duplicates, "the Foule Minutes" as the inscription on the old parch- ment describes them being rough, almost unread- able, notes jotted down during proceedings with interlinings and blottings to be copied into the Minute Books marked "Faire Copic." In some cases, the latter has been lost or destroyed; and only the un- corrected one remains. It is necessary to state this because discrepancies will be found noted as the story proceeds which arise from the fact that some volumes of the corrected minutes have been lost. The Minute Books consist variously from one to five hundred pages each. Beside the documents of Hudson's Bay House, London, there is a great mass of unpublished, unex- ploited material bearing on the Company in the Public Records Office, London. I had some thou- sands of pages of transcripts of these made which throw marvelous side light on the printed records of Radisson; of Ibcrville; of Parl. Report 1749; of the Coltman Report and Blue Book of 1817-22; and the Americans in Oregon. In many episodes, the story told here will differ almost unrecognizably from accepted versions and legends of the same era. This is not by accident. Nor is it because I have not consulted what one writer xix Foreword sarcastically called to my attention as "the secondary authorities" the words are his, not mine. Nearly all these authorities from earliest to latest days are in my own library and interlined from many read- ings. Where I have departed from old versions of famous episodes, it has been because records left in the handwriting of the actors themselves compelled me; as in the case of Selkirk's orders about Red River, Ogden's discoveries in Nevada and Utah and California, Thompson's explorations of Idaho, Howse's explorations in the Rockies, Ogden's rob- bery of the Americans, the Americans' robbery of him. I regret I have no clue to any Spanish version of why Glen Rae blew out his brains in San Francisco. On this episode, I have relied on the legends current among the old Hudson's Bay officers and retold so well by Bancroft. To Mr. C. C. Chipman, commissioner of the Hud- son's Bay Company, to Mr. William Ware, the sec- retary, and Lord Strathcona-and-Mount-Royal, the Governor I owe grateful thanks for access to the H. B. C. documents. On the whole, the record of the Adventurers, is not one to bring the blush of regret to those jealous for the Company's honor. It is a record of daring and courage and adventuring and pomp in the best xx Foreword sense of the words and of intrigue and statecraft and diplomacy, too, not always in the best sense of the words which must take its place in the world's history far above the bloody pageantry of Spanish conqueror in Mexico and Peru. It is the one case where Feudalism played an important and successful role in America, only in the end to be driven from the stage by Young Democracy. xxi PART I 1610-1631 Being an Account of the Discoveries in the Great Sea of the North by Henry Hudson and the Dane, Jens Munck. How the Search for the North- West Passage Led to the Opening of two Regions New York and the North-West Territories. THE CONQUEST OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST i CHAPTER I 1607 HENRY HUDSON'S FIRST VOYAGE PRACTICAL men scorn the dreamer, espe- cially the mad-souled dreamer who wrecks life trying to prove his dream a reality. Yet the mad-souled dreamer, the Poet of Action whose poem has been his life, the Hunter who has chased the Idea down the Long Trail where all tracks point one way and never return has been a herald of light for humanity. Of no one is this truer than the English pilot, Henry Hudson. Hudson did not set out to find the great inland waters that bear his name Hudson River and Hud- son Bay. He set out to chase that rainbow myth the Pole or rather the passage across the Pole. To 3 him, as to all Arctic explorers, the call had become a sort of obsession. It was a demon, driving him in spite of himself. It was a siren whom he could not resist, luring him to wreck, which he knew was cer- tain. It was a belief in something which reason couldn't prove but time has justified. It was like a scent taken up by a hound on a strange trail. He could not know where it would lead but because of Something in him and Something on the Trail, he was compelled to follow. Like the discoverer in science, he could not wait till his faith was gilt-edged with profit before risking his all on the venture. Call it demon or destiny! At its voice he rose from his place and followed to his death. The situation was this: Not a dozen boats had sailed beyond the Sixtieth degree of north latitude. From Sixty to the Pole was an area as great as Africa. This region was absolutely unknown. What did it hide? Was it another new world, or a world of waters giving access across the Pole from Europe to Asia? The Muscovy Company of England, the East India Com- pany of Holland, both knew the Greenland of the Danes; and sent their ships to fish at Spitzbergen, east of Greenland. But was Greenland an island, or a great continent? Were Spitzbergen and Green- 4 Henry Hudson's First Voyage land parts of a vast Polar land? Did the mountains wreathed there in eternal mists conceal the wealth of a second Peru? Below the endless swamps of ice, would men find gold sands? And when one fol- lowed up the long coast of the east shore as long as from Florida to Maine where the Danish colonies had perished of cold centuries ago what beyond? A continent, or the Pole, or the mystic realm of frost peopled by the monsters of Saga myth, where the Goddess of Death held pitiless sway and the shores were lined with the dead who had dared to invade her realm? Why these* questions should have pierced the peace of Henry Hudson, the English pilot, and possessed him can no more be explained than the Something on the Trail that compels Some- thing in the hound. Like other dreamers, . Hudson had to put his dreams in harness; hitch his Idea to every day uses, The Muscovy Company trading to Russia wanted to find a short way across the Pole to China. Hudson had worked up from sailor to pilot and pilot to master on the Dutch traders, and was commissioned to seek the passage. The Company furnished him with a crew of eleven including his own boy, John. It would be ridiculous if it were not so pathetic these simple sailors undertaking a venture that has baffled every great navigator since time began. S Led by Hudson with the fire of a great faith in his eyes, the men solemnly marched to Saint Ethelburge Church off Bishopgate Street, London, to partake of Holy Communion and ask God's aid. Back to the muddy water-front opposite the Tower; a gold coin for last drinks; a hearty God-speed from the gentlemen of the Muscovy Company pompous in self-importance and lace ruffles and the little crew steps into a clumsy river boat with brick-red sails. One gentleman opines with a pinch of snuff that it may be "this many a day before Master Hudson returns." Riffraff loafers'crane necks to see to the last. Cursing watermen clear the course by thump- ing other rivermen out of the way. The boat slips under the bridge down the wide flood of the yeasty Thames through a forest of masts and sails of as many colors as Joseph's coat. It is like a great sewer of humanity, this river tide with its city's traffic of a thousand years. Farmers rafting down loads of hay, market women punting themselves along with boat loads of vegetables, fish- ing schooners breasting the tide with full-blown sails, high-hulled galleons from Spain, flat-bottomed, rickety tubs from the Zee, gay little craft barges with bunting, wherries with lovers, rowboats with nothing more substantial than silk awnings for a sail jostle and throng and bump each other as Hudson's crew 6 Henry Hudson's First Voyage shoots down with the tide. Not a man of the crew but wonders is he seeing it all for the last time? But here is the Muscovy Company's ship all newly rigged waiting at Gravesend, absurdly small for such a venture on such a sea. Then, in the clanking of anchor chains and sing-song of the capstan and last shouts of the noisy rivermen, apprehensions are for- gotten. Can they but find a short route to China, their homely little craft may plough back with as rich cargo as ever Spanish caravel brought from the fabulous South Sea. The full tide heaves and rocks and bears out ; a mad-souled dreamer standing at the prow with his little son, who is very silent. The air is fraught with something too big for words. May first, 1607, Hudson is off for the Pole. He might as wtll have been following the Flying Dutch- man, or ballooning to the moon. The city along the banks of the Thames has presently thinned to towns. The towns slide past into villages. The villages blur into meadow lands with the thatch roof of the farmer's cot; and before night, the last harbor light has been left in the offing. The little ship has headed her carved prow north. The billows of the North Sea roll to meet her. Dark- ness falls with no sound but the swish of the waters against the ports, the hum of the wind through the 7 The Conquest of the Great Northwest rigging, and the whirring flap of the great sails shifting to catch the breeze. For six weeks, north, north-west, they drove over the tumbling world of waters, sliding from crest to trough, from blue hollow to curdling wave-top, plough- ing a watery furrow into the region of long, white light and shortening nights, and fogs that lay without lifting once in twenty days. The farther north they sailed, the tighter drew the cords of cold, like a violin string stretched till it fairly snapped air full of pure ozone that set the blood jumping and finger-tips tingling! Green spray froze the sails stiff as boards. The rigging became ropes of ice, the ship a ghost gliding white through the fogs. At last came a squall that rolled the mists up like a scroll, and straight ahead, high and lonely as cloud-banks, towered the white peaks of Greenland's mountains. Though it was two o'clock in the morning, it was broad daylight, and the whole crew came scrambling up the hatches to the shout of "Land!" Hudson enthusiastically named the mountain "God's Mercy" ; but the lift of mist uncurtained to the astonished gaze of the English sailors a greater wonder than the mountains. North, south, east, west, the ship was embayed in an ice-world ice in islands and hills and valleys with lakes and rivers of fresh water flowing over the surface. Birds flocked overhead with lonely 8 Henry Hudson's First Voyage screams at these human intruders on a realm as white and silent as death ; and where one crystal berg was lighted to gold by the sun, a huge polar bear hulked to its highest peak and surveyed the new- comers in as much astonishment at them as they felt at him. Truly, this was the Ultima Thule of poet's dream beyond the footsteps of man. Blue was the sky above, blue the patches of ocean below, blue the illimitable fields of ice, blue and lifeless and cold as steel. The men passed that day jubilant as boys out of school. Some went gunning for the birds. Others would have pursued the polar bear but with a splash the great creature dived into the sea. The crew took advantage of the pools of fresh water in the ice to fill their casks with drinking water. For the next twenty-four hours, Hudson crept among the ice floes by throwing out a hook on the ice, then hauling up to it by cable. By night the sea was churning the ice in choppy waves, with a growl of wind through the mast, and the crew wakened the next morning to find a hurri- cane of sleet had wiped out the land: The huge floes were turning somersets in the rough sea with a banging that threatened to smash the little ship into a crushed egg shell. Under bare poles, she drove before the wind for open sea. As she scudded from the crush of the tumbling 9 The Conquest of the Great Northwest ice, Hudson remarked something extraordinary in the conduct of his ship. Veering about, sails down, there was no mistaking it she was drifting against the wind! As the storm subsided, it became plainer: the wind was carrying in one direction, the sea was carrying in another. Hudson had discovered that current across the Pole, which was to play such an important part with Nansen three hundred years later. Icebergs were floating against the wind, too, laboriously, with apparently aimless circlings round and round, but circles that carried them forward against the wind, and the ship was presently moored to a great icepan drifting along with the undertow. Then the curse of all Arctic voyagers fell on the sea fog thick to the touch as wool, through which the icebergs glided like phantoms with a great crash of waters, where the surf beat on the floes. Never mind! Their anchor- hold acts as a breakwater. They are sheltered from the turmoil of the waves outside the ice. And they are still headed north. And they are up to Seventy-three along a coast, which no chart has ever before recorded, no chart but the myths of death's realm. As the coast might prove treacherous if the ice began thumping inland, Hud- son names the region "Hold Hope," which may be interpreted, "Keep up your Courage." Ice and fog, fog and ice, and the eternal silences 10 Henry Hudson's First Voyage but for the thunder of the floes banging the ports; up to Seventy-five by noon of June 25, when the sailors notice that the floundering clumsy grampus are playing mad pranks about the ship. The glisten- ing brown backs race round the prow and somerset bodily out of the water in a very deviltry of sauciness! Call it sailors' superstition, but when the grampus schools play, your Northern crew looks for storm, and by noon of June 26, the storm is there pounding the hull like thunder and shrieking through the rigging. Not a good place to be, between land and ice in hurri- cane! Hudson scampers for the sea, still north, but driven out east by the trend of Greenland's coast along an unbroken barrier of ice that seems to link Greenland to Spitzbergen. No passage across the Pole this way! That is certain! But there is a current across the Pole! That, too, is certain ! And Greenland is as long as a continent. So driving before the storm, Hudson stirrs east for Spitzbergen. In July, it is warmer, but heat brings more ice, and the man at the mast- head on the lookout for land up at Seventy-nine could not know that a submerged iceberg was going to turn a somerset directly under the keel. There was a splintering crash. Something struck the keel like a cannon shot. Up reared the little boat on end lib- a frightened horse. When the waters plunged ii The Conquest of the Great Northwest down two great bergs had risen one on each side of the quivering ship and a jagged gash gaped through the timbers at water line. Water slushed over decks in a cataract. The yardarms are still dipping and dripping to the churning seas when the crew leaps out to a man, some on the ice, some in small boats, some astraddle of driftwood to stop the leak in the bottom. As they toil and they toil in desperation, for the safety of the ship is their only possibility of reaching home they notice it again wood drifting against the wind, the undertow of some great un- known Polar Current. Hudson cannot wait for this current to carry him toward the Pole, as Nansen did. Up he tacks to Eighty-two, within eight degrees of the baffling Pole, within four degrees of Farthest North reached by modern navigators. When he finds Spitzbergen locked by the ice to the north, he tries it by the south. But the ice seems to become almost a living enemy in its resistance. Hudson had anchored to a drifting floe. Another icepan shut off his retreat. Then a terrific sea began running the effect of the ice jam against the Polar Current. The fog was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Not a breath of wind stirred. Sails hung limp, and the sea was driving the ship to instant destruction against a jam of ice. Heaving out small boats, the crew rowed for dear 12 Henry Hudson's First Voyage life towing the ship out of the maelstrom by main force, but their puny human strength was as child's play against the great powers of the elements. Back- wash had carried rowers and ship and small boats within a stone's throw of the ramming icebergs when a faint air breathed through the fog. Moisten- ing their fingers, the sailors held up hands to catch the motion of any breeze. No mistake it was a fair wind right about sails there the little ship turned tail to the ice and was off like a bird, for says the old ship's log: "it pleased God to give us a gale, and away we steered" The battle for a passage seemed hopeless. Hud- son assembled the crew on decks and on bended knees prayed God to show which way to steer. Of no region had the sailors of that day greater horror than Spitzbergen. They began to recall the fearful disasters that had befallen Dutch ships here but a few years before. Those old sailors' superstitions of the North being the realm of the Goddess of Death, came back to memory. That last narrow escape from the ice-crush left terror in the very marrow of thc-ir bones. In vain, Hudson once more suggested seeking the passage by Greenland. To the crew, tlu Voice of the North uttered no call. Glory was all very well, but they didn't want glory. They wanUd to go home. What was the good of chasing '3 The Conquest of the Great Northwest an Idea down the Long Trail to a grave on the frozen shores of Death? When men begin to reason that way, there is no answer. You can't promise them what you are not sure you will ever find. The Call is only to those who have ears to hear. You must have hold of the end of a GOLDEN THREAD before you can follow the baffling mazes of a discoverer's faith, and these men hadn't faith in anything except a full stomach and a sure wage. After all, their arguments were the same as the obstructions presented against every expedition to the Pole to-day, or for that matter, to any other realm of the Unknown. It was like asking the inventor to show his invention in full work before he has made it, or the bank to pay its dividends before you contribute to its capital. What reason could Hudson give to justify his faith? Standing on the quarter deck with clenched fists and troubled face, he might as well have argued with stones, or pleaded for a chance with modern money bags as talked down the expostulations of the mutineers.' They were men of the kidney who will always be on the safe side. As the world knows there was no passage across the Pole suitable for commerce. There was no justification for Hudson's faith. Yet it was the goal of that faith, which led him on the road to 14 Henry Hudson's First Voyage greater discoveries than a dozen passages across the Pole. Faith has always been represented as one of three sister graces; cringing, meek-spirited, downtrodden damsels at their best. In view of all she has accom- plished for the world in religion, in art, in science, in discovery, in commerce, Faith should be represented as a fiery-eyed goddess with the forked lightnings for her torch, treading the mountain peaks of the uni- verse. From her high place, she alone can see whence comes the light and which way runs the Trail. Step by step, the battle has been against dark- ness, every step a blow, every blow a bruise driving back to the right Trail; every blood mark a mile- stone in human progress from lowland to upland. But Hudson's men were obdurate to arguments all up in air. They will not seek the passage by Greenland. Hudson must turn back. To a great spirit, obstructions are never a stop. They are only a delay. Hudson sets his teeth. You will see him go by Greenland one day yet mark his word! Meantime, home he sails through what he calls "slabbie" weather, putting into Tilbury Docks on the 1 5th of September. If money bags counted up the profits of that year's trip, they would write against Hudson's name in the Book of Judgment Failure! 15 CHAPTER II 1608 HUDSON'S SECOND VOYAGE HENCEFORTH Hudson was an obsessed man. First, he possessed the Idea. Now the Idea possessed him. It was to lead him on a course no man would willingly have fol- lowed. Yet he followed it. Everything, life or death, love or hate, gain or loss, was to be subservient to that Idea. That current drifting across the Pole haunted him as it was to haunt Nansen at a later date. By at- tempting too much, had he missed all? He had gone to Spitzbergen in the Eighties. If he had kept down to Nova Zembla Islands in the Seventies, would he have found less ice? The man possessed by a single idea may be a trial to his associates. To himself, he is a torment. Once he becomes baffled, he is beset by doubts, by questions, by fears. If his faith leaves him, his life goes to pieces like a rope of sand. Hudson must have been beset by such doubts now. It is the place where the adventurer leaves the mile- 16 Hudson's Second Voyage stones of all known paths and has not yet found firm footing for his own feet. Hundreds, thousands, have struck out from the beaten Trail. Few, indeed, have blazed a new path. The bones of the dead bleach on the shores of the realm ruled by the God- dess of the Unknown. It is the place where the be- ginner sets out to be a great artist, or a great scien- tist, or a great discoverer. Thousands have set out on the same quest who should have rested content at their own ingle-nook, happy at the plow; not good plowmen spoiled. The beginner balances the chances a thousand to one against him! Is his vision a fool's quest, a will-o'-the-wisp? Is the call the tickling of his own restless vanity; or the voice of a great truth? He can learn only by going for- ward, and the going forward may take him over a precipice may prove him a fool. This was the place Hudson was at now. It is a place that has been passed by all the world's great. Nine Dutch boats had at different times passed between Nova Zembla and the main coast of Russia. To be sure, they had been blocked by the ice beyond, but might not Hudson by some lucky chance follow that Polar Current through open water? The chances were a thousand to one against him. Who but a fool would take the chance? Nansen's daring plan to utilize the ice-drift to lijt his ship above the 17 The Conquest of the Great Northwest ice-crush did not occur to Hudson. Except for that difference, the two explorers the greatest of the early Arctic navigators and the greatest of the modern planned very much the same course. This time, the Muscovy Company commissioned Hudson to look out for ivory hunting as well as the short passage to Asia. Three men only of the old crew enlisted. Hudson might enjoy risking his life for glory. Most mortals prefer safety. Of the three who re-enlisted one was his son. Keeping close to the cloud-capped, mountainous shores of Norway, the boat sighted Cape North on June 3, 1608. Clouds wreathed the mountains in belts and plumes of mist. Snow-fields of far sum- mits shone gold in sudden bursts of sunshine through the cloud-wrack. Fjords like holes in the wall nestled at the foot of the mountains, the hamlets of the fisher folk like tiny match boxes against the mighty hills. To the restless tide rocked and heaved the fishing smacks emblems of man's spirit at end- less wrestle with the elements. As Hudson's ship climbed the waves, the fishermen stood up in their little boats to wave a God-speed to these adven- turers bound for earth's ends. Sails swelling to the wind, Hudson's vessel rode the roll of green waters, then dipped behind a cataract of waves, and dropped over the edge of the known world. 18 Hudson's Second Voyage Driftwood again on that Polar Current up at Seventy - five, driftwood and the endless sweep of moving ice, which compelled Hudson "to loose }rom one floe" and "bear room from another" and anchor on the lee of one berg to prevent ramming by an- other; "divers pieces driving past the ship," says Hudson just as it drove past Nansen's Fram on the same course. To men satiated of modern life, the North is still a wonder- world. There are the white silences pri- meval as the morn when God first created Time. There is "the sun sailing round in a fiery ring" as one old Viking described it instead of sinking below the horizon; nightless days in summer and dayless nights in winter. There is the desolation of earth's places where man may never have dominion and Death must always veil herself unseen. Polar bears floundered over the ice hunting seals. Walrus roared from the rocks in herds till the surf shook ivory for the Muscovy Company ; and whales floated about the ship in schools that threatened to keel the craft over more profit for the Muscovy traders. What wonder that Hudson's ignorant sailors began to feel the marvel of the strange ice- world, and to see fabulous things in the light of the midnight sun? One morning a face was seen following the ship, staring up from the sea. There was no doubt of it. 19 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Two sailors saw it. Was it one of the monsters of Saga myth, that haunted this region? The watch called a comrade. Both witnessed the hideous ap- parition of a human face with black hair streaming behind on the waves. The body was like a woman's and the seamen's terror had conjured up the ill omen of a mermaid when wave- wash overturned its body, exhibiting the fins and tail of a porpoise "skin very white" mermaid without a doubt, portent of evil, though the hair may have been floating seaweed. Sure enough, within a week, ice locked round the ship in a vise. The floes were no brashy ice-cakes that could be plowed through by a ship's prow with a strong, stern wind. They were huge fields of ice, five, ten, twenty and thirty feet deep interspread with hummocks and hillocks that were miniature bergs in themselves. Across these rolling meadows of crystal, the wind blew with the nip of midwinter; but when the sun became partly hidden in fiery cloud- banks, the scene was a fairy land, sea and sky shad- ing off in deepest tinges to all the tints of the rain- bow. Where the ocean showed through ice depths, there was a blue reflection deep as indigo. Where the clear water was only a surface pool on top of submerged ice, the sky shone above with a light green delicate as apple bloom. Where the ice was a broken mass of an adjacent glacier sliding down 20 xon's Second Voyage to the sea through the eternal snows of some mountain gorge, a curious phenomenon could some- times be observed. The edge of the ice was in layers each layer representing one ^year's snowfall con- gealed by the summer thaw, so that the observer could count back perhaps a century from the ice layers. Other men tread on snow that fell but yes- terday. Hudson's crew were treading on the snow- fall of a hundred years as though this were God's workshop in the making and a hundred years were but as a day. Beyond the floating ice fields, the heights of Nova Zcmbla were sighted, awesome and lonely in the white night, gruesome to these men from memory of the fate that befell the Dutch crews here fifteen years previously. Rowing and punting through the ice-brash, two men went ashore to explore. They saw abundance of game for the Muscovy gentlemen ; and at one place among driftwood came on the cold ashes of an old fire. It was like the first print of man's footstep found by Robinson Crusoe. Startled by signs of human presence, they scanned the sur- rounding landscape. On the shore, a solitary cross had been erected of driftwood. Then the men re- calk-d the fate of the Dutch crew, that had perished wandering over these islands in 1597. What fearful battles had the white silences witnessed between 21 The Conquest of the Great Northwest puny men explorers and the stony Goddess of Death? What had become of the last man, of the man who had erected the cross? Did his body lie somewhere along the shores of Nova Zembla, or had he manned his little craft like the Vikings of old and sailed out lashed to the spars to meet death in tempest? The horror of the North seemed to touch the men as with the hands of the dead whom she had slain. The report that the two men carried back to Hud- son's boat did. not raise the spirits of the crew. One night the entire ship's company but Hudson and his son had gone ashore to hunt walrus. Such illimitable fields of ice lay north that Hudson knew his only chance must be between the south end of Nova Zembla (he did not know there were several islands in the group) and the main coast of Asia. It was three o'clock in the morning. The ice began to drive landward with the fury of a whirlpool. Two anchors were thrown out against the tide. Fenders were lowered to protect the ship's sides. Captain and boy stood with iron-shod poles in hand to push the ice from the ship, or the ship from the ice. The men from the hunt saw the coming danger and rushed over the churning icepans to the rescue. Some on the ice, some on the ship, with poles and oars and crowbars, they pushed and heaved away the icepans, and ramming their crowbars down 22 \\rv KIROW. *SIA. Hudson's Second Voyage crevices wrenched the ice to splinters or swerved it off the sides of the ship. Sometimes an icepan would tilt, teeter, rise on end and turn a somerset, plunging the sailors in ice water to their arm pits. The jam seemed to be coming on the ship from both directions at once, for the simple reason the ship offered the line of least resistance. Twelve hours the battle lasted, the heaving ice-crush threatening to crush the ship's ribs like slats till at last a channel of open water appeared just outside the ship's prison. But the air was a dead calm. Springing from ice- pan to icepan, the men towed their ship out of danger. Rain began to drizzle. The next day a cold wind came whistling through the rigging. The ship lay in a land-locked cove of Nova Zembla. Hudson again sent his men ashore to hunt, probably also to pluck up courage. Then he climbed the lookout to scan the sea. It was really to scan his- own fate. It was the old story of the glory-seeker's quest a harder battle than human power could wage; a struggle that at the last only led to a hopeless impasse. The scent on the Trail and the eagerness in the hound leading only to a blind alley of baffled effort and ruin! Every great benefactor of humanity has come to this cul de sac of hope. It is as if a man's highest aim were only in the end a sort of trap whither some impish will-o'-the-wisp has impelled 23 The Conquest of the Great Northwest him. The thing itself a passage across the Pole didn't exist any more than the elixir of life which laid the foundations of chemistry. The question is how, when the great men of humanity come to this blind wall, did they ever have courage to go on? For the thing they pursued was a phantom never to be real- ized; but strangely enough, in the providence of God, the phantom pursuit led to greater benefits for the race than their highest hopes dared to dream. No elixir of life, you dreamer; but your mad- brained search for the elixir gave us the secrets of chemistry by which man prolongs life if he doesn't preserve eternal youth ! No fate written on the scroll of the heavens, you star-gazer; but your fool-astrol- ogy has given us astronomy, by which man may pre- dict the movements of the stars for a thousand years though he cannot forsee his own fate for a day! No North- West Passage to Asia, you fevered adven- turers of the trackless sea; but your search for a short way to China has given us a New World worth a thousand Chinas! Go on with your dreams, you mad-souled visionaries! If it is a will-o'-the wisp you chase, your will-o'-the-wisp is a lantern to the rest of humanity! Climbing the rigging to the topmast yardarm, Hudson scanned the sea. His heart sank. His 24 Hudson's Second Voyage hopes seemed to congeal like the eternal ice of this ice-world. The springs of life seemed to grow both heavy and cold. Far as eye could reach was ice- only ice, while outside the cove there raged a tempest as if all the demons of the North were blowing their trumpets. "There is no passage this way," said Hudson to his son. Then as if hope only dies that it may send forth fresh growth like the seed, he added, "But we must try Greenland again, on the west side this time." It was ten o'clock at night when the men re- turned laden with game; but they, too, had taken counsel among themselves whether to go forward; and the memory of that dead crew's cross turned the scales against Hudson. It was only the 5th of July, but they would not hear of attempting Greenland this season. From midnight of the 5th to nine o'clock of the 6th, Hudson pondered. No gap opened through the white wall ahead. The Frost Giants, whose gamlx)ls may be heard on the long winter nights when the icecracks whoop and romp, had won against Man. "Being void oj hope," Hudson records, "the wind stormy and against us, much ice driving, we weighed and set sail westward." Home-bound, the ship anchored on the Thames, August 26. CHAPTER III 1609 HUDSON'S THIRD VOYAGE "W "IT THILE Hudson was pursuing his phantom \/^/ across Polar seas, Europe had at last awakened to the secret of Spain's great- ness colonial wealth that poured the gold of Peru into her treasury. To counteract Spain, colonizing became the master policy of Europe. France was at work on the St. Lawrence. England was settling Virginia, and Smith, the pioneer of Virginia, who was Hudson's personal friend, had explored the Chesapeake. i But the Netherlands went a step farther. To throw off the yoke of Spain, they maintained a fleet of seventy merchantmen furnished as ships of war to wage battle on the high seas. Spanish colonies were to be attacked wherever found. Spanish cities were to be sacked as the buccaneers sacked them on the South Sea. Spanish caravels with cargoes of gold were to be scuttled and sunk wherever met. It was to be brigandage brigandage pure and simple 26 Hudson's Third Voyage from the Zuider Zee to Panama, from the North Pole to the South. Hudson's voyages for the Muscovy merchants of London to find a short way to Asia at once arrested the attention of the Dutch. Dutch and English vied with each other for the discovery of that short road to the Orient. For a century the chance en- counter of Dutch and English sailors on Arctic seas had been the signal for the instant breaking of heads. Not whales but men were harpooned when Dutch and English fishermen met off Nova Zembla, or Spitzbergen, or the North Cape. Hudson was no sooner home from his second voyage for the English than the Dutch East India Company invited him to Holland to seek passage across the Pole for them. This it should be ex- plained is the only justification that exists for writ- ing the English pilot's name as Hendrick instead of Henry, as though employment by the Dutch changed the Englishman's nationality. The invitation was Hudson's salvation. Just at the moment when all doors were shut against him in England and when his hopes were utterly baffled by two failures another door opened. Just at the mo- ment when his own thoughts were turning toward America as the solution of the North-West Passage, the chance came to seek the passage in America. 27 Just when Hudson was at the point where he might have abandoned his will-o'-the-wisp, it lighted him to a fresh pursuit on a new Trail. It is such coin- cidences as these in human life that cause the poet to sing of Destiny. But the chanciness of human fortune did not cease because of this stroke of good luck. The great mer- chants of the Netherlands heard his plans. His former failures were against him. Money bags do not care to back an uncertainty. Having paid his expenses to come to Holland, the merchant princes were disposed to let him cool his heels in the outer halls waiting their pleasure. The chances are .they would have rejected his overtures altogether if France and Belgium had not at that time begun to consider the employment of Hudson on voyages of discovery. The Amsterdam merchants of the Dutch East India Company suddenly awakened to the fact that they wanted Hudson, and wanted him at once. Again Destiny, or a will-o'-the-wisp as impish as Puck- had befriended him. At Amsterdam, he was furnished with two vessels, the Good Hope as an escort part way; the Half Moon for the voyage itself a flat-bottomed, tub-like yacht such as plied the shallows of Holland. In his crew, he was unfortunate. The East India Company, of course, supplied him with the sailors of their own 28 Hudson's Third Voyage boats lawless lascars; turbaned Asiatics with stealthy tread and velvet voices and a dirk hidden in their girdles; gypsy nondescripts with the hot blood of the hot tropics and the lawless instincts of birds of plunder. Your crew trained to cut the Spaniard's throat may acquire the habit and cut the master's throat, too. Along with these sailors, Hudson in- sisted on having a few Englishmen from his former crews, among whom were Colman and Juet and his own son. Juet acted as astronomer and keeper of the ship's log. From Juet and Van Meteren, the Dutch consul in England in whose hands Hudson's manuscripts finally fell are drawn all the facts of the voyage. On March 25 (April 6, new style), 1609, the cum- bersome crafts swung out on the hazy yellow of the Zuider Zee. Motlier ships were about Hudson, here, than on the Thames, for the Dutch had an enormous commerce with the East and the West Indies. Fe- luccas with lateen sails and galleys for oarsmen had come up from the Mediterranean. Dutch pirates of the Barbary Coast narrow in the prow, narrow in the keel, built for swift sailing and light cargoes had forgathered, sporting sails of a different design for every harl)or. Then, there were the East India nun, ponderous, sic >\v moving, deep and broad, with cannon bristling through the ports like men-of-war, 29 The Conquest oj the Great Northwest and tawny Asiatic faces leering over the taffrail. Yawls from the low-lying coast, three-masted lug- gers from Denmark, Norwegian ships with hideous scaled griffins carved on the sharp-curved prows, brigs and brigantines and caravels and tall galleons from Spain all crowded the ports of the Nether- lands, whose commerce was at its zenith. Thread- ing his way through the motley craft, Hudson slowly worked out to sea. All went well till the consort, Good Hope, turned back north of Norway and the Half Moan ploughed on alone into the ice fields of Nova Zembla with her lawless lascar crew. This was the region where other Dutch crews had perished miserably. Here, too, Hudson's English sailors had lost courage the year before. And here Dutch and English always fought for fishing rights. The cold north wind roared down in gusts and flaws and sudden bursts of fury. Against such freezing cold, the flimsy finery of damasks and calico worn by the East Indians was no protection. The lascars were chilled to the bone. They lay huddled in their berths bound up in blankets and refused to stir above decks in such cold. Promptly, the English sailors rebelled against double work. The old feud between English and Dutch flamed up. Knives were out, and before Hudson realized, a mutiny was raging about his ears. 30 Hudson's Third Voyage If he turned back, he was ruined. The door of opportunity to new success is a door that shuts against retreat. His friend, Smith of Virginia, had written to him of the great inlet of the Chesapeake in America. South of the Chesapeake was no pas- ' sage to the South Sea. Smith knew that; but north of the Chesapeake old charts marked an unexplored arm of the sea. When Verrazano, the Italian, coasted America for France in 1524, he had been driven by a squall from the entrance to a vast river between Thirty-nine and Forty-one (the Hudson River); and the Spanish charts of Estevan Gomez, in 1525, marked an unknown Rio de Gamos on the same coast. Hudson now recalled Smith's advice to seek passage between the James River and the St. Lawrence. To clinch matters came a gust driving westward over open sea. Robert Juet, seeking guidance from the heavenly bodies, notices for the first time in history, on May 19, that there is a spot on the sun. If Hudson had accomplished nothing more, he had made two important discoveries for science the Polar Current and the spot on the sun. Geog- raphers and astronomers have been knighted and pensioned for less important discoveries. West, southwest, drove the storm flaw, the Half Moan scudding bare of sails for three hundred miles, The Conquest of the Great Northwest Was it destiny again, or his daemon, or his Puck, or his will-o'-the-wisp, or the Providence of God that drove Hudson contrary to his plans straight for the scene of his immortal discoveries? Pause was made at the Faroes for wood and water. There, too, Hud- son consulted with his officers and decided to steer for America. Once more afloat, June saw the Hal) Moon with its lazy lascars lounging over rails down among the brown fogs of Newfoundland. Here -a roaring nor'- easter came with the suddenness of a thunderclap. The scream of wind through the rigging, the growlers swishing against the keel, then the thunder of the great billows banging broadsides were like the burst of cannon fire over a battlefield. The fore- mast snapped and swept into the seas as the little Half Moon careened over on one side, and the next gust that caught her tore the other sails to tatters, but she still kept her prow headed southwest. Fogs lay as they nearly always lie on the Grand Banks, but a sudden lift of the mist on June 25 re- vealed a sail standing east. To the pirate East Indian sailors, the sight of the strange ship was like the smell of powder to a battle horse. Loot ! Spanish loot! With a whoop, they headed the Half Moon about in utter disregard of Hudson, and gave chase. From midday to dark the Half Moon played pirate, Hud 'son' s Third Voyage cutting the waves in pursuit, careening to the wind in a way that threatened to capsize boat and crew, the fugitive bearing away like a bird on wing. This little by-play lasted till darkness hid the strange ship, but the madcap prank seemed to rouse the lazy lascars from their torpor. Henceforth, they were alert for any lawless raid that promised plunder. Back about the Half Moon through the warm June night. Dutch and English forgathered in the moon- light squatting about on the ship's kegs spinning yarns of bloody pirate venture, when Spanish car- goes were scuttled and Spanish dons tossed off bayo- net point into the sea, and Spanish ladies compelled to walk the plank blindfolded into watery graves. What kind of venture did they expect in America this rascal crew? Then the fogs of the Banks settled down again like wool. Here and there, like phantom ships were the sails of the French fishing fleet, or the black-hulled bateaux, or the rocking Newfoundland dories. A long white curl of combing waves, and they have slurred off from the Wreckers' Reef at Sable Island. Slower now, and steady, the small boats sounding ahead, for the water is shallow and the- wind shifty. In the calm that falls, the crew fishes lazily over decks for cod. Through the fog and dark of July in. something ahead looks like islands. The boat 33 The Conquest of the Great Northwest ' anchors for the night, and when gray morning breaks, the Half Moon lies off what is now known as Penob- scot Bay, Maine. Two dugouts paddled by Indians come climbing the waves. Dressed in breechcloths of fur and feathers, the savages mount the decks without fear. The lascars gather round not much promise of plunder from such scant attire! By signs and a few French words, the Indians explain that St. Lawrence traders frequent this coast. The East India cut- throats prick up their ears. Trade what had these defenceless savages to trade? That week Hudson sailed up the river and sent his carpenters ashore to make fresh masts, but the East India men rummaged the redskins' camp. Great store of furs, they saw. It was not the kind of loot they wanted. Gold was more to their choice, but it was better than no loot at all. The Half Moon was ready to sail on the 25th of July. In spite of Hudson's commands, six sailors went ashore with heavy old-fashioned musketoons known as "murderers." Seizing the Indian canoes, they opened fire on the camp. The amazed Indians dashed for hiding in the woods. The sailors then plundered the wigwams of everything that could be carried away. This has always been considered a terrible blot against Hudson's fame. The only 34 Hudson's Third Voyage explanation given by Juet in the ship's log is, "we drave the savages jrom the houses and took the spoyle as they would have done of us." Van Meteren, the Dutch consul in London, who had Hudson's account, gives another explanation. He declares the Dutch sailors conducted the raid in spite of all the force with which Hudson could oppose them. The Eng- lish sailors refused to enforce his commands by fighting, for they were outnumbered by the muti- neers. No sooner were the mutineers back on deck than they fell to pummeling one another over a divi- sion of the plunder. Any one, who knows how news carries among the Indians by what fur traders describe as "the moccasin telegram," could predict results. "The moccasin telegram" bore exagge- rated rumors of the outrage from the Penobscot to the Ohio. The white man was a man to be fought, .for he had proved himself a treacherous friend. Wind-bound at times, keeping close to land,' warned off the reefs through fog by a great rutt or rustling of the tide, the pirate sailors now disregard- ' ing all commands, the Hall Moon drifted lazily southward past Cape Cod. Somewhere near Nan- tucket, a lonely cry sounded from the wooded shore. It was a human voice. Fearing some Christian had been marooned by mutineers like his own crew, Hud- son sent his small boat ashore. A camp of Indians 35 The Conquest of the Great Northwest was found dancing in a frenzy of joy at the appari- tion of the great "winged wigwam" gliding over the sea. A present of glass buttons filled their cup of happiness to the brim. Grapevines festooned the dank forests. Flowers still bloomed in shady nooks the wild sunflower and the white daisy and the nodding goldenrod ; and the sailors drank clear water from a crystal spring at the roots of a great oak. Robert Juet's ship log records that "the Indian country of great hills"- Massachusetts was "a very sweet land." On August 7, Hudson was abreast New York harbor; but a mist part heat, part fog, part the gathering purples of coming autumn hid the low- lying hills. Sliding idly along the summer sea, mystic, unreal, lotus dreams in the very August air, the world a world of gold in the yellow summer light the Half Moon came to James River by Au- gust 18, where Smith of Virginia lived; but the mutineers had no mind to go up to Jamestown set- tlement. There, the English would outnumber them, and English law did not deal gently with mutineers. A heat hurricane sent the green waves smashing over decks off South Carolina, and in the frantic fright of the ship's cat dashing from side to side, the turbaned pirates imagined portent of evil. Perhaps, too, they were coming too near the Spanish 36 Hudson's Third Voyage settlements of Florida. All their bravado of scuttled Spanish ships may have been pot-valor. Any way, they consented to head the boat back north in a search for the passage above the Chesapeake. Past the swampy Chesapeake, a run up the Dela- ware burnished as a mirror in the morning light; through the heat haze over a glassy sea along that New Jersey shore where the world of pleasure now passes its summers from Cape May and Atlantic City to the highlands of New Jersey slowly glided the Halj Moon. Sand reefs gritted the keel, and the boat sheered out from shore where a line of white foam forewarned more reefs. Juet, the mate, did duty at the masthead, scanning the long coast line for that inlet of the old charts. The East India men lay sprawled over decks, beards unkempt, long hair tied back by gypsy handkerchiefs, bizarre jewels gleaming from huge brass earrings. Some were paying out the sounding line from the curved beak of the prow. Others fished for a shark at the stern, throwing out pork bait at the end of a rope. Many were squatted on the decks unsheltered from the sun, chattering like parrots over games of chance. A sudden shout from Juet at the masthead of shoals! A grit of the keel over pebbly bottom ! On the far inland hills, the signal fires of watching Indians! Then the sea breaking from between 37 islands turbid and muddy as if it came from some great river September 2, they have found the inlet of the old charts. They are on the threshold of New York harbor. They have discovered the great river now known by Hudson's name. Even the mutineers stop gambling to observe the scene. The ringleader that in all sea stories wears a hook on one arm points to the Atlantic Highlands smoky in the summer heat. On their left to the south is Sandy Hook; to the north, Staten Island. To the right with a lumpy hill line like green waves running into one another lie Coney Island and Long Island. ( The East India men laugh with glee. It's a fine land. It's a big land. This is better than risking the gallows for mutiny down in Virginia, or taking chances of having throats cut boarding some Spanish galleon of the South Seas. The ship's log does not say anything about it. Neither does Van Meteren's r record, but I don't think Hudson would have been human if his heart did not give a leap. At five in the afternoon of September 2, the Half Moon anchored at the entrance to New York harbor not far from where the Goddess of Liberty waves her great arm to-day. Silent is the future, silent as the sphinx! How could those Dutch sailors guess, how could the Dutch company that sent them to the Pole know, that the commerce of the world for which they fought Spain 38 Hudson's Third Voyage would one day beat up and down these harbor waters? Dreamed he never so wildly, Hudson's wildest dream could not have forseen that the river he had discovered would one day throb to the multi- tudinous voices of a world traffic, a world empire, a world wealth. In Hudson's day, Spain was the leader of the world's commerce against whom all nations vied. To-day her population does not exceed twenty million, but there flows through the harbor gates, which Hudson, the penniless pilot dreamer, discov- ered, the commerce of a hundred million people. It is no straining to say that individual fortunes have been made in the traffic of New York harbor which exceed the national incomes of Spain and Holland and Belgium combined. But if a city's greatness consists in something more than volume of wealth and volume of traffic; if it consists in high endeavor and self-sacrifice and the pursuit of ideals to the death, Hudson, the dreamer, beset by rascal mutineers and pursuing his aim in spite of all diffi- culties, embodied in himself the qualities that go to make true greatness. Mist and heat haze hid the harbor till ten next morning. The Half Moon then glided a pace in- land. Three great rivers seemed to open before her 39 The Conquest of the Great Northivest the Hudson, East River and one of the channels round Staten Island. On the 4th, while the small boat went ahead to sound, some sailors rowed ashore to fish. Tradition says that the first white men to set foot on New York harbor landed on Coney Island, though there is no proof it was not Staten Island, for the ship lay anchored beside both. The wind blew so hard this night that the anchor dragged over bottom and the Hal) Moon poked her prow into the sands of Staten Island, "but took no hurt, thanks be to God" adds Juet. Signal fires burning driftwood and flames shot up through hollow trees had rallied the Indian tribes to the marvel of the house afloat on the sea. Objects like beings from heaven seemed to live on the house so the poor Indians thought, and they began burning sacrificial fires and sent runners beat- ing up the wise men of all the tribes. A religious dance was begun typifying w r elcome. Spies watch- ing through the foliage came back with word that one of the Manitous was chief of all the rest, for he was dressed in a bright scarlet cloak with something on it bright as the sun they did not know a name for gold lace worn by Hudson as commander. When the Manitou with the gold lace went ashore at Rich- mond, Staten Island, Indian legend says that the chiefs gathered round in a circle under the oaks and 40 Hudson's Third Voyage chanted an ode of welcome to the rhythmic measures of a dance. The natives accompanied Hudson back to the Half Moon with gifts of maize and tobacco "a friendly people," Hudson's manuscript describes them. Two days passed in the Narrow's with interchange of gifts between whites and Indians. On the morn- ing of the 6th, Hudson sent Colman and four men to sound what is now known as Hell Gate. The sailors went on to the Battery the southernmost point of Xew York City as it is to-day finding lands pleasant with grass and flowers and goodly oaks, the air crisp with the odor of autumn woods. With the yellow sun aslant the painted autumn forests, it was easy to forget time. The day passed in idle wanderings. At dusk rain began to fall. This extinguished "the match-lighters" of the men's muskets. Launching their boat again, they were rowing back to the Half Moon through a rain fine as mist when two canoes with a score of warriors suddenly emerged from the dusk. Both parties paused in mutual amazement. Then the warriors uttered a shout and had dis- charged a shower of arrows before the astonished sailors could defend themselves. Was the attack a chance encounter with hostiles, or had "the moccasin telegram " brought news of the murderous raid on the Penobscot? One sailor fell dead shot through the throat. Two of the other four men were injured. The Conquest of the Great Northwest The dead man was the Englishman, Colman. This weakened Hudson against the Dutch mutineers. Muskets were wet and useless. In the dark, the men had lost the ship. The tide began to run with a high wind. They threw out a grapnel. It did not hold. All night in the rain and dark, the two unin- jured men toiled at the oars to keep from drifting out to sea. Daylight brought relief. The enemy had retreated, and the Half Moon lay not far away. By ten of the morning, they reached the ship. The dead man was rowed ashore and buried at a place named after him Colman's Point. As the old Dutch maps have a Colman's Punt marked at the upper end of Sandy Hook, that is supposed to have been the burial place. A wall of boards was now erected round the decks of the Half Moon and men-at-arms kept posted. Indians, who came to trade that day, affected igno- rance of the attack but wanted knives for their furs. Hudson was not to be tricked. He refused, and per- mitted only two savages on board at a time. Two he clothed in scarlet coats like his own, and kept on board to guide him up the channel of the main river. The farther he advanced, the higher grew the shores. First were the ramparts, walls of rock, topped by a fringe of blasted trees. Then the coves where cities like Tarrytown nestle to-day. Then the forested peaks of the Highlands and West Point 42 Hudson's Third Voyage and Poughkeepsie, with the oaks to the river's edge. Mist hung in wreaths across the domed green of the mountain called Old Anthony's Nose. Mountain streams tore down to the river through a tangle of evergreens, and in the crisp, nutty autumn air was the all pervasive resinous odor of the pines. Moun- tains along the Hudson, which to-day scarcely feel the footfall of man except for the occasional hunter, were in Hudson's time peopled by native mountain- eers. From their eerie nests they could keep eagle eye on all the surrounding country and swoop down like birds of prey on all intruders. As the white sails of the Half Moon rattled and shifted and flapped to the wind tacking up the river, thin columns of smoke rose from the heights around, lights flashed from peak to peak like watch fires the signals of the moun- taineers. From the beginning of time they had dwelt secure on these airy peaks. What invader was this, ' gliding up the river-silences, sails spread like wings? I By the i3th of September, the Half Moon had passed Yonkers. On the morning of the i5th, it anchored within the shadow of the Catskills. On the night of the igth, it lay at poise on the amber swamps, where the river widens near modern Albany. Either their professions of friendship had been a farce from the first, or they were afraid to be carried into the land of the Mohawks, but the two savages, 43 The Conquest of the Great Northwest who had come as guides, sprang through the port- hole near Catskill and swam ashore, running along the banks shouting defiance. Below Albany, Hudson went ashore with an old chief of the country. "He was chief of forty men" Hudson's manuscript records, "whom I saw in a house of oak bark, circular in shape with arched roof. It contained a great quantity of corn and beans, enough to load three ships, besides what was growing in the fields. On our coming into the house, two mats were spread to sit upon and food was served in red wooden bowls. Two men were dispatched in quest of game, who brought in a pair of pigeons. They likewise killed a fat dog and skinned it with great haste with shells. The land is the finest for cultivation that ever I in my life set foot upon." Hudson had not found a passage to China, but his soul was satisfied of his life labor. Above Albany, the river became shoaly. Hudson sent his men forward twice to sound, but thirty miles beyond Albany the water was too shallow for the Half Moon. How far up the river had Hudson sailed? Juet's ship log does not give the latitude, but Van Meteren's record says 42 40'. Beyond this, on September 22, the small boat advanced thirty miles. Tradition says Hudson ascended as far as Waterford. While the boats were sounding, the conspirators 44 Hudson's Third Voyage were at their usual mischief. Indian chiefs had come on board. They were taken down to the cabin and made gloriously drunk. All went merrily till one Indian fell insensible. The rest scampered in panic and came back with offerings of wampum their most precious possession for the chief's ran- som. When they secured him alive, they brought more presents wampum and venison in gratitude. To this escapade of the mischief-making crew, moccasin rumor added a thousand exaggerations which came down in Indian tradition to the begin- ning of the last century. After the drunken frenzy legend says the white men made a great oration promising to come again. When they returned the next year, they asked for as much land as the hide of a bullock would cover. The Indians granted it, but the white men cut the buffalo hide to strips nar- row as a child's finger and so encompassed all the land of Manahat (Manhattan). The whites then built a fort for trade. The name of the fort was New Amsterdam. It grew to be a mighty city. Such are Indian legends of New York's beginnings. They probably have as much truth as the story of Rome and the wolf. On September 23, the Half Moon turned her prow south. The Hudson lay in all its autumn glory a glassy sheet walled by the painted woods, 45 now gorgeous with the frost tints of gold and scarlet and carmine. The ship anchored each night and the crew wandered ashore hatching pirate plots. Finally they presented their ultimatum to Hudson they would slay him if he dared to steer for Holland. Weakened by the death of Colman, the English were helpless against the Dutch mutineers. Perhaps they, too, were not averse to seizing the Company's ship and becoming sea rovers along the shores of such a land. At least one of them turned pirate the next voyage. Twice, the Half Moon was run aground at Catskill and at Esopus probably intentionally, or because Hudson dared not send his faithful Englishmen ahead to sound. Near Anthony's Nose, the wind is compressed with the force of a huge bellows, and the ship an- chored in shelter from the eddying gale. Signal fires had rallied the mountain tribes. As the ship lay wind-bound on the night of October i, the In- dians floating about in their dugouts grew daring. One climbed the rudder and stole Juet's clothes through the cabin window. Juet shot him dead red-handed in the act, and gave the alarm to the rest of the crew. .With a splash, the Indians rushed for shore, paddling and swimming, but a boat load of white men pursued to regain the plunder. A swimmer caught Juet's boat to upset it. The ship's 46 Hudson'* Thinl >o>air.- HiO!, LMcovery of Hudson Ki\. r Hudson's Third Voyage cook slashed the Indian's arm off, and he sank like stone. It was now dark, but Hudson slipped down stream away from danger. Near Harlem River the next afternoon, a hundred hostiles were seen am- bushed on the east bank. Led by the guides who had escaped going up stream, two canoes glided under The Half Moon's rudder and let fly a shower of arrows. Much as Hudson must have disliked to open his powder magazines to mutineers, arms were handed out. A spatter of musketry drove the Indians a gunshot distant. Three savages fell. Then there was a rally of the Indians to shoot from shore near what is now Riverside Drive. Hudson trained his cannon on them. Two more fell. Per- sistent as hornets, out they sallied in canoes. This time Hudson let go every cannon on that side. Twelve savages were killed. The Half Moan then glided past Hopoghan (Ho- boken) to safer anchorage on the open bay. It was October 4th before she passed through the Narrows to the Sea. Here, the mutiny reached a climax. Hudson could no more ignore threats. The Dutch refused to steer the ship to Holland, where punish- ment would await them. Juet advised wintering in Newfoundland, where there would be other Eng- lishmen, but Hudson allayed discontent by prom- ising not to send the guilty men to Holland if they 47 The Conquest of the Great Northwest would steer the ship to England; and to Dartmouth in Devon she came on November 7, 1609. What was Hudson's surprise to learn he had become an enormously important personage! The Muscovy Gentlemen of London did not purpose allowing his knowledge of the passage toward the Pole to pass into the service of their rivals, the Dutch. Hudson was forbidden to leave his own country and had to send his report to Holland through Van Meteren, the consul. The Half Moon returned to Holland and w r as wrecked a few years later on her way to the East Indies. It is to be hoped Hudson's crew went down with her. The odd thing was while Hudson was valued for his knowledge of the Polar regions, the discovery of Hudson River added not one jot to his fame. In fact, one historian of that time declares: "Hudson achieved nothing at all in 1609. " All he did was to exchange merchandise for furs" Nevertheless, the merchants of Amster- dam were rigging out ships to establish a trading factory on the entrance of that newly discovered river. Such was the founding of New York. Money bags sneer at the dreamer, but they are quick to transmute dreams into gold, though three hundred years were to pass before any of the gold drawn from his dreams was applied toward erecting to Hudson a memorial. 48 CHAPTER IV 1610 HUDSON'S FOURTH VOYAGE THREE years almost to a day from the time he set out to pursue his Phantom Dream along an endless Trail, Hudson again set sail for the mystic North. This time the Muscovy Gentlemen did not send him as a company, but three members of that company Smith, Wolsten- holme and Digges supplied him with the bark, Discovery. In his crew of twenty were several of his former seamen, among whom was the old mate, Juet. Provisions were carried for a year's cruise. One Coleburne went as adviser; but what with the timidity of the old crew and the officious ignorance of the adviser stirring up discontent by fault-finding before the boat was well out of Thames waters- Hudson was obliged to pack Coleburne back on the first craft met home-bound. The rest of the crew comprised the usual proportion of rogues impressed against their will for a voyage, which regular seamen feared. 49 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Having found one great river north of the Chesa- peake, Hudson's next thought was of that arm of the sea south of Greenland, which Cabot and Frob- isher and Davis had all reported to be a passage as large as the Mediterranean, and to Greenland Hud- son steered The Discovery in April, 1610. June saw the ship moored off Iceland under the shadow of Hekla's volcanic fires. Smoke above Hekla was always deemed sign of foul weather. Twice The Discovery was driven back by storm, and the storm blew the smoldering fears of the unwilling seamen to raging discontent. Bathing in the hot springs, Juet, the old mate, grumbled at Hudson for sailing North instead of to that pleasant land they had found the previous year. The impressed sailors were only too ready to listen, and the wrong-headed foolish old mate waxed bolder. He advised the men "to keep muskets loaded in their cabins, for they would need firearms, and there would be bloodshed if the master persisted going by Greenland." And all unconscious of the secret fires beginning to burn against him, was Hudson on the quarter-deck gazing westward, imagining that the ice bank seen through the mirage of the rosy North light was Greenland hiding the goal of his hopes. All you had to do was round Cape Farewell, south of Greenland, and you would be in the passage that led to the South Sea. 50 Hudson's Fourth Voyage It was July when the boat reached the southern end of Greenland, and if the crew had been terrified by Juet's tales of ice north of Asia, they were panic- stricken now, for the icebergs of America were as mountains are to mole-hills compared to the ice floes of Asia. Before, Hudson had cruised the east coast of Greenland. There, the ice continents of a polar world can disport themselves in an ocean's spacious area, but west of Greenland, ice fields the area of Europe are crunched for four hundred miles into a passage narrower than the Mediterranean. To make matters worse, up these passages jammed with ice- bergs washed hard as adamant, the full force of the Atlantic tide flings against the southward flow of the Arctic waters. The result is the famous "furious overfall," the nightmare of northern seamen a cataract of waters thirty feet high flinging themselves against the natural flow of the ice. It is a battle of blind fury, ceaseless -and tireless. Hudson Straits may be described as a great arm of the ocean curving to an inland sea the size of the Mediterranean. At each end, the Straits are less than fifty miles wide, lined and interspread with rocky islands and dangerous reefs. Inside, the Straits widen to a breadth of from one hundred to two hundred miles. Ungava Bay on the east is a cup-like basin, which the wash of the iron ice has The Conquest of the Great Northwest literally ground out of Labrador's rocky shore. Half way up at Savage Point about two hundred miles from the. ocean, Hudson Straits suddenly contract. This is known as the Second Narrows. The moun- tainous, snow-clad shores converge to a sharp funnel. Into this funnel pours the jammed, churning mael- strom of ice floes the size of a continent, and against this chaos flings the Atlantic tide. Old fur-trade captains of a later era entered the Straits armed and accoutered as for war. It was a standing regulation among the fur-trade captains always to have one-fourth extra allowance of pro- visions for the delay in the straits. Six iron-shod ice hooks were carried for mooring to the ice floes. Special cables called "ice ropes" were used. Twelve great ice poles, twelve handspikes all steel-shod, and twelve chisels to drill holes in the ice for powder- were the regulation requirements of the fur traders bound through Hudson Straits. Special rules were issued for captains entering the Straits. A checker- board sky deep blue reflecting the clear water of ocean, apple-green lights the sign of ice was the invariable indication of distant ice. "Never go on "either at night or in a fog when you have sighted "such a sky" was the rule. "Get your ice tackle "ready at the straits." "Stand away from the in- " draught between a big iceberg and the tide, for if 52 Hudson's Fourth Voyage "once the indraught nails you, you are lost." "To "avoid a" crush that will sink you in ten minutes, "run twenty miles inside the soft ice; that will break "the force of the tide." "Be careful of your lead "night and day." But these rules were learned only after centuries of navigating. All was new to the seamen in Hud- son's day. All that was known to the northern navi- gator was the trick of throwing out the hook, gripping to a floe, hauling up to it and worming a way through the ice with a small sail. Carried with the current southward from Green- land, sometimes slipping into the long "tickles" of water open between the floes, again watching their chance to follow the calm sea to the rear of some giant iceberg, or else mooring to some ice raft honeycombed by the summer's heat and therefore less likely to ram the hull The Discovery came to Ungava Bay, Labra- dor, in July. This is the worst place on the Atlantic seaboard for ice. Old whalers and Moravian mis- sionaries told me when I was in Labrador that the icebergs at Ungava are often by actual measurement nine miles long, and washed by the tide, they have been ground hard and sharp as steel. It is here they begin to break up on their long journey southward. An island of ice turned turtle close to Hudson's ship. There was an avalanche of falling seas. "Into 53 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the ice we put I or safety" says the record. "Some oj our men jell sick. I will not say it was for fear, though I saw small sign of other grief" Just west- ward lay a great open passage now known as Hud- son Strait, so the island in Ungava Bay was called Desire Provoked. Plainly, they could not remain anchored here, for between bergs they were in danger of a crush, and the drift might carry them on any of the rock reefs that rib the bay. Juet, the old mate, raged against the madness of venturing such a sea. Henry Greene, a penniless blackguard, whom Hudson had picked off the streets of London to act as secretary now played the tale- bearer, fomenting trouble between master and crew. "Our master," says Prickett, one of Digges' servants who was on board, "was in despair." Taking out his chart, Hudson called the crew to the cabin and showed them how they had come farther than any explorer had yet dared. He put it plainly to them would they go on, or turn back? Let them decide once and for all; no repinings! There, on the west, was the passage they had been seeking. It might lead to the South Sea. There, to the east, the way home. On both sides was equal danger ice. To the west, was land. They could see that from the masthead. To the east, between them and home, the width of the ocean. 54 Hudson's Fourth Voyage The crew were divided, but the ice would not wait for arguments and see-sawings. It was crushing in on each side of The Discovery with an ominous jar of the timbers. All hands were mustered out. By the usual devices in such emergencies by blowing up the ice at the prow, towing away obstructions, rowing with the ship in tow, all fenders down to protect the sides, the steel-shod poles prodding off the icebergs The Discovery was hauled to open water. Then, as if it were the very sign that the crew needed water opened to the west! There came a spurt of wind. The Discovery spread her sails to the breeze and carried the vacillating crew forward. For a week they had lain imprisoned. By the nth of July they were in Hudson Straits on the north side and had anchored at Baffin's Land, which Hudson named God's Mercy. That night the men were allowed ashore. It was a desolate, silent, mountainous region that seemed to lie in an eternal sleep. Birds were in myriads their flacker but making the profound silence more cavernous. When a sailor uttered a shout, there was no answer but the echo of his own voice, thin and weird and lonely, as if he, too, would be swallowed up by those deathly silences. Men ran over the ice chasing a polar bear. Others went gunning for partridge. The hills were presently rocketing with the crash and echo of musketry. Prickett climbed 55 The Conquest of the Great Northwest a high rock to spy ahead. Open water lay to the southwest. It was like a sea perhaps the South Sea; and to the southwest Hudson steered past Charles and Salisbury Islands, through "a whurling sea" the Second Narrows between two high head- lands, Digges island on one side, Cape Wolsten- holme on the other, eventually putting into Port Laperriere on Digges Island. Except for two or three government stations where whaling captains for- gather in log cabins, the whole region from Ungava Bay to Digges Island, four hundred miles, practically the whole length of the Straits on the south is as unexplored to-day as when Hudson first sailed those waters. The crew went ashore hunting partridge over the steep rocks of the island and examining stone caches of the absent Eskimo. Hudson took a careful ob- servation of the sea. Before him lay open water- beyond was sea, a sea to the south! Was it the South Sea? The old record says he was proudly confident it was the South Sea, for it was plainly a sea as large as the Baltic or Mediterranean. Fog falling, cannon were set booming and rocketing among the hills to call the hunters home. It was now August 4. A month had passed since he en- tered the Straits. If it took another month to go back through them, the boat would be winter-bound 56 and could not reach England. There was no time to lose. Keeping between the east coast of the bay with its high rocks and that line of reefed islands known as The Sleepers, The Discovery pushed on south, where the look-out still reported "a large sea to the I ore" This is a region, which at this late day of the world's history, still remains almost unknown. The men who have explored it could be counted on one hand. Towering rocks absolutely bare but for moss, with valley between where the spring thaw creates continual muskeg moss on water dangerous as quicksands are broken by swampy tracks; and near Richmond, where the Hudson's Bay Fur Com- pany maintained a post for a few years, the scenery attains a degree of grandeur similar to Norway, groves covering the rocky shores, cataracts shattering over the precipices and lonely vistas opening to beautiful meadows, where the foot of man has never trod. But for some unknown reason, game has always been scarce on the east side of Hudson Bay. Legends of mines have been told by the Indians, but no one has yet found the mines. The fury of Juet the rebellious old mate, now knew no bounds. The ship had victuals for only six months more. Here was September. Navigation would hardly open in the Straits before June. If the boat did not emerge on the South Sea, they would 57 The Conquest of the Great Northwest all be winter-bound. The waters began to shoal to those dangerous reefs on the south where the Hud- son's Bay traders have lost so many ships. In hoisting anchor up, a furious over-sea knocked the sailors from the capstan. With a rebound the heavy iron went splashing overboard. This was too much for Juet. The mate threw down his pole and re- fused to serve longer. On September 10, Hudson was compelled to try him for mutiny. Juet was deposed with loss of wages for bad conduct and Robert Bylot appointed in his place. The trial showed Hudson he was slumbering over a powder mine. Half the crew was disaffected, plotting to possess themselves of arms; but what did plots mat- ter? Hudson was following a vision which his men could not see. By this time, Hudson was several hundred miles south of the Straits, and the inland sea which he had discovered did not seem to be leading to the Pacific. Following the south shore to the westernmost bay of all James Bay on the west Hudson recognized the fact that it was not the South Sea. The siren of his dreams had sung her fateful song till she had lured his hopes on the rocks. He was land-bound and winter-bound in a desolate region with a mutinous crew. The water was too shallow for the boat to moor. 58 Hudson's Fourth Voyage The men waded ashore to seek a wintering place. Wood was found in plenty and the footprint of a savage seen in the snow. That night, November 2, it snowed heavily, and the boat crashed on the rocks. For twelve hours, bedlam reigned, Juet heading a party of mutineers, but next day the storm floated the keel free. By the loth of November, the ship was frozen in. To keep up stock of provis- ions, Hudson offered a reward for all game, of which there seemed an abundance, but when he ordered the carpenters ashore to build winter quarters, he could secure obedience to his commands only by threatening to hang every mutineer to the yardarm. In the midst of this turmoil, the gunner died. Henry Greene, the vagabond secretary, who received no wages, asked for the dead man's heavy great coat. Hudson granted the request. The mutineers re- sented the favoritism, for it was the custom to auction off a dead man's belongings at the mainmast, and in the cold climate all needed extra clothing. Greene took advantage of the apparent favor to shirk house building and go off to the woods with a rebellious carpenter hunting. Furious, Hudson turned the coveted coat over to Bylot, the new mate. So the miserable winter dragged on. Snow fell continuously day after day. The frost giants set the ice whooping and crackling every night like 59 The Conquest of the Great Northwest artillery fire. A pall of gloom was settling over the ship that seemed to benumb hope and benumb effort. Great numbers of birds were shot by loyal members of the crew, but the ship was short of bread and the cook began to use moss and the juice of tamarac as antidotes to scurvy. As winter closed in, the cold grew more intense. Stone fireplaces were built on the decks of the ship. Pans of shot heated red-hot were taken to the berths as a warming pan. On the whole, Hudson was fortunate in his wintering quarters. It was the most sheltered part of the bay and had the greatest abundance of game to be found on that great inland sea. Also, there was no lack of firewood. Farther north on the west shore, Hudson's ship would have been exposed to the east winds and the ice-drive. Here, he was secure from both, though the cold of James Bay was quite severe enough to cover decks and beds and bedding and port windows with hoar frost an inch thick. Toward spring came a timid savage to the ship drawing furs on a toboggan for trade. He promised to return after so many sleeps from the tribes of the South, but time to an Indian may mean this year or next, and he was never again seen. As the ice began to break up in May, Hudson sent men fishing in a shallop that the carpenters had built, but the fisher- men plotted to esgape in the small boat. The next 60 Hudson's Fourth Voyage time, Hudson, himself, led the fishermen, threaten- ing to leave any man proved guilty of plots marooned on the bay. It was an unfortunate threat. The men remembered it. Juet, the deposed mate, had but caged his wrath and was now joined by Henry Greene, the secretary, who had fallen from favor. If these men and their allies had hunted half as in- dustriously as they plotted, there would have been food in plenty, but with half the crew living idly on the labors of the others for a winter, somebody was bound to suffer shortage of food on the homeward voyage. The traitor thought was suggested by Henry Greene that if Hudson and the loyal men were, them- selves, marooned, the rest could go home with plenty of food and no fear of punishment. The report could be spread that Hudson had died. Hudson had searched the land in vain for Indians. All uncon- scious of the conspiracy in progress, he returned to prepare the ship for the home voyage. The rest of The Discovery's record reads like some tale of piracy on the South Sea. Hudson distributed to the crew all the bread that was left a pound to each man without favoritism. There were tears in his eyes and his voice broke as he handed out the last of the food. The same was done with the cheese. Seamen's chests were then searched and some pil- fered biscuits distributed. In Hudson's cabin were 61 The Conquest of the Great Northwest stored provisions for fourteen days. These were to be used only in the last extremity. As might have been expected, the idle mutineers used their food without stint. The men who would not work were the men who would not deny themselves. When Hudson weighed anchor on June 18, 1611, for the homeward trip, nine of the best men in the crew lay ill in their berths from overwork and privations. One night Greene came to the cabin of Prickett, who had acted as a sort of agent for the ship's owners. Vowing to cut the throat of any man who betrayed him, Greene burst out in imprecations with a sort of pot- valour that" he was going to end it or mend it; go through with it or die"; the sick men were useless: there were provisions for half the crew but not all- Prickett bade him stop. This was mutiny. Mutiny was punished in England by death. But Greene swore he would rather be hanged at home than starve at sea. In the dark, the whole troop of mutineers came whining and plotting to Prickett. The boat was only a few days out of winter quarters and embayed in the ice half way to the Straits. If such delays continued, what were fourteen days' provisions for a ( voyage? Of all the ill men, Prickett, alone, was to be spared to intercede for the mutineers with 62 Hudson's Fourth Voyage Sir Dudley Digges, his master. In vain, Prickett pleaded for Hudson's life. Let them wait two days; one day; twelve hours! They called him a fool! It was Hudson's death, or the death of all! The matter must be put through while their courage was up! Then to add the last touch to their villainy, they swore on a Bible to Prickett that what they con- templated was for the object of saving the lives of the majority. Prickett's defense for countenancing the mutiny is at best the excuse of a weakling, a scared fool he couldn't save Hudson, so he kept quiet to save his own neck. It was a black, windy night. The seas were moaning against the ice fields. As far as human mind could forestall devilish designs, the mutineers were safe, for all would be alike guilty and so alike pledged to secrecy. It must be remembered, too, the crew were impressed sea- men, unwilling sailors, the blackguard riffraff of London streets. If the plotters had gone to bed, Prukett might have crawled above to Hudson's cabin, but the mutineers kept sleepless vigil for the night. At daybreak two had stationed themselves at the hatch, three hovered round the door of the captain's cabin. When Hudson emerged from the room, two men leaped on him to the fore, a third, Wilson the bo' swain, caught and bound his arms behind. When Hudson demanded what they meant, The Conquest of the Great Northwest they answered with sinister intent that he would know when he was put in the shallop. Then,- all pretense that what they did was for the good of the crew was cast aside. They threw off all disguise and gathered round him with shouts, and jeers, and railings, and mockery of his high ambitions ! It was the old story of the Ideal hooted by the mob, cruci- fied by little-minded malice, misunderstood by evil and designing fools! The sick were tumbled out of berths and herded above decks till the shallop was lowered. One man from Ipswich was given a chance to remain but begged to be set adrift. He would rather perish as a man than live as a thief. The name of the hero was Phillip Staffe. With a run- ning commentary of curses from Henry Greene, Juet, the mate, now venting his pent-up vials of spleen, eight sick men were lowered into the small boat with Hudson and his son. Some one suggested giving the castaways ammunition and meal. Juet roared for the men to make haste. Wilson, the guilty bo' swain, got anchors up and sails rigged. Ammunition, arms and cooking utensils were thrown into the small boat. The Discovery then spread her sails to the wind a pirate ship. The tow rope of the small boat tightened. She followed like a despairing swimmer, climbing over the wave-wash for a pace or two; then some one cut the cable. The castaways 64 Hudson's Fourth Voyage were adrift. The distance between the two ships widened. Prickett looking out from his porthole below, caught sight of Hudson with arms bound and panic-stricken, angry face. As the boats drifted apart the old commander shouted a malediction against his traitor crew. "Juet will ruin you all "Nay, but it is that villain, Henry Greene," Prickett yelled back through the porthole, and the shallop fell away. Some miles out of sight from their victims, the mutineers slackened pace to ran- sack the contents of the ship. The shallop was sighted oars going, sails spread, coming over a wave in mad pursuit. With guilty terror as if their pur- suers had been ghosts, the mutineers out with crowded sails and fled as from an avenging demon ! So passed Henry Hudson down the Long Trail on June 21, 1611! Did he suffer that blackest of all despair loss of vision, of faith in his dream? Did life sud- denly seem to him a cruel joke in which he had played the part of the fool? Who can tell? What became of him? A silence as of a grave in the sea rests over his fate. Barely the shadow of a Ir^i-nd illumines his last hours; though Indians of Hudson Bay to this day tell folk-lore yarns of the first Englishman who came to the bay and was wrecked. When Radisson came overland to the bay 65 The Conquest of the Great Northwest fifty years later, he found an old house "all marked by bullets." Did Hudson take his last stand inside that house? Did the loyal Ipswich man fight his last fight against the powers of darkness there where the Goddess of Death lines her shores with the bodies of the dead? Also, the Indians told Radisson childish fables of a "ship with sails" having come to the bay; but many ships came in those fifty years: Button's to hunt in vain for Hudson; Munck, the Dane's, to meet a fate worse than Hudson's. Hudson's shallop went down to as utter silence as the watery graves of those old sea Vikings, who rode out to meet death on the billow. A famous painting represents Hudson huddled panic-stricken with his child and the ragged castaways in a boat driving to ruin among the ice fields. I like better to think as we know last of him standing with bound arms and face to fate, shouting defiance at the fleeing enemy. They could kill him, but they could not crush him! It was more as a Viking would have liked to die. He had left the world benefited more than he could have dreamed this pathfinder of two empires' commerce. He had fought his fight. He had done his work. He had chased his Idea down the Long Trail. What more could the most favored child of the gods ask? With one's task done, better to die in harness than rot in some garret of obscurity, 66 or grow garrulous in an imbecile old age the fate of so many great benefactors of humanity! It needed no prophet to predict the end of the pirate ship with such a crew. They quarreled over who should be captain. They quarreled over who should be mate. They quarreled over who should keep the ship's log. They lost themselves in the fog, and ran amuck of icebergs and disputed whether they should sail east or west, whether they had passed Cape Digges leading out of the Straits, whether they should turn back south to seek the South Sea. They were like children lost in the dark. They ran on rocks, and lay ice-bound with no food but dried sea moss and soup made of candle grease boiled with the offal left from partridge. Ice hid the Straits. They steered past the outlet and now steered back only to run on a rock near the pepper-colored sands of Cape Digges. Flood tide set them free. They wanted to land and hunt but were afraid to approach the coast and sent in the small boats. It was the 28th of July. As they neared the breeding ground of the birds, Eskimo kyacks came swarming over tin- waves toward them. That day, the whites rested in the Indian tents. The next day Henry Grtviu 1 hurried ashore with six men to secure provisions. Five men had landed to gather scurvy (sorrel) grass and trade with the fifty Indians along the shore. 6? The Conquest of the Great Northwest Prickett being lame remained alone in the small boat. Noticing an Eskimo boarding the boat, Prickett stood up and peremptorily ordered the savage ashore. When he sat down, what was his horror to find himself seized from behind, with a knife stroke grazing his breast. Eskimo carry their knives by strings. Prickett seized the string in his left hand and so warded off the blow. With his right hand he got his own dagger out of belt and stabbed the assailant dead. On shore, Wilson the bo'swain, and another man had been cut to pieces. Striking off the Indians with a club, Greene, the ringleader, tumbled to the boat with a death wound. The other two men leaped down the rocks into the boat. A shower of arrows followed, killing Greene outright and wounding the other three. One of the rowers fainted. The others signaled the ship for aid, and were rescued. Greene's body was thrown into the sea without shroud or shrift. Of the other three, two died in agonies. This encounter left only four well men to man the ship home. They landed twice among the numberless lonely islands that line the Straits and hunted partridge and sea moss for food. Before they had left the Straits, they were down to rations of half a bird a day. In mid-ocean they were grateful for the garbage of the cook's barrel. Juet, the old mate, died of starvation in 68 Hudson's Fourth Voyage sight of Ireland. The other men became so weak they could not stand at the helm. Sails flapped to the wind in tatters. Masts snapped off short. Splintered yardarms hung in the ragged rigging. It was like an ocean derelict, or a haunted craft with a maimed crew. In September, land was sighted off Ireland and the joyful cry of "a sail" raised; but a ship manned by only four men with a tale of dis- aster, which could not be explained, aroused sus- picion. The Discovery was shunned by the fisher folk. Only by pawning the ship's furniture could the crew obtain food, sailors and pilot to take them to Plymouth. Needless to say, the survivors were at once clapped in prison and Sir Thomas Button sent to hunt for Hudson ; but 'Hudson had passed to his unknown grave leaving as a monument the two great pathways of traffic, which he found Hudson River and the northern inland sea, which may yet prove the Baltic of America. DATA FOR HUDSON'S VOYAGES Purchas' Pilgrims contains the bulk of the data regarding Hudson's voyages. The account of the first voyage is writtrn by Hudson, himsrlf, and by one of the company, John Plavst-, Playse presumably completing the log-book directly from Hud- son s journal. This is supplemented by facts taken from Hudson's manuscripts (long since lost) now to be found in Edge's Discovery of tlie Muscovy Merchants (Purchas in, 464) ;m'I f*'otherby's statement concerning Hudson's journals (Pur- chas in, 730), the whole being concisely stated with ample proofs in the Hakluyt Society's 1860 publication on Hudson by Doctor Asher. The account of the second voyage is given by Hudson, himself. On the third voyage, the Journal was kept by Juet, the mate. The story of the last voyage is told in An Abstract of Hudson's Journals down to August 1610; and in an account written by that Prickett who joined the mutineers, : plainly to excuse his own conduct. Matter supplementary to ' the third voyage may be found outside Purchas in such Dutch ' authorities as Van Meteren and De Laet and Lambrechtsen and Van der Donck. Also in Heckeweldcr and Hesscl Gerritz. Every American historian who has dealt with the discovery of Hudson River draws his data from these sources. Yates, Moulton, O'Callaghan, Brodhcad are the earliest of the old American authorities. Supplementary matter concerning the fourth and last voyage is to be found in almost any account of Arctic voyaging in America, though nothing new is added to what is told by Hudson, himself, and by Prickett. Both the New York Historical Society and the Hakluyt Society of England have pub- lished excellent and complete transcripts of Hudson's Voyages with translations of all foreign data bearing on them including the voyages of Estevan Gomez and Verrazano past New York harbor. For data bearing on the navigation of Hudson Straits, the two reports of the Canadian Government on two expeditions sent to ascertain the feasibility of such a route are excellent; but not so good, not so detailed and beautifully unguarded as the sailing records kept by the old sea captains in the service of the Hudson's Bay furriers. The Government reports are too guarded. Besides, the ships stayed only one season in the straits; but these old fur company captains sailed as often as forty times to the bay eighty times in all through the straits; and I have availed myself of Captain Coat's sailing directions especially. In the Hudson's Bay Company Archives, London, are literally shelf loads of such directions. That modern enter- prise will ultimately surmount all difficulties of navigation in the straits cannot be doubted. What man sets himself to do he does ; but the difficulties are not child's play, nor imaginary ones created by politicians who oppose a Hudson Bay route to Europe. One has only to read the record of three hundred years' sailing by the fur traders to realize that the straits are to put it mildly a trap for ocean goers. Still it is interesting to note, it is typical of the dauntless spirit of the North, that a railroad is actually being built toward Hudson Bay. Not the bay, but the straits, will be the crux of the difficulty. < When I speak of "Wreckers' Reef" Sable Island, it is not a figure of speech, but a fact of those early days that false lights were often placed on Sable Island to lure ships on the sand reefs. Men, who waded ashore, were clubbed to death by pirates : See Canadian Archives. 70 Hudson's Fourth Voyage The Indian legends of Hudson's Voyage to New York are to be found in early missionary annals: see New York History, i8n. The report of the Canadian Geologic Survey of Baffins Land and the North was issued by Mr. A. P. Low as I completed this volume. All authorities as seen by the map place Hudson's win- tering quarters off Rupert River. From the Journals, it seems to me, he went as far west as he could go, and did not come back east, which would make his wintering quarters off Moose. This would explain "the old house battered with bullets," which Radisson records. My authority for data on Moose Factory is Bishop Horden. CHAPTER V 1619 THE ADVENTURES OF THE DANES ON HUDSON BAY JENS MUNCK'S CREW THOUGH Admiral Sir Thomas Button came out the very next year after Hud- son's death to follow up his discoveries and search for the lost mariner the sea gave up no message of its dead. Button wintered on the bay (1612-13) at Port Nelson, which he discovered and named after his mate who died there. With him had come Prickett and Bylot of Hudson's crew. Hudson's old ship, The Discovery, was used with a larger frigate called The Resolution. No sooner had the ships gone into winter quarters on the west coast at Port Nelson than scurvy infected the camp. The seaport which was destined to become the great emporium of the fur trade for three hundred years became literally a camp of the dead. So many seamen died of scurvy and cold, that Button had not enough sailors to man both vessels home. The big one was abandoned, and for a second time Hud- son's ship, The Discovery, carried back disheartened 72 The Adventures of the Danes on Hudson Bay survivors to England. Button's long absence had raised hopes that he had found passage westward to the South Sea. These hopes were dashed, but English endeavor did not cease. In 1614, a Captain Gibbon was dispatched to the bay. Ice caught him at Labrador. Here, he was held prisoner for the summer. Again hopes were dashed, but national greatness sometimes consists in sheer dogged persistence. The English adven- turers, who had sent Button and Gibbon, now fitted out Bylot, Hudson's former mate. With him went a young man named Baffin. These two spent two years, 1615-1616, on the bay. They found no trace of Hudson. They found no passage to the South Sea, but cruised those vast islands of ice and rock on the north to which Baffin's name has been given. The English treasure seekers and adventurers of the high seas took a breathing space. Where Eng- land left off, the trail of discovery was taken up by little Denmark. Norse sailors had been the first to belt the seas. Before Columbus was born, Norse- men had coasted the ice fields from Iceland to Green- land and Greenland to the Vinelands and Mark- lands farther south, supposed to be Nova Scotia and Rhode Island. The lost colonies of eastern Greenland had become the folk-lore of Danish fireside. 73 The Conquest of the Great Northwest King Christian IV, himself, examined the charts and supervised the outfitting of two ships for dis- covery in America. The Unicorn, named after a species of whale, was a frigate with a crew of forty- eight including chaplain and surgeon. The Lam- prey was a little sloop with sixteen of a crew. There remained the choice of a commander and that fell without question on the fittest man in the Danish navy Jens Munck, such a soldier of fortune as the novelist might delight to portray. Munck's father was a nobleman, who had sui- cided in prison, disgraced for misuse of public funds. Munck's mother was left destitute. At twelve years of age Jens was thrown on the world. Like a true soldier of fortune, he took fate by the beard and shipped as a common sailor to seek his fortunes in the New World. When a mere boy, he chanced to be off Brazil on a Dutch merchant ship. Here, he had his first bout with fate. The Dutch vessel was at- tacked off Bahia by the French and totally destroyed. Of all the crew, seven only escaped by plunging into the water and swimming ashore in the dark. Of the seven survivors, the Danish boy was one. He had succeeded in reaching shore by clinging to bits of wreckage through the chopping seas. Half drowned, friendless, crawling ashore like a bedrag- gled water rat, here was the boy, utterly alone in a 74 The Adventures o] the Danes on Hudson Bay strange land among a strange people speaking a strange tongue. Such an experience would have set most boys swallowing a lump in their throat. The little Dane was too glad to get the water out of his throat and to set his feet on dry land for any such nonsense. For a year he worked with a shoemaker for his board, and incidentally picked up a knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese over the cobbler's last. The most of young Danish noblemen gained such knowledge from tutors and travel. Then Munck became apprentice to a house painter. Not a yelp against fate did the plucky young castaway utter, and what is more marvel, he did not lose his head and let it sink to the place where a young gentle- man's feet ought to be namely the pavement. Toiling for his daily bread among the riffraff and rufT-scuff of a foreign port, Munck kept his head up and his face to the future; and at last came his chance. Munck was now about eighteen years old. Some Dutch vessels had come to Bahia without a license for trade. Munck overheard that the harbor au- thorities intended to confiscate both vessels. It was Munck's opportunity to escape, and he sei/nl it with 1x)th hands. Jostling among the sailors of the water-front, keeping his intentions to himself, 75 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Munck waited till it was dark. Then, he stripped, tied his clothes to his back, and swam out to warn the Dutch of their danger. The vessels escaped and carried Munck with them to Europe. Within five years he was sailing ships for himself to Iceland and Nova Zembla and Russia keeping up that old trick of picking up odds and ends, knowledge of people and things and languages wherever he went. Before he was thirty he had joined the Danish navy and was appointed to conduct embassies to Spain, and Russia where his knowledge of foreign lan- guages held good. When the traders of Copenhagen and King Christian looked for a commander to explore and colonize Hudson Bay, Munck was the man. Sunday, May 16, 1619, the ships that were to add a second Russia to Denmark, sailed for Hudson Bay. Sailors the world over hate the Northern seas. Some of Munck's crews must have been impressed men, for one fellow promptly jumped overboard and suicided rather than go on. Another died from natural causes, so Munck put into Norway for three extra men. Greenland was sighted in twenty days a quick run in those times and evidence that Munck was a swift sailor, who took all risks and pushed ahead at 76 The Adventures of the Danes on Hudson Bay any cost, for the Hudson's Bay fur trade captains considered seven weeks quick time from London 'to the Straits of Hudson Bay. A current sweeps south from Greenland. Lashing his ships abreast, Munck ran into the center of a great field of soft slob ice, that would keep the big bergs off and pro- tect the hulls from rough seas. Then lowering all sails, he drifted with the ice drive. It came on to blow. Slob ice held the ships safe, but sleet iced the rigging and deck till they were like glass and life lines had to be stretched from side to side to give hand hold, every wave-wash sending the sailors slithering over the icy decks as if on skates. Icicles as long as a man's arm would form on the cross- trees in a single night. The ropes became like bolts cracking when they were bent, but when the heat of mid-day came, both ships were in a drip of thaw. What with the slow pace of the ice drift and the heaviness of the ships from becoming ice-logged, it was the middle of July before they reached the Straits. Eskimos swarmed down to the islands of Ungava Bay, but seemed afraid to trade with Munck's crew. It was on one of the islands here that the Eskimo two centuries later massacred an entire crew of Hudson's Bay Company fur traders, who had been wrecked by the ice jam and escaped 77 The Conquest of the Great Northwest across the floes to the island. It was, perhaps, as well for Munck that the treacherous natives took themselves off, bounding over the waves in skin boats, so light they could be carried by one hand over the ice floes. The collision of the Atlantic tide with the eastward flowing current of the Straits created such a furious sea as Munck had never seen. It was no longer safe to keep The Lamprey lashed to the frigate, for one wave wash caused by an over- turning iceberg lifted the little ship almost on the masts of The Unicorn. The ships then began worming their way slowly through the ice drift. A grapnel would be thrown out on an ice floe. Up to this, the ships would haul by ropes. Both crews stood on guard at the deck rails with the long iron-shod ice poles in their hands, prodding and shoving off the huge masses when the ice threatened a crush. Six hours ebb and six hours flow was the rate of the tide, but where the Straits narrowed and the inflow beat against the ice jam, the incoming tide would sometimes last as long as nine hours. This was the time of greatest danger, for beaten between tide and ice, the Straits became a raging whirlpool. It was then the ships had to sheer away from the lashing undertow of the big bergs and stood out unsheltered to the crush and jam of the drive. Sometimes, a breeze and open 78 passage gave them free way from the danger. At other times, the maelstrom of the advancing tide caught them in dead calm. Then the men had to leap out on the icepan and tow the ships away. Soaked to their armpits in ice water, toiling night and day, one day exposed to heat that was almost tropi- cal, the next enveloped in a blizzard of sleet, the two crews began to show the effects of such terrible work. They were so completely worn out, Munck anchored on the north shore to let them rest. At Icy Cove off Baffin's Land, one seaman Andrew Staff reanger died. Where he was buried, Munck remarked that the soil showed signs of mica and ore. To-day it is interesting to note those mica mines are being worked in Baffin's Land. One night toward the end of July, ice swept on the ships from both sides. Suddenly the crew were tumbled from their berths by the dull rumbling as of an earthquake. The boards of the cabin floors had sprung. Ice had heaped higher than the yard- arms the ships were like toys, the sport of grim Northern giants. When the ships were examined, a gash was found in the keel of The Lamprey from stem to stern as broad as one's hand. Barely was this mended when the rudder was smashed from Tin- L'nicorn. A great icepan tossed up on end and shivered down in splinters that crashed over 79 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the decks like glass. A moment later a rolling sea swept the ships, sending the sailors sprawling, while the scuppers spouted a cataract of waters. Munck felt beaten. Again he ran to the north shore for shelter. While the sailors rested, the chaplain held services and made "offerings to God" beseeching His help. Munck, meanwhile, went ashore and set up the arms of the Danish King a superfluous proceeding, as Baffin had already set up the arms of England here. On the ebb of the tide the sea calmed, and Munck succeeded in passing the most dangerous part of the Straits the Second Narrows. An east wind cleared the sea of ice. Sails full blown, Munck' s ships shot out on the open water of Hudson Bay in the first week of September. Munck was six weeks traversing the Straits. It should not have taken longer than one. The storm pursued Munck clear across the bay. The ships parted. Through the hurricane of sleet, the man at the masthead discerned land. A small creek seemed to open on the long, low, sandy shore. Through the lashing breakers The Unicorn steered for the haven. A sunken rock protruded in mid- current. Munck sheered off, entered, drove up- stream and found himself in a land-locked lagoon 80 such as he could not have discovered elsewhere on the bay if he had searched every foot of its shores. By chance, the storm had driven him into the finest port of Hudson Bay, called by the Indians, River-of- the-Strangers or Danish River, now known as Churchill. Heaving out all anchors, the toil-worn Danes rested and thanked God for the deliverance. But the little Lamprey was still out, and the storm raged unabated for four days. Taking advantage of the ebb tide, the men waded ashore in the dark and kindled fires of driftwood to guide The Lamprey to the harbor. At Churchill, the land runs out in a long fine cape now known as Eskimo Point. Here signal fires were kept burning and Munck watched for the lost ship. Such a wind raged as blew the men off their legs, but the air cleared, and on the morning of September 9, the peak of a sail was seen rising over the tumbling billows. The sailors of The Unicorn ran up their ensign, hurrahed and heaped more driftwood. By night the little Lamprey came beating over the waves and shot into the harbor with flying colors. The Danes were astonished at the fury of the ele- ments so early in the season. Snow flew through the air in particles as fine as sand with the sting of bird-shot. When the east wind blew, ice drove up 81 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the harbor that tore strips in the ship's hull the depth of a finger. Munck moved farther up stream to a point since known as Munck's Cove. To-day there are no forests within miles from the rocky wastes of Churchill, but at that time, the country was timbered to the water's edge, and during the ebb tide the men constructed a log jam or ice-break around the ship. Bridge piles were driven in the freezing ooze. Timber and rocks were thrown inside these around the hulls. Six hawsers moored each ship to the rocks and trees of the main shore. Men were kept pumping the water out of the holds, while others mended the leaky keels. It was October before this work was completed. Then Munck and his officers looked about them. Plainly, they must winter here. Ice was closing the harbor. Inland, the region seemed bound- less a second Russia; and the Danish officers dreamed of a vast trans-atlantic colony that would place Denmark among the great nations of the earth. Three great fireplaces of rock were constructed on the decks. Then, every scrap of clothing in the cargoes was distributed to the crews. Used to the damp temperate climate of Denmark, the men were simply paralyzed by the hard, dry, tense cold of America and had no idea how to protect themselves 82 The Adventure* of the Dancx on llndxon Bay against it. Later navigators compelled to winter in Churchill, have boarded up their decks completely, tar-papered the sealed boarding and outside of this packed three feet of solid snow. Had Munck's men used furs instead of happing themselves up with clothing, that only impeded circulation, they might have wintered safely with their miserable make- shifts of outdoor fireplaces, but they had no furs, and as the cold increased could do nothing but huddle helpless and benumbed around the fires, plying more wood and heating shot red-hot to put in warming pans for their berths. Beer bottles were splintered to shivers by the frost. Most of the phials in the surgeon's medicine chests went to pieces in nightly pistol-shot explo- sions. Kegs of light wines were frozen solid and burst their hoops. The crews went to their beds for warmth and night after night lay listening to the whooping and crackling of the frost, the shriek- ing of the wind, the pounding of the ice as if giants had been gamboling in the dark of the wild Northern storms. The rest of Munck's adventures may be told in his own words: October 15 Last night, ice drift lifted the ship out of the dock. At next low water I had the space filled with clay and sand. October 30 Ice everywhere covers the river. There 83 The Conquest of the Great Northwest is such a heavy fall of snow, it is impossible for the men to go into the open country without snowshoes. November 14 Last night a large black dog came to the ship across the ice but the man on the watch shot him by mistake for a black fox. I should have been glad to have caught him alive and sent him home with a present of goods for his owner. November 27 All the glass bottles broken to pieces by the frost. December 10 The moon appeared in an eclipse. It was surrounded by a large circle and a cross appeared therein. December 12 One of my surgeons died and his corpse had to remain unburied for two days because the frost was so terrible no one dared go on shore. December 24, 25 Christmas Eve, I gave the men wine and beer, which they had to boil, for it was frozen to the bottom. All very jolly but no one offended with as much as a word. Holy Christmas Day we all celebrated as a Christian's duty is. We had a sermon, and after the sermon we gave the priest an offertory according to ancient custom. There was not much money among the men, but they gave what they had, some white fox skins for the priest to line his coat. January i, New Year's Day Tremendous frost. I ordered a couple of pints of wine to the bowl of every man to keep up spirits. January 10 The priest and the other surgeon took to their beds. A violent sickness rages among the men. My head cook died. January 21 Thirteen of us down with sickness. I asked the surgeon, who was lying mortally ill, whether any remedy might be found in his chest. He answered he had used as many remedies as he knew and if God would not help, there was no remedy. 84 The Adventures of the Danes on Hudson Bay It need scarcely be explained that lack of exercise and fresh vegetables had brought scurvy on Munck's crew. In accordance with the spirit of the age, the pestilence was ascribed not to man's fault but to God's Will. January 23 This day died my mate, Hans Brock, who had been in bed five months. The priest sat up in his berth to preach the sermon, which was the last he ever gave on this earth. January 25 Had the small minute guns discharged in honor of my mate's burial, but so exceedingly brittle had the iron become from frost that the cannon exploded. February 5 More deaths. I again sent to the surgeon for God's sake to do something to allay sickness, but he only answered as before, if God did not help there was no hope. February 16 Nothing but sickness and death. Only seven persons now in health to do the necessary work. On this day died a seaman, who was as filthy in his habits as an untrained beast. February 17 Twenty persons have died. February 20 In the evening, died the priest. Have had to mind the cabin myself, for my servant is also ill. March 30 Sharp frost. Now begins my greatest misery. I am like a lonely wild bird, running to and fro waiting on the sick. April ist Died my nephew, Eric Munck, and was buried in the same grave as my second mate. Not one of us is well enough to fetch water and fuel. Have begun to break up our small boats for fuel. It is with great diffi- culty I can get coffins made. 85 The Conquest of the Great Northwest April 13 Took a bath in a wine-cask in which I had mixed all the herbs I could find in the surgeon's chest, which did us all much good. April 14 Only four beside myself able to sit up and listen to the sermon for Good Friday, which I read. May 6 Died John Watson, my English mate. The bodies of the dead lie uncovered because none of us has strength to bury them. Doom seemed to settle over the ship when Munck, himself, fell ill in June. On the floor beside his berth, lay the cook's boy dead. In the steerage were the corpses of three other men. On the deck lay three more dead, "for"- records Munck " nobody had strength to throw them overboard." Besides himself, two men only had survived. These had managed to crawl ashore during ebb tide and had not strength to come back. Spring had come with the flood rush that set the ice free. Wild geese and duck and plover and cur- lew and cranes and tern were winging north. Day after day from his port window the commander watched the ice floes drifting out to sea; drifting endlessly as though from some vast inland region where lay an unclaimed empire, or a passage to the South Sea. Song birds flitted to the ship and darted fearfully away. Crows perched on the yardarms. Hawks circled ominously above the lifeless masts. Herds of deer dashed past ashore pursued by the 86 The Adventures of the Danes on Hudson Bay hungry wolves, who gave over the chase, stopped to sniff the air and came down to the water's edge howling all night across the oozy flats. More . . . need not be told. The ships were a pest house; the region, a realm of death; the port, a place accursed; the silence, as of the grave but for the flacker of vulture wings and the lapping the tireless lapping of the tide that had borne this hap- less crew to the shores of death. Artist brush has never drawn any picture half so terrible as the fate of the Danes on Hudson Bay. . . . Nor need the symptoms of scurvy be described. Salt diet and lack of exercise caused overwhelming depression, mental and physical. The stimulants that Munck plied two pints of wine and a pint of whiskey a day only increased the languor. Nausea rendered the thought of food unendurable. Joints swelled. Limbs became discolored. The teeth loosened and a spongy growth covered the gums Four days Munck lay without food. Reaching to a table, he penned his last words: "As I have now no more hope of life in this world, I request for the sake of God if any Christians should happen to come ht-rc, they will bury my [KX>r body togrtlu-r with the others found, and this my journal, forward to the Kin^. . . . Herewith, good night to all the world, and my soul to God. . . . "JENS MUNCK." 87 The Conquest of the Great Northwest The stench from the ship became unendurable. The Dane crawled to the deck's edge. It was a mutual surprise for him to see the two men ashore alive, and for them to see him. Coming over the flats with painful and labored weakness, they helped him down the ship's ladder. On land, the three had strength only to kindle a fire of the driftwood, which kept the wolves off, and lie near it sucking the roots of every green sprout within reach. This was the very thing they had needed green food. From the time they began eating weeds, sea nettles, hem- lock vines, sorrel grass, they recovered. On the 1 8th of June, they were able to walk out at ebb tide to the ships on the flats. By the 26th they could take broth made of fish and fresh part- ridge. "In the name of Jesus after prayer and supplication to God, we set to work to rig The Lam- prey" records Munck. The dead were thrown over- board. So were all ballast and cargo. Conse- quently, when the tide came in, the sloop was so light it floated free above the ice-break of rocks and logs constructed the year before. Munck then had holes drilled in the hull of The Unicorn to sink her till he could come back for the frigate with an ade- quate crew. "On the i6th of July," writes Munck, just a year from the time they had entered Hudson Straits, "Sunday in the afternoon, we set sail from 88 The Adventures of the Danes on Hudson Bay there in the name of God." Neither a kingdom nor a Northwest Passage had they found for King Christian of Denmark, but only hardships unspeak- able, the inevitable fate of every pioneer of the New World, as though Nature would test their mettle before she began rearing a new race of men, pioneers of a new era in the wwld's long history. If it had been difficult for crews of sixty-five to navigate the ice floes, what was it for an emaciated crew of three? Forty miles out from Churchill, a polar bear strayed across the ice sniffing at The Lamprey when the ship's dog sprang over in pursuit with the bold spirit of the true Great Dane. Just then the ice floe parted from the sloop, and for two days they could hear the faithful dog howling behind in dismay. A gale came banging the ship against the ice and smashed the rudder, but Munck out with his grapnel, fastened The Lamprey to the ice and drifted with the floe almost as far as the Straits. A month it took to cross the bay to Digges Island at the west end of the Straits. For a second time, the brave mariner worked his way through the Straits by the old trick of throwing out the grapnel and hauling himself along the floes. This time he was drifting with the ice, not against it, and the passage was easier. Once out of the Straits, such a gale was raging "as would blow a man of} his legs" records 89 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Munck, but the wind carried him forward. Off Shetland a ship was signaled for help, but the high seas prevented its approach and the little Lamprey literally shot into a harbor of Norway, on September 2oth. Not a soul was visible but a peasant, and Munck had to threaten to blow the fellow's brains out before he would help to moor the ship. With the soil of Europe once more firmly under their feet, the poor Danes could no longer restrain their tears. They fell on their knees thanking God for the de- liverance from "the icebergs and dreadful storms and foaming seas." As Munck did not record the latitude of his win- tering harbor presumably to keep his ship in hiding till he could go for it doubt arose about the port being Churchill. This doubt was increased by an erroneous account of his voyage published in France, but the identity of Munck' s Cove with Churchill has been trebly proved. The drawing which Munck made of the harbor is an exact outline of Churchill. Besides, eighty years afterward when the Hudson's Bay Fur Company established their fort at Church- ill, brass cannon were dug from the river flats stamped with the letter C 4 Christian IV. Strongest con- firmation of all were the Indian legends. The sav- ages called the river, River of Strangers, because when 90 The Adventures of the Danes on Hudson Bay they came down to the shore in the summer of 1620, they found clothing and the corpses of a race they had never seen before. When they beheld the ship at ebb tide, they could hardly believe their senses, and when they found it full of plunder, their wonder was unspeakable. But the joy was short-lived. Drying the cargo above their fires, kegs of gunpowder came in contact with a spark. Plunder and plun- derers and ship were blown to atoms. Henceforth, Churchill became ill omened as the River-of-the- Strangers. The same erroneous French account records that Munck suicided from chagrin over his failure. This is a confusion with Munck's father. The Dane had seen enough to know while there was no Northwest Passage, there was an unclaimed kingdom for Den- mark, and he had planned to come back to Churchill with colonists when war broke out in Europe. Munck went back to the navy and was in active service to within a few hours of his death on June 3, 1628. Many nameless soldiers go down to death in every victory. The exploration of America was one long- fought battle of three hundred years in which count- less heroes went down to nameless graves in what appeared to be failure. But it was not failure. Their little company, their scouts, the flanking move- ment met defeat, but the main body moved on to 9' The Conquest of the Great Northwest victory. The honor was not the less because their division was the one to be mowed down in death. So it was with Jens Munck. His crews did their own little part in their own little unknown corner, and they perished miserably doing it. They could not foresee the winning of a continent from realms as darkly unknown as Hades behind its portals. Not the less is the honor theirs. By what chances does Destiny or Providence direct the affairs of nations and men? If Munck had not been called back to the navy and had succeeded in bringing the colonists as he planned back to Hudson Bay, Radisson would not have captured that region for the Hudson's Bay Company. Though Hudson, an Englishman, had discovered the bay, one might almost say if Munck had succeeded, as far as the Northwest is concerned, there would have been no British North America. NOTES ON MUNCK Munck's Voyages, written by himself and dedicated to the King of Denmark, appeared in Copenhagen in 1624. Unfor- tunately before his authentic account appeared, stories of his voyage had been told in France from mere hearsay, by La Peyrere. It is this erroneous version of Munck's adventures that appears in various collections of voyages, such as Church- ill's and Jeremie's Relation in the Bernard Collection. Of modern authorities on Munck, Vol. II of the Hakluyt Society for 1897, and the writings of Mr. Lauridsen of Copenhagen stand first. Data on the topography of the Straits and Bay and Baffin's Land may be found in the Canadian Government Reports from 9 2 The Adventures of the Danes on Hudson Bay 1877 down to 1906. But best of all are the directions of the old sailing masters employed by the Hudson's Bay Company, which are only to be found in the Archives of Hudson's Bay House, London. In English reports though all English ac- counts of Munck except the Hakluyt Society's are limited to a few paragraphs his name is spelled Munk. He, himself, spelled it Munck. 93 PART II 1662-1713 How the Sea of the North is Discovered Over- land by the French Explorers of the St. Lawrence Radisson, the Pathfinder, Founds the Company of the Gentlemen Adventurers of England Trading to Hudson's Bay and Leads the Company a Dance for Fifty Years He is Followed by the French Raiders Under d'Iberville. CHAPTER VI 1662-1674 RADISSON, THE PATHFINDER, DISCOVERS HUDSON BAY AND FOUNDS THE COMPANY OF GEN- TLEMEN ADVENTURERS FOR fifty years the great inland sea, which Hudson had discovered, lay in a silence as of death. To the east of it lay a vast pen- insular territory crumpled rocks scored and seamed by rolling rivers, cataracts, upland tarns Labrador, in area the size of half a dozen European kingdoms. To the south, the Great Clay Belt of untracked, im- penetrable forests stretched to the watershed of the St. Lawrence, in area twice the size of modern Ger- many. West of Hudson Bay lay what is now known as the Great Northwest Keewatin, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Mackenzie River and Brit- ish Columbia in area, a second Russia; but the primeval world lay in undisturbed silence as of death. Fox and James had come to the bay ten years after Jens Munck, the Dane; and the record of their suf- ferings has been compared to the Book of Lamenta- 97 The Conquest of the Great Northwest tions; but the sea gave up no secret of its dead, no secret of open passage way to the Orient, no inkling of the immeasurable treasures hidden in the forest and mine and soil of the vast territory bordering its coasts. A new era was now to open on the bay an era of wildwood runners tracking the snow-padded silences ; of dare-devil gamesters of the wilderness sweeping down the forested waterways to midnight raid and ambuscade and massacre on the bay; of two great powers first France and England, then the Hud- son's Bay Fur Company and the Nor 'Westers locked in death-grapple during a century for the prize of dominion over the immense unknown terri- tory inland from the bay. Hudson and Jens Munck, Vikings of the sea, were to be succeeded by those in- trepid knights of the wilderness, Radisson the path- finder, and d'Iberville, the wildwood rover. The third era on Hudson Bay comes down to our own day. It marks the transition from savagery with semi-barbaric splendor, with all its virtues of out- door life and dashing bravery, and all its vices of unbridled freedom in a no-man's land with law of neither God nor man to modern commerce; the transition from the Eskimo's kyack and voyageur's canoe over trackless waters to latter-day Atlantic liners plowing furrows over the main to the marts 98 Radisson, the Pathfinder of commerce, and this period, too, is best typified in two commanding figures that stand out colossally from other actors on the bay Lord Selkirk, the young philanthropist, and Lord Strathcona, whose activities only began at an age when other men have either made or marred their careers. For three hundred years, the history of Hudson Bay and of all that region for which the name stands is really the history of these four men Radisson, d'Iberville, Selkirk and Strathcona. While Hudson Bay lay in its winter sleep, the world had gone on. The fur traders of New France had pushed westward from the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes and Mississippi. In fact, France was making a bold bid for the possession of all America except New Spain, and if her kings had paid more attention to her colonies and less to the fripperies of the fool-men and fool-women in her courts, the French flag might be waving over the most of Amer- ica to-day. In New England, things had also gone apace. New York had gone over from Dutgh to English rule, and the commissioners of His Majesty, King Charles II, were just returning from revising the affairs of the American plantations consequent upon the change from Cromwell's Commonwealth to the Stuart's Restoration. In England, at Oxford, 99 The Conquest of the Great Northwest was Charles himself, fled from the plague of London. Majesty was very jaded. Success had lost its relish and pleasure had begun to pall from too much sur- feit. It was a welcome spur to the monarch's idle languor when word came posthaste Uhat the royal commissioner, Sir George Carterett, had just arrived from America accompanied by two famous French- men with a most astonishing story. They had set sail from America on August i, 1665, Carterett bearing a full report of conditions in the American plantations. When off Spain, their boat had been sighted, pursued, captured and boarded by a Dutch privateer The Caper. For two hours, hull to hull, rail to rail, hand to hand, they had fought, the men behind the guns at the port- holes of one ship looking into the smoke-grimed faces of the men behind the guns on the other ship till a roaring broadside from The Caper tore the entrails out of Carterett's ship. Carterett just had time to fling his secret dispatches overboard when a bayonet was leveled at his breast and he surren- dered his sword a captive. Likewise did two French companions. Taken on board The Caper, all three were severely questioned especially the French- men. Why were they with Carterett? Where were they going? Where had they come from? Could they not be persuaded to go to Holland with their 100 Radisson, the Pathfinder extraordinary story. One Medard Chouart de Groseillers was a middle-aged man, heavily bearded, swarthy, weather-worn from a life in the wilderness. The other his brother-in-law Pierre Esprit Rad- isson, was not yet thirty years of age. He was clean- shaved, thin, lithe, nervous with the restlessness of bottled-up energies, with a dash in his manners that was a cut between the courtier and the wilderness runner. These were the two men of whom such famous stories had been told these ten years back the most renowned and far traveled wood-runners that New France had yet produced. It was they, who had brought 600,000 beaver skins to Quebec on a single trip from the North. How they had been robbed by the governor of New France and driven from Quebec to Cape Breton, where, out of jealousy, they were set upon and mobbed, escaping only with the clothes on their backs to Port Royal, Nova Scotia was known to all men. In vain, they had ap- pealed to France for justice. The robber governor was all powerful at the French court and the two explorers penniless nobodies pitting their power against the influence of wealth and nobility were dismissed from the court as a joke. They had been promised a vessel to make farther explorations in the North, but when they came to Isle Perce", south of Anticosti, to await the vessel, a Jesuit was sent 101 to them with word that the promise had been a put-off to rid the court of troublesome suitors in a word, a perfidious joke. There had followed the flight to Cape Breton, the setting to work of secret influence against them, the mob, the attempted murder, the flight to Port Royal, Nova Scotia. Port Royal was at this time under English rule, and an English captain, Zachariah Gillam, offered his ship for their trip North, but when up opposite Hudson Straits, the captain had been terrified by the ice and lost heart. He turned back. The season was wasted. The two Frenchmen had then clubbed their dwindling fortunes together and had engaged two vessels on their own account, but fishing to lay up supplies at Sable Island, one of the vessels had been wrecked. For four years they had been hounded by a persistent ill-luck : First, when robbed by the French governor on pretense of a fine for going to the North without his permission; second, when befooled by the false promises of the French court; third, when Captain Gillam refused to pro- ceed farther amid the Northern ice ; and now, when the wreck of the vessel involved them in a lawsuit. In Boston, they had won their lawsuit, but the ill-luck left them destitute. Carterett, the Royal Com- missioner, had met them in Boston and had per- suaded them to come to England with him. 1 02 Radisson, the Pathfinder The commander of the Dutch ship listened to their story and took down a report of it in writing. Could they not be persuaded to come on with him to Holland? The two Frenchmen refused to leave Carterctt. Groseillers, Radisson and Carterett were then landed in Spain. From Spain, they begged and borrowed and pawned their way to France, and from France got passage to Dover. Here, then, they had come to the king at Oxford with their amazing story. The stirring adventures of these two explorers, I have told in another volume, and an exact trans- cript of their journals I am giving elsewhere, but their story was one to make King Charles marvel. How Radisson as a boy had been captured by the Mohawks and escaped through the Dutch settle- ment of New York; how, as a youth, he had helped the Jesuits to flee from a beleaguered fort at Onon- daga; how before he was twenty-five years old, he had gone overland to the Mississippi where he heard from Cree and Sioux of the Sea of the North; and how before he was thirty, he had found that sea where Hudson had perished all those adventures King Charles htanl. The King listened and pondered, and pondered and listened, and especially did he listen to that story of the Sea of the North, which Ik-nry Hudson had found in 1610 and from which 103 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Radisson sixty years later had brought 600,000 beaver. Beaver at that time was worth much more than it is to-day. That cargo of beaver, which Radisson had brought down from Hudson Bay to Quebec would be worth more than a million dollars in modern money. "We were in danger to perish a thousand times from the ice runs," related Radisson, telling how they had passed up the Ottawa to Lake Superior and from Lake Superior by canoe seven hundred miles north to Hudson Bay. "We had thwarted (portaged) a place forty-five miles. We came to the far end at night. It was thick forest, and dark, and we knew not where to go. We launched our canoes on the current and came full sail on a deep bay, where we perceived smoke and tents. Many boats rush to meet us. We are received with joy by the Crees. They suffer us not to tread the ground but carry us like cocks in a basket to their tents. We left them with all possible haste to follow the great river and came to the seaside, where we found an old house all demolished and battered with bullets. The Indians tell us peculiarities of the Europeans, whom they have seen there. We went from isle to isle all summer. We went along the bay to see the place the Indians pass the summer. This river comes from the lake that empties in the Saguenay 104 Radisson, the Pathfinder at Tadoussac, a hundred leagues from where we were in the Bay of the North. We left in the place our mark and rendezvous. We passed the summer coasting the sea. This is a vast country. The people are friendly to the Sioux and the Cree. We followed another river back to the Upper Lake (Lake Superior) and it was midwinter before we joined the company at our fort" (north of Lake Superior). When King Charles moved from Oxford to Wind- sor, Radisson and Groseillers were ordered to ac- company him, and when the monarch returned to London, the two Frenchmen were commanded to take chambers in town within reach of the court, and what was more to the point, the King assigned them 2 a week maintenance, for they were both destitute, as penniless soldiers of fortune as ever graced the throne room of a Stuart. At Oxford, too, they had met Prince Rupert, and Prince Rupert espoused their cause with the enthusiasm of an ad- venturer, whose fortunes needed mending. The plague, the great fire in London, and the Dutch war all prevented King Charles according the adven- turers immediate help, but within a year from their landing, he writes to James, Duke of York, as chief of the navy, ordering the Admiralty department to loan the two Frenchmen the ship Eaglet of the South Sea fleet for a voyage to Hudson Bay, for the purpose 105 The Conquest of the Great Northwest of prosecuting trade and extending their explora- tions toward the South Sea. I have his letter issuing the instructions, and it is interesting as proving that the initiative came from King Charles, as Prince Rupert has hitherto received all the credit for organ- izing the Adventurers of England trading to Hudson Bay. Prince Rupert and half a dozen friends were to bear the expense of wages to the seamen and victualling the ships. During the long period of waiting, Charles presented Radisson with a gold medal and chain. To Groseillers if French tradi- tion is to be accepted he gave some slight title of nobility. During this time, too, Radisson and Groseillers heard from the captain of the Dutch ship, who had questioned them. There came a spy from Amsterdam Eli Godefroy Touret, who first tried to bribe the Frenchmen to come to Holland, and failing that, openly accused them of counter- feiting money. The accusation could not be proved, and the spy was imprisoned. The year 1667-8 was spent in preparations for the voyage. In addition to The Eaglet under Captain Stannard, the ship Nonsuch under Captain Gillam, who had failed to reach the bay from Nova Scotia- was chartered. As far as I could gather from the old documents in Hudson's Bay House, London, the ships were supplied with provisions and goods for 1 06 Radisson, the Pathfinder trade by leading merchants, who were given a share in the venture. The cash required was for the sea- men's wages, running from 20 to 30 a year, and for the officer's pay, 3 a month to the surgeons, 50 a trip to the captains, with a bounty if the venture succeeded. With the bounty, Gillam received 160 for this trip, Stannard, 280. Thomas Gorst, who went as accountant, and Mr. Sheppard as chief mate, were to assume command if anything hap- pened to Radisson and Groseillers. All, who ad- vanced either cash, or goods, or credit for goods, were entered in a stock book as Adventurers for so many pounds. There was as yet no company or- ganized. It was a pure gamble a speculation based on the word of two penniless French adven- turers, and in the spirit of the true gambler, gay were the doings. Captain Gillam facetiously pre- sents the Adventurers with a bill for five shilling for a rat catcher. The gentlemen honor the bill with a smile, order a pipe of canary, three tuns of wine, "a dinner with pullets," dinners, indeed, galore, at the Three Tunns and the Exchange Tavern and the Sun, at which Prince Rupert and Albermark- and perhaps the King, himself, "make merry like rii^lit worthy gentlemen." Everybody is in rare, good humor, for you must remember Mr. Radisson brought back 600,000 beaver from that Sea of the 107 The Conquest of the Great Northwest North, and the value of 600,000 beaver divided among less than a dozen Adventurers would mean a tidy $100,000 of modern money to each man. Then, the gentlemen go down to Gravesend Docks to see the ships off. Each seaman shakes hands heartily with his patron. Then the written com- mission is delivered to the captains: "You are to saile with the first wind that presents, keeping company with each other to your place of ren- dezvous (the old mark set up by Radisson when he went overland to the bay.) You are to saile to such place as Mr. Gooseberry (Groseillers) and Mr. Radisson shall direct to trade with the Indians there, delivering the goods you carry in small parcells no more than fifty pounds worth at a time out of each shipp, the furs in exchange to stowe in each shipp before delivering out any more goods, according to the particular advice of Mr. Gooseberry (Groseillers) and Mr. Radisson." Then follows a cryptogramatic order, which would have done credit to the mysterious cipher of pirates on the high seas. "You are to take notice that the Nampumpeage which you carry with you is part of our joynt cargoes wee having bought it for money for Mr. Gooseberry and Mr. Radisson to be delivered by small quantities with like caution as the other goods." No more drinking of high wines, my gentlemen! Strict business now, for it need scarcely be explained 1 08 Radisson, the Pathfinder the mysterious Nampumpeage was a euphemism for liquor. Fortifications are to be built, minerals sought, the cargo is to be brought home by Gros- eillers, while Radisson remains to conduct trade, and "You are to have in your thought the discovery of the passage into the South Sea and to attempt it with the advice and direction of Mr. Gooseberry and Mr. Rad- isson, they having told us that it is only seven daies pad- dling or sailing from the River where they intend to trade unto the Stinking Lake (the Great Lakes) and not above seven daies more to the straight wchj leads into that Sea they call the South Sea, and from tKence but forty or fifty leagues to the Sea itselfe." Exact journals and maps are to be kept. In case the goods cannot be traded, the ships are to carry their cargoes to Newfoundland and the New Eng- land plantations, where Mr. Philip Carterett, who is governor of New Jersey, will assist in disposing of the goods. "Lastly we advise and require you to use the said Mr. Gooseberry and Mr. Radisson with all manner of civility and courtesy and to take care that all your company doe In-ar a particular respect unto them, they being the per- sons upon whose credit wee have undertaken this expedi- tion, "Which we beseech Almighty God to prosper." RUPERT ALBERMARLE (signed) CRAVEN G. CARTERETT J. HAYES P. COLLETON. 109 The Conquest of the Great Northwest A last shout, the tramp of sailors running round the capstans, and the ships of the Gentlemen Ad- venturers of England trading to Hudson's Bay are off; off to find and found a bigger empire for Eng- land than Russia and Germany, and France, and Spain, and Austria combined. Notes on Chapter VI. Full details of Radisson's life prior to his coming to England, when he was an active explorer of New France, are to be found in the previous volume, Pathfinders of the West. The data for that volume came almost exclusively from the Marine Archives of Paris. The facts of this chapter are drawn from the Archives of Hudson's Bay House, London, England, which I personally searched with the result of almost three hundred foolscap folio pages of matter pertaining to Radisson, and from the Public Records Office of London, which I had searched, by a competent person, on the Stuart Period. It is extraordinary how the Archives of France and the Archives of England dove-tail and corroborate each other in every detail regarding Radisson. King Charles' letter in his favor is to be found in the Public Records Office, State Papers, Domestic Series, Entry Book 26. The Admiralty Board Books, No. 15, contain the correspondence regarding the voyage. The in- structions to the captains five foolscap pages are in the S. P. Dom. Carl. II. No. 180. The exact data regarding Radisson's movements, given in this chapter, are from his Manuscript Journal in the Bodleian and from the two petitions which he filed, one to the Company, one to Parliament, copies of which are in Hudson's Bay House, London. It is necessary to give the authorities somewhat explicitly because in the case of Path- finders of the West, the New York Evening Post begged readers to consult original sources regarding Radisson. As original sources are not open to the public, the advice was worth just exactly the spirit that animated it. However, transcripts of all data bearing on Radisson will be given to the public with his journals, in the near future. HO CHAPTER VII 1668-1674 THE ADVENTURES OF THE FIRST VOYAGE RADISSON DRIVEN BACK ORGANIZES THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY AND WRITES HIS JOURNALS OF FOUR VOYAGES THE CHARTER AND THE FIRST SHARE- HOLDERS ADVENTURES OF RADISSON ON THE BAY THE COMING OF THE FRENCH AND THE QUARREL A LAST, then, five years from the time they had discovered the Sea of the North, after baffling disappointments, fruitless efforts and the despair known only to those who have stood face to face with the Grim Specter, Ruin, Radisson and Groseillers set sail for Hudson Bay from Gravesend on June 3, 1668. Radisson was on the big ship Eaglet with Captain Stannard, Gros- dllers on The Nonsuch of Boston, with Captain Gillam. Countless hopes and fears must have animated the breasts of the Frenchmen. It is so with every venture that is based on the unknown. The very fact that possibilities are unknown gives scope to unbridled fancy and the wildest hopes; gives scope, 1 1 1 The Conquest of the Great Northwest too, when the pendulum swings the other way, to deepest distrust. The country boy trudging along the road with a carpetbag to seek his fortunes in the city, dreams of the day when he may be a million- aire. By nightfall, he longs for the monotonous drudgery and homely content and quiet poverty of the plow. So with Radisson and Groseillers. They had brought back 600,000 beaver pelts overland from Hudson Bay five years before. If they could repeat the feat, it meant bigger booty than Drake had raided from the Spanish of the South Seas, for the price of beaver at that time fluctuated wildly from eight shillings to thirty-five. And who could tell that they might not find a passage to the South Seas from Hudson Bay? That old legend of a tide like the ocean on Lake Winnipeg, Radisson had heard from the Indians, as every explorer was to hear, it for a hundred years. The explanation is very simple to anyone who has sailed on Lake Winnipeg. The lake is so shallow that an inshore wind lashes the waters up like a tide. Then sudden calm, or an outshore breeze, leaves the muddy flats almost bare. I remember being stranded on that lake by such a shift of wind for twenty-four hours. To the Indians who had never seen the ocean, the phenomenon seemed like the tide of which the white man told, 112 The Adventures of the First Voyage so Radisson had reported to the Adventurers that the Indians said the South Sea was only a few weeks' journey from Hudson Bay. Radisson, whose highest hope from boyhood was to be a great explorer, must have dreamed his dreams as the ships slid along the glassy waters of the Atlantic westward. Six weeks, ordinarily, it took sailing vessels to go from the Thames to the mouth of Hudson Straits, but furious storms as if the very elements themselves were bent on the defeat of these two indomitable men drove their ships apart half way across the Atlantic. As is often the case, the little ship Gillam's Nonsuch weathered the hur- ricane. Now buried under billows mountain-high, with the yardarms drenched by each wash of the pounding breakers, now plowing through the cata- ract of waters, the little Nonsuch kept her head to the wind, and if a sea swept from stem to stern, battened hatches and masts naked of sails took no harm. The staunch craft kept on her sea feet, and was not knocked keel up. But The Eaglet, with Radisson, was in bad way. Larger and ponderous in motion, she could not shift quick to the raging gale. Blast after blast caught her broadsides. The masts snapped off like sap- lings uprooted by storm. A tornado of waters threw the ship on her side "till we had like to have "3 The Conquest of the Great Northwest swamped" relate the old Company records and when the storm cleared and the ship righted, behold, of The Eaglet there is left only the bare hull, with deck boards and cabin floors sprung in a dozen places. The other ship was out of sight. Carpen- ters were set at work to rig the lame vessel up. It was almost October before the battered hull came crawling limply to her dock on the Thames. There, Sir James Hayes, Rupert's secretary, turned her over to the Admiralty. Adversity is a great tester of a man's mettle. When some men fall they tumble down stairs. Other men, when they fall, make a point of falling up stairs. Radisson was of the latter class. His activ- ity redoubled. The design in the first place had been for one of the two ships to winter on the bay; the other ship to come back to England in order to return to the bay with more provisions. Radisson urged his associates not to leave The Nonsuch in the lurch. Application was made to the Admiralty for another ship. The Wavero of the West Indies was granted. Radisson spent the winter of 1668-69 fitting up this ship and writing the account of his first four voyages through the wilds of America, "and I hope" he concludes the fourth voyage "to em- barke myselfe by ye helpe of God this fourth year" of coming to England. But The Wavero on which 114 The Adventure* of ike First Voyage Radisson sailed in March, 1669, proved unsea- worthy. She had to turn back. What was Rad- isson's delight to find anchored in the Thames, The Nonsuch, with his brother-in-law, Groseillers. After parting from the disabled Eaglet, The Non- such had driven ahead for Hudson Straits, which she missed by going too far north to Baffin's Land, but came to the entrance on the 4th of August. ( hving to the lateness of the season, the straits were free of ice and The Nonsuch made a quick passage for those days, reaching Digges' Island, at the west end of the straits on the iQth of August. Groseillers and Gillam then headed south for that rendezvous at the lower end of the bay, where the two French- men had found "a house all battered with bullets," five years before, and had set up their own marks. Slow and careful search of the east coast must have been made, for The Nonsuch was seven weeks cruising the seven hundred miles from Digges' Island to that River Nemisco, which had seemed to flow from the country of the St. Lawrence or New France. Here they cast anchor on September 25, naming the river Rupert in honor of their patron. Beaching the ship on the sand-bars at high tide, the CR-W threw logs about her to fend off ice jams and i-rcctcd slab palisades round two or three log huts for the winter a fort named after King Charles. "5 Weather favored The Nonsuch's crew. The south end of Hudson Bay often has snow in October, and nearly always ice is formed by November. This year, the harbor did not freeze till the gth of December, but when the frost did come it was a thing to paralyze these Englishmen used to a climate where a pocketful of coal heats a house. The silent pine forests, snow-padded and snow- wreathed ; the snow-cones and snow-mushrooms and snow-plumes bending the great branches with weight of snow like feathers; the icy particles .that floated in the air; ice fog, diamond-sharp in sunshine and starlight but ethereal as mist, morning and evening; the whooping and romping and stamping and cannon- shot reports of the frost at night when the biggest trees snapped brittle and the earth seemed to groan with pain; the mystic mock-suns that shone in the heavens foreboding storm, and the hoot and shout and rush of the storm itself through the forests like the Indians' Thunder Bird on the wings of the wind ; the silences, the awful silences, that seemed to engulf human presence as the frost-fog closed mistily through the aisled forests all these things were new and wondrous to the English crew. It was as Gillam's journal records as if all life "had been frozen to death." And then the marvel of the frost world, frost that fringed your eyelashes and hair 116 The Adventures of the First Voyage with breath as you spoke, and drew ferns on the glazed parchment of the port windows, and created two inches of snow on the walls inside the ship! Snow fell fell fell, day after day, week after week, muffling, dreamy, hypnotic as the frost sleep. But these things were no new marvels to Gros- eillers. The busy Frenchman was off to the woods on snowshoes in search of the Indians a search in which a twig snapped off short, old tepee poles standing bare, a bit of moose skin blowing from a branch, deadfall traps, rabbit snares of willow twigs were his sole guides. True wood-loper, he found the Ojibways' camps and they brought down their furs to trade with him in spring. I don't know what ground there is for it, but Groseillers had the reputation for being a very hard trader. Perhaps it was that the cargo of 600,000 pelts had been brought back when he had gone North with only two canoe loads of goods. As far as I could ascertain from the old records, the scale of trade at the time was half a pound of beads, one beaver; one kettle, one beaver; one pound shot, one beaver; five pounds sugar, one beaver; one pound tobacco, one beaver; one gallon brandy (diluted?), four beaver; one blanket, six beaver; two awls, one beaver; twelve buttons, one beaver; twenty fishhooks, one beaver; twenty flints, one beaver; one gun, twelve beaver; one The Conquest of the Great Northwest pistol, four beaver; eight bells, one beaver. At this stage, trade as barter was not known. The white man dressed in gold lace and red velvets pompously presented his goods to the Indian. The Indian had previously, with great palaver, presented his furs to the trader. Any little difference of opinion as to values might be settled later by a present from the trader of drugged liquor to put the malcontent to sleep, or a scalping raid on the part of the Indian. As spring came, life awakened on the bay. Wild geese darkened the sky, the shrill honk, honk, calling the sailors' notice to the long curved lines marshaled like armies with leaders and scouts, circling, ma- neuvering, filing north. Whiskey jays became noisier and bolder than in winter. Red bills alighted in flocks at the crew's camp fires, and a constant drumming told of partridge hiding in underbrush the color of his own plumage. There was no lack of sport to Gillam's crew. The ice went out with the rush of a cataract in May, and by June it was blistering hot, with the canaries and warblers and blue jays of Southern climes nesting in the forests of this far Northern bay. By June, The Nonsuch was ship-shape for homeward voyage, and the adven- turers sailed for England, coming into the Thames about the time Radisson was driven back on The Wavero. 118 The Adventures of the First Voyage There is no record of what furs Groseillers and Gillam brought back, doubtless for the reason that the proceeds of their sale had to satisfy those credit- ors, who had outfitted the ships and to purchase new ships for future voyages. But the next move was significant. With great secrecy, application was made to King Charles II for a royal charter granting "the Gentlemen Adventurers Trading to Hudson's Bay" monopoly of trade and profits for all time to come. In itself, the charter is the purest piece of feudal- ism ever perpetrated on America, a thing so alien to the thought of modern democracy and withal des- tined to play such a necessary part in the develop- ment of northern empire that it is worth examining. In the first place, though it was practically deeding away half America namely all of modern Canada i-xropt New France, and the most of the Western States beyond the Mississippi practically, I say, in its workings; the charter was purely a royal favor, depending on that idea of the Stuarts that the earth was not the Lord's, but the Stuarts, to be disposed of as they wished. The applicants for the charter were Prince Ru- pert, the Duke of Albermarlc, the Earl of Craven, Lord Arlington, Lord Ashley, Sir John Robinson, Sir Robert Viner, Sir Peter Collcton, Sir Edward 119 Hungerford, Sir Paul Neele, Sir John Griffith, Sir Philip Carterett, Sir James Hayes, John Kirke, Frances Millington, William Prettyman, John Fenn and John Portman. "Whereas," runs the charter, " these have at their own great cost and charges undertaken an expedition for Hudson's Bay for the discovery of a new passage to the South Sea and for trade, and have humbly besought us to incor- porate them and grant unto them and their suc- cessors the whole trade and commerce of all those seas, straits, bays, rivers, creeks and sounds in what- soever latitude that lie within the entrance of the straits called Hudson's Straits together with all the lands, countries and territories upon the coasts and confines of the seas, straits, bays, lakes, rivers, creeks and sounds not now actually possessed by the subjects of any other Christian State, know ye that we have given, granted, ratified and confirmed" the said grant. There follow the official name of the company, "the Governor and Company of Ad- venturers of England trading with Hudson's Bay," directions for the appointment of a governor and a governing committee Prince Rupert to be the first governor Robinson, Viner, Colleton, Hayes, Kirke, Millington and Portman to be the first committee, to which elections are to be made each November. Their territory is to be known as Rupert's Land. 120 The Adventures of the First Voyage Of this territory, they are to be "true and absolute lords" paying as token of allegiance to the King when he shall happen to enter these dominions "two elks and two black beaver." Permission is given to build forts, employ mari- ners,, use firearms, pass laws and impose punish- ments. Balboa has been laughed at ever since he crossed Panama to the Pacific for claiming Heaven and earth, air and water, "from the Pole Arctic to the Pole Antarctic" for Spain; but what shall we say of a charter that goes on royally to add, "and further- more of our own ample and abundant grace we have granted not only the whole, entire and only liberty of trade to and from the territories aforesaid ; but also the whole and entire trade to and frgm all Havens, Bays, Creeks, Rivers, Lakes, and Seas unto which they shall find entrance by water or land out of the territories aforesaid . . . and to, and with, all other nations adjacent to the said territories, which is not granted to any other of our subjects?" In other words, if trade should lead these Ad- venturers far afield from Hudson Bay where no other discoverers had been the territory was to be theirs. For years, it was contended that the chart c-r covered only the streams tributary to Hudson Bay, that is to the headwaters of Churchill and Saskatche- wan and Moose and Rupert Rivers, but if the charter 121 The Conquest of the Great Northwest was to be valid at all, it was to be valid in all its pro- vision and the company might extend its possessions indefinitely. And that is what it did from Hudson Bay to Alaska, and from Alaska to California. The debonair King had presented his friends with three- quarters of America. All other traders are forbidden by the charter to frequent the territory on pain of forfeiture of goods and ships. All other persons are forbidden to in- habit the territory without the consent of the Com- pany. Adventurers at the General Court in Novem- ber for elections are to have votes according to their stock, for every hundred pounds one vote. The Company is to appoint local governors for the terri- tory with all the despotic power of little kings. In case of misdemeanors, law-breakers may be brought before this local governor or home to England for trial, sentence, and punishment. The Shah of Persia had not more despotic power in his lands than these local governors. Most amazing of all, the Company is to have power to make war against other "Prince or People whatsoever that are not Christ- ians," "for the benefit of the said company and their trade." Should other English intrude on the ter- ritory, the Company is explicitly granted the right to seize and expel them and impose such punishment as the offense may warrant. If delinquents appeal 122 The Adventures of the First Voyage against such sentence, the Company may send them home to England for trial. Admirals, judges, sheriffs, all officers of the law in England are charged by the charter to "aid, favor, help and assist" the Company by "land and sea. . . ' signed at Westminster, May 2, 1670. We of to-day may well smile at such a charter; but we must remember that the stones which lie buried in the clay below the wall are just as essential to the superstructure as the visible foundation. Let us grant that the charter was an absurd fiat creating a tyranny. It was an essential first step on the trail that was to blaze a way through the wilderness to democracy. In the charter lay the secret of all the petty pomp little kings in tinsel with which the Company's underling officers ruled their domain for two hundred years. In the charter lay the secret of all the Com- pany's success and all its failure; of its almost paternal care of the Indians and of its outrageous, unblushing, banditti warfare against rivals; of its one-sidedness in driving a bargain the true caste i The Conquest of the Great Northwest cast their useless dependents off like old clothes, or let them rot in poverty. Given all the facts of the case, any man can play the prophet. With such a charter, believing in its validity as they did in their own existence, it is not surprising the Adventurers of Hudson Bay ran the magnificent career the Company has had, and finally ran their privileges aground. Thus, then, was the Hudson's Bay Company in- corporated. Its first stock book of 1667 before in- corporation, shows the Duke of .York to have ,300 of stock; Prince Rupert, 470; Carterett, 770 in all; Albermarle, 500; Craven, 300; Arlington, 200; Shaftsbury, 600; Viner, 300; Colleton, 300; Hungerford, 300; Sir James Hayes, 1800; Sir John Kirke, 300; Lady Margaret Drax, 300 with others, in all a capital of ^10,500. The most of these shares were not subscribed in cash. It may be inferred that the Duke of York and Prince Rupert and Carterett and Sir James Hayes received their shares for obtaining the ships from the Admiralty. Indeed, it is more than probable that very little actual cash was subscribed for the first voyages. The seamen were impressed and not usually paid, as the account books show, until after the sale of the furs, and the provisions were probably supplied on credit by those merchants who are credited with 124 The Adventures of the First Voyage shares. At least, the absence of any cash account or strong box for the first years, gives that impression. Mr. Portman, the merchant, it is, or Mr. Young, or Mr. Kirke, or Robinson, or Colleton who ad- vance money to Radisson and Groseillers as they need it, and the stock accounts of these shareholders are credited with the amounts so advanced. Gillam and Stannard, the captains, are credited with 160 and 280 in the venture, as if they, too, accepted their remuneration in stock. The charter was granted in May. June saw Radisson and Groseillers off for the bay with three ships, The Wavero under Captain Newland, The Shajtsbury under Captain Shepperd, The Prince Rupert under Gillam, in all some forty men. The vessels were loaned from the Admiralty. Bayly went as governor to Rupert River, Gorst as secretary ; Peter Romulus, the French apothecary, as sargeon at 20 a year. While the two big ships spent the summer at Charles Fort, Radisson took the small boat Wavero along the south shore westward, ap- parently seeking passage to the South Sea. Monsibi flats, now known as Moose, and Schatawan, now known as Albany, and Cape Henrietta Maria named after royalty, were passed on the cruise up west and north to Nelson, where Radisson himself erected 125 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the English King's Arms. Only a boat of shallow draft could coast these regions of salt swamps, muddy flats and bowlder-strewn rocky waters. Moose River with its enormous drive of ice stranded on the flats for miles each spring was found by Radisson to have three channels. Ninety-six miles northwest from Moose was Albany River with an island just at its outlet suitable for the building of a fort. Cape Henrietta Maria, three hundred miles from Moose, marked where James Bay widened out to the main waters of Hudson Bay. All this coast was so shallow and cut by gravel bars that it could be explored only by anchoring The Wavero off shore and approaching the tamarack swamps of the land by canoe, but the whole region was an ideal game preserve that has never failed of its supply of furs from the day that Radisson first examined it in 1670 to the present. Black ducks, pintail, teal, partridge, promised abundance of food to hunters here, and Radisson must have noticed the walrus, porpoise and seal floundering about in the bay promising another source of profit to the Company. North of Hen- rietta Cape, Radisson was on known ground. But- ton and Fox and James had explored this coast, Port Nelson with its two magnificent harbors Nelson and Hayes River taking its name from Button's seaman, Nelson, who was buried here. 126 The Adventures of the First Voyage Groseillers wintered on the bay but Radisson came home to England on The Prince Rupert with Gillam and passed the winter in London as advisor to the company. This year, the Company held its meet- ings at Prince Rupert's lodgings in Whitehall. In the summer of '71, Radisson was again on the bay cruising as before, to Moose, and Albany, and Nelson with a cargo of some two hundred mus- kets, four hundred powderhorns and five hundred hatchets for trade. Though Radisson as well as Groseillers spent the years of 17 ~" the bay, there was no mistaking the fact r were bringing furs to Rupert Riv isson reported conditions when don in the fall of '72, and he linked im..^. closely to the interests of the Company by marrying Mary, the daughter of Sir John Kirke. "It is ordered," read the minutes of the Company, Oct. 23, 1673, "that The Prince Rupert arriving at Portsmouth, Captain Gillam do not stire from the shippe till Mr. Radisson take post to Lon- don with the report." The report was not a good one. The French coming overland from Canada were intercepting the Indians on the way down to the bay. The Company decided to appoint another governor, William Lyddcll, for the west coast, and when Radisson went back to the bay in '74, a council The Conquest of the Great Northwest was held to consider how to oppose the French. The captains of the ships were against moving west. Groseillers and Radisson urged Governor Bayly to build new forts at Moose and Albany and Nelson. Resentful of divided authority, Bayly hung between two opinions, but at length consented to leave Rupert River for the summer and cruise westward. When he came back to Fort Charles in August, he found it occupied by an emissary from New France, Father Albanel, an English Jesuit, with a passport from Frontenac recommending him to the English Gov- ernor, and with personal letters for the two French- men. Bayly's rage knew no bounds. He received the priest as the passports from a friendly nation com- pelled him to do, but he flared out in open accusa- tions against Radisson and Groseillers for being in collusion with rivals to the Company's trade. A thousand fictions cling round this part of Radisson's career. It is said that the two Frenchmen knocked down and were knocked down by the English Gov- ernor, that spies were set upon them to dog their steps when they went to the woods, that Bayly threatened to run them through, and that the two finally escaped through the forests overland back to New France with Albanel, the Jesuit. All these are childish fictions directly contradicted 128 The Adventures of the First Voyage by the facts of the case as stated in the official min- utes of the Company. No doubt the little fort was a tempest in a teapot till the Jesuit departed, but quietus was given to the quarrels by the arrival, on September 17, of William Lyddell on The Prince Rupert, governor-elect for the west coast. Radisson decided to go home to England and lay the whole case before the Company. There is not the slightest doubt that he was desperately dissatisfied with his status among the Adventurers. He had found the territory. He had founded the Company. He had given the best years of his life to its advancement, and they had not even credited him as a shareholder. When he returned to England, they accepted proof of his loyalty, asking only that he take oath of fidelity, but financially, his case had already been prejudged. He was not to be a partner. At a meeting in June, it was ordered that he be allowed 100 a year for his services. That is, he was to be their servant. As a matter of fact, he was already in debt for living expenses. In his pocket were the letters Albanel had brought overland to the bay and offers direct from Mons. Colbert, himself, of a position in the French navy, payment of all debts and a gratuity of some 400 to begin life anew if he would go over to Paris. Six weeks from the time he had left the bay, Radisson quit the Company's services in disgust. It 129 The Conquest of the Great Northwest was the old story of the injustice he had suffered in Quebec he, the creator of the wealth, was to have a mere pittance from the monopolists. Radisson could not induce his English wife to go with him, but he sailed for France at the end of October in 1674. As the operations of the Adventurers were now to become an international struggle for two hundred years, it is well to pause from the narrative of stirring events on the bay to take a glance forward on the scope and influence and power of the Hudson's Bay Company in the history of America. Notes on Chapter VII. For authorities on this chapter see Chapters VIII and IX. To those familiar with the subject, this chapter will clear up a great many discrepancies. In the life of Radisson in Pathfinders of the West, it was necessary to state frankly that his movements could not be traced definitely at this period both as to locale and time. The facts of this chapter are taken solely from the official Stock Books, Minute Books, Sailing Directions and Journals of Hudson's Bay House, London. Extracts from these minutes will be found after Chapter VIII and IX. One point in Pathfinders of the West, all authorities t differ as to the time when Radisson left the company, Albanel's Journal in the Jesuit Relations being of 1672, Gorst's record of the quarrel in 1674, and other accounts placing the date as late as 1676. My examinations of the Hudson's Bay records show that the rupture occurred in London in October, 1674. How, then, is Albanel's Relation 1672? The passport from Fronte- nac, which Albanel delivered to Bayly now on record in Hud- son's Bay Company papers is dated, Quebec, Oct. 7, 1673. If the passport only left Quebec in October, 1673, and Albanel reached the bay in August, 1674 there is only one conclusion: the date of his journal, 1672, is wrong by two years. One can easily understand how this would occur in a journal made up of scraps of writing jotted down in canoes, in tepees, every- where and anywhere, and then passed by couriers from hand to hand till it reached the Cramoisy printers of Paris. A letter to the Secretary of State, dated Sept. 25, 1675, re- lates: "This day came The Shaftsbury Pink ffrom Hudson I 3 The Adventures of the First V ay age Baye. Capt. Shopard, ye capt. tiles me thay found a franch Jesuit thare that did endeavor to convert ye Indians & persuad them not to trade with ye English, for wh. reason they have brought him away with them. . . Capt. Gillam we expect to-morrow." Later: "This day is arrived Capt. Gillam. I was on board of him and he tells me they were forced to winter there and spend all their Provisions. They have left only four men to keep possession of the place. I see the French Jesuit is a little ould man." CHAPTER VIII 1670-1870 "GENTLEMEN ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND" LORDS OF THE OUTER MARCHES TWO CENTURIES OF COMPANY RULE SECRET OATHS THE USE OF WHISKEY THE MATRIMONIAL OFFICES THE PART THE COMPANY PLAYED IN THE GAME OF INTERNATIONAL JUGGLING HOW TRADE AND VOYAGES WERE CONDUCTED JUST where the world's traffic converges to that roaring maelstrom in front of the Royal Ex- change, London on Lime Street, off Leaden- hall Street stands an unpretentious gray stone building, the home of a power that has held unbroken sway over the wilds of America for two-and-a-half centuries. It is the last of those old companies granted to royal favorites of European courts for the partitioning of America. To be sure, when Charles II signed away sole rights of trade and possession to all countries border- ing on the passage supposed to lead from the Atlantic to the South Sea, he had not the faintest notion that he was giving to "the Gentlemen Adventurers oj Eng- 132 "Gentlemen Adventurers of England" land Trading on Hudson's Bay" three-quarters of a new continent. Prince Rupert, Albermarle, Shafts- bury, the Carteretts and half a dozen others had helped him back to his throne, and with a Stuart's good-natured belief that the world was made for the king's pleasure, he promptly proceeded to carve up his possessions for his friends. Only one limitation was specified in the charter of 1670 the lands must be those not already claimed by any Christian power. But Adventurers on booty bound would sail over the edge of the earth if it were flat, and when the Hudson's Bay Company found, instead of a passage to the fabulous South Sea, a continental watershed whence mighty rivers rolled north, east, south, over vaster lands than those island Adventurers had ever dreamed was it to turn back because these coun- tries didn't precisely border on Hudson's Bay? The Company had been chartered as Lords of the Outer Marches, and what were Outer Marches for, but to march forward? For a hundred years, the world heard very little of these wilderness Adventurers except that they were fighting for dear life against the French raiders, but when Canada passed to the English, Hudson's Bay canoes were threading the labyrinthine waterways of lake and swamp and river up the Saskatchewan, down the Athabasca, over the mountain passes to the Columbia. Hudson's The Conquest of the Great Northwest Bay fur brigades were sweeping up the Ottawa to Abbittibbi, to the Assiniboine, to MacKenzie River, to the Arctic Circle. Hudson's Bay buffalo runners hunted the plains from the Red River to the Missouri. Hudson's Bay Rocky Mountain brigades one, two, three hundred horsemen, fol- lowed by a ragged rabble of Indian retainers yearly scoured every valley between Alaska and Mexico in regular platoons, so much territory as- signed to each leader Oregon to McLoughlin, the Snake Country to Ogden, the Umpqua to Black or McLeod, the Buffalo Country to Ross or some other, with instructions not to leave a beaver alive on the trail wherever there were rival American traders. Hudson's Bay vessels coasted from the Columbia to Alaska. The Adventurers could not dislodge Baran- off from Sitka, but they explored the Yukon and the Pelly, and the official books show record of a farm where San Francisco now stands. Beginning with a score of men, the Company to-day numbers as many servants as the volunteer army of Canada. Railroads to Eastern ports now do the work of the four or five armed frigates that used yearly to come for the furs, but two company ships still carry pro- visions through the ice floes of Hudson's Bay, and on every navigable river of the inland North, floats the flag of the Company's steamers. The brigades 134 "Gentlemen Adventurers of England' 1 of fur canoes can yet be seen at remote posts like Abbittibbi; and the dog trains still tinkle across the white wastes bringing down the mid-winter furs from the North. The old Company has the unique distinction of being the only instance of feudalism transplanted from Europe to America, which has flourished in the new soil. Other royal companies of Virginia, of Maryland, of Quebec, became part of the new democracy. Only the Hudson's Bay Company re- mains. The charter which by "the Grace of God" and the stroke of a pen gave away three-quarters of America was, itself, pure feudalism. Oaths of secrecy, implicit obedience of every servant to the man immediately above him the canoemen to the steersman, the trader to the chief factor, the chief factor to the governor, the governor to the king- dependence of the Company on the favor of the royal will all these were pure feudalism. Prince Rupert was the first governor. The Duke of York, after- wards King James, was second. Marlljorough, the great general, came third; and Lord Strathcona, the pn -cut governor, as High Commissioner for Canada, stands in the relation of ambassador from the colony to the mother country. Always the Company has been under the favor of the court. The Conquest of the Great Xorthwest Formerly, every shareholder had to make solemn oath: "/ doe sweare to bee True & jaithfull to ye Governor &> Comply of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson's Bay 6^ to my power will support and maintain the said comply & the privi- leges of ye same; all bye laws and orders not repeated which have been or shall be made by ye said Governor r Company I will to my best knowledge truly observe and keepe: ye secrets of ye said company, which shall be given me in charge to conceale, I will not disclose; and during the joint stock of ye said comply I will not directly nor indirectly trade to ye limitts of ye said company's charter without leave of the Governor, the Deputy Governor and committee, So help me God." A similar oath was required from the governor. Once a year, usually in November, the shareholders met in a general session called the General Court, to elect officers a governor, a deputy governor, and a committee which was to transact details of busi- ness as occasion required. Each officer was re- quired to take oath of secrecy and fidelity. This committee, it was, that appointed the captains to the vessels, the men of the crews, the local governors for the fur posts on the bay, and the chief traders, who were to go inland to barter. From all of these, oaths and bonds of fidelity were required. He, who violated his oath, was liable to forfeiture of wages 136 "Gentlemen Adventurers of England" and stock in the Company. In all the minute books for two-and-a-half centuries, both of the committee and the General Court which I examined, there were records of only one director dismissed for breaking his oath, and two captains discharged for illicit trade. Compared to the cut-throat methods of modern business, whose promise is not worth the breath that utters it and whose perjuries having become so common, people have ceased to blush, the old, slow-going Company has no need to be ashamed. Each officer in his own sphere was as despotic as a czar, but the despotism was founded on good will. When my Lord Preston did the Company a good turn by sending Radisson back from Paris to London, the committee of 1684 orders the warehouse keeper " to deliver the furrier as many black beaver skins as :/// make my lord a fine covering for his bedd" not a bribe before the good turn, but a token of good will n/tcnvards. When Mr. Randolph of New England arrests Ben Gillam for poaching on the Company's preserve up on Hudson Bay, the committee orders a piece of plate to the value of 10 for Mr. Randolph. When King Charles and the Duke of York interceded with France to forbid interlopers, "two pair of beaver stockings are ordered for the King and the Duke of York; 1 ' and the committee of April, 1684, instructs "Sir James Hayes do attend His Royal Highness '37 The Conquest of the Great Northwest at Windsor and present him his dividend in gold in a jaire embroidered purse." For whipping u those vermin, those enemies of all mankind, the French," the Right Honorable Earl John Churchill (Marl- borough) is presented with a cat-skin counterpane. The General Court and weekly committee meet- ings w r ere held at the very high altars of feudalism in the White Tower built by William the Conqueror, or at Whitehall where lived the Stuarts, or at the Jerusalem Coffee House, where scions of nobility met the money lenders and where the Company seems to have arranged advances on the subscribed stock to outfit each year's ships. Often, the com- mittee meetings wound up with orders for the secre- tary "to bespeake a cask of canary for ye governor" or "a hogshead of claret for ye captains sailing from Gravesend," to whom u ye committee wished a God speed, a good wind and a faire saile" When the Stuart line gave place to a new regime, the Company hastened to King William at Kensing- ton, and as the minutes of Oct. i, 1690, record " having the Honour to be introduced into His Majesty^ s clossett . . . the Deputy-Governor Sir Edward Dering delivered himself in these words. . . . May it Please your Majesty Your Maj- esty's most loyal and dutifull subjects, the Hudson's Bay Company begg leave most humbly to congratu- 138 "Gentlemen Adventurers of England" late your Majesty's Happy Returne home with hon- ours and safety. And wee doo daily pray to Heaven (that Hath God wonderfully preserved your Royall person) that in all your undertakings, your Majesty may bee as victorious as Caesar, as Beloved as Titus, and (after all) have the glorious long reign and peace- lull end of Augustus. . . . We doo desire also most humbly to present to your Majesty a dividend of three hundred guineas upon three hundred pounds stock in the Hudson's Bay Company now Rightfully devolved to your Majesty. And altho we have been the greatest sufferers of any Company, from these com- mon enemies off all mankind, the French, yet when your Majesty's just arms shall have given repose to nil Christendom, wee also shall enjoy our share of those great Benefits and doo not doubt but to appeare often with this golden fruit in our hands And the Deputy-Governor upon his knees humbly presented to his Majesty, the purse of gold . . . and then the Deputy-Governor and all the rest had the honour to kiss His Majesty j s 7/ reserve, the Company acted as a nursery for the fur- bcaring animals. Indians were taught not to kill in summer, not to kill the young, to leave the mother untouched. Talcs are told and the talcs arc per- fcctly true of Hudson's Bay fur traders taking a particularly long-barreled old musket standing it on M9 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the ground and ordering the poor, deluded Indian to pile furs to the top before he could have the gun ; but to make these tales entirely true it should be added that the furs were muskrat and rabbit killed out of season not worth a penny apiece in the Lon- don market and only taken to keep the Indians going till a year of good hunting came. When ar- raigned before a committee of the House of Com- mons, in 1857, charged with putting an advance of 50 per cent, on all goods traded to the Indians, and with paying ridiculously small prices for the rare skins in proportion to what they had paid for the poor, the Company frankly acknowledged both facts, but it was proved that 33 per cent, of the advance represented expenses of carriage to the interior. As for the other charge, the Company contended that it was wiser to take many skins that were absolutely worthless and buy the valuable pelts at a moderate price; otherwise, the Indians would die from want in bad years, and in good years kill off the entire supply of the rare fur-bearing animals. Since the surrender of the monopoly, countless rival traders have invaded the hunting grounds of the Company. None has yet been able to wean the Indians away from the old Company. It is a question if the world shows another example of such a long-lived feudalism. 150 "Gentlemen Adventurers of England" Though a Hudson's Bay servant could not take as much as one beaver skin for himself, every man afield had as keen an interest in the total returns as the shareholders in London. This was owing to the bounty system. To encourage the servants and prevent temptations to dishonesty, the Company paid bounty on every score (20) of made beaver to cap- tains, factors, traders, and trappers, in amounts ranging from three shillings to sixpence a score. Latterly, this system has given place to larger salaries and direct shareholding on the part of the servants, who rise in the service. A change has also taken place in methods of barter. Up to 1820, beaver was literally coin of the realm. Mink, marten, ermine, silver fox, all were computed as worth so much or so many fractions of beaver. A roll of tobacco, a pound of tea, a yard of blazing-red flannel, a powderhorn, a hatchet, all were measured and priced as worth so many beaver. This was the Indian's coinage, but this, too, has given way to modern methods, though the old system may perhaps be traced among the far Northern tribes. The account system was now used, so much bi-ing consigned to each factor, for which he was respon- sible. The trader, in turn, advanced the Indian whatever he needed for a yearly outfit, charging it against his name. This was repaid by the year's The Conquest of the Great Northwest hunt. If the hunt fell short of the amount, the Indians stood in debt to the Company. This did not in the least prevent another advance for the next year. If the hunt exceeded the debt, the Indian might drav/ either cash or goods to the full amount or let the Company stand in his debt, receiving coins made from the lead of melted tea chests with i, 2, 3 or 4 B beaver stamped in the lead, and the mystic letters N. B., A. R., Y. F., E. M., C. R., H. H., or some other, meaning New Brunswick House, Albany River, York Fort, East Main, Churchill River, Henley House names of the Company's posts on or near the bay. And these coins have in turn been supplanted by modern money. One hears much of the Indians' slavery to the Company owing to the debts for these advances, but any one who knows the Indians' infinite capacity for lounging in idleness round the fort as long as food lasts, must realize that the Company had as much trouble exacting the debt as the Indian could pos- sibly have in paying it. A more serious charge used to be leveled against the fur traders the wholesale use of liquor by which an Indian could be made to give away his furs or sell his soul. Without a doubt, where opposition traders were encountered Americans west of the Mississippi, Nor'Westers on the Saskatchewan, 152 "Gentlemen Adventurers of England" French south of the bay, Russians in Alaska liquor and laudanum, bludgeon and bribe were plied with- out stint. Those days are long past. For his safety's sake, the fur trader had to relinquish the use of liquor, and for at least a century the strictest rules have pro- hibited it in trade, the old Russian company and the Hudson's Bay binding each other not to permit it. And I have heard traders say that when trouble arose at the forts the first thing done by the Company was to split open the kegs in the fort and run all liquor on the ground. The charge, however, is a serious one against the Company's past, and I searched the minutes for the exact records on the worst year. In 1708, conflict was at its height against the French. The highest record of liquor sent out for two hundred servants was one thousand gallons an average of five gallons a trader for the year, or less than two quarts a month. In 1770, before the fight had begun with the Nor'- Westers, the Company was sending out two hundred and fifty gallons a year for three hundred traders. In 1800, when Nor'Westers and Hudson's Bay came to open war and each company drove the other to extremes of outlawry, neither had intended at the beginning, courcurs falling by the assassin's :IT, a Hudson's Bay governor butchered on the open field, Indians horsewhipped for daring to 153 The Conquest of the Great Northwest communicate with rivals, whole camps demoralized by drugged liquor, the highest record was twelve thousand six hundred gallons of brandy sent out for a force of between 4,000 or 5,000 men. This gives an average of three gallons a year for each trader. So that however terrible the use of liquor proved in certain disgraceful episodes between the two great British companies it must be seen that the orgies were neither general nor frequent. It is astonishing, too, to take a map of North America and consider what exploration stands to the credit of the fur traders. They were first overland from the St. Lawrence to Hudson Bay, and first inland from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi thanks to Radisson. In the exploration of the Arctic, who stands highest? It was a matter of paralyzing astonish- ment to the Company, itself, when I told them I had counted up in their books what they had spent on the Northwest Passage, and that before 1800 they had suffered dead loss on that account of 100,000. Beginning with old Captain Knight in 1719, who starved to death on Marble Island with his forty- three men, on down to Hearne in 1771, and Simpson and Rae in later days that story of exploration is one by itself. The world knows of Franklins and 154 "Gentlemen Adventurers of England''' Nansens, but has never heard of the Company's humble servants whose bones are bleaching on the storm-beaten rocks of the desolate North. Take that bleak desert of the North, Labrador of which modern explorers know nothing by 1750 Captain Coates of the Hudson's Bay had explored its shores at a loss to the company of 26,000. Inland by 1690, that ragamuffin London boy, Henry Kelsey, who ran away with the Indians and afterward rose to greatness in the service, had pene- trated to the present province of Manitoba and to the Saskatchewan. The MacKenzie River, the Columbia, the Fraser, the passes of the Rocky Moun- tains, the Yukon, the Liard, the Pelly all stand to the credit of the fur trader. And every state north of Louisiana, west of the Mississippi, echoed to the tramp of the fur traders' horses sweeping the wilder- ness for beaver. Gentlemen Adventurers, they called themselves, but Lords of the Outer Marches were they, truly as any robber barons that found and conquered new lands for a feudal king. Old-fashioned feudalism marked the Company's treatment of its dependents. To-day, the Indian simply brings his furs to the trader, has free egress to the stores, and goes his way like any other buyer. A hundred years ago, bartering was done through a 155 The Conquest of the Great Northwest small wicket in the gate of the fort palisades; but in early times, the governor of each little fort felt the pomp of his glory like a Highland chief. Decking himself in scarlet coat with profusion of gold lace and sword at belt, he marched out to the Indian camp with bugle and fife blowing to the fore, and all the white servants in line behind. Bartering was then accomplished by the Indian chief, giving the white chief the furs, and the white chief formally presenting the Indian chief with a quid pro quo, both sides puffing the peace pipe like chimney pots as a token of good-fellowship. How these pompous governors little men in stat- ure some of them kept their own servants obedi- ent, and loyal in the loneliness of these wilderness wilds, can only be ascribed to their personal prowess. Of course, there were desertions, desertions to the wild life and to the French overland in Canada and to the Americans south of the boundary, but only once was payment withheld from the men of the far fur post on account of mutiny, though many a mutiny was quelled in its beginnings by the governor doffing his dignity and laying a sound drubbing on the back of the mutineer. The men were paid by bills drawn on the home office to the amount of two thirds of their wages, the other third being kept against their return as savings. Many devices were 156 "Gentlemen Adventurers of England" employed to keep the men loyal. Did a captain accomplish a good voyage? The home committee ordered him a bounty of 150. Hearne, for his ex- plorations inland, over and above his wages was given a present of 200. Did a man suffer from rigorous climate? The committee solemnly indites: "4, smart money, for a frozen toe." Such luck as a French wood-runner deserting from Canada to the Hudson's Bay was promptly recognized by the order: "To Jan Ba'tiste Larlee, 1-5, a periwig to keep him loyal." No matter to what desperate straits war reduced the Company's finances, it was never too poor to pension some wreck of the service, or present gold plate to some hero of the fight, or give a handsome funeral to some servant who died in harness "funeral by torch light and linkmen, to St. Paul's Churchyard, company and crew in attendance, 31." Though Governor Semple had been little more than a year on the field when he was murdered, the Company pensioned both his sisters for life. The humblest servants in the ranks men beginning on twenty shillings a month, like Kdsey, and Grimmington, and Hearne, and old Captain Knight were urged and encouraged to rise to the highest positions in the Company. The one thing required was absolute, implicit, unquestioning loyalty; the Company could do no wrong. Quite the 157 The Conquest of the Great Northwest funniest instance of the Company's fatherly care for its servants was the matrimonial office. For years, especially in time of war, it was almost impossible to secure apprentices at all, though the agents paid 2 as bonus on signing the contract. At this period in the Company's history, I came across a curious record in the minutes. A General Court was se- cretly called of which no entry was to be made in the minutes, to consider the proposals of one, Mr. Andrew Vallentine, for the good of the Company's service. In addition to the shareholders' general oath of secrecy, every one attending this meeting had to take solemn vows not to reveal the proceedings. What could it be about? I scanned the general minutes, the committee books, the sub-committee records of shippings and sailings and wars. It was not about France, for proceedings against France were in the open. It was not a "back-stairs" fund, for when the Company wanted favors it openly sent purses of gold or beaver stockings or cat-skin counter- panes. But farther on in the minutes, when the good secretary had forgotten all about secrecy, I found a cryptic entry about the cryptic gentleman, Mr. Andrew Vallentine "that all entries about Mr. Andrew Vallentine' s office for the service of the Company be made in a Booke Aparte," and that 10 per cent, of the regular yearly dividends go as 158 "Gentlemen Adventurers of England" dowries for the brides of the apprentices, the cere- monies to be performed not by any unfrocked clergyman under the rose but by the Honorable, the Very Reverend Doctor Sacheverell of renown. The business with the gentleman of matrimonial fame was not called "a marriage office." No such clumsy herding of fair ones to the altar, as in Virginia and Quebec, where brides were sent in shiploads and exposed on the town square like slaves at the shambles. The Company's matrimonial venture was kept in dignified reserve, that would send down no stigma to descendants. It was organized and desig- nated as a separate company; certainly, a company of two. Later on, Mr. Vallentine's office being too small for the rush of business, the secretary, "Mr. Potter is ordered to arrange a larger office jor Mr. Vallentine in the Buttery of the Company's store house" But all the delightful possibilities hidden in Mr. Vallentine's suggestive name and in the oleaginous place which he chose for his matrimonial mart failed to make the course of true love run smooth. Mr. Vallentine entangled the Company in lawsuits and on his death in 1731, the office was closed. Notes on Foregoing Chapters. Groseillers's name is given in a variety of ways, the full name being Meclard Chouart (in>s- eillers the last translated by the English as "Gooseberv." which of course would necessitate the name being spelled "Groseilliers." 159 The Conquest of the Great Northwest The account of the passage of the ships across the Atlantic is drawn from Radisson Journals, from his Petitions, and from the Journal of Gillam as reported by Thomas Gorst, Bayly's secretary. There are also scraps about the trip in Sir James Hayes' report of damage to The Eaglet, which he submitted to the Admiralty. The relationship of Radisson to Groseillers and the French version of the quarrel on the bay are to be found in the life of Radisson in Pathfinders of the West. Though I have searched diligently, I have not been able to find a single authority, ancient or modern, for the odd version given by several writers of Radisson and Groseillers absconding overland to New France. The statement is sheer fiction neither more nor less, as the Minutes of Hudson's Bay House account for Radisson's move- ments almost monthly from 1667 to 1674, when he left London for France. A comical story is current in London about the charter. After the monopoly was relinquished by the Company in 1870 and its territory taken over by Canada, the old charter was, of course, of no importance. For thirty years it disappeared. It was finally found jammed behind old papers tumbled down the back of an old safe and this was the charter that deeded away three-quarters of America. Before a Parliamentary Commission on March 10, 1749, the Company made the following statement concerning its stock: 1676 October 16 It appears by the Company's Books, that their stock then was 10,500 1690 September The same being trebled is. . 21,000 Which made the Stock to be 31,500 1720 August 29 This Stock being again trebled is 63,000 Which made the Stock to be 94,500 And a subscription then taken in of 10% amounting to Additional Stock 9,450 Which makes the present Amount of the Stock to be 103,950 The minutes of the Company and Radisson's journal alike prove that he passed to France from England, in October, 1674. Whether Groseillers came to England on the ship is not stated, therefore the question is left open, but it is stated that Groseillers 1 60 "Gentlemen Adventurers of England' passed to France at the same time, so that pretty story of Groseillers knocking Bayly's head is all fiction. I was not able to find that " Booke Aparte" in which entries were made of Mr. Andrew Vallentine's matrimonial mart. It may yet turn up in the cellarful of old papers in the Company's warehouse. Perhaps it is as well that it should not, for some of the most honored names in Canadian history came into the service of the Company at this time. Lyddell's salary as governor of the west coast of the bay was to be ^100 per. annum. Sailors were paid, in 1671, from 20 to 30 a year, the surgeons 20 a year. 161 CHAPTER IX 1674-1685 IF RADISSON CAN DO WITHOUT THE ADVENTURERS, THE ADVENTURERS CANNOT DO WITHOUT RAD- ISSON THE ERUPTION OF THE FRENCH ON THE BAY THE BEGINNING OF THE RAIDERS WHILE Radisson became once more a man without habitat or country, the Hudson's Bay Adventurers were in the very springtime of wonderful prosperity. Despite French interlopers coming overland from the St. Lawrence, the ships of 1679 brought home cargoes totaling 10,500 beaver, 1,100 marten, 200 otter, 700 elk and a vast quantity of such smaller furs as musk- rat and ermine. Cash to the value of half the Com- pany's capital lay in the strong box as a working fund, and by 1681 dividends to the value of just twice the Company's stock had been paid to the share- holders. The first speculation in the stock began about this time, the shares changing hands at an advance of 33 per cent, and a new lot of shareholders coming in, among whom was the famous architect- Christopher Wrenn. At this time, too, one, Mr. 162 Radisson and the Adventurers Phillips, was expelled as a shareholder for attempt- ing to conduct a private trade through members of the crews. Prince Rupert continued to be governor till the time of his death, in 1682, when James, Duke of York, was chosen to succeed. At first, the govern- ing committee had met only before the ships sailed and after they returned. Committee meetings were now held two or three times a week, a payment of 6s 8d being made to each man for attendance, a like amount being levied as a fine for absence, the fines to be kept in a Poor Box for the benefit of the service. Bayly, who had been governor on the south coast of Hudson's Bay, when Radisson left, now came home in health broken from long exposure, to die at Mr. Walker's house on the Strand, whence he was buried with full military honors, the crew of The John and Alexander and the Adventurers marching by "torch light" to St. Paul's Churchyard. Hudson Bay let it be repeated can be com- pared in size only to the Mediterranean. One gov- ernor could no more command all the territory bor- dering it than one ruler could govern all the countries bordering the Mediterranean. Nixon was com- missioned to succeed Bayly as governor of the South Shore namely of Rupert and Moose Rivers, terri- tory inland about the size of modern Germany, which the new governor was supposed to keep in order 163 The Conquest of the Great Northwest with a force of sixteen men from the crew of The John and Alexander and garrison of eight men at each of the two forts thirty-two men in all, serving at salaries ranging from $60 (12) to $100 (20) a year, to police a barbarous pre-historic Germany; and the marvel is, they did it. Crime was almost unknown. Mr. Nixon's princely salary as governor, poohbah, potentate, was ^200 a year, and it is ordered, May, 1680, "that a cask of canary be sent out as a present to Governor Nixon." On the West Coast, it will be remembered, Lyd- dell had gone out as governor. That vague "West Coast" though the Adventurers did not know it meant a region the size of Russia. Lyddell was now succeeded by Sargeant, the bluffest, bravest, halest, heartiest of governors that ever donned the gold lace and pompous insignia of the Adventurers. Sar- geant's garrison never at any time numbered more than forty and usually did not exceed twelve. His fort was on an island at the mouth of Albany River, some one hundred miles north of Moose. It will be recalled that Radisson had traveled three hun- dred miles farther up the west coast to Port Nelson. The Company now decided to appoint a governor for that region, too, and John Bridgar was commissioned to go out in 1682 with Captain Gillam on the ship Prince Rupert a bad combination, these two, whose 164 Radisson and the Adventurers chief qualification seemed to be swashbuckler valor, fearlessness of the sea, ability to break the heads of their men and to drown all remorse pottle deep in liquor. How did they rule, these little potentates of the wilds? With all the circumstance and pomp of war, couriers running beforehand when they traveled, drums beating, flags flying, muskets and cannon roaring salutes, a bugler tootling to the fore of a governor dressed in gaudiest regimentals, a line of white servants marching behind, though they were so poor they wore Indian garb and had in their hearts the hatred of the hireling for a tyrant ; for over them the Company had power of life and death without redress. All very absurd, it seems, at this long distant time, but all very effective with the Indians, who mistook noise for power and display for greatness. By royal edict, privateers were forbidden to go to Hudson Bay, whether from England or New Eng- land. Instead of two small ships borrowed from the Admiralty, the Adventurers now had four of their own and two chartered yearly The Prudent Mary, and Albermarle frigate and Colleton yacht outward bound, The Prince Rupert and John and Alexander and Shajtsbury which was wrecked homeward bound, or vice versa. And there began to come into Company's records, grand old names of grand old 165 The Conquest of the Great Northwest mariners Vikings of the North Mike Grimming- ton, who began before the mast of The Albemarle at thirty shillings a month, and Knight, of whose tragic fate more anon, and Walker, who came to blows with Governor Sargeant, outward bound. Those were not soft days for soft men. They were days of the primordial when the best man slept in his fight- ing gear and the victory went to the strong. When Captain James had come out to follow up Hudson's discoveries, he had left his name to James Bay and discovered Charlton Island, some forty miles from the South Shore. Now that the Company had so many ships afloat, Charlton Island became the rendezvous. The ships, that were to winter on the bay, went to their posts, but to Charlton Island came the cargoes for those homeward bound. To Port Nelson, then, came Governor Bridgar on The Prince Rupert with Captain Gillam, in August, of 1682. Mike Grimmington is now second mate. Gillam must have been to Port Nelson before on trading ventures, but Governor Bridgar's com- mission was to establish that fort which for two cen- turies was to be the battleground of Northern traders and may yet be the great port of Northern commerce. The whole region was called Nelson after Admiral Button's mate, but it was to become better known 166 Radisson and the Adventurers as Fort Bourbon, when possessed by the French; as York, when it repassed to the English. Shifting shoals of sand-drift barred the sea from the main coast for ten miles north and south, but across the shoals were gaps visible at low tide, through which the current broke with the swiftness of a river. Gillam ordered small boats out to sound and stake the ship's course by flags erected in the sand at half tide. Between these flags, The Prince Rupert slowly moved inland. Inside the sand-bar, the coast was seen to be broken by the mouths of two great rivers either one a miniature St. Lawrence, on the north the Nelson, on the south the Hayes. It was on the Hayes to the south that the Adventurers finally built their fur post, but Bridgar and Gillam now pushed The Prince Rupert's carved prow slowly up the northern river, the Nelson. The stream was wide with a tremendous current and low, swampy, wooded banks. Each night sails were reefed and men sent ashore to seek a good site or sign of Indians. Night after night during the whole month of Sep- tember, John Calvert, Robert Braddon, Richard Phineas, Robert Sally and Thomas Candy punted in and out of the coves along the Nelson, lighting bonfires, firing muskets, spying the shore for foot- step of native. On the ship, Bridgar ordered the cannon fired as signals to distant Indians and for 167 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the first time in history the roar of heavy guns rolled across the swamps. Winter began to close in early. Ice was forming. Nipping frosts had painted the swamp woods in colors of fire. One afternoon toward October when The Prince Rupert was some seventeen miles from the sand-bar, gliding noiselessly with full-blown sails before a gentle wind, the smoke of an Indian signal shot skyward from the south shore. In vain Bridgar fired muskets all that afternoon and waved flags, to call the savages to the ship. A solitary figure, seeming to be a spy, emerged from the brushwood, gazing stolidly at the apparition of the ship. Presently, two or three more figures were discovered moving through the swamp. The next morning Governor Bridgar ordered the gig-boat lowered, and accompanied by Gillam and an escort of six sailors rowed ashore. First impressions count much with the Indians. On such occasion, Hudson's Bay Company officers never failed of pompous ostentation profusion of gold lace, cocked hats for officers, colored regimentals for underlings, a bugler to the fore, or a Scotchman blowing his bagpipes, with a show of burnished firearms and helmets. On rowed the gig-boat toward the imperturbable figure on the shore. Some paces out, the boat 168 Radisson and the Adventurers grated bottom and stuck in the sand. A sailor had jumped to mid-waist in water to drag the craft in, when the stolid figure on the sand suddenly came to life. With a leap, leveled musket covering the in- coming boat, the man had bounded to the water's edge and in purest English shouted "Halt!" "We are Hudson's Bay Company men," protested Bridgar standing up. "But I," answered the figure, "am Radisson, and I hold possession of all this region for France." If the Frenchman had been Vesuvius suddenly erupted under some idling tourists, or if a ghost arisen from the ground, the English could not have been more astonished. They had thought they had finished with the troublesome Frenchman, and behold him, here, in possession with a musket leveled at their heads and three men commanding ambushed forces behind. With a show of hollow courage, Bridgar asked permission to land and salute the commander of the French forces. One can guess with what love, they fell on each other's necks. Radisson's courage rose recklessly as if the danger had been so much wine. These three men were his officers, he said. His fort was some distance away. He had two ships but expected more. How many men had he? Ah, there his English failed, but his broken French 169 conveyed the impression of forces that could wipe the English out of existence. Gillam and Bridgar, who could not speak one word of French, looked glum enough. To test this brave show of valor, they invited him on board The Prince Rupert to dine. Radisson accepted with an alacrity that disarmed suspicion, but he took the precaution of inviting two English sailors to remain on shore with his French followers. What yarns were spun over the mess room table of The Prince Rupert that day! Radis- son enquired for all his own friends of London, and Bridgar in turn heard what Radisson had been doing in the French navy all these eight years. Who knew Port Nelson better than Radisson? They asked him about the current of the river. He ad- vised them to penetrate no farther for fear of a clash with the French forces and to forbid their men marauding inland in order to avoid trouble with the Indians. Could any one guess that the astute Frenchman, boasting of ship's and so recklessly quaffing toasts at the table of his enemies was defenseless and power- less in their hands? His fort was not on this river but on the Hayes across the swamp to the south a miserable collection of log shacks with turf roofs, garrisoned by a mere handful of mutinous sailors. His fear was not that the English would clash with 170 Radisson and the Adventurers the French forces, but that they would learn how weak he was. And another discovery added the desperation of recklessness to the game. Radisson and Groseillers had come to the bay but a month before on two miserable ships with twenty-seven men. Musketry firing had warned Radisson of some one else at Port Nelson. Twenty-six miles up Nelson River on Gillam Island, he had discovered to his amazement, poachers who were old acquaint- ances Ben Gillam, son of the Company's captain, with John Outlaw, come in The Bachellors' Delight from Boston, on June 21, to poach on the Com- pany's fur preserve. It was while canoeing down stream from the discovery of the poachers that Radisson ran full-tilt into the Company's ship. Here, then, was a pretty dilemma two English ships on the same river not twenty miles apart, the French south across the swamp not a week's journey away. Radisson was trapped, if they had but known. His only chance was to keep The Prince Rupert and The Bachelors' Delight apart, and to master them singly. If Bridgar had realized Radisson's plight, the Frenchman would have been clapped under hatches in a twinkle, but he was allowed to leave The Prince Rupert. Bridgar beached his ships on the flats and prepared to build winter quarters. Ten days later, 171 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Radisson dropped in again, "to drink health," as he suavely explained, introducing common sailors as officers and firing off muskets to each cup quaffed, to learn whether the Company kept soldiers "on guard in case of a surprise." Governor Bridgar was too far gone in liquor to notice the trick, but Captain Gillam rushed up the decks of The Prince Rupert with orders for the French to begone. Gillam and Radisson had been enemies from the first. Gillam was suspicious. Therefore, it behooved Radisson to play deeper. The next time he came to the ship he was accompanied by the Captain's son, Ben, the poacher, dressed as a bushranger. There was reason enough now for the old captain to keep his crew from going farther up the river. If Ben Gillam were discovered in illicit trade, it meant ruin to both father and son. When some of his crew remarked the resemblance of the supposed bushranger to the absent son, Captain Gillam went cold with fright. Falsity, intrigue, danger, were in the very air. It lacked but the spark to cause the explosion; and chance supplied the spark. Two of the Company men ranging for game came on young Gillam's ship. They dashed back breath- less to Governor Bridgar with word that there was a strange fort only a few miles away. Bridgar thought 172 Radisson and the Adventurers this must be the French fort, and Captain Gillam had not courage to undeceive him. Scouts were sent scurrying. Those scouts never returned. They had been benighted in a howling blizzard and as chance would have it, were rescued by Radisson's spies. While he waited for their return, worse disaster befell Bridgar. Storm and ice set the tide driving in Nel- son River like a whirlpool. The Prince Rupert was jammed, ripped, crushed like an eggshell and sunk with loss of all provisions and fourteen men, includ- ing old. Captain Gillam. Mike Grimmington, the mate, escaped. Governor Bridgar was left destitute and naked to the enemy without either food or am- munition for the remainder of his crew to face the winter. The wretched man seems to have saved nothing from the wreck but the liquor, and in this he at once proceeded to drown despair. It was Rad- isson who came to his rescue. Nothing more was to be feared from Bridgar. Therefore, the Frenchman sent food to the servants of his former friends. With- out his aid, the entire Hudson's Bay crew would have perished. Cooped up in the deplorable rabbit hutches that did duty as barracks, and constantly besotted with liquor, Governor Bridgar was eking out a miserable winter when he was electrified by another piece of chance news. A thunderous rapping awakened the 173 The Conquest of the Great Northwest cabin one winter night. When the door was opened, there stumbled in a disheveled, panting Scotchman with an incoherent plea for help. The French were attacking Ben Gillam's fort. For the first time, Bridgar learned that the fort up stream was not French but English the fort of Ben Gillam, the poacher; and all his pot valor resolved on one last, desperate cast of the dice. To be sure, the other ship was a poacher; but she was English. If Bridgar united with her, he might beat Radisson.' He would at least have a ship to escape to the Company's forts at the lower end of Hudson Bay, or to England. Also, he owed his own and his crew's life to Radisson ; but he owed his services to the Company, and the Company could best be served by treachery to Radisson and alliance with that scalawag sailor adventurer Ben Gillam, whose ship sailed under as many names as a pirate and showed flags as various as the seasons. Better men than Bridgar forced to choose between the scalawag with the dollar and honor with ruin, have chosen the scalawag with the dollar. Men sent out as scouts came back with unsatis- factory tales of having failed to capture Ben Gillam's ship, but they were loaded with food for Bridgar from Radisson. Bridgar only waited till spies re- ported that Radisson had left Gillam's fort to cross the marsh to French headquarters. Then he armed 174 Radisson and the Adventurers his men cutlass, bludgeon, such muskets as Rad- isson's ammunition rendered available and set out. It was a forced tramp in midwinter through bitter cold. The men were an ill-clad rabble. They were unused to this cold with frost that glittered sharp as diamond-points, and had not yet learned snowshoe travel over the rolling drifts. Frost-bitten, plunging to their armpits in snow, they followed the iced river bed by moonlight and sometime before dawn pre- sented themselves at the main gate of Ben Gillam's palisaded fort. Never doubting but Gillam's sentry stood inside, Bridgar knocked. The gate swung open before a sleepy guard. In rushed Bridgar's men. Bang went the gates shut. In the confusion of half-light and frost smoke, armed men surrounded the English. Bridgar was trapped in his own trap. Not Gillam's men manned the poacher's fort, but Radisson's French sailors. Ben Gillam and his crew had long since been captured and marched across the swamp to French headquarters. Bridgar and his crew were the prisoners of the French in the poacher's fort. The rest of the winter of 1682-83 belongs to the personal history of Radisson and is told in his life. Between despair and drink, Bridgar was a madman. Radisson carried him to the French fort on Hayes River, whence in a few weeks he was released on The Conquest of the Great Northwest parole to go back to his own rabbit hutch of a bar- racks. When spring came, between poachers and Company men, the French had more English prisoners than they knew what to do with. To make matters worse, one of the French boats had been wrecked in the ice jam. It was decided to send some of the English prisoners on the remaining boat to Moose and Rupert River at the south end of the bay, and to carry the rest on the poacher Backellors' Delight to Quebec. Outlaw and some of the other poachers would take no chance of going back to New England to be arrested as pirates. They went in The Ste. Anne to the foot of James Bay and joined the Hudson's Bay Company. Bridgar, too, was to have gone to his company's forts on James Bay, but at the last moment he pretended to fear the ice floes on such a slender craft and asked to go with Radisson on The Bachellors' Delight to Quebec. Giving the twelve refugees on The Ste. Anne each four pounds of beef, two bushels of oatmeal and flour, Radisson dispatched them for the forts of James Bay on August i4th. He had already set fire to Bridgar's cabins on Nelson River and destroyed the poachers' fort on Gillam Island, Bridgar, himself, asking per- mission to set the flame to Ben Gillam's houses. Leaving Groseillers' son, Chouart, with seven French- men to hold possession of Port Nelson, Radisson set 176 Radisson and the Adventurers sail with his prisoners on The Bachellors' Delight. A few miles out, a friendly Englishman warned him of conspiracy. Bridgar and Ben Gillam were plot- ting a mutiny to cut the throats of all the Frenchmen and return to put the garrison at Port Nelson to the sword; so when Bridgar asked for the gig-boat to attempt going six hundred miles to the forts at the south end of the bay, Radisson's answer was to order him under lock the rest of the voyage. At Quebec, profound disappointment awaited Radisson. Frontenac had given place to De la Barre as governor of New France, and De la Barre knew that a secret treaty existed between France and England. He would lend no countenance to Radisson's raid. The Bachellors' Delight was restored to young Gillam and Radisson ordered to France to report all he had done. Young Gillam was promptly arrested in Boston for poaching on Hudson Bay. Within a few years, he had turned pirate in earnest, or been driven to piracy by the monopolistic laws that gave every region for trade to some special favorite of the English crown. About the time Captain Kidd of pirate fame was arrested at Boston, one Gillam of The Prudent Sarah was arrested, too. By wrenching off his handcuffs and filing out the bars of his prison window with the iron of the handcuff, Gillam almost escaped. He was 177 leaping out of the prison window on old Court Street when the bayonet of a guard prodded him back. With Captain Kidd, he was taken to England and tried for crimes on the high seas. There, he drops from history. As for Bridgar, he no sooner whirled Governor De la Barre's fear of consequences for what Radisson had done, than he set two worlds ringing with vaunt- ings of the vengeance England would take. Put- ting through drafts on the Hudson's Bay Company for money, he hired interpreters, secretaries, outriders, and assumed pomp that would have done credit to a king's ambassador. Sailing to New England with Ben Gillam, he cut a similar swath from Boston to New York, riding like a Jehu along the old post road in a noisy endeavor to rehabilitate his own dignity. Then he sailed for England where condign humilia- tion lay in wait. The Company was furious. They refused to honor his drafts and would not pay him one penny's salary from the day he had surrendered to Radisson. The wages of the captured servants, the Company honored in full, even the wages of the dead in the wreck of The Prince Rupert. Bridgar was retained in the service, but severely reprimanded. Notes on Chapter IX. Practically the entire contents of this chapter are taken from the documents in Hudson's Bay House, London. Details of the Company's affairs are from the Minute Books, of the fracas with Radisson, from the affidavits I 7 8 Radisson and the Adventurers of John Outlaw, who first went to the bay as a poacher with young Gillam, and from the affidavits of Bridgar's crew. It has always been a matter of doubt whether Gillam Sr. survived the wreck of The Prince Rupert. The question is settled by the fact that his wages are "payable to an attorney for his heirs." If he had lived, it was ordered that he was to be arrested for complicity in piracy with his son. The ultimate fate of Ben Gillam I found in the Shaftesbury collection of papers bearing on Captain Kidd. His name is variously given as "William" and "James," but I think there can be little doubt of his identity from several coincidences. In the first place, the Gillam whom Mr. Randolph arrested for piracy (and was given a present by the Company for so doing) was the Gillaum later arrested in connection with Captain Kidd. Also Gillam's boat was known under a variety of names BacheUors' Delight, Prudent Sarah, and the master of The Pru- dent Sarah was arrested in connection with Captain Kidd. The minutes of the Hudson's Bay Company show that the Boston owners of Gillam's boat sued for the loss of this trip against the Hudson's Bay Company, and lost their suit. This was the first test of the legality of the Hudson's Bay Company monopoly, and the courts upheld it. Radisson's life as given in Pathfinders of the West and Her- alds of Empire affords fuller details of the fray from the French- man's point of view. It is remarkable how slightly his record differs from the account as contained in the official affidavits. As to the distance of Charlton Island from the main coast it puzzled me how the sailing directions for the ships that were to rendezvous there gave the distance of the island from the main coast as anything from twenty to eighty miles. The explanation is the point on the south coast that is considered. 179 CHAPTER X 1683-1685 THE ADVENTURERS FURIOUS AT RADISSON, FIND IT CHEAPER TO HAVE HIM AS FRIEND THAN ENEMY AND INVITE HIM BACK THE REAL REASON WHY RADISSON RETURNED THE TREACHERY OF STATECRAFT YOUNG CHOUART OUTRAGED, NURSES HIS WRATH AND THERE GAILY COMES ON THE SCENE MONSIEUR PERE SCOUT AND SPY THE Hudson's Bay Adventurers were dazed by the sudden eruption of Radisson at Port Nelson. Their traders had gone there often enough to have learned that the finest furs came from the farthest North. Here was a region six hundred miles distant from the French bush-lopers, who came overland from the St. Law- rence. Here were the best furs and the most numer- ous tribes of Indian hunters. Radisson had found Port Nelson for them. Now he had snatched the rich prize from their hands. Bad news travels fast. Those refugees, who had been shipped by the French to the Company's posts at the south of the bay, reached the ships' rendezvous 180 The Adventurers Furious at Radisson at Charlton Island in time to return to England by the home-bound vessels of 1683. Before Radisson had arrived in France, Outlaw and the other refugees had come to London. The embassies of France and England rang With what was called "the Radisson outrage." John Outlaw, quondam captain for Ben Gillam, the poacher, took oath in London, on No- vember 23, of all that Radisson had done to injure the English, and he swore that Groseillers had showed a commission from the Government of France for the raid. Calyert, Braddon, Phineas and those seamen, who had gone up Nelson River with Bridgar gave similar evidence, and when Bridgar, himself, came by way of New England, the clamor rose to such heights it threatened to upset the friendly treaty between England and France. Lord Preston, England's envoy to Paris, was besieged with memorials against Radisson for the French Government. "I am confirmed in our worst fears by the news I have lately received," wrote Sir James Hayes of the Company, " Monsieur Radisson, who was at the head of the action at Port Nelson is arrived in France the 8th of this month (December, 1683) in a man- of-war from Canada and is in all posthaste for Paris to induce the ministry to undermine us on I ludson's Bay. Nothing can mend at this time but 181 to get His Majesty's order through my Lord Preston instantly to cause ye French King to have exemplary justice done upon ye said Radisson." At the same time, Hayes was urging Preston to bribe Radisson; in fact, to do anything to bring him back to the service of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany. Radisson and Groseillers had meanwhile reached Paris only to find that the great statesman, Colbert on whose protection they had relied was dead. Fur traders of Quebec had the ear of the court those monopolists, who had time and again robbed them of their furs under pretense of collections for the revenue. Both Radisson and Groseillers separately petitioned the court for justice. If De la Barre had been right in restoring the pirate vessel to Ben Gillam, what right had he to seize their furs? One fourth for revenue did not mean wholesale confiscation. The French Court retorted that Radisson and Gros- eillers had gone North without any official commis- sion. "True," answered Groseillers in his petition, "no more official than a secret verbal commission such as Albanel the Jesuit had, when he came to us years ago, and that is no good reason why we should be condemned for extending French dominion and changing Nelson's name to Bourbon." Radisson's 182 The Adventurers Furious at Radisson petition openly stated that while they carried no "official commission," they had gone North by the express order of the King, and that the voyage, itself, was sufficient proof of their zeal for France. King Louis was in a quandary. He dare not offend the Hudson's Bay Company, for its chief share- holders were of the English court, and with the English Court, Louis XIV had a secret treaty. To De la Barre he sent a furious reprimand for having released Gillam's pirate vessel. "It is impossible to imagine what your conduct meant," ran the reproof, "or what you were about when you gave up the vessel captured by Radisson and Groseillers, which will afford the English proof of possession at Port Nelson. I am unwilling to afford the King of England cause of complaint," he explained, "but I think it important to prevent the English establishing them- selves on Nelson River." In brief, according to the shifty trickery of a royal code, Radisson was to be reprimanded publicly but encouraged privately. Groseillers dropped out of the contest disgusted. The French court sent for Radisson. He was ordered to prepare to sail again to the bay on April 24, 1684, but this time, Radisson would have no under- hand commission which fickle statesmen might repudiate. He demanded restoration of his con- fiscated furs and a written agreement that he should The Conquest of the Great Northwest have equal share in trading profits. The Depart- ment of the Marine haggled. Preparations went on apace, but the Hudson's Bay Company was not idle. Sir James Hayes and Sir William Young and my Lord Preston English envoy to Paris urged Radisson to come back to England on one hand, and on the other threatened rupture of the treaty with France if "condign punishment" were not visited on the same men. It is here what historians have called "Radisson's crowning treachery" takes place. "Prince of liars, traitors, adventurers and bushrangers" says one writer. "He received the marked displeasure of M. Colbert," explains another, though Colbert was dead. "He was blamable for deserting the flag of France: the first time we might pardon him, for he was the victim of grave injustice, but no excuse could justify his second desertion. He had none to offer. It was an ineffaceable stain," asserts yet another critic. In a word, Radisson suddenly left France secretly and appeared in England, the servant of the Hud- son's Bay Company. Why did he do it? Especially, why did he do it without any business agreement with the Company as to what his rewards were to be? Traitors sell themselves for a quid pro quo, but there was no prospect of gain in Radisson's case. 184 The Adventurers Furious at Radisson His own journals give no explanation. I confess I had always thought it was but another example of the hair-brained enthusiast mad to be back in his native element the wilds and shutting his eyes to all precautions for the future. It was not till I had examined the state papers that passed between the Hudson's Bay Company and France that I found the true explanation of Radisson's erratic conduct. He was sent for by the Department of the Marine, and told that the French had quit all open preten- tions to the bay. He was commanded to cross to England at once and restore Port Nelson to the Hudson's Bay Company. "Openly?" he might have asked. Ah, that was different! Not openly, for an open surrender of Port Nelson would forever dispose of French claims to the bay. All Louis XIV now wanted was to pacify the English court and main- tain that secret treaty. No, not openly; but he was commanded to go to England and restore Port Nel- son as if it were of his own free will. He had cap- tured it without a commission. Let him restore it in the same way. But Radisson had had enough of being a scapegoat for state statecraft and double dealing. He demanded written authority for what he was to do, and the Department of Marine placed this commission in his hands: The Conquest of the Great Northwest "In order to put an end to the Differences wh. exist between the two Nations of the French & English touch- ing the Factory or Settlement made by Messrs. Groseillers and Radisson on Hudson Bay, and to avoid the efusion of blood that may happen between the sd. two nations, for the Preservation of that place, the expedient wch. appeared most reasonable and advantageous for the English company will, that the sd. Messrs. De Groseillers and Radisson return to the sd. Factory or habitation fur- nished with the passport of the English Company, import- ing that they shall withdraw the French wh. are in garrison there with all the effects belonging to them in the space of eighteen months to be accounted from the day of their departure by reason they cannot goe and come from the place in one year. . . . The said gentlemen shall restore to the English Company the Factory or Habitation by them settled in the sd. country to be thenceforward enjoyed by the English company without molestation. As to the indemnity pretended by the English for effects seized and brought to Quebec . . . that may be accomodated in bringing back the said inventory & restoring the same effects or their value to the English Proprietors." This, then, was the reason for Radisson a second time deserting the French flag. He was compelled by "the statecraft" of Louis XIV, and this reason, as a man of honor, he could not reveal in his journals. On the loth of May, 1684, Radisson landed in London. He was welcomed by Sir James Hayes and forthwith carried in honor to Windsor, where 186 The Adventurers Furious at Radisson he took the oath of fidelity as a British subject a fealty from which he never swerved to the end of his life. In a week, he was ready to leave. Three ships sailed this year, The Happy Return, under Captain Bond ; The Success, under Outlaw, who had been with Ben Gillam, and a little sloop called The Adventure for inland waters, under Captain Geyer. Radisson went on board The Happy Return. Gros- eillers had long since left France for Quebec, where he settled at Three Rivers with his family. Favor- able winds carried the ships forward without storm or stop, to the straits, which luckily presented open water. Inside the bay, ice and heavy seas separated the vessels. Sixty miles from Port Nelson The Happy Return was caught and held. Fearing that the French at Nelson, under young Chouart Gros- eillers, might attack the English if the other ships arrived first, Radisson asked permission of Governor Phipps, who had superseded Bridgar, to take seven of the crew and row the sixty miles ashore. It was a daring venture. Ice floes were tossing in a heavy sea, but by rowing might and main, portaging over tin- ice where the way was blocked, and seeking shelter on the lee side of a floe when the wind became too rough, Radisson and his men came safely to Port Nelson in forty-eight hours, spending only one night in the gig-lx>at on the sea. Radisson was amazed 187 to find the French fort on Hayes River deserted. Indians presently told him the reason. Barely had he left the bay the year before when the annual frigate of the English company came to port. Young Chouart Groseillers trusted to the loyalty of the In- dians as a defense against the English till he learned that the savages had been offered a barrel of gun- powder to massacre the French. Then Chouart hastily withdrew up Hayes River above the first rapids to the camping place of the Assiniboines, whose four hundred warriors were ample protection. Young Groseillers' anger at the turn of affairs knew no bounds. In his fort were twelve thousand beaver skins and eight thousand other pelts of the same value as beaver. To the expedition the year before, he had contributed 500 of his own money, and the cargo of that voyage had been confiscated at Quebec. Now, he had rich store of pelts to com- pensate for the two years' toil, and by the order of the French Government a secret back-stairs, treach- erous order which could not stand daylight and would brand him as a renegade he was to turn these furs over to the enemy. The young man was furious, and surrendered his charge with an ill grace. Rad- isson had been commissioned to offer the Frenchmen employment in the English Company at 100 a year for Chouart, 50 for Durvall, Lamotte, Greymaire 1 88 The Adventurers Furious at Radisson and the rest. They heard his offer in sullen silence, for it meant they must forswear allegiance to France. They preferred to remain free-lances and take chances of crossing overland to Quebec two thousand miles through the wilderness. Then came what was truly the crowning treachery. A square deal is safest in the long run. The man of double dealing forgets that he often compels men, who would otherwise deal squarely, to meet him on his own ground double dealing; to stoop to the trickery that his dishonesty has taught. Radisson had been assured that the Frenchmen left in Hudson Bay should be free to do as they wished, or if they joined the English they should be well treated ; but when they evinced no haste to be- come English subjects, Governor Phipps took his own counsel. By September, a new fort had been built on Hayes River five miles from the mouth. The Indians had come down stream with an enor- mous trade and Radisson had made a treaty of peace between them and the English, which has lasted to this day. Finally, the cargo of beaver was on board The Happy Return. Sailors were chanting their singsong as they ran round the capstan bars heaving up anchor on September the 4th, when Governor Phipps suddenly summoned a final council on board the decks of The Happy Return. To this council 189 The Conquest of the Great Northwest came the unsuspecting Frenchmen from the shore. Three as it happened had gone to the woods, but young Groseillers and the rest clambered up the accommodation ladder for last orders. No sooner were they on board, than sails were run out. The Happy Return spread her wings to the wind and was off for England carrying the unwilling Frenchmen passengers. In a trice, hands were on pistols and swords out, but Radisson besought the outraged Frenchmen to restrain their anger. What was their strength against an armed crew of ruffians only too glad of a scuffle to put them all to the sword? It was a sullen, sad home-coming for the adventurer. Uncle and nephew were scarcely on- speaking terms, and the trick of Governor Phipps must have opened Radisson's eyes to the treatment he might expect now that he was completely in the power of the English. The boat reached Portsmouth on Octo- ber 23. Not waiting for coach. Radisson took horse and rode fast and furious to London. He was at once taken before the Company. He was publicly thanked for his services, presented with a set of silver and given a present of a hundred guineas. He became the lion of the hour. Nor did he forget his French confreres. The committee at once voted each of the Frenchmen twenty shillings a week for 190 The Adventurers Furiaus at Radisson pocket money and ordered their board paid. Later, Mr. Radisson is authorized to offer them salaries ranging from 100 a year to 50 if they will join the Company. But they are in no haste to join the Company, and strangely, when they evince intentions of going across to France a thousand obstructions arise as out of the ground. They are watched even threatened; politely, of course, but threatened with arrest. Some suave-tongued gentleman points out an advantageous marriage that young Chouart might make with some well-dowered English belle, like his Uncle Radisson, who had married Mary Kirke. Monsieur Chouart shrugs his shoulders. He hasn't a very high opinion of the way Radisson has man- aged his marriage affairs. But when they find that they can gain their liberty in no other way, these young French knights of the wilderness, they accept service in the English com- pany to be sent to the bay forthwith, and take out "papers of denizenation," which can be broken with less damage to conscience than an oath of fealty and the forswearing of France. And all the while, they are burning with rage that bodes ill for Governor Phipps' trick on the deck of The Happy Return. Letters came from France to Chouart, letters from one Duluth, who is pushing north from Lake Superior; letters from one Comport r, who has offered to go 191 The Conquest of the Great Northwest overland and "wipe the English from the bay"; messages from a bush-loper, one Pere, who is useful to the king of France as a spy. To Comporte, Chouart writes: "I am not at liberty to do as I wish. All the advantages offered do not for a moment cause me to waver. I shall be happy to meet you by the route you travel. I will perish or be at the place you desire me to go. It is saying enough. I will keep my word." To his mother at Three Rivers, the young Frenchman confesses: "Orders have been given to arrest me if I try to leave. I will cause it to be known in France that I never wished to follow the English. I will abandon this nation. I have been forced here by my Uncle's subterfuges. See M. Duluth in my behalf and M. Pere and all our good friends" "All our good friends," are the bush- rangers who are working overland north from the St. Lawrence to intercept the trade of Hudson Bay- especially "Mons. Pere." And the same French Government that has com- pelled Radisson to go back to England, issues orders to the Governor of New France M. de Denonville, "to arrest Radisson wherever he may be found," "to reward young Groseillers if he will desert from Hudson's Bay," and "to pay fifty pistolles" to any man who seizes Radisson. And the reason for this duplicity of statecraft? Plain enough. The Stuart 192 The Adventurers Furious at Radisson throne is tottering in England. When it falls, there falls also the secret treaty with France. His Most Christian Majesty does not wish to relinquish claim to one foot of ground in the North, and well might he not it was an empire as large as half Europe. Meantime, the Company was proceeding on the even tenor of its ways. Dividends of 50 per cent, were paid in '83, the same in '84, despite intercep- tion of furs by the French overlanders. In the suit for loss by the owners of Ben Gillam's ship, the Company had emerged triumphant its monopoly vindicated, and in 1684, Captain Walker of the south coast coming out of the bay on The Diligence, captured another pirate ship, The Expectation, whose owners again tested the Company's claim to exclusive trade on the bay, by a lawsuit; and again the Com- pany came out a victor its monopoly justified by the courts. Three of the ships Happy Return, Captain Bond; Owners' Good Will, Captain Lucas, and Success, Captain Outlaw were yearly chartered from Sir Stephen Evance, a rich goldsmith, who had become a heavy shareholder in the Company. Besides these, there were The Perpctuana Merchant, Captain Hume, with Smithsend as mate; The Dili- gence, Captain Walker; the sloop A dventure, Captain Geyer. and one frigate ; in all a fleet of seven vessels, 193 The Conquest of the Great Northwest each carrying from twelve to twenty men plying to and from the bay. It was in 1686 that the sloop was sent north of Nelson to Churchill River, named after the great General to open trade on the river where Mimck's Danes had suffered such frightful disaster. About this time, too, poor London boys began to go out as apprentices scullions, valets, general knockabouts among whom was one Henry Kelsey engaged at 8 a year, and his keep for Port Nelson. When James, Duke of York, became king, the position of governor of the Company was vacated, and Sir James Hayes, who seems always to have been the Company's emissary in all court matters, is directed by the governing committee "to bespeak the Lord John Churchill to dynner at ye Rummor Tavernne in Queen's Street" on business for the company's very great interests. What that business was became evident at the General Court of the Adventurers called on April 2, 1685, when my Lord Churchill is elected governor by unanimous ballot. Phipps remains at Nelson as local governor, Sargeant at Albany, Nixon at Moose. Bridgar has been transferred to Rupert River, not important now, because the French are luring the Indians away, and Radisson is general superintendent of all trade, spending the winters in London to arrange the furs for sale and to choose the outgoing cargoes, 194 The Adventurers Furious at Radisson going each summer to the bay to barter with the Indians. Notes on Chapter X. With the exception of the two petitions filed by Radisson and Groseillers in France, and of young Groseillers' letters all the contents of this chapter are drawn from the official records of the Hudson's Bay House. Young Groseillers, by the way, is usually called Jean Baptiste, but as he signs himself Chouart I have referred to him by that name. The real reason why Radisson came back to England is so new to history that I have given the instructions of the French Government in full. Radisson refers to these instructions in his affidavit of 1697, a document which for State reasons has never been given to the public till now. The State reasons will become plainer as the record goes on. Both governments were lying to sustain fictitious claims for damages. Herewith in part, is Radisson's affidavit, taken before Sir Robert Jeffery, Aug. 23, 1697, left with the English commissioners of claims against France the jjth of June, 1699: "Peter Esprit Radisson of the Parish of St. James in the County of Middlesex Esqr. aged sixty-one years or thereabouts maketh oath that he came into England in the year 1665 And in the year 1672 married one of the Daughters of Sir John Kirke And in trie year 1667 this deponent with his Brother in law Medard Chouart De Groseilier were designed for a voyage in the service of the English to Hudson Bay, which they under- took, this deponent going on board the ship Eagle then com- manded by one Captain Wm. Stanard was hindered being dis- abled at sea by bad weather, soe could not compleate the sd. intended Voyage, But the sd. Grosilier proceeded in another English ship called the Nonsuch and arrived in the Bottom of Hudson's Bay on a certaine River then which Capt. Zachary Gillam commander of the sd. ship . . . then named Rupert River in Honor of His Highness Prince Rupert who was chiefly interested in that expedition. . . . And this deponent alsoe saith that in the vcar 1668 He went from England to another voyage to Port Xclson on an English ship called the Wavero but was also obstructed . . . and at his returne found the sd. GrossiliiT safely arrived . . . and in tin- year 1669 this deponent went on the sd. ship the Wavero com- manded by Captain Ncwland & arrived at Port Nelson . . . and in the year 1670 the sd. Grosilier was sent in an English Barke to Port Nelson . . . and in the year 1673 there arising some difference between the Hudson's Bay Company of England & this deponent, this deponent went unto France 195 The Conquest of the Great Northwest . . and in the year 1682 there were two Barkes fitted out at Canada . . . sailed to Hudson's Bay and arrived on Hayes River . . . and took Port Nelson and an English vessel which came from New England commanded by one Benj. Gillam . . . and gave the name of Bourbon to the said Port Nelson . . . and in the year 1683 he came from Canada to Paris by order of Monsr. Colbert, who soone after dyed. And this deponent being at Paris was there informed that the Lord Preston, Ambassador of the King of England had given in a Memoriall . . . against this Deponent And after this deponent had been several times with the Marquis de Seignlay & Monsr. Calliere (one of the Plenipotentiaries at the Treaty of Peace) this Deponent found that the French had quitted all pretences to Hudson Bay, And thereupon in the year 1684 in the month of Aprill, this deponent by the special direction of the sd. Monsr. Calliere did write the papers here- unto annexed ' (there follow the instructions to return to England as given in the text) . . . "which the sd. Monsr. Calliere dictated . . . and the sd. Monsr. Calliere acted in the sd. affaire by the directions of the Superintendent of Marine affairs in France. . . . And the deponent was commanded by the sd. Monsr. Calliere ... to goe to Port Nelson to withdraw the French from thence, And to restore the same to the English who he sd. should be satisfied for the wrong & damages done them by this deponent . . . and this deponent went in one of the Hudson's Bay Company ships to Port Nelson and withdrew the French that were there from that Place, and the sd. Place was then put into possession of the English . . . and the French that withdrew were brought unto England .... (Signed) Pierre Esprit Radisson London." August 1697. Those who wish a more detailed account of Radisson will find it in Pathfinders of the West. Chouart's letter will be found in the appendix of the same volume. Documents Relatifs a la Nouvelle France," Tome I (1492-1712), contains the petitions filed by Radisson and Groseillers in France. It has been almost a stock criticism of the shallow now- adays to say that an author has rejected original authorities, if the author refers to printed records, or to charge that the author has ignored secondary authorities, if the writer refers only to original documents. I may say that I have not de- pended on secondary authorities in the case of Radisson, because to refer to them would be to point out inaccuracies in every second line an ungrateful task. But I have consulted and 196 The Adventurers Furious at Radisson possess in my own library every book that has ever been printed on the early history of the Northwest. As for original docu- ments, I spent six months in London on records whose dust had not been disturbed since they were written in the sixteen- hundreds. The herculean nature of this laborious task can best be understood when it is realized that these records are not open to the public and it is impossible to have an assistant do the copying. The transcripts had to be done by myself, and revised by an assistant at night. 197 CHAPTER XI 1685-1686 WHEREIN THE REASONS FOR YOUNG CHOUART GROS- EILLERS' MYSTERIOUS MESSAGE TO OUR GOOD FRIEND "PERE" ARE EXPLAINED THE FOREST ROVERS OF NEW FRANCE RAID THE BAY BY SEA AND LAND TWO SHIPS SUNK PERE, THE SPY, SEIZED AND SENT TO ENGLAND IT IS now necessary to follow the fleet of seven ships four large frigates, three sloops for inland waters to the bay. Radisson goes as general superintendent with Captain Bond and Cap- tain Lucas to Nelson the port farthest north. In these ships, too, go young Chouart Groseillers and his French companions, bound for four years to the Hudson's Bay Company, albeit they have received and sent mysterious messages to and from "our good friend, Monsieur Jan Pere," of Quebec, swear- ing they will meet him at some secret rendezvous or "perish in the attempt." What Chouart Gros- eillers and his friends sworn to serve the English company mean by secret oaths to meet French bush-rovers from Quebec remains to be seen. 198 Reasons for Groseiller's Message Explained Young Mike Grimmington is second mate on Captain Outlaw's ship, The Success, destined for the fort south of Nelson Albany, where bluff old Governor Sargcant holds sway from his bastioned stronghold on the island at the mouth of Albany River. Brid- gar quondam governor at Nelson now goes with the small sloops bound for the bottom of the bay Moose and Charlton Island and Rupert River. No Robin Hoods of legendary lore ever lived in more complete security than the Gentlemen Adven- turers of Hudson Bay. Radisson the one man to be feared as a rival had been compelled by the French Court to join them. So had his followers. The forts on the bay seemed immune from attack. To the south, a thousand miles of juniper swamp and impassable cataracts separated the English fur traders from the fur traders of New France. To the west, was impenetrable, unknown wilderness. To the north, the realm of iron cold. The Adven- turers of Hudson Bay slumbered secure on the margin of their frozen sea. Rupert and Moose the forts of the south yearly collected 5,000 beaver pelts each, not counting as many again of other rare furs. Albany where the bay turns north gave a yearly quota of 3,500, and Nelson sent out as much as $100,000 worth of beaver in a single year. The 199 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Adventurers had found a gold mine rich as Spanish Eldorado. To be sure, the French fur traders, who had been led to the bay by Radisson once, would now be able to find the way there for themselves, but the French fur traders demanded four beavers in barter where the English asked only two, and two French ships that had come up under Lamartiniere commissioned "to seize Radisson," could neither find Radisson nor an Indian who would barter them a single pelt. They dare not land at Nelson, for it was now Eng- lish. Reefing sails, Lamartiniere's ships spent the summer of '85 dodging the ice floes and hiding round Digges' Island at the inside end of the straits for reasons that young Chouart Groseillers might have explained if he would. It was July before the fleet of Hudson's Bay boats reached the straits. Ice jam and tide-rip had presently scattered the fleet. As usual, the smaller vessels showed their heels to danger and slipping along the lee edge of the floes, came to the open water of the bay first. The Happy Return, under Captain Bond with Monsieur Radisson, Monsieur Chouart and his comrades; The Success, under Captain Out- law; The Merchant Perpetuana, under Captain Hume, with mates Smithsend and Mike Grimming- ton looking anxiously over decks at the tumult of 200 Reasons for Groseiller's Message Explained ramming ice that swept past came worming their way laboriously through the ice floes, small sails only out, grappling irons hooked to the floating icepans, cables of iron strength hauling and pulling the frigates up to the ice, with crews out to their armpits in ice slush ready to loose and sheer from the danger of undertow when the tide ripple came. On July 27, with the crews forespent and the ships badly battered, the three emerged on the open water of Hudson Bay and steered to rest for the night under shelter of the rocky shores off Digges' Island. Like ghosts from the gloom, shadows took form in the night mist two ships with foreign sails on this lonely sea, where all other ships were for- bidden. In a trice, the deathly silence of the sea is broken by the roar of cannonading. It is Monsieur Radisson, on whose head there is a price, who realizes the situation first and with a shout that they are trapped by French raiders by Lamartinie're bids Captain Bond flee for his life. Captain Bond needs no urgings. The Happy Return's sails are out like the wings of a frightened bird and she is off like a terrified quarry pursued by a hawk. Nor does Captain Outlaw on The Success wait for argument. With all candles instantly put out, he, too, steers for the hiding of darkness on open water. The Per- petuana is left alone wedged between Lamartinie're's 20 1 The Conquest of the Great Northwest two French ships. Hooked gang planks seize her on both sides in a death grapple. Captain Hume, Mates Smithsend and Mike Grimmington with half a dozen others are surrounded, overpowered, dis- armed, fettered and clapped under hatches of the victorious ships. Before morning, The Perpetuana had been scuttled of her cargo. Fourteen of her crew have been bayoneted and thrown overboard. A month later, cargo and vessel and captives are re- ceived with acclaim at Quebec. Captain Hume is sent home to France in December on a man-of-war to lie in a dungeon of Rochelle till he can obtain ransom. So are Mr. Richard Alio and Andrew Stuckey seamen. The rest are to lie in the cells below Chateau St. Louis, Quebec, on fare of bread and water for six months. Mike Grimmington is held and "tortured" to compel him to betray the secrets of navigation at the different harbors of Hudson Bay, but Mate Grimmington tells no tales; for he learns that rumors of raid are in the air at Quebec. Though England and France are at peace, the fur traders of Quebec are asking commission for one Chevalier de Troyes with the brothers of the family Le Moyne, to raid the bay, fire the forts, massacre the English. Smithsend by secret mes- senger sends a letter with warnings of the designs to the Hudson's Bay Company in England, and Smith- 202 Reasons for Groseiller's Message Explained send for his pains is sold with his comrades into slavery in Martinique, whence he escapes before spring. Grimmington is held prisoner for two years before a direct order from the French Court sets him free. Other things, Grimmington hears in Quebec of the French on the bay. All unsuspecting of plots at Quebec and pirate attacks on the Company's ships, the governors of the different forts on the bay awaited the coming of the ships. From July, it was customary to keep harbor lights out on the sand-bars, and station sentinels day and night to watch for the incoming fleet. Secret codes of signals had been left the year before with the forts. If the incoming ships did not display these signals, the sentinels were ordered to cut the harbor buoys, put out the lights, and give the alarm. If the signals were correct, cannon roared a welcome, flags were run up, and pilots went out in small boats to guide the ships in through sand-bars and bowlder reefs. At Albany, Governor Sargeant, whose wife and family were now with him at the fort had ordered a sort of lookout, or crow's-nest, built of scaffolding, on a hill above the fort. As far as known, not a single Englishman had up to this time pi-nrt rated the wilds west of the bay. One Robert Sanford had been ordered this very year to "go up into the 203 The Conquest of the Great Northwest country," but fear of French bush-rovers made him report that such a course was very unsafe. It would be wiser and safer for the Company to give hand- some presents to the Indian chiefs. This would induce them to bring their tribes down to the bay. So the sentinel at Albany could hardly believe his senses one morning when from the eerie height of his lookout he espied three men three white men, steering a canoe down the swift, tumultuous current of the rain-swollen river. They were coming not from the sea, but from the Upcountry. This was a contingency the cutting of harbor buoys had not provided against. The astounded sentinel ran to Sargeant with the alarm. Cannon were manned and Governor Sargeant took his stand in the gate of the palisaded walls. Beaching their canoe, the three white men marched jauntily up to the governor. The shaggy eyes of the bluff old governor took in the fact that the newcomers were French Frenchmen dressed as bush-lopers, but with the manners of gentlemen, introducing themselves with the debonair gayety of their race, Monsieur Pere, Monsieur Coultier de Comporte and a third, whose name is lost to the records. Old Governor Sargeant scratched his burly beard. England and France were at peace, very much at peace when France had sent Radisson back; 204 Reasons for Groseiller's Message Explained and he must treat the visitors with courtesy; but what were gentlemen doing dressed as bush-rovers? Hunting taking their pleasure where they found it knights of the wildwoods says my good friend, Jan Pere, doffing his fur capote with a bow. Gov- ernor Sargeant hails good friend Pere into the fort, to a table loaded with game and good wine and the hospitality of white men lonely for companionship as a sail at sea. The wine passes freely and stories pass freely, stories of the hunt and the voyage and of Monsieur Radisson and his friends, whom the Gov- ernor expects back this year soon, very soon, any day now the ships may come. But at base, every Hudson's Bay Company man is a trader. Governor Sargeant evincing no zealous desire to extend his hospitality longer, Monsieur Pe*re* tactfully evinces no desire to stay. The gay adventurers aver they are going to coast along the shore that alkali shore between the main coast of cedar swamps and the outer reef of bowlders where good sport among feathered game is to be ex- pected. Once they are out of sight from Albany, the three Frenchmen rest on their paddles and confer. They had not counted on leaving quite so soon. Still gay as schoolboys on an escapade, that night as they sleep on shore under the stars, they take good care to leave their canoe so that the high tide carries 205 The Conquest of the Great Northwest it out to sea. What is to be done now a thousand miles by swamp from the nearest French fort? Presto go back to the English fort, of course; and back they trudge to Albany with their specious farce of misadventure. Meanwhile, Outlaw on The Success, had arrived at Albany with the tale of Lamartiniere's raid and the loss of The Perpetiiana. Before Monsieur Jan Pere can feign astonishment he is dumfounded at the news, is Monsieur Pere Governor Sargeant has clapped irons on his wrists and irons on his feet. The fair-tongued spy is cast manacled into the bas- tion that served as prison at Albany, and his two comrades are transported across to Charlton Island to earn their living hunting till they have learned that no one may tamper with the fur trade of the English adventurers. What welcome Chouart Groseillers and his French comrades received is not told in Hudson's Bay annals. They go north to Nelson for the next four years, then drop from the pay lists of the Company, and reappear as fur traders of New France. It would hardly be stretching historic fact to infer that these daring French youths took to the tall timbers. Over on Charlton Island, Pere's comrades hunted as to the wildwoods born; hunted so diligently that by September they had store enough of food to stock 206 Reasons for Groseiller's Message Explained them for the winter. By September the boats that met at Charlton Island had sailed. No one was left to watch the Frenchmen. They hastily constructed for themselves a large canoe, loaded it with their provisions, set out under cover of night and reached the south shore of James Bay, keeping well away from Moose and Rupert River. Then they paddled for life upstream toward New France. By October, ice formed, cutting the canoe. They killed a moose, cured the buckskin above punk smoke, made themselves snowshoes and marched overland seven hundred miles to the French fort at Michilimackinac. Word ran like wildfire from Lake Superior to Quebec Jan Pere was held in prison at Albany. These were the rumors Mike Grimmington and Richard Smithsend heard from their prison cells under Chateau St. Louis. If these two spies can march overland in midwinter, cannot a band of bush-rovers march overland to the rescue of Pere"? France and England are at peace; but Albany holds Pre* in prison, and Quebec holds Mike Grimmington and Smithsend in the cellar of the Chateau St. Louis. Up on the bay, old Sargeant was puzzled what to do with P6re*. All told, there were only eighty- nine men on Hudson Bay at this time. It was de- cided that Outlaw should remain for the winter with 207 Sargeant, but take Pere up to Captains Bond and Lucas at Nelson to be shipped home to England, where the directors could decide on his fate. On October 27, Bond and Lucas arrived in London, and on October 29, the minutes of the Company report "one Monsieur Jan Pere sent home by Gov- ernor Sargeant as a French spy." The full report of The Perpetuana's loss was laid before the Company on the 3oth. On November 4, Monsieur Pere is examined by a committee. Within a week the suave spy suffers such a change of heart, he applies on November n for the privilege of joining the Com- pany. Before the Company have given answer to that request, comes a letter from Captain Hume dated December 13, Rochelle, France, giving a full account of the wreck of The Perpetiiana, the indignities suffered at Quebec, stating that he is in a dungeon awaiting the Company's ransom. Cap- tain Hume is ordered to pay what ransom is neces- sary and come to England at once, but it is manifest that the French spy, Jan Pere, must be held for the safety of the other English prisoners at Quebec. The Company lodges a suit of 5,000 damages against him, which will keep Pere in gaol till he can find bail, and when he sends word to know the reason for such outrage, the minutes of the Company glibly put on record "that he hath damnified the company 208 Reasons for Groseiller's Message Explained very considerably." Unofficially, he is told that the safety of his life depends on the safety of those Eng- lish prisoners held at Quebec. In January arrives Captain Hume, putting on record his affidavit of the wreck of The Perpetuana. In February, 1686, comes that letter from Smithsend which he smuggled: out of his prison in Quebec, "ye contents to be kept private and secret" warning the Company that- raiders are leaving Canada overland for the bay. By March, Jan Pere is on his knees to join the Com-, pany. The Company lets him stay on his knees in prison. All is bustle at Hudson's Bay House fitting out frigates for the next summer. Eighteen extra men are to be sent to Albany, twelve to Moose, six to Rupert. Monsieur Radisson is instructed to inspect the large guns sent over from Holland to be sent out to the bay. Monsieur Radisson advises the Company to fortify Nelson especially strongly, for hence come the best furs. The Company is determined to be ready for the raid, but the straits will not be clear of ice before July. Notes on Chapter XI. The contents of this chapter are taken from the Minutes of the Company, Hudson's Bay House. AIL French records state that Hume was killed in the loss of The Perpetuana. As I have his letter from Rochelle, dated Decem- ber, 1685, this is a mistake. He reached England. January, 1686, and his affidavit is in Hudson's Bay House. Captain Bond was severely censured by the Company for deserting The 209 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Perpetuana. If he had not fled, the French would without a doubt have dispatched Radisson on the spot. Some of the men of The Perpetuana spent two years imprisoned in Quebec. Up to this time, by wreck and raid, including sloops as well as frigates the Company had lost thirteen vessels. Record of Pe"r is found also in French state documents of this date. Smithsend escaped to England, February 14, 1686. 2IO CHAPTER XII 1686-1687 PIERRE LE MOYNE D'lBERVILLE SWEEPS THE BAY WITH Captain Outlaw's crew adding strength to Albany, and Governor Brid- gar's crew wintering at Rupert River, the Adventurers on Hudson Bay once more felt secure. Like a bolt from the blue came the French raiders into the midst of this security. It was one of the long summer nights on the i8th of June, 1686, when twilight of the North merges with dawn. Fourteen cannon in all protruded from the embrasures of the four stone bastions round Moose Factory the southwest corner of the bay; and the eighteen-foot pickets of the palisaded square wall were everywhere punctured with holes for musketry. In one bastion were three thousand pounds of powder. In another, twelve soldiers slept. In a third were stored furs. The fourth bastion served as kitchen. Across the middle of the court- yard was the two-story storehouse and residence of the chief factor. The sentinel had shot the strong 211 The Conquest of the Great Northwest iron bolts of the main gate facing the waterway, and had lain down to sleep wrapped in a blanket without loading the cannon it was his duty to guard. Twi- light of the long June night almost the longest day in the year had deepened into the white stillness that precedes dawn, when two forms took shape in the thicket of underbrush behind the fort, and there stepped forth clad in buckskin cap-a-pie, musket over shoulder, war hatchet, powderhorn, dagger, pistol in belt and unscabbarded sword aglint in hand, two French wood-lopers, the far-famed coureurs des bois, whose scalping raids were to strike terror from Louisiana to Hudson Bay. At first glance, the two scouts might have been marauding Iroquois come this outrageous distance through swamp and forest from their own fighting ground. Closer scrutiny showed them to be young French noblemen, Pierre le Moyne d'Iberville, age twenty-four, and his brother, Sainte Helene, native to the roving life of the bushranger, to pillage and raid and ambuscade as the war-eagle to prey. Born in Montreal in i66T and schooled to all the wilder- ness perils of the struggling colony's early life, Pierre le Moyne, one of nine sons of Charles le Moyne, at Montreal, became the Robin Hood of American wilds. Sending his brother Ste. Helene round one side of 212 Le Moi/ne d'Iberville Sweeps the Bay the pickets to peer through the embrasures of the moonlit fortress, Pierre le Moyne d'Iberville skirted the other side himself and quickly made the dis- covery that not one of the cannon was loaded. The tompion was in every muzzle. Scarcely a cat's-paw of wind dimpled the waters. The bay was smooth as silk. Not a twig crunched beneath the moccasined tread of the two spies. There was the white silence, the white midnight pallor of Arctic night, the diaph- anous play of Northern lights over skyey waters, the fine etched shadows of juniper and fir and spruce black as crayon across the pale-amber swamps. With a quick glance, d'Iberville and his brother took in every detail. Then they melted back in the pallid half-light like shadows. In a trice, a hundred forms had taken shape in the mist sixty-six Indians decked in all the war-gear of savage glory from head- dress and vermilion cheeks to naked red-stained limbs lithe as tiger, smooth and supple as satin sixty-six Indians and thirty-three half-wild French soldiers gay in all the regimentals of French pomp, commanded by old Chevalier de Troyes, veteran of a hundred wars, now commissioned to demand the release of Monsieur Pore* from the forts of the Eng- lish fur traders. Beside De Troyes, stood De la Chesnay, head of the Northern Company of Fur Traders in Quebec, only too glad of this chance to 213 The Conquest of the Great Northwest raid the forts of rivals. And well to the fore, cross in hand, head bared, the Jesuit Sylvie had come to rescue the souls of Northern heathendom from hell. Impossible as it may seem, these hundred intrepid wood-runners had come overland from Montreal. While Grimmington and Smithsend were still in prison at Quebec, d'Iberville and his half-wild fol- lowers had set out in midwinter on a voyage men hardly dared in summer. Without waiting for the ice to break up, leaving Montreal in March, they had followed the frozen river bed of the Ottawa north- ward, past the Rideau and Chaudiere Falls tossing their curtains of spray in mid-air where the city of Ottawa stands to-day, past the Mattawa which led off to the portages of Michilimackinac and the Great Lakes, up the palisaded shores of the Temiscamingue to Lake Abbittibbi, the half-way watershed between the St. Lawrence and Hudson Bay. French silver mines, which the English did not rediscover to the present century, were worked at Temiscamingue. At Abbittibbi, a stockade was built in the month of May, and three Canadians left to keep guard. Here, too, pause was made to construct canoes for the voyage down the watershed of Moose River to James Bay. Instead of waiting for the ice of the Ottawa to break up, the raiders had forced their 214 Le Moyne d'Iberville Sweeps the Bay march to be on time to float down on the swollen currents of the spring thaw to Moose Factory, four- hundred miles from the height of land. And a march forced against the very powers of the elements, it had proved. No tents were carried; only the blanket, knapsack fashion, tied to each man's back. Bivouac was made under the stars. No provisions but what each blanket carried! No protection but the musket over shoulder, the war axe and powderhorn, and pistol in belt! No reward but the vague promise of loot from the English wig- wamming as the Indians say on the Northern Bay! Do the border raids of older lands record more heroic daring than this? A march through six-hundred miles of trackless forest in midwinter, then down the maelstrom sweep of torrents swollen by spring thaw, for three-hundred miles to the juniper swamps of rotting windfall and dank forest growth around the bay? If the march had been difficult by snowshoe, it was ten-fold more now. Unknown cataracts, un- known whirlpools, unknown reaches of endless rapids dashed the canoes against the ice jam, under huge trunks of rotting trees lying athwart the way, so that Pierre d'Iberville's canoe was swamped, two of his voyageurs swept to death before his eyes, and two others only saved by d'Iberville, himself, leaping 215 The Conquest of the Great Northwest to the rescue and dragging them ashore. In places, the ice had to be cut away with hatchets. In places, portage was made over the ice jams, men sinking to their armpits in a slither of ice and snow. For as long as eleven miles, the canoes were tracked over rapids with the men wading barefoot over ice-cold, slippery river bed. It had been no play, this fur-trade raid, and now Iberville was back from his scouting, having seen with his own eyes that the English fur traders were really wigwamming on the bay by which the Indians meant "wintering." Hastily, all burdens of blanket and food and clothes were cast aside and cached. Hastily, each raider fell to his knees invoking the blessing of Ste. Anne, patron saint of Canadian voyageur. Hastily, the Jesuit Sylvie passed from man to man absolving all sin; for these men fought with all' the Spartan ferocity of the Indian fighter that it was better to die fighting than to suffer torture in defeat. Then each man recharged his musket lest the swamp mists had dampened powder. Perhaps, Iberville reminded his bush-lopers that the Sov- ereign Council of Quebec had a standing offer of ten crowns reward for every enemy slain, twenty crowns for every enemy captured. Perhaps, old Chevalier de Troyes called up memories of Bollard's fight on 216 Le Moyne d'Iberville Sweeps the Bay the Long Sault twenty years before, and warned his thirty soldiers that there was no retreat now through a thousand miles of forest. They must win or perish ! Perhaps Dechesnay, the fur trader, told these wood- rovers that in at least one of the Hudson's Bay Company's forts were fifty-thousand crowns' worth of beaver to be divided as spoils among the victors. De Troyes led his soldiers round the fore to make a feint of furious onslaught from the water front. Iberville posted his Indians along each flank to fire through the embrasures of the pickets. Then, with a wild yell, the French raiders swooped upon the sleeping fort. Iberville and his brothers, Ste. Helene and Maricourt, were over the rear pickets and across the courtyard, swords in hand, before the sleepy gunner behind the main gate could get his eyes open. One blow of Ste. Helene's saber split the fellow's head to the collar bone. The trunk of a tree was used to ram the main gate. Iberville's Indians had hacked down the rear pickets, and he, himself, led the way into the house. Before the six- teen terrified inmates dashing out in their shirts had realized what was happening, the raiders were masters of Moose. Only one man besides the gunner was killed, and he was a Frenchman slain by the cross-fire of his comrades. Cellars were searched, but there was small loot. Furs were evidently 217 The Conquest oj the Great Northwest stored elsewhere, but the French were the richer by sixteen captives, twelve portable cannon, and three- thousand pounds of powder. Flag unfurled, mus- kets firing, sod heaved in air, Chevalier de Troyes took possession of the fort for the Most Redoubtable, Most Mighty, Most Christian King of France, though a cynic might wonder how such an act was accom- plished in time of peace, when the sole object of the raid had been the rescue of Monsieur Pere, im- prisoned as a spy. Eastward of Moose, a hundred and thirty miles along the south coast of the bay on Rupert's River, was the other fort, stronger, the bastions of stone, with a dock where the Hudson's Bay Company's ships commonly anchored for the summer. North- westward of Moose, some hundred miles, was a third fort, Albany, the citadel of the English fur traders' strength, forty paces back from the water. Unas- sailable by sea, it was the storehouse of the best furs. It was decided to attack Rupert first. Staying only long enough at Moose to build a raft to carry Cheva- lier de Troyes and his prisoners along the coast, the raiders set out by sea on the 2yth of June. Iberville led the way with two canoes and eight or nine men. By sailboat, it was necessary to round a long point of land. By canoe, this land could be portaged, and Iberville was probably the first man 218 Le Moyne d'Iberville Sweeps the Bay to blaze the trail across the swamp, which has been used by hunters from that day to this. By the first of July, he had caught a glimpse of Rupert's bastions through the woods. Concealing his Indians, he went forward to reconnoiter. To his delight, he espied the Company's ship with the H. B. C. ensign flying that signified Governor Bridgar was on board. Choosing the night, as usual, for attack, Iberville stationed his bandits where they could fire on the decks if necessary. Then he glided across the water to the schooner. Hand over fist, he was up the ship's sides when the sleeping sentinel awakened with a spring at his throat. One cleft of Iberville's sword, and the fellow rolled dead at the Frenchman's feet. Iber- ville then stamped on the deck to call the crew aloft, and sabered three men in turn as they tumbled up the hatchway, till the fourth, Governor Bridgar, him- self, threw up his hands in unconditional surrender of the ship and crew of fourteen. Twice in four years, Bridgar found himself a captive. The din had alarmed the fort. Though the bastions were dis- mantled for repairs, gates were slammed shut and musketry poured hot shot through the embrasures, that kept the raiders at a distance. Again, it was the Le Moyne brothers who led the fray. The bastions served the usual two-fold purpose of defense and 219 The Conquest of the Great Northwest barracks. Extemporizing ladders, Iberville went scrambling up like a monkey to the roofs, hacked holes through the rough thatch of the bastions and threw down hand grenades at the imminent risk of blowing himself as well as the enemy to eternity. "It was," says the old chronicle, "with an effect most admirable" which depends on the point of view; for when the defenders were driven from the bastions to the main house inside, gates were rammed down, palisades hacked out, and Iberville with his followers, was on the roof of the main house throwing down more bombs. As one explosive left his hand, a terrified English woman dashed up stairs into the room directly below. Iberville shouted for her to retire. The explosion drowned his warning, and the next moment he was down stairs dashing from hall to hall, candle in hand, fol- lowed by the priest, Sylvie. A plaintive cry came from the closet of what had been the factor's room. Followed by his powder-grimed, wild raiders, Iber- ville threw open the door. With a scream, there fell at his feet a woman with a shattered hip. However black a record these raiders left for braining children and mutilating women, four years later in what is now New York State, they made no war on women here. Lifting her to a bed, the priest Sylvie and Iberville called hi the surgeon, and barring the door from the 220 Le Moync d'Iberville Sweeps the Bay outside, forbade intrusion. The raid became a riot. The French possessed Rupert, though little the richer but for the ship and thirty prisoners. The wild wood-rovers were now strong enough to attempt Albany, three hundred miles northwest. It was at Albany that the French spy Pere was supposed to be panting for rescue. It was also at Albany that the English fur traders had their greatest store of pelts. As usual, Iberville led off in canoes; De Troyes, the French fur traders, the soldiers and the captives following with the cannon on the ship. It was sunset when the canoes launched out from Ru- pert River. To save time by crossing the south end of the bay diagonally, they had sheered out from the coast when there blew down from the upper bay one of those bitter northeast gales, that at once swept a maelstrom of churning ice floes about the cockleshell birch canoes. To make matters worse, fog fell thick as night. A birch canoe in a cross sea is bad enough. With ice floes it was destruction. Some made for the main shore and took refuge on land. The Le Moyncs' two canoes kept on. A sea of boiling ice floes got between the two. There was nothing to do for the night but camp on the shifting ice, hanging for dear life to the canoe held high on the voyat^urs' heads out of danger, clinging hand to hand so that if one man slithered through the ice- 221 The Conquest of the Great Northwest slush the human rope pulled him out. It was a new kind of canoe work for Iberville's Indians. When daylight came through the gray fog, Iberville did not wait for the weather to clear. He kept guns firing to guide the canoe that followed and pushed across the traverse, portaging where there was ice, pad- dling where there was water. Four days the traverse lasted, and not once did this Robin Hood of Canadian wildwoods flinch. The first of August saw his In- dians and bush-lopers below the embankments of Albany. A few days later came De Troyes on the boat with soldiers and cannon. Governor Sargeant of Albany had been warned of the raiders by Indian coureurs. The fort was shut fast as a sealed box. Neither side gave sign. Not till the French began trundling their cannon ashore by all sorts of clumsy contrivances to get them in range of the fort forty yards back, was there a sign of life, when forty-three big guns inside the wall of Albany simultaneously let go forty-three bombs in midair that flattened the raiders to earth under shelter of the embankment. Chevalier De Troyes then mustered all the pomp and fustian of court pageantry, flag flying, drummers beating to the fore, guard in line, and marching forward demanded of the English traders, come half-way out to meet him, satisfaction for and the delivery of Sieur Pere, a 222 Le Moyne d'Iberville Sweeps the Bay loyal subject of France suffering imprisonment on the shores of Hudson Bay at the hands of the Eng- lish. One may wonder, perhaps, what these raiders would have done without the excuse of Pere. The messenger came back from Governor Sargeant with word that Pere had been sent home to France by way of England long ago. (That Pere had been delayed in an English prison was not told.) De Troyes then pompously demanded the surrender of the fort. Sargeant sent back word such a demand was an insult in time of peace. Under cover of night the French retired to consider. With an extravagance now lamented, they had used at Rupert the most of their captured ammunition. Cannon, they had in plenty, but only a few rounds of balls. They had thirty prisoners, but no provisions; a ship, but no booty of furs. Between them and home lay a wilder- ness of forest and swamp. They must capture the fort by an escalade, or retreat empty-handed. Inside the fort such bedlam reigned as might have delighted the raiders' hearts. Sargeant, the sturdy old governor, was for keeping his teeth clinched to the end', though the larder was lean and only enough powder left to do the French slight damage as they landed their cannon. When a servant fell dead from a French ball, Turner, the chief gunner, dasht-d from his post roaring out he was going to throw 223 The Conquest of the Great Northwest himself on the mercy of the French. Sargeant rounded the fellow back to his guns with the generous promise to blow his brains out if he budged an inch. Two English spies sent out came back with word the French were mounting their battery in the dark. Instantly, there was a scurry of men to hide in attics, in cellars, under bales of fur, while six worthies, over signed names, presented a petition to the sturdy old governor, imploring him to surrender. Declaring they would not fight without an advance of pay any- way, they added in words that should go down to posterity, "for if any of us lost a leg, the company could not make it good." Still Sargeant kept his teeth set, his gates shut, his guns spitting defiance at the enemy. For two days bombs sang back and forward through the air. There was more parleying. Brid- gar, the governor captured down at Rupert, came to tell Sargeant that the French were desperate; if they were compelled to fight to the end, there would be no quarter. Still Sargeant hoped against hope for the yearly English vessel to relieve the siege. Then Captain Outlaw came from the powder mag- azines with word there was no more ammunition. The people threw down their arms and threatened to desert en masse to the French. Sargeant still stubbornly refused to beat a parley; so Dixon, the 224 Le Mayne (Tlberville Sweeps the Bay under factor, hung out a white sheet as flag of truce, from an upper window. The French had just ceased firing to cool their cannon. They had actually been reduced to melting iron round wooden disks for balls, when the messenger came out with word of surrender. Bluff and resolute to the end, Sargeant marched out with two flagons of port, seated himself on the French cannon, drank healths with De Troyes, and proceeded to drive as hard a bargain as if his larders had been crammed and his magazines full of powder. Drums beating, flags flying, in full possession of arms, governor, officers, wives and ser- vants were to be permitted to march out in honor, to be transported to Charlton Island, there to await the coming of the English ship. Barely had the thirty English sallied out, when the bush-lopers dashed into the fort, ransacking house and cellar. The fifty-thousand-crowns' worth of leaver were found, but not a morsel of food except one bowl of barley sprouts. Thirteen hundred miles from Canada with neither powder nor food! De Troyes gave his men leave to disband on August 10, and it was a wild scramble for home sauve qui pent, us the old chronicler relates, some of the prisoners being taken to Quebec as carriers of the raided furs, others to the number of fifty, being turned adrift in the desolate wilderness of the bay! It was 225 The Conquest of the Great Northwest October before Iberville's forest rovers were back in Montreal. From Charlton Island, the English refugees found their way up to Port Nelson, there to go back on the annual ship to England. Among these were Bridgar and Outlaw, but the poor outcasts, who were driven to the woods, and the Hudson's Bay servants, who were compelled to carry the loot for the French raiders back to Quebec suffered slim mercies from their captors. Those round Albany were compelled to act as beasts of burden for the small French garri- son, and received no food but what they hunted. Some perished of starvation outside the walls. Others attempted to escape north overland to Nelson. Of the crew from Outlaw's ship Success, eight perished on the way north, and the surviving six were accused of cannibalism. In all, fifty English fur traders were set adrift when Albany surrendered to the French. Not twenty were ever heard of again. Notes on Chapter XII. The contents of this chapter are drawn from the documents of Hudson's Bay House, London, and the State Papers of the Marine, Paris, for 1685-87. It is remark- able how completely the State papers of the two hostile parties agree. Those in H. B. C. House are the Minutes, Governor Sargeant's affidavit, Bridgar's report, Outlaw's oath and the petition of the survivors of Outlaw's crew namely, John Jarrett, John Howard, John Parsons, William Gray, Edmund Clpugh, Thomas Rawlin, G. B. Barlow, Thomas Lyon. As the raids now became an international matter, duplicates of most of these papers are to be found in the Public Records Office, Lon- don. All French historians give some account of this raid of 226 Lc Mayne d'Iberville Sweeps the Bay Iberville's; but all are drawn from the same source, the account of the Jesuit Sylvie, or from one De Lery, who was supposed to have been present. Oldmixon, the old English chronicler, must have had access to Sargeant's papers, as he relates some details only to be found in Hudson's Bay House. 227 CHAPTER XIII 1686-1697 D'IBERVILLE SWEEPS THE BAY (Continued) THE French were now in complete possession of the south end of Hudson Bay. Iber- ville's brother, Maricourt, with a handful of men remained at Albany to guard the captured forts. Some of the English, who had taken to the woods in flight, now found the way to Severn River, half-way north between Albany and Nelson, where they hastily rushed up rude winter quarters and boldly did their best to keep the Indians from com- municating with the French. Among the refugees was Chouart Groseillers, who became one of the chief advisers at Nelson. Two of his comrades had promptly deserted to the French side. For ten years, Hudson Bay became the theater of such esca- pades as buccaneers might have enacted on the Spanish Main. England and France were at peace. A Treaty of Neutrality, in 1686, had provided that the bay should be held in common by the fur traders 228 Le Moyne d y Iberville Sweeps the Bay of both countries, but the Company of the North in Quebec and the English Adventurers of London had no notion of leaving their rights in such an ambigu- ous position. Both fitted out their raiders to fight the quarrel to the end, and in spite of the Treaty of Neutrality, the King of France issued secret in- structions to the bush-rovers of Quebec "to leave 0} the English jorts on the Northern Bay, not a vestige standing" If the bay were to be held in common, and the English abandoned it, all rights would revert to France. The year 1687 saw the tireless Iberville back at. Rupert River. The Hudson's Bay sloop, The Young, had come to port. Iberville seized it with- out any ado and sent four spies over to Charlton Island where The Churchill, under Captain Bond, was wintering. Three of the French spies were summarily captured by the English fur traders and thrown into the hold of the ship, manacled, for the winter. In spring, one was brought above decks to give the English sailors a helping hand. The fellow waited till six of the crew were up the ratlines, then he seized an axe, tip-toed up behind two English- men, brained them on the spot, rushing down the hatchway liberated his two comrades, took possession of all firearms and at pistol point kept the English- men up the mast poles till he steered the vessel across 229 The Conquest of the Great Northwest to Iberville at Rupert River, where a cargo of pro- visions saved the French from famine. It was in vain that the English sent rescue parties south from Nelson and Severn to recapture Albany. Captain Moon had come down from Nelson with twenty-four men to Albany, reinforced by the crews of the two ships, Hampshire and North-West Fox, when Iberville came canoeing across the ice floes with his Indian bandits. The English ships were locked in the ice before the besieged fort. Iber- ville ambushed his men in the tamarack swamps till eighty-two English had landed. Then, he rushed the deserted vessels, took possession of one with its cargo of furs, and as the ice cleared sailed gayly out of Albany for Quebec. The astounded English set fire to the other ship and retreated overland to Severn. At the straits, Iberville ran full-tilt into the fleet of incoming English vessels, but that was nothing to disconcert this blockade-runner, not though the ice closed round them all, holding French and English prisoners within gunshot of each other. Iberville ran up an English flag on his captured ship and had actually signaled the captains of the English frigates to come across the ice and visit him when the water cleared, and away he sailed. Perhaps success bred reckless carelessness on the part of the French. From 1690 to '93, Iberville 230 Le Moyne d'lberville Sweeps the Bay was absent from the bay on the border raids of Schenectady, and Pemaquid in New England. Mike Grimmington of The Perpetucma was at last released from captivity in Quebec and came to England with rage in his heart and vengeance in his hands for France. It was now almost impossible for the Eng- lish Adventurers to hire captains and crews for the dangerous work of their trade on the bay. The same pensions paid by the State were offered by the Com- pany in case of wounds or death, and in addition a bonus of twenty shillings a month was guaranteed to the sailors, of from 50 to 200 a year to the captains. A present of 10 plate was given to Grimmington for his bravery and he was appointed captain. Coming out to Nelson in '93, Grimming- ton determined to capture back Albany for the English. Three ships sailed down to Albany from Nelson. The fort looked deserted. Led by Grim- mington, the sailors hacked open the gates. Only four Frenchmen were holding the fort. The rest of the garrison were off hunting in the woods, and in the woods they were forced to remain that winter; for Grimmington ransacked the fort, took possession and clapped the Frencli under Mons. Captain Lc Meux, prisoners in the hold of his vessel. With Grimmington on this raid was his old mate in cap- tivity Smithsend. Albany was the largest fort on 231 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the bay at this time. As the two English captains searched the cellars they came on a ghastly sight- naked, covered with vermin, shackled hands to feet and chained to the wall was a French criminal, who had murdered first the surgeon, then the priest of the fort. He, too, was turned adrift in the woods with the rest of the garrison. Mons. Le Meux, carried to England captive, is examined by the English Adventurers. From his account, all the French garrisons are small and France holds but lightly what she has captured so easily. Captain Grimmington is given a tankard worth 36 for his distinguished services. Captain Edgecombe of The Royal Hudson's Bay, who, in spite of the war, has brought home a cargo of twenty- two thousand beaver, is given plate to the value of 20 as well as a gratuity of 100. Captain Ford, who was carried prisoner to France by Iberville, is ransomed, and The Hampshire vessel put up at auction in France is bid in by secret agents of the English company. Chouart Groseillers is wel- comed home to London, and given a present of 100 and allowed to take a graceful farewell of the Com- pany, as are all its French servants. The Company wants no French servants on the bay just now not even Radisson to whom Mons. Pere, now escaped 232 Le Moyne d'lberville Sweeps the Bay to France, writes tempting offers. Sargeant, who lost Albany in 1686, is first sued for 20,000 damages for surrendering the fort so easily, and is then re- warded 350 for holding it so bravely. Phipps has refused point-blank to serve as governor any longer at so dangerous a point as Nelson for so small a salary as 200 a year. Phipps comes home. Abra- ham tries it for a year. He, too, loses relish for the danger spot, and Walsh goes to Nelson as governor with the apprentice boy Henry Kelsey, risen to be first lieutenant. In spite of wars and raids and am- buscades, there is a dividend of 50 per cent, in '88, (the King refusing to receive it personally as it might prejudice him with France) and of 50 per cent, in '89, and of 25 per cent, in '90 o'n stock which had been trebled, which was equivalent to 75 per cent, divi- dends; and there are put on record in the Company's minutes these sentiments: "being thoroughly sen- sible of the great blessing it has pleased Almighty God to give the company by the arrival of the shippes, the comply doo thinke fill to show some testimony of their Humble thankfulness jor Gods so great a mercy dud doo now unanimously resolve that the sum oj ioobee sett aparte as charity money to be distributed amongst such persons as shall dye or be wounded in the companies' service, their widows or children &* the secretary is to keep a particular account in the 233 The Conquest of the Great Northwest company' ] s books I or the future." Stock forfeited for the breaking of rules is also to go to wounded men and widows. And the Company is equally generous to itself; no shilling pay for committeemen now but a salary of 300 a year to each committeeman of the weekly meetings on the Company's business. The upshot of the frequent meetings and increas- ing dividends was the Company resolved on a des- perate effort to recapture the lost forts. The Eng- lish now held Nelson, the great fur emporium of the North; New Severn to the South, which had been built by refugees from Albany, burnt twice to escape bush-raiders and as promptly rebuilt when the French withdrew; and Albany, itself, which Mike Grim- mington had captured back. The French held Moose and Rupert on the south of the bay. James Knight, who had acted variously as appren- tice, trader and captain from the beginning of the Company was now appointed commander of the south end of the bay, with headquarters at Albany, at a salary of 400 a year. Here, he was to resist the French and keep them from advancing north to Nelson. New Severn, next north, was still to serve as a refuge in case of attack. At Nelson, in addition to Walsh, Bailey a new man Geyer, a captain, 234 Le Moyne d'lberville Sweeps the Bay and Kelsey were to have command as officers. Three frigates The Dering, The Hudson's Bay and The Hampshire are commissioned to the bay with letters of marque to war on all enemies, and three merchant- men The Prosperous, The Owner's Love and The Perry are also to go to the bay. Mutinous of voy- ages to the bay, seamen are paid in advance, and two hundred and twenty gallons of brandy are divided among the ships to warm up courage as occasion may require. But Iberville was not the man to let his win- nings slip through his ringers. It had now become more than a guerrilla warfare between gamesters of the wilderness. It was a fight for ascendency on the continent. It was a struggle to determine which nation was to command the rivers leading inland to the unknown West. If the French raiders were to hold the forts at the bottom of the bay, they must capture the great stronghold of the English Nelson. Taking on board one hundred and twenty woodrangers, IbtTville sailed from Quebec on August 10, 1694. He had two frigates The Poll and Salamander. By September 24, he was unload- ing his cannon talow the earthworks of one hundred great guns at Nelson. Steady bombardment from his frigates poured bombs into the fort from 235 The Conquest of the Great Northwest September 25 to October 14, and without ceasing, the fort guns sent back a rain of fire and ball. Chateauguay, Iberville's brother, landed to attempt a rush with his bush-rovers by the rear. He was met at the pickets by a spattering fire and fell shot as other brave sons of the Le Moyne family fell wounded in front, shouting a rally with his dying breath. The death of their comrade redoubled the fury of the raiders. While long-range guns tore up the earthworks and cut great gashes in the shattered palisades to the fore, the bushrangers behind had knocked down pickets and were in a hand-to-hand fight in the ditch that separated the rows of double palisades. In the hope of saving their furs, Walsh and Kelsey hung out a tablecloth as flag of truce. For a day, the parley lasted, the men inside the pickets seizing the opportunity to eat and rest, and spill all liquor on the ground and bury ammunition and hide personal treasures. The weather had turned bitterly cold. Winter was impending. No help could come from England till the following July. Walsh did his best in a bad bargain, asking that the officers be lodged till the ships came the next year, that the English be allowed the same provisions as the French, that no injury be offered the English traders during the winter, and that they should be allowed to keep the Company's books. 236 Le Moyne d? Iberville Sweeps the Bay Iberville was depending on loot to pay his men, and would not hear of granting the furs to the Eng- lish, but he readily subscribed to the other condi- tions of surrender, and took possession of the fort. When Iberville hastily sailed away to escape through the straits before winter closed them, he left De la Forest commander at Nelson, Jeremie, interpreter. And De la Forest quickly ignored the conditions of surrender. He was not a good man to be left in charge. He was one of those who had outfitted Radisson in '83 and lost when Radisson turned Nelson over to the English in '84. Early next year, the English ships would come. If De la Forest could but torture some of the English officers, who were his prisoners, into betraying the secret signals of the ships, he might lure them into port and recoup himself for that loss of ten years ago. Only four officers were kept in the fort. The rest of the fifty-three prisoners were harried and abused so that they were glad to flee to the woods. Beds, clothes, guns and ammunition everything, was taken from them. Eight or ten, who hung round the fort, were treated as slaves. One Eng- lishman was tied to a stake and tortured with hot irons to compel him to tell the signals of the English ships. But the secret was not told. No English ships anchored at Port Nelson in the summer of '95. 237 The Conquest of the Great Northwest The sail that hove on the offing was a French privateer. In the hold of this, the English survivors were huddled like beasts, fed on pease and dogs' meat. The ship leaked, and when the water rose to mid-waist of the prisoners, they were not allowed to come above decks, but set to pumping the water out. On the chance of ransom money, the privateer carried the prisoners in irons to France because as one of the sufferers afterward took oath "we had not the money to grease the commander's fist for our freedom" Of the fifty-three Hudson's Bay men turned adrift from Nelson, only twenty-five survived the winter. So the merry game went on between the rival traders of the North, French and English fighting as furiously for a beaver pelt as the Spanish fought for gold. The English Adventurers' big resolutions to capture back the bay had ended in smoke. They had lost Nelson and now possessed only one fort on the bay Albany, under Governor Knight; but one thing now favored the English. Open war had taken the place of secret treaty between France and England. The Company applied to the government for protection. The English Admiralty granted two men-of-war, The Bonaventnre and Seaforth, under Captain Allen. These accompanied Grimmington and Smithsend to Nelson in '96, so when Iberville's 238 Le Moyne d'lberville Sweeps the Bay brother, Serigny, came out from France with pro- visions on The Poll and Hardi for the French garri- sons at Nelson, he found English men-of-war lined up for attack in front of the fort. Serigny didn't wait. He turned swift heel for the sea, so swift, indeed, that The Hardi split on an ice floe and went to the bottom with all hands. On August 26, Captain Allen of the Royal Navy, demanded the surrender of Nelson from Governor De la Forest. Without either provision or powder, La Forest had no choice but to capitulate. In the fort, Allen seized twenty thousand beaver pelts. Nelson or York-* as it is now known consisted under the French rule of a large square house, with lead roof and limestone walls. There were four bastions to the courtyard one for the garrisons' lodgings, one for trade, one for powder, one for provisions. All the buildings were painted red. Double palisades with a trench between enclosed the yard. There were two large gates, one to the waterside, one inland, paneled in iron with huge, metal hinges showing the knobs of big nail heads. A gallery ran round the roof of the main house, and on this were placed five cannon. Three cannon were also mounted in each bastion. The officers' mess room boasted a huge iron hearth, oval tables, wall cupboards, and beds that shut up in the wall-panels. 239 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Captain Allen now retaliated on the French for their cruelty to English captives by taking the entire garrison prisoners. Loaded with furs to the water- line, the English ships left Bailey and Kelsey at Nelson and sailed slowly for England. Just at the entrance to the straits the place already made so famous by Indian attack on Hudson's crew, and French raid on The Perpetuana, a swift-sailing French privateer bore down on the fleet, singled out Allen's ship which was separated from the other, poured a volley of shot across her decks which killed Allen on the spot, and took to flight before the other ship could come to the rescue. Was this Iberville's brother Serigny on his way home? It will never be known, for as the ships made no capture, the action is not reported in French records. The war had reduced the Hudson's Bay Company to such straits that several of the directors had gone bankrupt advancing money to keep the ships sailing. No more money could be borrowed in England, and agents were trying to raise funds in Amsterdam. Nevertheless, the Company presented the captains Smithsend and Grimmington with 100 each for capturing York. The captured furs replenished the exhausted finances and preparation was made to dispatch a mighty fleet that would forever settle mastery of the bay. 240 Le Moijnc d'Ibcrville Sweeps the Bay Two hundred extra mariners were to be engaged. On The Dering, Grimmington, now a veteran cam- paigner, was to take sixty fighting men. Captain Moon was to have eighteen on the little frigate, Perry. Edgecombe's Hudson's Bay, frigate, was to have fifty-five; Captain Fletcher's Hampshire, sixty; the fire ship Prosperous another thirty under a new man, Captain Batty. These mariners were in addi- tion to the usual seamen and company servants. On The Hudson's Bay also went Smithsend as adviser in the campaign. Every penny that could be raised on sales of beaver, all that the directors were able to pledge of their private fortunes, and all the money that could be borrowed by the Adven- turers as a corporate company, went to outfit the vessels for what was to be the deciding campaign. With Bailey in control at Nelson and old Governor Knight down at Albany surely the French could be driven completely from the bay. Those captives that Allen's ship had brought to England, lay in prison five months at Portsmouth before they were set free. Released at last, they hash nod to France where their emaciated, ragged condition spoke louder than their indignant words. Fn-nchmen languishing in English prison! Like wildfire ran the rumor of the outrage! Once before 241 The Conquest of the Great Northwest when Pere, the Frenchman, had been imprisoned on Hudson Bay, Iberville had thrust the sword of vengeance into the very heart of the English fastness. France turned again to the same Robin Hood of Canada's rude chivalry. Iberville was at this time carrying havoc from hamlet to hamlet of Newfound- land, where two hundred English had already fallen before his sword and seven hundred been captured. On the yth of April, 1697, Serigny, his brother, just home from Nelson, was dispatched from France with five men-of-war The Pelican, The Palmier, The Profound, The Violent, The Wasp to be placed under Iberville's command at Palcentia, New- foundland, whence he was to proceed to Hudson Bay with orders, "to leave not a vestige remaining" of the English fur trade in the North. The squadron left Newfoundland on July 8. By the 25th, the ships had entered the straits amid berg and floe, with the long, transparent daylight, when sunset merges with sunrise. Iberville was on The Pelican with Bienville, his brother, two hundred and fifty men and fifty guns. The other brother, Serigny, commanded The Palmier, and Ed- ward Fitzmaurice of Kerry, a Jacobite, had come as chaplain. A gun gone loose in the hold of The Wasp, created a panic during the heavy seas of the Upper Narrows in the straits the huge implement 242 Le Moyne d'lberville Sweeps the Bay of terror rolling from side to side of the dark hold with each wash of the billows in a way that threat- ened to capsize the vessel not a man daring to risk his life to stop the cannon's roll ; and several gunners were crushed to death before The Wasp could come to anchor in a quiet harbor to mend the damage. On The Pelican, Iberville's ship, forty men lay in their berths ill of scurvy. The fleet was stopped by ice at Digges' Island at the west end of the straits a place already famous in the raiders' history. Here, the icepans, contracted by the straits, locked around the vessels in iron grip. Fog fell concealing the ships from one another, except for the ensigns at the mastheads, which showed all the fleet anchored southward except Iberville's Pelican. For eighteen days the impatient raider found himself forcibly gripped to the ice floes in fog, his ship crushed and banged and bodily lifted until a powder blast re- lieved pressure, or holes drilled and filled with bombs broke the ice crush, or unshipping the rudder, his own men disembarked and up to the waist in ice slush towed Tlie Pelican forward. On the 25th of August at four in the morning, the fog suddenly lifted. Iberville saw that The Palmier had been carried back in the straits. The Wasp and Violent had disappeared, but straight to the fore, ice- jammed, were The Profound, and 243 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Iberville could scarcely believe the evidence of his eyes three English men-of-war, The Hamp- shire, and Dering, and Hudson's Bay closing in a circle round the ill-fated and imprisoned French ship. Just at that moment, the ice loosened. Iber- ville was off like a bird in The Pelican, not waiting to see what became of The Profound, which escaped from the ice that night after a day's bombardment when the English were in the act of running across the ice for a hand-to-hand fight. On the 3rd of September, Iberville anchored before Port Nelson. Anxiously, for two days, he scanned the sea for the rest of his fleet. On the morning of the fifth, the peaked sails of three vessels rose above the offing. Raising anchor, Iberville hastened out to meet them, and signaled a welcome. No response signaled back. The horrified watch at the masthead called down some warning. Then the full extent of the terrible mistake dawned on Iberville. These were not his consort ships at all. They were the English men-of-war, The Hamp- shire, Captain Fletcher, fifty-two guns and sixty soldiers; The Dering, Captain Grimmington, thirty guns and sixty men ; The Hudson's Bay, Edgecombe and Smithsend, thirty-two guns and fifty-five men- hemming him in a fatal circle between the English fort on the land and their own cannon to sea. 244 Le Moyne d'Iberville Sweeps the Bay One can guess the wild whoop of jubilation that went up from the Englishmen to see their enemy of ten years' merciless raids, now hopelessly trapped between their fleet and the fort. The English ves- sels had the wind in their favor and raced over the waves all sails set like a war troop keen for prey. Iberville didn't wait. He had weighed anchor to sail out when he thought the vessels were his own, and now he kept unswervingly on his course. Of his original crew, forty were invalided. Some twenty-five had been sent ashore to reconnoiter the fort. Counting the Canadians and Indians taken on at Newfoundland, he could muster only one hundred and fifty fighting men. Quickly, ropes were stretched to give the mariners hand-hold over the frost-slippery decks. Stoppers were ripped from the fifty cannon, and the batterymen below, under La Salle and Grandville, had stripped naked in preparation for the hell of flame and heat that was to be their portion in the impending battle. Bicnville, Iberville's brother, swung the infantrymen in line above decks, swords and pistols prepared for the hand-to-hand grapple. De la Potherie got the Canadians to the forecastle, knives and war hatchets out, bodies stripped, all ready to board when the ships knocked Iberville knew it was to be like those old- time raids a Spartan conflict a fight to the death; 245 The Conquest of the Great Northwest death or victory; and he swept right up to The Hampshire, Fletcher's frigate, the strongest of the foe, where every shot would tell. The Hampshire shifted broadsides to the French; and at nine in the morning, the battle began. The Hampshire let fly two roaring cannonades that ploughed up the decks of The Pelican and stripped the French bare of masts to the hull. At the same instant, Grimmington's Dering and Smith- send's Hudson's Bay circled to the left of the French and poured a stream of musketry fire across The Pelican's stern. At one fell blast, forty French were mowed down ; but the batterymen below never ceased their crash of bombs straight into The Hampshire's hull. Iberville shouted for the infantrymen to fire into The Bering's forecastle, to pick off Grimmington if they could ; and for the Canadian sharpshooters to rake the decks of The Hudson's Bay. For four hours, the three-cornered battle raged. The ships were so close, shout and counter-shout could be heard across decks. Faces were singed with the closeness of the musketry fire. Ninety French had been wounded. The Pelican's decks swam in blood that froze to ice, slippery as glass, and trickled down the clinker boards in reddening splashes. Grape shot and grenade had set the fallen 246 Le Moyne d'Iberville Sweeps the Bay sails on fire. Sails and mastpoles and splintered davits were a mass of roaring flame that would presently extend to the powder magazines and blow all to eternity. Railings had gone over decks; and when the ship rolled, only the tangle of burning debris kept those on deck from washing into the sea. The bridge was crumbling. A shot had torn the high prow away; and still the batterymen below poured their storm of fire and bomb into the English hull. The fighters were so close, one old record says, and the holes torn by the bombs so large in the hull of each ship that the gunners on The Pelican were looking into the eyes of the smoke-grimed men below the decks of The Hampshire. For three hours, the English had tacked to board The Pelican, and for three hours the mastless, splintered Pelican had fought like a demon to cripple her enemy's approach. The blood -grimed, half- naked men of both decks had rushed en masse for the last leap, the hand-to-hand fight, when a frantic shout went up! Then silence, and fearful confusion, and a mad panic back from the tilting edges of the two vessels with cries from the wounded above the shriek of the sea! The batteries of The Hampshire had suddenly silenced. The great ship refused to answer to the 247 The Conquest of the Great Northwest wheel. That persistent, undeviating fire bursting from the sides of The Pelican had done its work. The Hampshire gave a quick, back lurch. Before the amazed Frenchmen could believe their senses, amid the roar of flame and crashing billows and hiss of fires extinguished in an angry sea, The Hampshire, all sails set, settled and sank like a stone amid the engulfing billows. Not a soul of her two hundred and fifty men one hundred and ninety mariners and servants, with sixty soldiers escaped. The screams of the struggling seamen had not died on the waves before Iberville had turned the bat- teries of his shattered ship full force on Smithsend's Hudson's Bay. Promptly, The Hudson's Bay struck colors, but while Iberville was engaged boarding his captive and taking over ninety prisoners, Grim- mington on The Dering showed swift heel and gained refuge in Fort Nelson. In the fury and heat of the fight, the French had not noticed the gathering storm that now broke with hurricane gusts of sleet and rain. The whistling in the cordage became a shrill shriek warning a bliz- zard. Presently the billows were washing over decks with nothing visible of the wheel but the drenched helmsman clinging for life to his place. The pan- cake ice pounded the ships' sides with a noise of 248 Le Moyne d'lberville Sweeps the Bay thunder. Mist and darkness and roaring sleet drowned the death cries of the wounded, washed and tossed and jammed against the railing by the pound- ing seas. The Pelican could only drive through the darkness before the storm-flaw, "the dead" says an old record, "floating about on the decks among the living." The hawser, that had towed the captive ship, snapped like thread. Captor and captive in vain threw out anchors. The anchors raked bottom. Cables were cut, and the two ships drove along the sands. The deck of The Pelican was icy with blood. Every shock of smashing billows jumbled dead and dying en masse. The night grew black as pitch. The little railing that still clung to the shattered decks of The Pelican was now washed away, and the waves carried off dead and wounded. Tables were hurled from the cabin. The rudder was broken, and the water was already to the bridge of the foundering ship, when the hull began to split, and The Pelican buried her prow in the sands, six miles from the fort. All small boats had been shot away. The canoes of the Canadians swamped in the heavy sea as they were launched. Tying the spars of the shattered masts in four-sided racks, Iberville had the sur- viving wounded bound to these and towed ashore In the others, half-swimming, half-wading. Many of the men sprang into the icy sea bare to mid-waist as 249 they had fought. Guns and powderhorns carried ashore in the swimmers' teeth were all that were saved of the wreck. Eighteen more men lost their lives going ashore in the dark. For twelve hours they had fought without pause for food, and now shivering round fires kindled in the bush, the half- famished men devoured moss and seaweed raw. Two feet of snow lay on the ground, and when the men lighted fires and gathered round in groups to warm themselves, they became targets for sharp- shooters from the fort, who aimed at the camp fires. Smithsend, who escaped from the wrecked Hudson's Bay and Grimmington, who had succeeded in taking The Dering into harbor put Governor Bailey on guard. Their one hope was that Iberville might be drowned. It was at this terrible pass that the other ships of Iberville's fleet came to the rescue. They, too, had suffered from the storm, The Violent having gone to bottom; The Palmier having lost her steering gear, another ship her rudder. Nelson or York under the English was the usual four-bastioned fur post, with palisades and houses of white fir logs a foot thick, the pickets punctured for small arms, with embrasures for some hundred cannon. It stood back from Hayes River, four miles up from the sea. The seamen of the wrecked Hud- 250 Le Moyne d'Iberville Sweeps the Bay son's Bay carried word to Governor Bailey of Iber- ville's desperate plight. Nor was Bailey inclined to surrender even after the other ships came to Iber- ville's aid. With Bailey in the fort were Kelsey, and both Grimmington and Smithsend who had once been captives with the French in Quebec. When Iberville's messenger was led into the council hall with flag of truce and bandaged eyes to demand surrender, Smithsend advised resistance till the Eng- lish knew whether Iberville had been lost in the wreck. Fog favored the French. By the nth, they had been able to haul their cannon ashore unde- tected by the English and so near the fort that the first intimation was the blow of hammers erecting platforms. This drew the fire of the English, and the cannonading began on both sides. On the i2th, Serigny entered the council again to demand sur- render. "If you refuse, there will be no quarter," he warned. "Quarter be cursed," thundered the old governor. Then turning to his men, "Forty pounds sterling to every man who fights." But the Canadians with all the savagery of Indian warfare, had begun hacking down palisades to the rear. Serigny came once more from the French. "They -'5' The Conquest of the Great Northwest are desperate," he urged, "they must take the fort, or pass the winter like beasts in the wilds." Bombs had been shattering the houses. Bailey was induced to capitulate, but game to the end, haggled for the best bargain he could get. Neither the furs nor the armaments of the fort were granted him, but he was permitted to march out with people unharmed, drums beating, flags unfurled, ball in mouth, matches lighted, bag and baggage, fife screaming its shrillest defiance to march out with all this brave pomp to a desolate winter in the wilds, while the bush-lopers, led by Boisbriant, ransacked the fort. In the sur- render, Grimmington had bargained for his ship, and he now sailed for England with the refugees, reaching the Thames on October 26. Bailey and Smithsend with other refugees, resolutely marched overland in the teeth of wintry blasts to Governor Knight at Albany. How Bailey reached England, I do not know. He must have gone overland with French coureurs to Quebec ; for he could not have sailed through the straits after October, and he ar- rived in England by December. That the blow of the last loss paralyzed the Company need not be told. Of all their forts on the bay, they now had only Albany, and were in debt for the last year's ships. They had not money to pay the captains' wages. Nevertheless, they borrowed 252 Le Moijnc d' Ihcrcille Sweeps the Bay money enough to pay the wages of all the seamen and 20 apiece extra, for those who had taken part in the fight. Just at this time, the Treaty of Ryswick put an end to war between England and France, but, as far as the Company was concerned, it left them worse than before, for it provided that the con- testants on the bay should remain as they were at the time, which meant that France held all the bay except Albany. Before this campaign, the loss of the English Adventurers from the French raiders had been 100,000. Now the loss totaled more than 200,000. Chouart Groseillers had long since been created a nobleman for returning to France. In spite of the peace, this enigmatical declaration is found in the private papers of the King of France: "Owing to the peace, the King of England has given positive orders that goods taken at Hudson Bay, must lx- paid for; but the French King relies on getting out of this affair." Iberville sailed away to fresh glories. A seign- iory had been granted him along the Bay of Chal- eurs. In 1699, he was created Chevalier of St. Louis. The rest of his years \\vre passed founding the colony of Louisiana, and he visited Boston and New York hurl tors with plans of conquest in his mind, though as the Earl of IVlnmont reported "he pretended it 253 The Conquest of the Great Northwest was for wood and water." In tile war of the Bar- badoes, Iberville had hoped to capture slaves for Louisiana, and he had transported hundreds, but yellow fever raged in the South and Iberville fell a victim to it on July 9, 1706, at Havana. He was, perhaps, the most picturesque type of Canada's wildwood chivalry, with all its savage faults and romantic heroism. And His Majesty, the King of France, well pleased with the success of his brave raiders sends out a dis- patch that reads: "His Majesty declines to accept the white bear sent to him from Hudson Bay, but he will permit the fur traders to exhibit the animal." Notes on Chapter XIII. The English side of the story related in this chapter is taken from the records of Hudson's Bay House, London, and of the Public Records Office. The French side of the story, from the State Papers of the Marine Archives. Bacqueville de la Potherie, who was present in the fight of '97, gives excellent details in his Historte de I'Amerique Septentrio- nale (1792). Jeremie, who was interpreter at York, wrote an account, to be found among other voyages in the Bernard Col- lection of Amsterdam. For side-lights from early writers, the reader is referred to Doc. Relatifs Nouvelle France; Oldmixon; Doc. Hist. N. Y.; Quebec Hist. So. Collection in which will be found Abbe Belmont's Relation and Dottier de Casson's. It will be noticed that one of the conditions of surrender was that the English should be permitted to march out "match- lighted; ball in mouth." The latter term needs no explanation. The ball was held ready to be rammed down the barrel. With reference to the term "match-lighted," in the novel, "Heralds of Empire," I had referred to "matches" when the argus-eyed critic came down with the criticism that "matches" were not invented until after 1800. I stood corrected till I happened to be in the Tower of London in the room given over to the collection of old armor. I asked one of the doughty old ' ' beef 254 Le Moyne d'Iberville Sweeps the Bay eaters" to take down a musket of that period, and show me exactly what "match-lighted" must have meant. The old soldier's explanation was this: In time of war, not flint but a little bit of inflammable punk did duty as "match-lighter." This was fastened below the trigger like the percussion cap of a later day. The privilege of surrendering "match-lighted" meant with the punk below the trigger. I offer this explana- tion for what it is worth, and as he is the keeper of the finest collection of old armor in the world, the chances are he is right and that matches preceded 1800. At first sight, there may seem to be discrepancies in the numbers on the English ships, but the 200 mariners were extra men, in addition to the 50 or 60 seamen on each frigate, and the 50 or 60 servants on each boat sent out to strengthen the forts. 255 CHAPTER XIV 1688-1710 WHAT BECAME OF RADISSON? NEW FACTS ON THE LAST DAYS OF THE FAMOUS PATHFINDER WHAT became of Radisson? It seems im- possible that the man, who set France and England by the ears for a century, and led the way to the pathfinding of half America, should have dropped so completely into oblivion that not a scrap is recorded concerning the last twenty-five years of his life. Was he run to earth by the bailiffs of London, like Thackeray's " Vir- ginian?" Or did he become the lion tamed, the eagle with its wings clipped, to be patronized by supercilious nonentities? Or did he die like "Ledyard of a heart broken by hope deferred? Radisson, the boy, slim and swarth as an Indian, running a mad race for life through mountain tor- rents that would throw his savage pursuers off the trail we can imagine; but not Radisson running from a London bailiff. Leading flotillas of fur brigades up the Ottawa across Lake Superior to the 256 What Became of Radisson? Great Northwest he is a familiar figure, but not stroked and petted and patronized by the frowzy duchesses of Charles the Second's slovenly court. Yet from the time Radisson ceased to come to Hudson Bay during Iberville's raids, he drops as completely out of history as if he had been lost in Milton's Serbonian Bog. One historian describes him as assassinated in Quebec, another as dying destitute. Both statements are guesses, but from the dusty records of the Hudson's Bay Company many of them undisturbed since Radisson's time can be gleaned a complete account of the game pathfinder's life to the time of his death. The very front page of the first minute book kept by the Company, contains account of Radisson an order for Alderman Portman to pay Radisson and Groseillers 5 a year for expenses chiefly wine and fresh fruit, - as later entries show. There were present at this meeting of the Company, adventurers of as romantic a glamor as Robert Louis Stevenson's heroes or a Captain Kidd. There was the Earl of Craven, married to the Queen of Bohemia. There was Ashley, ambitious for the earldom that came later, and with the reputation that "he would rob the devil, himself, and the church altars." It was Ashley, \vhcn Chancellor of the Exchequer, who charged a bribe of 100 to every man appointed in 257 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the government services, though he concealed his peculations under stately manners and gold lace. Notoriety was the stock in trade of the court beauties at that time, and Ashley's wife earned public notice by ostentatiously driving in a glass coach that was forever splintering in collision with some other car- riage or going to bits over the clumsy cobblestones. Old Sir George Carterett of New Jersey was now treasurer of the Navy. Sir John Robinson was com- mander of the Tower. Griffith was known as the handsome dandy of court balls. Sir John Kirke, the Huguenot, was a royal pensioner of righting blood, whose ancestors had captured Quebec. The meeting of the Hudson's Bay Adventurers was held at the house of Sir Robert Viner, Lord Mayor of London, renowned for the richest wife, the finest art galleries, the handsomest conservatories in England. 'It was to Viner' s that Charles the Second came with his drunken crew to fiddle and muddle and run the giddy course, that danced the Stuart's off the throne. Mr. Young was a man of fashion as well as a mer- chant, so famous for amateur acting that he often took the place of the court actors at a moment's notice. These were Radisson's associates, the French- man's friends when he came to London fresh from the wilderness in his thirtieth year with the explora- 258 What Became of Radisson? tion of the North and the West to his credit. None knew belter than he, the money value of his dis- coveries. And Radisson knew the way to this land. By the lifting of his hand, he could turn this wealth into the coffers of the court adventurers. If the fur trade was a gamble and everything on earth was gamble in the reign of Charles Radisson held the winning cards. The gamesters of that gambling age gathered round him like rooks round a pigeon, to pick his pockets politely and according to the codes of good breeding, of course and to pump his brain of every secret, that could be turned into pounds sterling politely, also, of course. Very generous, very pleasant, very suave of fair promises were the gay adventurers, but withal slippery as the finery of their silk ruffles or powdered periwigs. Did Radisson keep his head? Steadier heads have gone giddy with the sudden plunge from wil- derness ways to court pomp. Sir James Hayes, Prince Rupert's secretary, declares in a private docu- ment that the French explorer at this time "deluded the daughter of Sir John Kirke into secretly marry- ing him," so that Radisson may have been caught in the madcap doings of the court dissipations when no rake's progress was complete unless he persuaded some errant damsel to jump over the back wall and elope, though there was probably no hindrance in 2 59 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the world to ordinary lovers walking openly out of the front door and being married properly. The fact that Radisson was a penniless adventurer and a Catholic, while his bride was the daughter of a rich Puritan, may have been the explanation of the secrecy, if indeed, there is any truth at all in the rumor repeated by Hayes. For seven years after he came to London, the love of wilderness places, of strange new lands, clung to Radisson. He spent the summers on Hudson Bay for the Company, opening new forts, cruising up the unknown coasts, bartering with new tribes of Indians, and while not acting as governor of any fur post, seems to have been a sort of general superintendent, to keep check on the Company's officers and prevent fraud, for when the cargoes arrived at Portsmouth, orders were given for the Captains not to stir with- out convoy to come to the Thames, but for "Mr. Rad- isson to take horse" and ride to London with the secret reports. During the winters in London, Sir John Robinson of the Tower and Radisson attended to the sales of the beaver, bought the goods for the next year's ships, examined the cannon that were to man the forts on the bay and attended to the general bus- iness of the Company. Merchants, who were share- holders, advanced goods for the yearly outfit. Other shareholders, who owned ships, loaned or gave ves- 260 sels for the voyage. Wages were paid as money came in from the beaver sales. So far, Radisson and his associates were share and share alike, all laying the foundations of a future prosperity. Radisson and his brother-in-law drew from the beaver sales during these seven years (1667-1673) 287, about $2,000 each for living expenses. But now came a change. The Company's ships were bought and paid for, the Company's forts built and equipped all from the sales of the cargoes brought home under Radisson's superintendence. Now that profits were to be paid, what share was his? The King had given him a gold chain and medal for his services, but to him the Company owed its existence. What was his share to be? In a word, was he to be one of the Adventurers or an outsider? Radisson had asked the Adventurers for an agree- ment. Agreement ? A year passed, Radisson hung on, living from hand to mouth in London, re- ceiving 10 one month, 2 the next, an average of $5 a week, compelled to supplicate the Company for every penny he needed a very excellent arrange- ment for the Gentlemen Adventurers. It compelled Radisson to go to them for favors, instead of their going to Radisson; though from Radisson's point of view, the boot may have seemed to be on the wrong leg. Finally, as told in a preceding chapter 261 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the committee met and voted him ";ioo per ann. from the time of his arrival in London, and if it shall please God to bless this company with good success, they will then resume the consideration of Mr. Rad- isson." One hundred pounds was just half of one per cent, of the yearly cargoes. It was the salary of the captains and petty governors on the bay. Radisson probably had his own opinion of a con- tract that was to depend more on the will of Heaven than on the legal bond of his partners. He quit England in disgust for the French navy. Then came the raids on Nelson, the order of the French Court to return to England and his resumption of service with the Hudson's Bay Company up to the time Iberville drove the English from the bay and French traders were not wanted in the English service. For changing his flag the last time, such abuse was heaped on Radisson that the Hudson's Bay Company was finally constrained to protest: "that the said Radisson doth not deserve those ill names the French give him. If the English doe not give him all his Due, he may rely on the justice of his cause." Indeed, the English company might date the be- ginning of the French raids that harried their forts for a hundred years from Radisson's first raid at Port Nelson ; but they did not foresee this. 262 Wliat Became of Radisson? The man was as irrepressible as a disturbed hornets' nest break up his plans, and it only seemed to scatter them with wider mischief. How the French Court ordered Radisson back to England has already been told. He was the scapegoat for court intrigue. Nothing now was too good for Radisson with the English. The Adventurers pre- sented him with a purse "for his extraordinary ser- vices to their great liking and satisfaction." A dealer is ordered "to keep Mr. Radisson in stock of jresh pro- visions" and the Company desires u that Mr. Rad- isson shall have a hogshead of claret" presumably to drown his memory of the former treatment. My Lord Preston is given a present of furs for pursuad- ing Radisson to return. So is "Esquire Young," the gay merchant of Cornhill, who was Radisson's best friend in England, and Sir James Hayes, who had been so furious against him only a few months before, begs Monsieur to accept that silver tankard as a token of esteem from the Adventurers (10 45, I found it cost by the account books.) ( )nly one doubt seemed to linger in the minds of the Company. In spite of King Louis' edict for- bidding French interlopers on Hudson's Bay, secret instructions of an opposite tenor were directing Ibervillc's raiders overland. If Radisson was to act as superintendent on the bay, chief councillor 263 The Conquest of the Great Northwest at Port Nelson, the Company must have bonds as well as oath for his fidelity, and so the entry in the minute books of 1685 records: "At this committee, Mons. Pierre Radisson signed and sealed the cove- nants with the company, and signed a bond of 2,000 to perform covenants with the company, dated 1 1 May. . . . Dwelling at the end of Seething Lane in Tower Street." I think it was less than ten minutes from the time I found that entry when I was over in Seething Lane. It is in a part of old London untouched by the Great Fire running up from the famous road to the Tower, in length not greater than between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, New York. Opening off Great Tower Street, it ends at Crutched Friars. At the foot of the lane is the old church of All Hallows Barking, whose dial only was burned by the fire; at the top, the little antiquated church of St. Olave Hart's, whose motley architecture with leaning walls dates from the days of the Normans. If Radisson lived "at the end of Seething Lane," his house must have been just opposite St. Olave Hart's, for the quaint church with its graveyard occupies the entire left corner. In this lane dwelt the merchant princes of London. Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the Navy, who thought his own style of living "mighty fine" as he describes it preening and pluming himself 264 What Became of Radisson? on the beautiful panels he had placed in his man- sion, must have been a near neighbor of Radisson's; for in the diarist's description of the fire, he speaks of it coming to Barking Church "at the bottom of our lane." But a stone's throw away is the Tower, in those days commanded by Radisson's friend, Sir John Robinson. The Kirkes, the Colletons, Griffith the dandy of the balls, Sir Robert Viner, the rich Lord-Mayor; Esquire Young of Cornhill all had dwellings within a few minutes' walk of Seething Lane. The whereabouts of Radisson in London explain how the journals of his first four voyages were lost for exactly two hundred years and then found in the Pepys Collection of the Bodleian Library. He had given them either directly or through the mutual friend Carterett, to his neighbor Pcpys, who was a keen collector of all matter appertaining to the navy, and after being lost for years, the Pepys Collection only passed to the Bodleian in recent days. The place where Radisson lived shows, too, that he was no backstairs sycophant hanging on the favor of the great, no beggarly renegade hungry for the crumbs that fell from the tables of those merchant princes. It proves Radisson a front-door acquaint- ance of the Gentlemen Adventurers. Sir Christo- pher Wren, the famous architect who was a share - 265 The Conquest of the Great Northwest holder in the Hudson's Bay Company at this time, thought himself well paid at 200 a year for super- intending the building of St. Paul's. Radisson's agreement on returning to the Adventurers from France, was for a salary of 50 a year, paid quar- terly, 50 paid yearly and dividends running as high as 50 per cent. on 200 of stock making in all, practically the same income as a man of Wren's standing. Second-rate warehouses and dingy business offices have replaced the mansions of the great merchants on Seething Lane, but the two old churches stand the same as in the days of Radisson, with the massive weather-stained stone work uncouth, as if built by the Saxons, inner pillars and pointed arches showing the work of the Normans. Both have an antique flavor as of old wine. The Past seems to reach for- ward and touch you tangibly from the moldering brass plates on the walls, and the flagstone of the aisles so very old the chiseled names of the dead below are peeling off like paper. The great mer- chant princes the Colletons, the Kirkes, the Rob- insons, Radisson's friends lie in effigy around the church above their graves. It was to St. Olave's across the way, Pepys used to come to hear Hawkins, the great Oxford scholar, also one of the Adventurers preach; and a tablet tells where the body of Pepys' 266 What Became of Radittonf gay wife lies. From the walls, a memorial tablet to Pepys, himself, smiles down in teplumed hat and curled periwig and velvet cloak, perhaps that very cloak made in imitation of the one worn in Hyde Park by the King and of which he was as he writes "so mighty proud." The roar of a world's traffic beats against the tranquil walls of the little church ; but where sleeps Radisson, the Catholic and alien, in this Babylon of hurrying feet? His friends and his neighbors lie here, but the gravestones give no clue of him. Pepys, the annalist of the age, with his gossip of court and his fair wife and his fine clothes thought Radisson's voyages interesting enough as a curio but never seems to have dreamed that the countries Radisson discovered would become a dominant factor in the world's progress when that royal house on whose breath Pepys hung for favor as for life, lay rotting in a shameful oblivion. If the dead could dream where they lie forgotten, could Radisson believe his own dream that the seas of the world are freighted with the wealth of the coun- tries he discovered; that "the country so pleasant, so beaut ij id . . . so fruitful . . . so plen- tijul o] nil things" as he described the Great North- west when he first saw it is now peopled by a race that all the nations of Europe woo; that the hope of the empire, which ignored him when he lived, is now 267 The Conquest of the Great Northwest centered on "that fair and fruitful and pleasant land" which he discovered? For ten years Radisson continued to go to the bay, Esquire Young acting as his attorney to draw the allowance of 100 a year and the dividends on 200 stock for Radisson's wife, Mary Kirke. The min- utes contain accounts of wine presented to Mr. Rad- isson, of furs sent home as a gift to Mistress Radisson, of heavy guns bought for the forts on the advice of Mr. Radisson, of a fancy pistol delivered to Monsieur Radisson. Then a change fell. The Stuarts between vice and folly had danced themselves off the throne. The courtiers, who were Adventurers, scattered like straws before the wind. The names of the shareholders changed. Of Rad- isson's old friends, only Esquire Young remained. Besides, Iberville was now campaigning on the bay, sweeping the English as dust before a broom. Dividends stopped. The Company became embar- rassed. By motion of the shareholders, Radisson's pension was cut from 100 to 50 a year. In vain Esquire Young and Churchill, the Duke of Marl- borough, now governor of the Company, urged Rad- isson's claims. The new shareholders did not know his name. These were dark days for the old pathfinder. He must have been compelled to move from Seething 268 What Became o} Radisson? Lane, for a petition describes him as in the Parish of St. James "in a low and mean condition" in great want and mental distress lest his family should be driven to the poorhouse. It was at this period three papers were put on file that forever place beyond dispute the main facts of his life. He filed a suit in Chancery against the Company for a resumption of his full salary pending the discontinuance of divi- dends. He petitioned Parliament to make the con- tinuance of the Company's charter dependent on recognition of his rights as having laid the founda- tions of the Company. And he took an oath regard- ing the main episodes of his life to be used in the treaty of peace with France. A fighter he was to the end, though haunted by that terrible Fear of Want which undermined his courage as no Phantom Fright ever shook him in the wilderness. No doubt he felt himself growing old, nearly seventy now with four children to support and naught between them and destitution but the paltry payment of 12 los a quarter. Again the wheel of fortune turned. Radisson won his suit against the Company. His income of 100 was resumed and arrears of 150 paid. Also, in the treaty pending with France, his evidence was absolutely requisite to establish what the boundaries ought to be between Canada and Hudson Bay; so the 269 The Conquest o) the Great Northwest Adventurers became suddenly very courteous, very suave, very considerate of the old man they had kept standing outside their office door; and the com- mittee of August 17, 1697, bade "the secretary take coach and fetch Mr. Radisson who may be very useful at this time as to affairs between the French and the Company." The old war horse was once more in harness. In addition to his salary, gratuities of 10 and 8 and 20 "for reliable services" are found in the minutes. Regularly his 50 were paid to him at the end of each year. Regularly, the 12 los were paid each quarter to March 29, 1710. When the next quarter came round, this entry is recorded in the minute book: "Alt A Comitte the i2th July 1710 "The Sec is ordered to pay Mr. Radisson' s widow as charity the sum of six pounds." Between the end of March and the beginning of July, the old pathfinder had set forth on his last voyage. But I think the saddest record of all is the one that comes nineteen years later: "24 Sept. 1729 Alt A Comitte " The Sec. is ordered to pay Mrs. Radisson, widow of Mr. Peter Esprit Radisson, who was formerly employed in the company's service, the sum of 10 as charity, she being very ill and in very great want, the said sum to be paid her at such times as the Sec. shall think most convenient." 270 What Became of Radisson? This was the widow of the man who had explored the West to the Mississippi; who had explored the North to Nelson River; who had twice saved New France from bankruptcy by the furs he brought from the wilderness, and who had laid the foundations of the most prosperous chartered company the world has ever known. Notes on Chapter XIV. It need scarcely be explained that the data for this chapter are all drawn from thousands of sheets of scattered records in Hudson's Bay House, London. Within the limits of this book, it is quite impossible to quote all the references of this chapter. Details of Radisson's early life are to befound in "Pathfinders of the West." One of Radisson's peti- tions has been given in a former chapter. Another of his pe- titions runs as follows: "Copy of Peter Esprit Radisson's peticon to ye Parleamt. presented ye nth of March 1697-8. "To ye Hon'ble the Knights Citizens & Burgesses in Parli- ament Assembled "The Humble Peticon of Peter Esprit Radisson Humbly sheweth "That your petitioner is a native of France, who with a brother of his (since deceased) spent many years of their youths among the Indians in and about Hudson's Bay, by reason whereof they became absolute masters of the trade and lan- guage of the said Indians in those parts of America "That about the year 1666 King Charles the Second sent yr. Pet'r and his said brother with two ships on purpose to settle English colonies & factories on the sd. Day, \vh. they effected soe well by the said King's satisfaction that he gave each of them a gold chain & medell as a marke of his Royale favour & recommended them to the Comp'y of Adventurers of England Trading unto Hudson's Bay to be well gratified and rewarded by them for their services aforesaid. "That since the death of yr. Petr. Brother, the sd. compy have settled on your Petr: six actions in the joint stock of ye sd. compy and one hundred pounds per annum during yr. Petr : life "That your Petr is now 62 years of age (being grown old in the compys service) & hath not reed any Benefits of the sd. six 271 The Conquest of the Great Northwest shares in the compys stock for more than 7 years last past & hath had nothing but the sd. 100 pds. Per annum to maintain himselfe and four small children all borne in England "That during the late Reign a Price was set upon your Petr head by the French & several attempts were made upon him to assassinate him & that for none other reasons but for quittting his owne country & serving the compy. "That your Petr: dares not return to his Native country for the reasons aforesaid : & seeing all his subsistance depends on the sd. compy & is shortly to Determine with the life of your Petr and his four smalle children must consequently fall to be main- tained by the Alms of the Parish altho' the company hath had many thousand pounds effects by his procurement & some that he conceives he had himselfe a good tytle to "Your Petr therefore most humbly prays that this House will comiserate the condition of yr. Petr said children, and whereas he hath now the said six actions & 100 only for his life, that you will Vouchsafe to direct a provisoe in the Bill depending to grant the sd. annuity to be paid quarterly & the dividends of the sd. Actions as often as any shall become due to your Petr: his Heirs for Ever during the joint stock of the said compy "And yr. Petr shall forever pray "PETER ESPRIT RADISSON." The occasion of this petition by Radisson was when the Stuarts had lost the throne and the Company was petitioning for a confirmation of its royal charter by an act of Parliament. "The many thousand pounds which he conceived himself to have a title to," refers to 1684, when the French Court com- pelled him to turn over all the 20,000 in his fort at Nelson to the English. That beaver had been procured in the trade of goods for which Radisson and Groseillers and young Chouart and La F6rest and De la Chesnay and Dame Sorrell had ad- vanced the money. As a matter of fact, the Company never gave Radisson any stock. They simply granted him the right to dividends on a small amount of stock a wrong which he was powerless to right as he dared not return to France. It was during Iberville's raids that the Company stopped paying Radisson dividends or salary, when he filed a suit against them in Chancery and won it. It is quite true the Company was un- able to pay. him at this time, but then they had their own nig- gardly policy to thank for having driven him across to France in the first place. When the Company presented a bill of damages against France for the raids, Radisson's evidence was necessary to prove that the French King gave up all claims to the bay when he ordered Radisson back to England, so the old man was no 272 What Became of Radisson? longer kept cooling his heels in the outer halls of the Company's Council Room. The bill of damages was made up as follows: 1682 Port Nelson taken with Gov. Bridgar & Zechariah Gillam & 5 men per- ished 25,000 1684 damage to trade at Nelson 10,000 1685 Perpetuana taken with 14 seamen 5,000 loss of life and wages i. 2 55 1686 forts captured at the bottom of the bay 50,000 loss in trade 10,000 1688 loss of Churchill Captain Bond 15,000 Young St imson cargo to Canada 70,000 1692 forts lost 20,000 206,255 The French King had said, "You may rely on me getting out of this affair," and the bill of damages, however absurdly exaggerated, was never paid. The French raiders proved an expensive experiment. Radisson 's other affidavit was made to prove that the French had quitted all pretensions to the bay when he was ordered back to Nelson. The French responded by denying that he had ever been ordered back to Nelson and by calling him "a liar," "a renegade," "a turn coat." To this, the English answered in formal memorial: "The Mr. Radisson mentioned in this paper doth not deserve the ill names heaped upon him," following up with the proof that the French had sent him back to England. The real reason that the Company were so remiss to Radisson in his latter days was their own desperate straits. Besides, the old shareholders of the Stuart days had scattered like the wind. Radisson was unknown to the new men, so completely unknown that in one committee order his wife is spoken of as Madam Gwodet (Godey) instead of Mary Kirke. Now Madam Godey was the damsel whom Lord Preston offered to Radisson in marriage (with a dowry) despite the fact that he already had a wife if he would go back from Paris to London. De la Potherie tells the story and adds that Radisson married her another of the numerous fictions about the explorer. This mass of notes may give the impression that I am a protagonist of Radisson. My answer is that he badly needs one, when such h modern defenders of his as Drs. Brvce, and Dionne, and Judge Prudhomme refuse to excuse him for his last deser- tion of tne French flag. In that case, Radisson was as much a victim of official red tape as Dreyfus in modern days. 273 PART III 1700-1820 The Search for the North- West Passage, the Fall of France, the Inlanders, the Coming of the Colo- nists and the Great Struggle with the North- West Company of Montreal. CHAPTER XV 1699-1720 THE FIRST ATTEMPT OF THE ADVENTURERS TO EX- PLORE HENRY KELSEY PENETRATES AS FAR AS THE VALLEY OF THE SASKATCHEWAN SANFORD AND ARRINGTON, KNOWN AS "RED CAP," FOUND HENLEY HOUSE INLAND FROM ALBANY BESET FROM WITHOUT, THE COMPANY IS ALSO BESET FROM WITHIN PETITIONS AGAINST THE CHAR- TER INCREASE OF CAPITAL RESTORATION OF THE BAY FROM FRANCE THE Peace of Ryswick in 1697, which decreed that war should cease on Hudson Bay, and that France and England should each retain what they chanced to possess at the time of the treaty left the Adventurers of England with only one fort, Albany, under doughty old Governor Knight, and one outpost, New Severn, which refugees driven to the woods had built out of necessity. Back in '85 when Robert Sanford had been or- dered to explore inland, he had reported such voy- ages impracticable. The only way to obtain inland trade, he declared, was to give presents to the Indian 277 chiefs and attract the tribes down to the bay. Now that the French had swept the English from the bay, Sanford was driven to the very thing he had said could not be done penetrating inland to intercept the Indian fleets of canoes before they came down to the French. With one Arrington, known as Red Cap on the bay, and a man, John Vincent, Sanford year after year went upstream from Albany through Keewatin toward what is now Manitoba. By 1700, Henley House had been built one hundred and fifty miles inland from Albany. The French war was proving a blessing in disguise. It had awakened the sleeping English gentlemen of the bay and was scattering them far and wide. The very year the French came overland, 1686, Captain Abraham had sailed north from Nelson to Churchill "a faire wide river," he describes it, naming it after the great Marl- borough; and now with only Albany as the radiat- ing point, commanded by old Governor Knight, sloops under the apprentice boy, young Henry Kel- sey, under Mike Grimmington and Smithsend, sailed across to the east side of the bay, known as East Main (now known as Ungava and Labrador) and yearly traded so successfully with the wandering Eskimo and Montagnais there that in spite of the French holding the bay, cargoes of 30,000 and 40,000 beaver pelts were sent home to England. 278 First Attempt of the Adventurers to Explore But the honors of exploration at this period belong to the ragamuffin, apprentice lad, Henry Kelsey. He had come straight to Nelson before the French occupation from the harum-scarum life of a London street arab. At the fur posts, discipline was abso- lutely strict. Only the governor and chief trader were allowed to converse with the Indians. No man could leave the fort to hunt without special parole. Every subordinate was sworn to unquestioning obedi- ence to the officer above him. Servants were not supposed to speak unless spoken to. Written rules and regulations were stuck round the fort walls thick as advertisements put up by a modern bill poster, and the slightest infraction of these martinet rules was visited by guardroom duty, or a sound drub- bing at the hands of the chief factor, or public court- martial followed by the lash. It was all a part of the cocked hat and red coat and gold lace and silk ruffles with which these little kings of the wilderness sought to invest themselves with the pomp of authority. It is to the everlasting credit of the Company's governors that a system of such absolute despotism was seldom abused. Perhaps, too, the loneliness of the life a handful of whites cooped up amid all the perils of savagery made each man realize the responsibility of being his brother's keeper. Henry Kelsey, the apprentice boy, fresh from the 279 The Conquest of the Great Northwest streets of London, promptly ran amuck of the strict rules at Nelson. He went in and out of the fort without leave, and when gates were locked, he climbed the walls. In spite of rules to the contrary, he talked with the Indians and hunted with them, and when Captain Geyer switched him soundly for disobedience, he broke bars, jumped the walls, and ran away with a party of Assiniboines. About this time, came the French to the bay. The Company was moving heaven and earth to induce servants to go inland for trade when an Indian runner brought a message on birch bark from Kelsey. He had been up Hayes River with the Indians and now offered to conduct an exploration on condition of pardon. Geyer not only pardoned the young rene- gade but welcomed him back to the fort bag and baggage, Indian wife and all the trumpery of an Indian family. The great Company issued Kelsey a formal commission for discovery, and the next year on July 15, 1691, as the Assiniboines departed from Deering's Point where they camped to trade at Nel- son, Kelsey launched out in a canoe with them. Radisson and young Chouart had been up this river some distance; but as far as known, Kelsey was the first white man to follow Hayes River west- ward as far as the prairies. The weather was ex- ceedingly dry, game scarce, grass high and brittle, 280 First Attempt of the Adventurers to Explore the tracks hard to follow whether of man or beast. Within a week, the Indians had gone up one hundred and seventy miles toward what are now known as Manitoba and Saskatchewan, but only two moose and one partridge had been killed, and provisions were exhausted. Leaving the Indians, Kelsey pushed forward across country following the trail of an en- campment to the fore. At the end of a thirty mile tramp through brushwood of poplars and scrub birch, he came to three leather tepees. No one was in them. Men and women were afield hunting. Ravenous with hunger, Kelsey ransacked provision bags. He found nothing but dried grass and was fain to stay his hunger with berries. At night the hunters came in with ten swans and a moose. Here, Kelsey remained with them hunting till his party came up, when all advanced together another one hundred and thirty miles to the Assiniboine camp- ing place. There were only twenty-six tents of Assiniboines. In a fray, the main party of Assini- boine hunters had slain three Cree women, and had now fled south, away from Cree territory. By the middle of August, Kelsey and his hunters were on the buffalo plains. All day, the men hunted. At night, the women went out to bring in and dress the meat. Once, exhausted, Kelsey fell sound asleep on the trail, When he awakened, there was not even 281 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the dust of the hunt to guide him back to camp. From horizon to horizon was not a living soul ; only the billowing prairie, grass neck high, with the lonely call of birds circling overhead. By following the crumpled grass and watching the sky for the reflec- tion of the camp fires at night, Kelsey found his way back to the Assiniboines. Another time, camp fire had been made of dry moss. Kelsey was awakened to find the grass round him on fire and the stock of his musket blazing. With his jackknife he made a rude gunstock for the rest of the trip. Hunting with an Indian one day, the two came unexpectedly on a couple of grizzly bears. The surprise was mutual. The bears knew no fear of firearms and were dis- posed to parley, but the hunters didn't wait. The Indian dashed for a tree; Kelsey for hiding in a bunch of willows, firing as he ran. The bears mis- took the direction of the shot and had pursued the Indian. Kelsey's charge had wounded one bear, and with a second shot, he now disabled the other, firing full in its face. The double victory over the beast of prey most feared by the Indians gained him the name of Little Giant Miss-top-ashish. From Kelsey's journal, it is impossible to follow the exact course of his wanderings. Enemies, who tried to prove that the English Company deserved no credit for exploration, declared that he did not go 282 First Attempt of the Adventurers to Explore farther than five hundred miles from the bay, seventy- one by canoe, three hundred through woods over- land, forty-six across a plain, then eighty-one more to the buffalo country. From his own journal, the distance totals up six hundred miles; but he does not mention any large river except the Hayes, or large lake; so that after striking westward he must have been north of Lake Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan, but not so far north and west as Athabasca. This would place his wanderings in the modern province of Saskatchewan. It was the 24th of August before he joined Washa, chief of the Assiniboines, and took up lodgings amid the eighty tents of the tribe. Solemnly, the peace pipe was smoked and, on the i2th of September, Kel- sey presented the Assiniboine chief with the present of a lace coat, a cap, a sash, guns, knives, powder and shot, telling the Indians these were tokens of what the white men would do if the Indians proved good hunters; but on no account must the tribes war on one another, or the white man would give the enemy guns, which would exterminate all fighters. Washa promised to bring his hunt down to the bay, which tribal wars prevented for some years. Hudson's Bay traders, who followed up Kelsey's exploration- aimed for the region now known as Cumberland House, variously called Poskoyac and Basquia 283 The Conquest of the Great Northwest westward of Lake Winnipeg, so there is little doubt it was in this land that the Hudson's Bay boy first hunted and camped. With Kelsey, the result was instant promotion. His wife went home to England, where she was regularly paid his salary, and he rose to a position second only to the venerable old Gov- ernor Knight, commander of the entire bay. Meanwhile, the French were having their own troubles in the captured forts. War had broken out again, and was going against France in Marlbor- ough's victories. The French might hold the bay, but not a pound of provisions could be sent across seas on account of English privateers. The French garrisons of Hudson Bay were starving. Indians, who brought down pelts from the Pays d'En Haut or upcountry could obtain no goods in barter and having grown dependent on the whiteman's fire- arms, were in turn reduced to straits. Lagrange, a gay court adventurer, had come out in 1704 to Nelson, which the French called Bourbon, with a troop of pleasure-seeking men and women for a year's hunting. For one year, the drab mo- notony of post life was enlivened by a miniature Paris. Wines from the royal cellars flowed like water. The reckless songs of court gallants rang among the rafters, and the slippered feet of more reckless court beauties tripped the light dance over 284 Firxt Attempt of the Adventurers to Explore the rough-timbered floors of the fur post. It was a wild age, and a wild court from which they came to this wilderness reckless women and reckless men, whose God was Pleasure. Who knows what court intrigue was being hidden and acted out at Port Nelson? Poor butterflies, that had scorched their wings and lost their youth, came here to masquerade! Soldiers of fortune, who had gambled their patrimony in the royal court and stirred up scandal, rusticating in a little log fort in the wilderness! The theme is more romantic than the novelist could conceive. But war broke out, and Lagrange's gay troop scattered like leaves before the wind. Iberville was dead in Havana. LaFdrest of the Quebec Fur Company had gone back to the St. Lawrence. Jeremic, the interpreter, had gone to France on leave, in 1707, and now in 1708, when the French garrisons were starving and the high seas scoured by privateers Jercmie came back as governor, under the king. He at once dispatched men to hunt. Nine bushrangers had camped one night near a tent of Crees. The Indians were hungry, sullen, resent- ful to the whitemen who failed to trade guns and powder as the English had traded. At the fort, they had been turned away with their furs on their hands. It is the characteristic of the French trader that he frequently descends to the level of the Indian. 285 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Jeremie's nine men were, perhaps, slightly intoxicated after their supper of fresh game and strong brandy. Two Indian women came to the camp and invited two Frenchmen to the Indian tents. The fellows tumbled into the trap like the proverbial country jack with the thimblerigger. No sooner had they reached the Indian tepees than they were brained. Seizing the pistols and knives of the dead men, the Indians crept through the thicket to the fire of the bush-rovers. With unearthly yells they fell on the remaining seven and cut them to pieces. One wounded man alone escaped by feigning the rigor of death, while they stripped him naked, and creeping off into hiding of the bushes while the savages de- voured the dead. Waiting till they had gone, the wounded man crawled painfully back by night a distance of thirty miles to Jeremie, at an outpost. Jeremie quickly withdrew the garrison from the out- post, retreated within the double palisades of Nelson (Bourbon) shot all bolts, unplugged his cannon and awaited siege; but Indians do not attack in the open. Jeremie held the fort till events in Europe relieved him of his charge. In spite of French victories, as long as Mike Grim- mington and Nick Smithsend were bringing home cargoes of thirty thousand beaver a year, the English 286 First Attempt of the Adventurers to Explore Adventurers prospered. In fact, within twenty years of their charter's grant, they had prospered so exceedingly that they no longer had the face to declare such enormous dividends, and on Septem- ber 3, 1690, it was unanimously decided to treble their original stock from 10,500 to 31,500. The reasons given for this action were: that there were furs of more value than the original capital of the Company now in the Company's warehouses; that the year's cargo was of more value than the original capital of the Company; that the returns in beaver from Nelson and Severn alone this year exceeded 20,000; that the forts and armaments were of great value, and that the Company had reasons to expect 100,000 reparation from the French. Immediately after the decision, a dividend of 25 per cent, was declared on the trebled stock. Such prosperity excited envy. The fur buyers and pelt workers and skin merchants of London were up in arms. People began to question whether a royal house, which had been deposed from the English throne, had any right to deed away in perpetuity public domain of such vast wealth to court favorites. Besides, court favorites had scattered with the ruined Stuart House. Newcomers were the holders of the Hudson's Bay Company stock. What right had these newcomers to the privileges of such monopoly? 287 The Conquest oj the Great Northwest Especially, what was the meaning of such dividends, when the Company regularly borrowed all the money needed for working operations? As late as 1685, the Company had borrowed 2,000 at 6 per cert, from its own shareholders, and after French disasters began to injure its credit in the London market, it regularly sent agents to borrow money in Amsterdam. The Company foresaw that the downfall of the Stuarts might affect its monopoly and in 1697 had applied for the confirmation of its charter by Parlia- ment. Against this plea, London fur buyers filed a counter petition: (i) It was too arbitrary a charter to be granted to private individuals. (2) It was of no advantage to the public but a mere stockjobbing concern, 100 worth of stock selling as high as 300, 30 as high as 200. (3) Beaver purchased in Hud- son Bay for 6d sold in London for 6s. (4) Monopoly drove the Indians to trade with the French. (5) The charter covered too much territory. To which the Company made answer that not 1,000 of stock had changed hands in the last year, which was doubtless true; for '97 was the year of the great defeat. The climate would always prevent set- tlement in Hudson Bay, and most important of all- England would have lost all that region but for the Hudson's Bay Company. In its mood at the time, that was a telling argument with the English .Parlia- 288 First Attempt of the Adventurers to Explore ment. Negotiations were in progress with France for a permanent treaty of peace. If the Hudson's Bay Company were dissolved, to whom would all the region revert but to those already in possession the French? And if the impending war broke out, who would defend the bay from the French but the Company? By act of Parliament, the charter of the English Adventurers was confirmed for a period of seven years. And more -when an act was passed in 1708 to encourage trade to America, a proviso was inserted that the territory of the Company should not be included in the freedom of trade. From the time France was beaten in the continental wars, the English Adventurers never ceased to press their claims against France for the restoration of all posts on Hudson Bay and the payment of damages varying in amount from 200,000 to 100,504. Memorials were presented to King William, me- morials to Queen Anne. Sir Stephen Evance, the goldsmith, who had become a heavy shareholder through taking stock in payment for his ships char- It nd to the bay had succeeded Marlborough as governor in 1692, but the great general was still a friend at Court, and when Evance retired in 1696, Sir William Trumbull, Secretary of State, became governor. Old Governor Knight came from Albany 289 The Conquest of the Great Northwest on the bay, in 1700, to go to France with Sir Bibye Lake and Marlborough to press the claims of the English fur traders against France. For the double claims of restoration and damages, France offered to trade all the posts on the south shore for all the posts on the west shore. The offer was but a parley for better terms. Both English and French fur traders knew that the best furs came from the west posts. Negotiations dragged on to 1710. It was subterraneously conveyed to the English fur traders that France would yield on one point, but not on both: they could have back the bay but not the in- demnity; or the indemnity but not the bay. The English fur traders subterraneously conveyed to the commissioners in Holland, that they would accept the restoration of the bay and write off the indemnity bill of 100,000 as bad debts. Such was the Peace of Utrecht, 1713, as it affected the fate of the Hud- son's Bay Company. One point was left unsettled by the treaty. Where was the boundary between bushrangers of New France working north from the St. Lawrence, and the voyageurs of the Hudson's Bay Company, work- ing south from James Bay? A dozen different propositions were made, but none accepted. The dispute came as a heritage to modern days when Quebec and Ontario wrangled out their boundaries, 290 First Attempt of the Adventurers to Explore and Ontario and Manitoba competed for Keewatin, and finally the new province of Saskatchewan disputed Manitoba for a slice giving access to a seaport on Hudson Bay. The settlement came just in time to save the Com- pany from bankruptcy. The Adventurers had no money to pay their captains. Grimmington and Smithsend accepted pay of 200 apiece in bonds. Yet this same Company so often accused of avarice and tyranny to servants borrowed money to pay 20 each to the seamen surviving the terrible disasters of '97, and donated a special gratuity to Captain Bailey for bringing the books of Nelson safely home. Sir Stephen Evance became governor again in 1700 and transferred 600 of his own stock to Captain Knight as wages for holding Albany. Captains would now accept engagements only on condition of being ransomed if captured, at the Company's ex- pense; and no ship would leave port without a tonvoy of frigates. June 2, 1702, the secretary is ordered to pay the cost of making a scarlet coat with lace, for Nepa- nah-tay, the Indian chief, come home with Captain Grimmington. November 5, 1703, Captain Knight is ordered to take care of the little Indian girl brought home by Captain Grimmington. It is ordered at the same 291 The Conquest of the Great Northwest time that tradesmen's bills shall be paid "as long as the money lasts," but that seamen's wages be paid up to date. Orders are also issued for the gunsmith "to stamp no barrell nor locks with ye compy's marker that are not in every way good and perfect." Henry Kelsey is now employed at 100 per annum either "to go up country" meaning inland or across to East Main (Labrador). When Mike Grimmington is not on the bay in his frigate, he is sent to Russia with beaver, bringing back cargoes of leather. Fullerton takes Knight's place at Albany, with a scale of wages running from 10 to 16 a year for apprentices with a gratuity of 205 a month if they prove worthy; and to Fullerton and the cap- tains of the vessels are sent twenty- three hogsheads of liquor to keep up their courage against the French in 1710. Outward bound the same year, Mike Grim- mington, the veteran of a hundred raids, falls des- perately ill. Like the Vikings of the North, he will not turn back. If vanquished, he will be vanquished with face to foe. So he meets his Last Foe at sea, and is vanquished of Death on June 15 within a few weeks of 'Radisson's death and is buried at Harwich. Learning the news by coureur, the Govern- ing Committee promptly vote his widow, Anne, a gift of 100 and appoints the son, Mike Grimmington, Jr., an apprentice. Sir Bibye Lake, who had helped 292 First Attempt of the Adventurers to Explore to secure the favorable terms of the peace treaty, is voted governor in 1713. In no year at this period did the sales of furs exceed 100,000 but big cargoes are beginning to come in again, and the Company is able to declare a dividend of 10 per cent, in 1718. Before the French war, the forts had been nothing but a cluster of cabins pali- saded. Now the Adventurers determine to strengthen their posts. For the time, Rupert and Severn are abandoned, but stone bastions are built in 1718 at Moose and Albany and Nelson (now known as York) and Churchill. Inland from Albany, Henley House is garrisoned against the French overlanders. At East Main on Slude River a fort is knocked together of driftwood and bowlder and lime. In spite of increased wages and peace, the Adven- turers have great difficulty procuring servants. The war has made known the real perils of the service. Mr. Ramsay is employed in 1707 and Captain John Mc-rry in 1712 to go to the Orkneys for servants fourteen able-bodied seamen in the former year, forty in the latter, and for the first time there come into the history of the Northwest the names of those Orkney families, whose lives are really the record of the great domain to which they gave their strength the Belchers and Gunns, and the Carruthers, and the Bannisters, and the Isbisters and the Baileys, 293 The Conquest of the Great Northwest generation after generation, and the Mackenzies, and the Clarkes and the Gwynnes's. Some came as clerks, some as gunners, some as bush-lopers. The lowest wage was 125 a month with a gratuity of 2 on signing the contract. But this did not suffice to bring recruits fast enough for the expanding work of the Company, and there comes jauntily on the scene, in 1711, Mr. Andrew Vallentine of matrimonial fame with secret contracts to supply the Company with apprentices if the Company will supply the dowries for the brides of the said apprentices. As told in a former chapter, "all proposals to be locked up in ye Iron Chest in a Booke Aparte" Dr. Sach- everell, the famous divine, performed the marriage ceremonies; and from an item surreptitiously smug- gled into the general minutes of the Company's records instead of "the Booke Aparte," I judge that the marriage portions were on a scale averaging some 70 and 100 each. A Miss Evance is named as one of the brides, so that the affair was no common list- ing of women for the marriage shambles such as Virginia and Quebec witnessed, but a contract in which even a relative of the Company's governor was not ashamed to enter. Business flourished as told elsewhere. The marriage office had to have addi- tional apartments in " the Buttery " until about 1735, when lawsuits and the death of Mr. Vallentine 294 First Attempt of the Adventurers to Explore caused a summary shutting down of the enterprise. It had accomplished its aim brought recruits to the Company. By 1717 Kelsey, the aforetime apprentice, had become governor of Churchill at 200 a year. One William Stewart and another apprentice, Richard Norton, were sent inland from Churchill to explore and make peace between the tribes. How far north they proceeded is not known not farther than Ches- terfield Inlet, where the water ran with a tide like the sea, and the Indians by signs told legends of vast mines. Kelsey had heard similar tales of mines over on the Labrador coast. Thomas Macklish, who had gone up Nelson River beyond Ben Gillam's Island, heard similar tales. Each of these explorers, the Company rewarded with gratuities ranging from 20 to 100. There were legends, too, at Moose and Rupert of great silver mines toward Temiscamingue the field of the modern cobalt beds. The Company determined to inaugurate a policy of search for mineral wealth and exploration for a passage to the South Sea. Old Captain Knight- now in his eighties had gone back to the bay to re- ceive the posts from the French under Jeremie. He had returned to England and was, in 1718, ordered on a voyage of exploration. He demanded stiff terms for the arduous task. His salary was to be 295 ^400 P er annum. He was to have one-tenth profit of all minerals discovered and all new trade estab- lished, which was not in furs, such as whale hunting and fishing. He was to be allowed to accept such presents from the evacuating French as he saw fit, and was not to be compelled to winter on the bay. The contract was for four years with the proviso in case of Knight's death, Henry Kelsey was to be governor of all the bay. With a Greenland schooner and a yawl for inland waters, Knight set sail on the frigates bound from England, hopes high as gold miners stampeding to a new field. Notes on Chapter XV. The Sandford first sent inland from Albany was a relative of Captain Gillam and was at one time put on the lists for dismissal owing to Ben Gillam's poaching. Robson casts doubt on Kelsey having gone inland from Nelson, but Robson was writing in a mood of spite toward his former employers. The reasons given for his doubt are two- fold: (i) Kelsey could not have gone five hundred miles in sixty days; (2) in the dry season of July, Kelsey could not have followed any Indian trail. Both objections are absurd. Forty miles a day is not a high average for a good woodsman or canoe- man. As to following a trail in July, the very fact that the grass was so brittle, made it easy to follow recent tracks. Night camp fire and the general direction of the land would be guides enough for a good pathfinder, let alone the crumpled grasses left behind a horde of wandering Indians. Kelsey 's Journal is to be found in the Parliamentary Report of 1749. At the time, it was handed over to Parliament, it was taken from Hudson's Bay House, and is no longer in the records of the Company. The exact itinerary of the journey, I do not attempt to give. Each reader, especially in the West, can guess at it for himself. It is about this time that Port Nelson became known as York, in honor of the Duke of York, former governor. Hereto- 296 First Attempt of the Adventurers to Explore fore, dispatches were headed "Nelson." Now, they are ad- dressed to "York." The account of French occupation is to be found in French Marine Archives and in the Relation of Jeremie, Bernard's Voy- ages. Governor Knight paid 277 to the French for provisions left nt Nelson. It was the cargo of furs he sent home in 1714 that enabled the Company to pay its long-standing debts and declare a dividend by 1718. As York may soon be Manitoba's seaport, it is worth noting that in 1715 Captain Davies spent the entire summer beating about and failed to enter Hayes River for the ice. For this failure, he was severely reprimanded by the Company. In 1695 the lease was signed for thirty-five years for the premises on Fenchurch Street, occupied till the Company moved to present quarters in Lime Street. The first map of the bay drawn for the Company was executed in 1684, by John Thornton, for which he was paid 4. It was in 1686 that the famous Jan Pe"re\ the spy, was dis- charged from prison and escaped to France. All trace of young Chouart is lost after 1689, when he came to London from Nelson. 297 CHAPTER XVI 1719-1740 OLD CAPTAIN KNIGHT BESET BY GOLD FEVER, HEARS THE CALL OF THE NORTH THE STRAITS AND BAY THE FIRST HARVEST OF THE SEA AT DEAD MAN'S ISLAND CASTAWAYS FOR THREE YEARS THE COMPANY BESET BY GOLD FEVER IN- CREASES ITS STOCK PAYS TEN PER CENT. ON TWICE-TREBLED CAPITAL COMING OF SPIES AGAIN FROM the time of the first voyage up to Church- ill River, in 1686, the fur traders had noticed tribes of Indians from the far North, who wore ornaments of almost pure copper. Chunks of metal, that melted down to lead with a percentage of silver, were brought down to the fur post at Slude River in Labrador on the east side of the bay. Vague tales were told by the wandering Eskimo and Chip- pewyans at Churchill of a vast copper mine some- where on that river now known as Coppermine, and of a metal for which the Indians had no name but which white man's avidity quickly recognized as gold dust coming from the far northern realms of iceberg 298 Old Captain Knight Beset by Gold Fever and frost known as Baffin's Land. How true some of these legends were has been proved by the great cobalt mines of modern Ontario and placers of Alaska. But where lies the hidden treasure trove from which the Indians brought down copper to Churchill, silver to Slude River, and gold dust if gold it was from the snowy realm of the Eskimo in the North? Those treasure stores have not yet been uncovered, though science has declared that vast deposits of copper may be found west of Chesterfield Inlet, and placers may at any time be uncovered in Baffin's Land. The Hudson's Bay charter had been granted in the first place for " the discovery of a passage to the South Sea." At this time, there was great agitation in Russia for the discovery of the Straits of Anian, that were supposed to lead through America from Asia to Europe. Vitus Bering's expedition to find these straits resulted in Russia's discovery of Alaska. The English Adventurers now kept agents in Russia. They were aware of the projects in the air at the Russian Court. Why not combine the search for the passage to the South Sea with the search for the hidden mines of Indian legends? Besides the Company had another project in the air. Richard Norton, the apprentice boy, had gone overland north from Churchill almost as far as Chesterfield Inlet. 299 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Chesterfield Inlet seemed to promise the passage to the South Sea; but what was more to the point the waters in this part of the bay offered great oppor- tunities for whale fisheries. With the threefold commission of discovering mines, the passage to the South Sea, and a whale fishery, old Captain Knight sailed from Gravesend on June 3, 1719, "so God send the good ships a successful Discovery and to return in sajety your loving friends" ran the words of the commission. Four ships there were in the fleet that sailed this year: The Mary, frigate, under Captain Belcher, with Mike Grimmington, Jr., now chief mate, a crew of eighteen and a passenger list of new servants for York and Churchill, among them Henry Kelsey, to be governor during Knight's absence from Churchill; the frigate Hudson's Bay under Cap- tain Ward, with twenty-three passengers for the south end of the bay; and the two ships for Knight's venture: The Discovery, Captain Vaughan; The Albany, Captain Bailey, with fifty men, all told, bound for the unknown North, the three men, Ben- jamin Fuller, David Newman and John Awdry going as lieutenants to Captain Knight. Henry Kelsey had left his wife in London. Each of the captains had given bonds of 2,000 to obey Knight in all things. 300 Old Captain Knight Beset by Gold Fever Knight himself is now eighty years of age an old war horse limbering up to battle at the smell of powder smoke his ships loaded with iron-hooped treasure casks to carry back the gold dust. The complete frames of houses are carried to build a post in the North, and among his fifty men are iron forgers, armorers, whalers from Dundee, and a surgeon paid the unusual salary of 50 a year on account of the extraordinary dangers of this voyage. Bailey was probably the son of that Bayly, who was first gov- ernor for the Adventurers on the bay. A seasoned veteran, he had passed through the famous siege of Nelson in '97. When Knight had left Albany to come to England, Fullerton was deputy and Bailey next in command. There was peace with France, but that had not prevented a score of French raiders coming overland to ambush the English. Bailey got wind of the raiders hiding in the woods round Albany and shutting gates, bided his time. Word was sent to the mate of his ship lying off shore, at the sound of a cannon shot to rush to the rescue. At midnight a thunderous hammering on the front gates summoned the English to surrender. Bailey gingerly opened the wicket at the side of the gate and asked what was wanted. 1 l-'.ntrancc," yelled the raiders, confident that tlu-y had taken the English by surprise. The Conquest of the Great Northwest Bailey answered that the Governor was asleep, but he would go and fetch the keys. The raiders rallied to the gate. Bailey put the match lighters to the six-pounders inside and let fly simultaneous charges across the platform where the raiders crowded against the gate. There was instant slaughter, a wild yell, and a rush for cover in the woods, but the cannon shot had brought the master of Bailey's sloop running ashore. Raiders and sailors dashed into each other's faces, with the result that the crew were annihilated in the dark. For some days the raiders hung about the outskirts of the woods, burying the dead, waiting for the wounded to heal, and hunting for food. A solitary Frenchman was observed parad- ing the esplanade in front of the fort. Fullerton came out and demanded what he wanted. The fellow made no answer but continued his solitary march up and down under the English guns. Fuller- ton offered to accept him as a hostage for the others' good conduct, but the man was mute as stone. The English governor bade him be off, or he would be shot. The strange raider continued his odd tramp up and down till a shot from the fort window killed him instantly. The only explanation of the incident was that the man must have been crazed by the hardship of the raid and by the horrors of the mid- night slaughter. 302 Old Captain Knight Beset by Gold Fever Bailey, then, was the man chosen as the captain of The Albany and Knight's right-hand man. The ships were to keep together till they reached the entrance of the straits, the two merchantmen under Ward and Belcher then to go forward to the fur posts, Knight's two ships straight west for Ches- terfield Inlet, where he was to winter. Two guineas each, the Adventurers gave the crews of each ship that afternoon on June 3, at Gravesend, to drink "God-speed, a prosperous discovery, a jaire wind, and a good sail" As a railway is now being actually built after being projected on paper for more than twenty-five years from the western prairie to a seaport on Hudson Bay, which has for its object the diversion of Western traffic to Europe from New York to some harbor on Hudson Bay, it is necessary to give in detail what the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company reveal about this route. Hudson Strait opens from the Atlantic between Resolution Island on the north and the Button Islands on the south. From point to point, this end of the strait is forty-five miles wide. At the other end, the west side, between Digges' Island and Nottingham Island, is a distance of thirty-five miles. From east to west, the straits are four hundred and fifty miles long wider at the east where the south 303 The Com/next of the Great Northwest side is known as Ungava Bay, contracting at the west, to the Upper Narrows. The south side of the strait is Labrador; the north, Baffin's Land. Both sides are lofty, rocky, cavernous shores lashed by a tide that rises in places as high as thirty-five feet and runs in calm weather ten miles an hour. Pink granite islands dot the north shore in groups that afford harborage, but all shores present an adamant front, edges sharp as a knife or else rounded hard to have withstood and cut the tremendous ice jam of a floating world suddenly contracted to forty miles, which Davis Strait pours down at the east end and Fox Channel at the west. Seven hundred feet is considered a good-sized hill ; one thousand feet, a mountain. Both the north and the south sides of the straits rise two thousand feet in places. Through these rock walls ice has poured and torn and ripped a way since the ice age preced- ing history, cutting a great channel to the Atlantic. Here, the iron walls suddenly break to secluded silent valleys moss-padded, snow-edged, lonely as the day Earth first saw light. Down these valleys pour the clear streams of the eternal snows, burnished as silver against the green, setting the silence echoing with the tinkle of cataracts over some rock wall, or filling the air with the voice of many waters at noon- tide thaw. One old navigator Coates describes the 34 Old (.'(.ifttnin Knlt/lif 7>Y.sv7 hij (iold Fever beat of the angry tide at the rock base and the silver voice of the mountain brooks, like the treble and bass of some great cathedral organ sounding its diapason to the glory of God in this peopleless wilderness. Perhaps the kyacks of some solitary Eskimo, lashed abreast twos and threes to prevent capsizing, may shoot out from some of these bog-covered val- ley< like seabirds; but it is only when the Eskimos happen to be hunting here, or the ships of the whalers and fur traders are passing up and down that there is any sign of human habitation on the straits. Walrus wallow on the pink granite islands in huge herds. Polar bears flounder from icepan to icepan. The arctic hare, white as snow but for the great bulging black eye, bounds over the bowlders. Snow buntings, whistling swans, snow geese, ducks in myriads flacker and clacker and hold solemn con- clave on the adjoining rocks, as though this were their realm from the beginning and for all time. Of a tremendous depth are the waters of the straits. Not for nothing has the ice world been grinding through this narrow channel for billions of years. No fear of shoals to the mariner. Fear is of another sort. When the ice is running in a whirlpool and the incoming tide meets the ice jam and the waters mount thirty-five feet high and a wind roars between the high shores like a Ix-llows then it 305 The Conquest of the Great Northwest is that the straits roll and pitch and funnel their waters into black troughs where the ships go down. "Undertow," the old Hudson's Bay captains called the suck of the tide against the ice- wall; and that black hole where the lumpy billows seemed to part like a passage between wall of ice and wall of water was what the mariners feared. The other great danger was just a plain crush, getting nipped between two icepans rearing and plunging like fighting stal- lions, with the ice blocks going off like pistol shots or smashed glass. No child's play is such navigat- ing either for the old sailing vessels of the fur traders or the modern ice-breakers propelled by steam! Yet, the old sailing vessels and the whaling fleets have navigated these straits for two hundred years. Westward of the straits, the shores dropped to low, sandy reaches at Mansfield Island. Another five hundred miles across the bay brought the ships to Churchill and York (Nelson). Here, then, came Captain Knight's fleet. And the terrific dangers of his venture met him as it were on the spot. The records do not give the exact point of the disaster, but one may guess without stretching imagination that it was in the Upper Narrows where thirty-five feet of lashing tide meet a churning wall of ice. The ships were embayed, sails lowered, rudders 306 Old Captain Knight Beset by Gold Fever unshipped, and anchors put out for the night. Night did not mean dark. It meant the sunlight aslant the ice fields and pools in hues of fire that tinted the green waves and set rainbows playing in the spray. Gulls wheeled and screamed overhead. Cascades tinkled over the ice walls. There was the deep still- ness of twilight calm, then the quiver of the ship's timbers forewarning the rising tide, then the long, low undertone of the ocean depths gathering might to hurl against the iron forces of the ice. The crews had been rambling over the ice but were now recalled to be on the watch as the tide rose. Some were at the windlass ready to heave anchors up at first opening of clear water; others ready to lower boats and tow from dangers ; others again preparing blasts of powder to blow up the ice if the tide threat- ened to close the floes in a squeeze. Captain Ward's men must have been out on the ice, for it happened in the twinkling of an eye as such wrecks always happened, and not a man was lost. Two icepans reared up, smashed together, crushed the frigate Hudson's Bay, like an eggshell and she sank a water-logged wreck before their eyes. Ward's crew were at once taken on board by Belcher, and when the ice loosened, carried on down to York and All any. There was a lawsuit against the Company for the wages of these men wrecked outward bound 37 and kept in idleness on the bay for thirteen months. The matter was compromised by the Company paying ten months' wages instead of thirteen. Captain Knight waited only long enough at Churchill to leave the fort provisions. Then he set out on his quest to the north. This could scarcely be described as foolhardy, for his ships carried the frames for houses to winter in the North. From this point on, the story must be pieced together of fragments. From the time Captain Knight left Churchill, in 1719, his journal ceases. No line more came from the game old pathfinder to the Company. The year 1719 passed, 1720, 1721, still no word of him. Surely, he must have passed through the Straits of Anian to the South Sea and would presently come home from Asia laden with spices and gold dust for the Company. But why didn't he send back one of the little whaling boats to Churchill with word of his progress; or why didn't some of the men come down from the whaling station he was to establish at Chesterfield Inlet? Henry Kelsey takes a cruise on the sloop Prosperous from York, in 1719, but finds no trace of him. Hancock has been cruising the whaling seas on The Success that same summer, but he learns nothing of Knight. The whole summer of 1721, while whaling, Kelsey is on the lookout for 308 ' Old Captain Knight Beset by Gold Fever the peaked sails of Knight's ships; but he sees never a sail. Napper is sent out again on the sloop Success, but he runs amuck of a reef four days from Nelson River and loses his ship and almost his life. Three full years were long enough for Knight to have circumnavigated the globe. By 1721, the Com- pany was so thoroughly alarmed that it bought The Whalebone, sloop John Scroggs, master and sent it from Gravesend on the 3ist of May to search for Knight. Two years Scroggs searched the north- west coast of the bay, but the northwest coast of the bay is one thousand miles in and out, and Scroggs missed the hidden hole-in-the-wall that might have given up the secret of the sea. Norton traveling inland with the Indians hears disquieting stories, and some whalers chancing North, in 1726, discover a new harbor at the bottom of which lie cannon, anchors, bits of iron, but it is not till fifty years later that the story is learned in detail. Here it is: Knight steered for that western arm of the sea known as Chesterfield Inlet. It was here that Norton had heard legends of copper mines and seen evi- dences of tide water. Just south of Chesterfidd Inlet is a group of white quart/ islands the largest five by twenty miles, known as Marble Island, from the fact that it is bare of growth as a gravestone. 309 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Bedford whalers of modern days have called it by another name Dead Man's Island. At the extreme east is a hole-like cavity in the rock wall where Eskimos were wont to shoot in with their bladder boats and hide from the fury of the northeast gale. One night as the autumn storms raged, the Indians were amazed to see two huge shadows emerge from the lashing hurricane like floating houses- driving straight as an arrow for the mark to certain destruction between an angry sea and the rock wall. If there were cries for help, they were drowned by the shrieks of the hurricane. In the morning, when the storm had abated, the Indians saw that the shadows had been whitemen's ships. The large one had struck on the reefs and sunk. The other was a mass of wave-beaten wreckage on the shore, but the white men were toiling like demons, saving the timbers. Presently, the whites began to erect a framework their winter house. To the wondering Eskimos, the thing rose like magic. The Indians grasped their kyacks and fled in terror. It need scarcely be told these were Knight's treasure-seekers, wrecked without saving a pound of provisions on an island bare as a billiard ball twenty miles from the mainland. How did the crews pass that winter? Their only food must have been such wild cranberries as they could gather under the 310 Old Captain Knight Beset by Gold Fever drifting snows, arctic hares, snowbirds, perhaps the carcass of an occasional dead porpoise or whale. When the Indians came back in the summer of 1720, there were very few whitemen left, but there was a great number of graves graves scooped out of drift sand with bowlders for a tombstone. The survivors seemed to be starving. They fell like wild beasts on the raw seal meat and whale oil that the Eskimos gave them. They seemed to be trying to make a boat out of the driftwood that had been left of that winter's fuel. The next time the Eskimos visited the castaways, there were only two men alive. These were demented with despair, passing the time weeping and going to the highest rock on the island to watch for a sail at sea. Their clothes had been worn to tatters. They were clad in the skins of the chase and looked like madmen. From the Indians' account, it was now two years from the time of the wreck. What ammunition had been saved from the ships, must have been almost exhausted. How these two men kept life in their bodies for two winters in the most bitterly cold, exposed part of Hudson Bay, huddling in their snow-buried hut round fires of moss and driftwood, with the howling north wind chanting the death song of the winding sheet, and the scream of the hungry were- wolf borne to their cars in the storm' can better be imagined than described. The Conquest of the Great Northwest Why did not they tiy to escape? Possibly, because they were weakened by famine and scurvy. Surely Bering's Russians managed better when storm cast them on a barren island while they were searching this same mythical passage. They drifted home on the wreckage. Why could not these men have tried to escape in the same way? In the first place, they did not know they were only twelve miles from the main coast. Cast on Marble Island in the storm and the dark, they had no idea where they were, except that it was in .the North and in a harbor facing east. Of the two last survivors, one seemed to be the armorer, or else that surgeon who was to receive 50 for the extraordinary dangers of this voyage, for he was constantly working with metal instruments to rivet the planks of his raft to- gether. But he was destined to perish as his com- rades. When his companion died, the man tried to scoop out a grave in the sand. It was too much for his strength. He fell as he toiled over the grave and died among the Eskimo tents. So perished Captain Knight and his treasure-seekers, including the veteran Bailey as Hudson had perished before them taken as toll of man's progress by the insatiable sea. Not a secret has been wrested from the Unknown, not a milepost won for civilization from savagery, but some life has paid for the secret to go down in despair 312 Old Captain Kniyht Beset by Gold Fever and defeat; but some bleaching skeleton of a name- less failure marks where the mile forward was won. The lintel of every doorway to advancement is ever marked with some blood sacrifice. Whalers in 1726, saw the cannon and anchors lying at the bottom of the harbor, also casks with iron hoops that were to bring back the gold dust. Hearnc, in 1769, could count where the graves had been scraped up by the wolves, and he gathered up the skeletons along the beach to bury them in a com- mon grave. Latterly, oddly enough, that island was the rendezvous of Northern whalers where they came from the far North to bury their dead and set up crosses for those who lie in the sea without a grave. It was known as Dead Man's Island. After giving an account of three wrecks in four years, I hope it may not seem inconsistent to say that I believe the next century will see a Hudson's Bay route to Europe. What you say after telling of three wrecks in four years? Yes what Atlantic port does not have six wrecks in ten years? New York and Montreal have more. If the Hudson's Bay route is not fit for navigation, the country must make- it fit for navigation. Of trlrgraphs, shelters, light- houses, there is not now one. Canals have been dug for less cause than the Upper Narrows of Hudson 3'3 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Straits. If Peter the Great had waited till St. Peters- burg was a fit site for a city, there would have been no St. Petersburg. He made it fit. The same problem confronts northwest America to-day. It is absurd that a population of millions has no seaport nearer than two thousand miles. Churchill or York would be seaports in the middle of the continent. Of course, there would be wrecks and difficulties. The wrecks are part of the toll we pay for harnessing the sea. The difficulties are what make nations great. One day was the delay allowed the fur ships for the straits. Who has not waited longer than one day to enter New York harbor or Montreal? Meanwhile, moneybags at home were counting their shekels. A wild craze, of speculation was sweep- ing over England. It was a fever of getting-some- thing-for-nothing, floating wild schemes of paper capital to be sold to the public for pounds, shillings and pence. In modern language it would be called "wild-catting." The staid "old Worthies" as the Adventurers were contemptuously designated were caught by the craze. It was decided on August 19, 1720, to increase the capital of the Company from 31,500 to 378,000 to be paid for in subscriptions of 10 per cent, installments. Before the scheme had matured, the bubble of speculation had collapsed. Old Captain Knight Beset by Gold Fever Money could neither be borrowed nor begged. The plan to enlarge the stock was dropped as it stood with subscriptions to the amount of 103,950 paid in which practically meant that the former capital f ^S 1 ^ 00 na d been trebled and an additional 10 per cent, levied. On this twice-trebled capital of 103,950, divi- dends of 5 per cent, were paid in 1721 ; of 8 per cent, in 1722; of 12 per cent, in 1723 and '24; of 10 per cent, from 1725 to 1737, when the dividends fell to 8 per cent, and went up again to 10 per cent, in 1739. From 1723, instead of leaving the money idle in the strong box, it was invested by the Company in bonds that bore interest till their ships came home. From 1735, the Bank of England regularly advanced money for the Company's operations. Sir Bibye Lake was governor from the time he received such good terms in the French treaty. The governor's salary is now 200, the deputy's 150, the committeemen 100 each. It was in February, 1724, that a warehouse was leased in Lime Street at 12 a year, the present home of the Company. In four years, the Company had lost four vessels. These were replaced by four bigger frigates, and there come into the service the names of captains famous on Hudson Bay Belcher, and Goston, and 315 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Spurell, and Kennedy, and Christopher Middleton, and Coates, and Isbister, with officers of the names of Inkster, and Kipling, and Maclish, and MacKenzie, and Gunn, and Clement. Twice in ten years, Cap- tain Coates is wrecked in the straits, on the 26th of June, 1727, outward bound with all cargo and again on the frigate Hudson's Bay in 1736, when "we sank" relates Coates, "less than ten minutes ajter we were caught by the ice." From being an apprentice boy traveling inland to the Indians, Richard Norton has become governor of Churchill, with an Indian wife and half-Indian sons sent to England for education. Norton receives orders, in 1736, once more to explore Chesterfield Inlet where Knight had perished. Napper on The Churchill, sloop, and Robert Crow on The Musquash carry him up in the summer of 1737. Napper dies of natural causes on the voyage, but Chesterfield Inlet is found to be a closed arm of the sea, not a passage to the Pacific; and widow Napper is voted fifty guineas from the Company. Kelsey dies in 1729, and widow Kelsey, too, is voted a bounty of ten guineas, her boy to be taken as apprentice. In 1736, Captain Middleton draws plans for the building of a fine new post at Moose and of a stone fort at Eskimo Point, Churchill, which shall be the strongest fort in America. The walls are to be six- 316 Old Captain Knight Beset by Gold Fever teen feet high of solid stone with a depth of twenty- four feet solid masonry at base. On the point op- posite Eskimo Cape, at Cape Merry, named after the deputy governor, are to be blockhouses ten feet high with six great guns mounted where watch is to be kept night and day. Moose will send up the supply of timber for Churchill, and the Company sends from London sixty-eight builders, among whom is one Joseph Robson, at 25 a year, who afterward writes furious attacks on the Company. Barely is Moose com- pleted when it is burned to the ground, through the carelessness of the cook spilling coals from his bake oven. Two things, perhaps, stirred the Company up to this unwonted activity. Spies were coming overland from St. Lawrence French explorers working their way westward, led by La Verendrye. "We warn you" the Company wrote to each of its factors at this time, "meet these spies very civily but do not offer to detain them and oti no account suffer such to come within the gates nor let the servants converse icith them, and use (ill Ic^il methods to make them depart and be on your guard not to tell the company's secrets" Then in 1740, came a bolt from the blue. Cap- tain Christopher Middle-ton, their trusted officer, publicly resigned from the service to go into the 317 The Conquest of the Great Northwest King's navy for the discovery of a Northwest Passage through Hudson Bay. Notes on Chapter XVI. Of Baffin's Land, Dr. Bell, who personally explored Hudson Bay in 1885 for the Dominion Gov- ernment, says: "These ancient grounds probably contain rich glacer gold in the valleys of the streams." The mica mines of affin's Land were being mined in 1906. The name of the captain, who perished with Knight, is our friend Bailey of the Iberville siege; not Barlow, as all modern histories copying from Hearne and 1749 Parl. Report give. The minutes of the H. B. C. show that Barlow is a misprint for Berley, and Berley for Bailey, which name is given repeatedly in the minutes in connection with this voyage. The account of Bering's efforts to find the Straits of Anian and of his similar fate will be found in "Vikings of the Pacific." All the printed accounts of Knight's disaster say he win- tered at Churchill in 1719-20. This is wrong, as shown by the unprinted records of H. B. C. He sailed at once for the North. All printed accounts except Hearne's give the place of dis- aster as the west end of Marble Island. This is a mistake. It was- at the east end as given in the French edition of Hearne. Hearne it is, who gives the only account of Bailey's defense of Albany in 1704, only Hearne calls Bailey, Barlow, which the records show to be wrong. An almost parallel wreck to that of Knight's took place at Gull Island off Newfoundland twenty-five years ago. A whole shipload of castaways perished on a barren island in sight of their own harbor lights, only in the case of Gull Island, the castaways did not survive longer than a few weeks. They lived under a piece of canvas and subsisted on snow-water. It was not till 1731 that Knight's Journals as left at Churchill were sent home to London. They cease at 1719. Richard Norton first went North by land in 1718. His next trip was after Knight's death; his next, by boat as told in this chapter. In 1723, Samuel Hopkins was sent home in irons from Albany for three times absconding over the walls to the woods without Governor Hyatt's leave. Examined by the committee, he would give no excuse and was publicly dismissed with loss of 318 Old Captain Knight Beset Iry Gold Fever wages. Examined later privately, he was re-engaged with honor which goes to prove that Myatt may have been one of those governors, who ruled his men with the thick end of an oar. At this period, servants for the first time were allowed to go to the woods to trap and were given one half the proceeeds of their hunt. 319 CHAPTER XVII 1740-1770 THE COMPANY'S PROSPERITY AROUSES OPPOSITION ARTHUR DOBBS AND THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE AND THE ATTACK ON THE CHARTER NO NORTH- WEST PASSAGE IS FOUND BUT THE FRENCH SPUR THE ENGLISH TO RENEWED ACTIVITY FOR fifty years, the Company had been paying dividends that never went lower than 7 per cent, and generally averaged 10. These dividends were on capital that had been twice trebled. The yearly fur sales yielded from 20,000 to 30,000 to the Adventurers twice and three times the orig- inal capital, which it must be remembered was not all subscribed in cash. French hunters had been penetrating America from the St. Lawrence. Bering had discovered Alaska on the west for Russia. La Verendrye had discovered the great inland plains between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri, for France. It was just beginning to dawn on men's minds what a vast domain lay between the planta- tions of the Atlantic seaboard and the Western Sea. It was inevitable that men should ask themselves 320 The Company's Prosperity Arouses Opposition whether Charles II. had any right to deed away for- ever that vast domain to those court favorites and their heirs known as the Hudson's Bay Company. To be sure, Parliament had confirmed the charter when the Stuart House fell; but the charter had been confirmed for only seven years. Those seven years had long since expired, and the original stock of the fur company had passed from the heirs of the original grantees to new men stock specu- lators and investors. With the exception of royalty, there was not a single stockholder of the Hudson's Bay Company by 1 740, who was an heir of the orig- inal men named in the original charter. Men asked themselves had these stockholders any right to hold monopoly against all other traders over a western domain the size of half Europe? The charter had been granted in the first place as a reward for efforts to find passage to the South Sea. What had the Company done to find a passage to the Pacific? Sent Knight and his fifty men hunting gold sands in the North, where they perished ; and dispatched half a dozen little sloops north of Chesterfield Inlet to hunt whales. This had the Adventurers done to earn their (barter, and ever since sat snugly at home drawing dividends on twice-trebled capital equal to 90 per cent, on the original stock, intrenched behind the comfortable feudal notion that it was 321 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the manifest design of an All Wise Providence to create this world for the benefit of the few who can get on top and exploit the many to the profit of the aforesaid few. We, whose modern democracy is working ten- fold worse injustice by favors to the few against the many, must have a care how we throw stones at that old notion. Feudalism in the history of the race had its place. It was the system by which the bravest man led the clan and ruled because he was fittest to rule as well as to protect. Of all those rivals now yelping enviously at the Company's privi- leges which could point to an ancestor, who had been willing to brave the perils of a first essay to Hudson Bay? We have seen how even yet the Company could obtain servants only by dint of promising bounties and wives and dowries; how the men under command of the first navigators balked and reared and mutinied at the slightest risk; how in spite of all we can say against feudalism it was the spirit of feudalism, the spirit of the exclusive favored few, that faced the first risks and bought success by willing, reckless death, and later fought like demons to hold the bay against France. It was one Arthur Dobbs, a gentleman and scholar, who voiced the general sentiment rising against the 322 The Companies Prosperity Arouses Opposition privileges of the Company. Dobbs had been bitten by that strange mania which had lured so many and was yet to lure more brave seamen to their death. He was sure there was a Northwest Passage. Granted that; and the sins of the fur traders became enormi- ties. Either they had not earned their charter by searching the Northwest Passage, or if they had found it, they had kept the discovery a secret through jealousy of their trade. Dobbs induced the Ad- miralty to set aside two vessels for the search. Then he persuaded Captain Middleton, who had for twenty years navigated Hudson Bay, to resign the service of the Company and lead the government expedition of 1741-2. Around this expedition raged a maelstrom of ill feeling and false accusations and lies. The Com- pany were jealous of their trade and almost instantly instructed their Governing Committee to take secret means to prevent this expedition causing encroach- ment on their rights. This only aroused the fury of the Admiralty. The Company were given to under- stand that if they did not do all they could to facili- tate Middleton's search, they might lose their charter. On this, the Company ordered their factors on the bay to afford Middleton every aid, but judging from the factors' conduct, it may be surmised that secret instructions of another nature were sent out. 323 The Conquest of the Great Northwest When Middleton came to Churchill in July on The Furnace Bomb and Discovery, he found buoys cut, harbor lights out and a governor mad as a hornet, who forbade the searchers to land, or have any intercourse with the Indians. Taking two Indians as guides, Middleton proceeded north as far as 66 in the region of Rowe's Welcome beyond Chesterfield Inlet. Here, he was utterly blocked by the ice, and the expedition returned to England a failure. It was at this point the furor arose. It was charged that the Company had bribed Middleton with ^5 ,000 not to find a passage; that he had sailed east instead of west ; that he had cast the two Indian guides adrift at Marble Island with scant means of reaching the main shore .alive; and that while winter- ing in Churchill he had been heard to say, "That the Company need not be uneasy, for if he did find a passage, no one on earth would be a bit the wiser." The quarrel, which set England by the ears for ten years and caused a harvest of bitter pamphlets that would fill a small library need not be dealt with here. Middleton knew there was no passage for com- mercial purpose. That the Admiralty accepted his verdict may be inferred from the fact that he was permanently appointed in the king's service ; but 3 2 4 The C out pan if .^ Prosperity Arouses Opposition Dobbs was not satisfied. He hurled baseless charges at Middleton, waged relentless pamphlet war against the Company and showered petitions on Parliament. Parliament was persuaded to offer a reward of 20,000 to any one rinding a passage to the Pacific. Dobbs then formed an opposition company, opened subscriptions for a capital of 10,000 in one hundred shares of 100 each for a second expedition, and petitioned the king for a grant of all lands found adjacent to the waters discovered, with the > rights oj exclusive trade. Exclusive trade! There the secret was out the cloven hoof! It was not because they had not earned their charter, that the Adven- turers had been assailed; but because rivals, them- srlves, wanted rights to exclusive trade. To these petitions, the Company showered back counter- memorials; and memorials of special privileges be- coming the fashion, other merchants of London, in 1752, asked for the grant of all Labrador; to which the Company again registered its counter-memorial. The furor materialized in two things: the expedi- tion of the Dobbs Company to find the Northwest Passage in 1746-47, and the Parliamentary Inquiry, in 1748-49, to look into the rights and workings of the Adventurers' charter. The Dobbs galley, under Captain Moore was one hundred and eighty tons; The California, Captain 3 2 5 Smith, one hundred and forty tons ; and to the crews of both, rewards for the discovery of the Passage to the South Sea were to be given ranging from 500 for the captains to 200 to be divided among the sailors. Henry Ellis went as agent for the Dobbs Company. The name of The California was indic- ative of where these argonauts hoped to sail. Oddly enough, that Captain Middleton, whom the Dobbs forces had so mercilessly belabored accompanied the explorers some distance westward from the Ork- neys on The Shark as convoy against French pirates. After leaving Middleton, one of the vessels suffered an experience that very nearly finished Arthur Dobbs' enterprise. "Nothing had occurred," writes Ellis, "till the 2ist of June, at night, when a terrible fire broke out in the great cabin of The Dobbs, and quickly made progress to the powder room, where there were not less than thirty-six or forty barrels of powder besides other combustibles. It is impos- sible to express the consternation. Every one on board had every reason to expect that moment was their last. You might hear all varieties of sea- eloquence, cries, prayers, curses, scolding, mingled together. Water was passed along by those who still preserved their reason, but the crew were for hoisting out the boats. Lashings were cut, but none had patience to hoist them out. The ship was head 326 The Company's Prosperity Arouse* Opposition to wind, the sails shaking and making a noise like thunder, then running right before the wind and rolling, every one on deck waiting for the blast to put an end to our fears." The fire was put out before it reached the powder, but one can guess the scare dampened the ardor of the crew. Very little ice was met in Hudson Straits and by August 19, the vessels were at Marble Island. The season was top late to go on north, so the ships sailed to winter at York (Nelson) on Hayes River. Here, the usual quarrels took place with the Hudson's Bay people buoys and flag signals being cut down as the ships ran through the shoals of Five-Fathom Hole, five miles up Hayes River. A fort called Montague House was built for the winter on the south side, the main house being a two-story log- barracks, the outbuildings, a sort of lean-to, or wooden wigwam banked up with snow, where the crows could have quarters. The harbor was frozen over by October 8. Heavy fur clothing was then donned for the winter, but in spite of precautions against scurvy exercise, the use of spruce beer, out- door life four men died from the disease before ice cleared from Hayes River in June. It need not be told here that no passage was found. As the boats advanced farther and farther north of Rowe's Welcome toward Fox Channel, the hope- 327 The Conquest of the Great Northwest lessness of the quest became apparent. Before them lay an ice world, "As gloomy a prospect," writes Ellis, "as ever astonished mortal eyes. The ragged rocks seemed to hang above our heads. In some places there were falls of water dashing from cliff to cliff. From others, hung icicles like the pipes of a vast organ. But the most overwhelming things were the shattered crags at our feet, which appeared to have burst from the mountains through the power of the frost amazing relics of the wreck of nature." In October of 1747, the ships were back on the Thames. If Dobbs' Expedition had found a Northwest Passage, the history of the Adventurers would close here. With the merchants of London a unit against the charter and the Admiralty open to persuasion from either side, there can be no doubt that the discovery of a way to China through Hudson Bay would have sounded the death knell of the Company. But the Dobbs Expedition was a failure. The Company's course was vindicated, and when the Parliamentary Committee of 1748-49 met, affairs were judiciously and I must believe intentionally steered away from the real question the validity of the charter to such side issues as the Northwest Passage, the state of the Indians, whether the coun- 328 The Company's Prosperity Arouses Opposition try could be inhabited or not, questions it will be noticed on which no one was competent to give evidence but the Company itself. Among other evidence, there was quietly laid on the table the journals of one Joseph La France, a French wood- rover who had come overland from Michilimackinac to Hudson Bay. This record showed that France was already on the field in the West. La Verendrye and his sons were on their way to the Rockies. Three forts were already built on the Assiniboine. Such evidence could have only one influence on Parliament. If Parliament took away the charter from the Company declared, in fact, that the charter was not legal who would hold the vast do- main against France? The question of the abstract right did not come up at all. Does it ever in international affairs? The question was one for diplomacy, and diplomacy won. It was better for England that the Adventurers should remain in undisturbed possession ; and the Company retained its charter. Meanwhile, that activity among the French fur traders stirred up the old Company as all the home agitation could not. Each of the forts, Churchill furthest north, York on Hayes River, Albany, and Henley House up Albany River, Moose (Rupert lay 329 The Conquest of the Great Northwest dismantled these years) and Richmond Fort on the east side of the bay, were strengthened by additions to the garrisons of from thirty to fifty men. Each of the four frigates sent out by the Company had a crew of fifty men, among whom was one young sailor, Samuel Hearne, of whom more anon. Every year took out more cannon for the forts, more builders for Churchill, now a stone-walled fort strong as Quebec. Joseph Isbister, who had been governor at Albany and made some inland voyages from. Churchill, was permanently appointed, from 1770, as agent at Quebec to watch what rival fur traders were doing; and when he died, Hugh Findlay suc- ceeded him. A new house was rushed up on Severn River in 1756, to attract those Indians of Manitoba where the French were established. Lest other mer- chants should petition for Labrador, the Slude River Station was moved to Richmond Fort and Captain Coates appointed to survey the whole east coast of Hudson Bay, for which labor he was given a present of 80. Poor Coates! This was in 1750. Within a year, he is hauled up for illicit trade and dismissed ignominiously from the service; whereat he suicides from disgrace. Eight years later, Richmond Fort is closed at a loss of 20,000, but it has shut the mouths of other petitioners for Labrador; It is in 1757, too, that the Company inaugurates 330 The Company's Prosperity Arouses Opposition its pension system withholding 5 per cent, of wages for a fund. As if Joseph La France's journal had not been alarming enough, there comes overland to Nelson, in 1759, that Jan Ba'tiste Larkfe, a spy whom the English engage and vote a wig (i 55) "to keep him loyal." At Henley House up Albany River, pushing trade to attract the Indians away from the French, is that Andrew Graham, whose diary gives such a picture of the period. Richard Norton of Churchill is long since dead. Of his half-breed sons educated in Eng- land, William has become a captain; Moses, from being sailor under Middleton, wins distinction as explorer of Chesterfield Inlet and rises to become governor at Churchill. Among the recruits of the increasing garrisons are names famous in the West Bannister's and Spencer's and Flett's. By way of encouraging zeal, the Company, in 1770, increases salaries for chief traders to 130 a year, for captains to 12 a month with a gratuity of 100 if they have no wreck. Each chief trader is to have added to his salary three shillings for every twenty beaver sent home from his department; each captain, one* shilling sixpence for every twenty beaver brought safely to England. As these bounties amounted to 108 and 150 a year, they more than doubled salaries. I am sorry to say that at this period, 33' The Conquest of the Great Northwest brandy began to be plied freely. French power had fallen at Quebec in 1759. French traders were scattered through the wilds birds of passage, free as air, lawless as birds, too, who lured the Indians from the English by the use of liquor. If an English trader ventured among Indians, who knew the cus- toms of the French, and did not proffer a keg of watered brandy, he was apt to be forthwith douched 11 baptized" the Indians called it. But the greatest activity displayed by the English at this time was inland from the bay. If Joseph La France could come overland from Lake Superior, English traders could be sent inland. Andrew Gra- ham is ordered to keep his men at Severn and Albany moving up stream. One Isaac Butt is paid 14 for his voyaging, and in 1756 the Company votes 20 to Anthony Hendry for his remarkable voyage from York to the Forks of the Saskatchewan the first Englishman to visit this now famous region. Hen- dry's voyage merits a detailed account in the next chapter. t Notes to Chapter XVII. The list of governors at this period is: Sir Bibye Lake, 1712-1743; Benjamin Pitt, 1743-1746, when he died; Thomas Knapp, 1746-1750; Sir Atwell Lake, 1750-1760; Sir William Baker, 1760-1770; Bibye Lake, Jr., 1770-1782. The controversy between the Company and Dobbs fills vol- umes. Ellis and Dobbs need not be taken seriously. They were for the time maniacs on the subject of a passage that had no existence except in their own fancy. Robson is different. 332 The Company* x Prosperity Arouses Opposition Having been a builder at Churchill, he knew the ground, yet we find him uttering such absurd charges as that the Company purposely sent Governor Knight to his death and were glad "that the troublesome fellow was out of the way." This is both malicious and ignorant, for as Robson knew, the North- west Passage played a very secondary part in Knight's fatal voyage. The Company just as much as Knight was infatuated with the lure of gold-dust. Perhaps, it will some day prove not so foolish an infatuation. Gold placers have been found in Klondike. Indian legend says they also exist in the ices of the East. The Parliamentary Report for 1749 is an excellent example of investigating "off the beat." The only thing of value in the report is Joseph La France's Journal. It is valuable not as a voyage for this trip was well tracked from the days of Radisson and Iberville but as a description of the Frencn posts on the Saskatchewan, which Hendry visited Pachegoia or Pasquia or the Pas and Bourbon and as helping to identify the Indians, whom Hendry met. La Verendrye voyages are not given here, because not rela- tive to the subject. His life will be found in "Pathfinders of the West." The Canadian Archives give Hendry's name as Hendey. It is spelt Hendry in the H. B. C. minutes. In 1746 the warehouse on Lime Street was purchased for 550. This year, too, comes a letter to the Company from Captain Lee of Virginia, warning that a French pirate of two hundred and fifty men, which captured him, is on the lookout for the fur ships. Sharpe was the lawyer who engineered the Parliamentary Inquiry of 1749. I find his charges in the Minutes 250 and 505- John Potts was the trader of Richmond, when Coates was captain. In 1766, Samuel Hearne's name appears as on the pay roll of The Prince Rupert. Whale fisheries were now flourishing on the bay, for which each captain received a bounty of 25 per cent, on net proceeds. In 1769, the Company issued as standard of trade 3 marten, i beaver; 2 fox, 3 beaver: gray fox, 4 beaver; white fox, $ beaver; i otter, i bea- 333 CHAPTER XVIII 1754-1755 THE MARCH ACROSS THE CONTINENT BEGINS THE COMPANY SENDS A MAN TO THE BLACKFEET OF THE SOUTH SASKATCHEWAN ANTHONY HENDRY IS THE FIRST ENGLISHMAN TO PENETRATE TO THE SASKATCHEWAN THE FIRST ENGLISHMAN TO WINTER WEST OF LAKE WINNIPEG HE MEETS THE SIOUX AND THE BLACKFEET AND INVITES THEM TO THE BAY NOTHING lends more romantic coloring to the operations of the fur traders on Hud- son Bay than the character of the men in the service. They were adventurers, pure and simple, in the best and the worst sense of that term. Peter Romulus, the foreign surgeon, rubbed elbows with Radisson, the Frenchman. A nephew of Sir Stephen Evance come out under the plain name, Evans is under the same roof as a niece of the same governor of the Company, who has come to the bay as the doweried wife of an apprentice. Younger sons of the English gentry entered the service on the same level as the Cockney apprentice. Rough Ork- 334 The March Across the Continent Begins ney fishermen with the thick burr of the North in their accent, the iron strength of the North in their blood, and a periphery of Calvinistic self- righteous- ness, which a modern gatling gun could not shoot through had as bedfellows in the fort barracks soft- voiced English youths from the south counties, who had been outlawed for smuggling, or sent to the bay to expiate early dissipations. And sometimes this curious conglomeration of human beings was ruled in the fort ruled with the absolute despotism of the little king, of course by a drunken half-breed brute like Governor Moses Norton, whose one qualification was that he could pile up the beaver returns and hold the Indians' friendship by being baser and more uncivilized than they. The theme is one for song and story as well as for history. Among the flotsam and jetsam cast on Hudson Bay in the seventeen hundred and fifties was one Anthony Hendry, a boy from the Isle of Wight. He had been outlawed for smuggling and sought escape from punishment by service on the bay. He came as bookkeeper. Other servants could scarcely be driven or bribed to go inland with the Indians. Hendry asked permission to go back to their country with the Assiniboines, in 1754. James Isham was governor of York Fort at the time. He was only too glad to give Hendry permission. 335 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Four hundred Assiniboines had come in canoes with their furs to the fort. Leather wigwams spread back from the Hayes River like a town of mush- rooms. Canoes lay in hundreds bottom-up on the beach, and where the reddish blue of the camp- fire curled up from the sands filling the evening air with the pungent smell of burning bark, Assiniboine voyageurs could be seen melting resin and tar to gum the splits in the birch canoes. Hunters had exchanged their furs for guns and ammunition. Squaws had bartered their store of pemmican (buffalo) meat for gay gewgaws red flannels and prints, colored beads, hand mirrors of tin given at the wicket gate of the fort. Young Hendry joined the encampment, became acquainted with different leaders of the brigades, and finally secured an Assiniboine called Little Bear as a guide to the country of the Great Unknown River, where the French sent traders the Saskatchewan. It was the end of June before the Indians were ready to break camp for the homeward voyage. By look- ing at the map, it will be seen that Nelson and Hayes rivers flow northeast from the same prairie region to a point at the bay called Port Nelson, or Fort York. One could ascend to the country of the Assiniboines by either Hayes River or Nelson. York Fort was on Hayes River. The Indians at that time usually 336 *The March Across the Continent Begins ascended the Hayes River halfway, then crossed westward to the Nelson by a chain of rivers and lakes and portages, and advanced to the prairie by a branch of the Nelson River known as Katchawan to Playgreen Lake. Playgreen Lake is really a northern arm of Lake Winnipeg. Instead of com- ing on down to Lake Winnipeg, the Assiniboines struck westward overland from Playgreen Lake to the Saskatchewan at Pasquia, variously known as Basquia and Pachegoia and the Pas. By cutting across westward from Playgreen Lake to the main Saskatchewan, three detours w r ere avoided: (i) the long detour round the north shore of Lake Winni- peg; (2) the southern bend of Saskatchewan, where it enters the lake; (3) the portage of Grand Rapids in the Saskatchewan between Lake Winnipeg and Cedar Lake. It is necessary to give these some- what tedious details as this route was to become the highway of commerce for a hundred years. Up these waters paddled the gay Indian voyageurs, the foam rippling on the wake of their bark canoes not half so light as the sparkling foam of laugh and snni? and story from the paddlers. Over these long lonely portages, silent but for the wind through the trees, or the hoot of the owl, or flapping of a loon, or a far weird call of the meadow lark a motr in an ocean of sky the first colonists were to trudge, 337 The Conquest of the Great Northwest men and women and children, who came to the West seeking that freedom and room for the shoulder- swing of uncramped manhood, which home lands had denied. Plymouth Rock, they call the landing place of the Pilgrim Fathers. Every portage up Hayes River was a Plymouth Rock to these first colonists of the West. On June 26, then, 1754, Hendry set out with the Assiniboines for the voyage up Hayes River. At Amista-Asinee or Great Stone Rock they camped for the first night, twenty-four miles from York good progress considering it was against stream at the full flood of summer rains. Fire Steel River, Wood Partridge River, Pine Reach marked the camps for sixty miles from York. Four Falls com- pelled portage beyond Pine Reach, and shoal water for another twenty-five miles set the men tracking, the crews jumping out to wade and draw the light- ened canoes up stream. July i, Hendry was one hundred and thirteen miles from York. Terrific rains, hot and thundery, deluged the whole flotilla, and Hendry learned for the first time what clouds of huge inland mos- quitoes can do. Mosquito Point, he called the camp. Here, the Hayes broke into three or four branches. Hendry's brigade of Assiniboines began to work up one of the northwestward branches toward the 338 The March Across the Continent Begins Nelson. The land seemed to be barren rock. At camping places was neither fish nor fowl. The voyageurs took a reef in their belts and pressed on. Three beaver afforded some food on Steel River but "we are greatly fatigued," records Hendry, "with carrying and hauling our canoes, and we are not well fed ; but the natives are continually smoking, which I find allays hunger." Pikes and ducks replenished the provision bags on Duck Lake beyond Steel River. Twenty canoes of Inland Indians were met at Shad Falls beyond Cree Lake, on their way to York. With these. Hendry sent a letter to Governor Isham. It was July 20 before Hendry realized that the laby- rinth of willow swamps had led into Nelson River. It must have been high up Nelson River, in some of its western sources east of Playgreen Lake, for one day later, on Sunday the 2ist, he records: "We pad- dled two miles up the Nelson and then came to Keiskatchewan River, on which the French have two houses which we expect to see to-morrow." He was now exactly five hundred miles from York. "The mosquitoes are intolerable, giving us peace neither day nor night. We paddled fourteen miles up the Keiskatchewan west, when we came to a French house. On our arrival, two Frenchmen came to the waterside and in a very genteel manner invited me into their house, which I readily accepted. One 339 The Conquest of the Great Northwest asked if I had any letter from my master and why I was going inland. I answered I had no letter and was out to view the country; that I meant to return this way in spring. He told me his master and men were gone down to Montreal with the furs, and that they must detain me until his return. However, they were very kind, and at night I went to my tent and told Little Bear my leader. He only smiled and said: "They dare not detain you." Hendry was at the Pas on the Saskatchewan. If he had come up the Saskatchewan from Lake Winnipeg,' he would have found that the French had another fort at the mouth of the river Bourbon. From now on, he describes the region which he crossed as Mosquito Plains. White men alone in the wilderness become friends quickly. In spite of rivalry, the English trader presented the French with tobacco ; the French in turn gave him pemmican of moose meat. On Wednesday, July 24, he left the fort. Sixteen miles up the Saskatchewan, Hendry passed Peotago River, heavily timbered with birch trees. Up this region the canoes of the four hundred Assiniboines ascended southward, toward the western corner of the modern province of Manitoba. As the river became shoal, canoes were abandoned seventy miles south of the Saskatchewan. Packs strapped on backs, the Indians starving for food, a dreary march 340 The March Jrmv.v the Continent began across country southwest over the Mosquito Plains. "Neither bird nor beast is to be seen. We have nothing to eat," records Hendry after a twenty- six miles tramp. At last, seventy miles from where they had left the canoes, one hundred and forty from the Saskatchewan, they came on a huge patch of ripe raspberries and wild cherries, and luckily in the brushwood killed two moose. This relieved the famine. Wandering Assiniboines chanced to be en- camped here. Hendry held solemn conference with the leaders, whiffed pipes to the four corners of the universe by which the deities of North, South, East and West were called to witness the sincerity of the sentiments and invited these tribes down to York; but they only answered, "we are already supplied by the French at Pasquia." One hundred miles south of Pas or just where the Canadian Northern Railroad strikes west from Manitoba across Saskatchewan a delightful change came over the face of the country. Instead of brackish swamp water or salt sloughs, were clear- water lakes. Red deer called by the Assiniboines waskesaw were in myriads. "I am now," writes Ilendry as he entered what is now the Province of Saskatchewan, "entering a most pleasant and plenti- ful country of hills and dales with little woods." Many Indians were met, but all were strong 34i The Conquest of the Great Northwest partisans of the French. An average of ten miles a day was made by the marchers, hunting red deer as they tramped. On August 8, somewhere near what is now Red Deer River, along the line of the Canada Northern, pause was made for a festival of rejoicing on safe return from the long voyage and relief from famine. For a day and a night, all hands feasted and smoked and danced and drank and con- jured in gladness; the smoking of the pipe corre- sponding to our modern grace before meals, the dancing a way of evincing thanks in rhythmic motion instead of music, the drinking and conjuring not so far different from our ancestors' way of giving thanks. The lakes were becoming alkali swamps, and camp had to be made where there was fresh water. Some- times the day's march did not average four miles. Again, there would be a forced march of fifteen. For the first time, an English fur trader saw Indians on horseback. Where did they get the horses? As we now know, the horses came from the Spaniards, but we must not wonder that when Hendry reported having seen whole tribes on horseback, he was laughed out of the service as a romancer, and the whole report of his trip discredited. The Indians' object was to reach the buffalo grounds and lay up store of meat for the winter. They told Hendry he would presently see whole tribes of Indians on horse- 342 The March Across the Continent Begins back Archithinues, the famous Blackfoot Con- federacy of Bloods, Blackfeet, Piegans and Sarcees. On the 1 5th of August, they were among the buffalo, where to-day the great grooves and ruts kft by the marching herds can still be seen between the Saskatchewan and the Assiniboine Rivers toward Qu' Appelle. For the most part, the Indians hunted the buffalo with bow and arrow, and at night there was often a casualty list like the wounded after a battle. "Sunday dressed a lame man's leg and he gave me for my trouble a moose nose, which is con- sidered a great delicacy among the Indians" "I killed a bull buffalo" he writes on September 8, "he was nothing but skin and bones. I took out his tongue and lejt his remains to the wolves, which were waiting around in great numbers. We cannot afford to expend ammunition on them. My feet are swelled with marching, but otherwise I am in perfect health. So expert are the natives buffalo hunting, they will take an arrow out of the buffalo when the beasts are foaming and raging and tearing the ground up with their feet and horns. The buffalo are so numerous, like herds o] Jtnglish cattle that we are obliged to make them sheer out of our KV/V." Sometimes more dangerous game than buffalo was encountered. On September 17, Hendry writes: "Two young men were miserably wounded by a 343 The Conquest of the Great Northwest grizzly bear that they were hunting to-day. One may recover but the other never can. His arm is torn from his body, one eye gouged out and his stomach ripped open." The next day the Indian died. The Assiniboines were marching southwest from the Pas toward the land of the Blackfeet. They were now three hundred miles southwest of the French House. To Hendry's surprise they came to a large river with high banks that looked exactly like the Saskatchewan. It was the South Branch of the Saskatchewan, where it takes the great bend south of Prince Albert. Canoes had been left far behind. What were the four hundred Assiniboines to do? But the Indians solved the difficulty in less than half a day. Making boats of willow branches and moose parchment skin like the bull-boats of the Missouri the Assiniboines rafted safely across. The march now turned west toward the Eagle River and Eagle Hills and North Saskatchewan. The Eagle Indians are met and persuaded to bring their furs to York Fort. As winter approached, the women began dressing the skins for moccasins and clothes. A fire of punk in an earth-hole smoked the skins. Beating and pounding and stretching pelts, the squaws then softened the skin. For winter wear, moccasins were left with the fur inside. Hendry remarks how in 344 The March Aero fin the Continent the fall of the year, the women sat in the doors of their wigwams '"knitting moose leather into snow shoes" made of seasoned wood. It was October before the Indians of the far Western plains were met. These were the famous Blackfeet for the first time now seen by an English trader. They ap- proached the Assiniboines mounted and armed with bows and spears. Hendry gave them presents to carry to their chief. Hendry notes the signs of mines along the banks of the Saskatchewan. He thought the mineral iron. What he saw was prob- ably an outcropping of coal. The jumping deer he describes as a new kind of goat. As soon as ice formed on the swamps, the hunters began trenching for beaver which were plentiful beyond the fur trader's hopes. When, on October the nth, the marchers for the third time came on the Saskatche- wan, which the Indians called Waskesaw, Hendry recognized that all the branches were forks of one and the same great river the Saskatchewan, or as the French called it, Christinaux. Tin- Indian names for the two branches were Keskatchew and Waske- For several days the far smoke of an encampment had been visible southwest. On October the i.;th. four riders came out to conduct Hendry to an en- campment of three hundred and twenty-two tents 345 "the Conquest of the Great Northwest of Blackfeet Indians "pitched in two rows with an opening in the middle, where we were conducted to the leader's tent." This was the main tribe of which Hendry had already met the outrunners. "The leader's tent was large enough to contain fifty persons. He received us seated on a buffalo skin attended by twenty elderly men. He made signs for me to sit down on his right hand, which I did. Our leaders (the Assiniboines) set several great pipes going the rounds and we smoked according to their custom. Not one word was spoken. Smoking over, boiled buffalo flesh was served in baskets of bent wood. I was presented with ten buffalo tongues. My guide informed the leader I was sent by the grand leader who lives on the Great Waters to 'invite his young men down with their furs. They would receive in return, powder, shot, guns and cloth. He made little answer: said it was far off and his people could not paddle. We were then ordered to depart to our tents which we pitched a quarter of a mile outside their lines" Again invited to the leader's tent the next morning, Hendry heard some remarkable philosophy from the Indian. " The chief told me his tribe never wanted food as they followed the buffalo, but he was informed the natives who frequented the settlements often starved on their journey, which was exceedingly true" added Hendry. Reciprocal presents closed 346 The March Across the Continent Begins the interview. The present to the Assiniboine chief was a couple of girl slaves, one of whom was mur- dered at York ten years afterward by an Indian in a fit of jealousy. Later, Hendry learned that the Assiniboines did not want these Blackfeet of the far West to come down to the bay. Neither would the Assiniboines hvnt except for food. Putting the two facts to- gether, Hendry rightly judged that the Assiniboines acted as middlemen between the traders and the Blackfeet. By the end of October, Hendry had left the plains and was in a rolling wooded land northwest of the North Saskatchewan. Here, with occasional moves as the hunting shifted, the Indians wintered; his journal says, "eight hundred and ten miles west of York," moving back and forward north and south of the river; but a comment added by Andrew Graham on the margin of the journal, says he was in latitude 59. This is plainly a mistake, as latitude 59 is six decrees away from the Saskatchewan; but eight hundred and ten miles from York along the Sas- katchewan would bring Hendry in the region be- tween the modern Edmonton and Battleford. It is to Hendry's credit that he remained on good terms with the Assinilx)ines. If he had been a weakling, he would easily have become the butt of the children 347 The Conquest of the Great Northwest who infested the tents like imps; but he hunted with the hunters, trapped with the trappers, and could outmarch the best of them. Consequently, there is not a note in his journal of that doleful whine which comes from the weakling run amuck of hard life in a savage land. When he met Indians hunting for the French forts, with true trader instinct he bribed them with gifts to bring their furs down to Hudson Bay. Almost the entire winter, camp moved from bend to bend or branch to branch of the North Saskatchewan, head- ing gradually eastward. Toward spring, different tribes joined the Assiniboines to go down to York. Among these were "green scalps" and many women captives from those Blackfeet Indians Hendry had met. Each night the scalps hung like flags from the tent poles. The captives were given around camp as presents. One hears much twaddle of the red man's noble state before he was contaminated by the white man. Hendry saw these tribes of the Far West before they had met any white men but him- self, and the disposal of those captives is a criterion of the red man's noble state. Whenever one was not wanted the present of a girl, for instance, re- sented by a warrior's jealous wives she was sum- marily hacked to pieces, and not a passing thought given to the matter. The killing of a dog or a beaver 348 The March Across the Continent />q////.v caused more comment. On the value of life as a thing of worth in itself, the Indian had absolutely no conception, not so much conception as a domestic dog trained not to destroy life. By spring, Hendry's camp had dwindled down to a party of twelve. He now had only two pounds of powder in his possession, but his party were rich in furs. As the time approached to build canoes, the Assiniboines began gathering at the river banks. Young men searched the woods for bark. Old men whittled out the gun'els. Women pounded pemmican into bags for the long voyage to the bay. The nights passed in riotous feast and revel, with the tom-tom pounding, the conjurers performing tricks, the hunters dancing, the women peeping shyly into the dance tent. At such times, one may guess, Hendry did not spare of his scant supplies to lure the Indians to York Fort, but he did not count on the effects of French brandy when the canoes would pass the French posts. Ice was driving in the river like a mill race all the month of April. Swans and geese and pigeons and Muejays came winging north. There was that sudden and wondrous lea]) to life of a dormant world and lo! it was summer, with the ducks on the river in Hocks, and the long prairie grass waving like a green sea, and tin- trees l>leak and hare against 349 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the vaporous sky now clothing themselves in foliage as in a bridal veil shot with sunlight. The great dog feast was solemnly held. The old men conjured the powers of the air to bless them a God-speed. Canoes were launched on April 28, and out swung the Assiniboines' brigade for Fort York. It was easier going down stream than up. Thirty and forty miles a day they made, passing multitudes of Indians still building their canoes on the river banks. At every camp, more fur-laden canoes joined them. Hendry's heart must have been very happy. He was bringing wealth untold to York. Four hundred miles down stream, the Blackfeet Indians were met and with great pow-wow of trading turned their furs over to the crafty Assiniboines to be taken down to York. There were now sixty canoes in the flotilla and says Hendry "not a pot or kettle among us." Everything had been bartered to the Blackfeet for furs. Six hundred miles from their launching place, they came to the first French post. This distance given by Hendry is another pretty effective proof that he had wintered near Edmonton, if not beyond it, for this post was not the Pas. It was subordinate to Basquia or Pasquia. Hendry was invited into the French post as the guest of the master. If he had been as crafty as he 350 The March Across the Continent Begins was brave, he would have hurried his Indians past the rival post, but he had to live and learn. While he was having supper, the French distributed ten gallons of brandy among the Assiniboines. By morning, the French had obtained the pick of the furs, one thousand of the best pelts, and it was three days before the amazed Hendry could coax the Indians away from his polite hosts. Two hundred miles more, brought the brigade to the main French post the Pas. Nine Frenchmen were in possession, and the trick was repeated. "The Indians are all drunk," deplores Hendry, "but the master was very kind to me. He is dressed very genteel but his men wear nothing but drawers and striped cotton shirts ruffled at the hand and breast. This house has been long a place of trade and is named Basquia. It is twenty-six feet long, twelve wide, nine high, having a sloping roof, the walls log on log, the top covered with willows, and divided into three rooms, one for trade, one for storing furs, and one for a dwelling." Four days passed before the Indians had sobered sufficiently to go on, and they now had only the heavy furs that the French would not take. On June i, the brigade again set out for York. Canoes were lighter now. Seventy miles a day was made. Hen- dry does not give any distances on his return voyage, but he followed the same course by which he had come, through Deer Lake and Steel River to Hayes River and York, where all arrived on the 2oth of June. To Hendry's profound disgust, he was not again permitted to go inland. In fact, discredit was cast on his report. " Indians on horseback!" The fac- tors of the bay ridiculed the idea. They had never heard of such a thing. All the Indians they knew came to the fort in canoes. Indeed, it was that spirit of little-minded narrowness that more than anything else lost to the Company the magnificent domain of its charter. If the men governing the Company had realized the empire of their ruling as fully as did the humble servants fighting the battles on the field, the Hudson's Bay Company might have ruled from Atlantic to Pacific in the North, and in the West as far south as Mexico. But they objected to being told what they did not know. Hendry was "frozen" out of the service. The occasion of his leaving was even more contemptible than the real cause. On one of his trading journeys, he was offered very badly mixed brandies, probably drugged. Being a fairly good judge of brandies from his smuggling days, Hendry refused to take what Andrew Graham calls "such slops from such gentry." He quit the service in disgust. 352 The March Across the Continent Begins The Company, as the minutes show, voted him 20 gratuity for his voyage. Why, then, did the factors cast ridicule on his report? Supposing they had accepted it, what would have been entailed? They must capture the furs of that vast inland coun- try for their Company. To do that, there must be forts built inland. Some factor would be ordered inland. Then, there would be the dangers of French competition very real danger in the light of that brandy incident. The factors on the bay Norton and Isham were not brave enough men to under- take such a campaign. It was easier sitting snugly inside the forts with a multitude of slave Indians to wait on their least want. So the trade of the interior was left to take care of itself. Notes on Charter XVIII. Hendry's Journal is in Hudson's Bay Company's House, London. A copy is also in the Canadian Archives. Andrew Graham of Severn has written various notes along the margin. If it had not been for Graham, it looks much as if Hi-ndrv's Journal would have been lost to the Company. Ih-ndrv gives the distances of each day's travel so minutely, that his course can easily be followed first to Basquia, then from 'ia to the Xorth Saskatchewan region. Graham's com- ment that Hendry was at 59 north is simply a slip. It is out of the question to accept it for the simple reason Hendry could not have gone eight hundred and ten miles southwest from York, as his journal daily records, and have been within 6 of 59. Besides his own discovery that he had been crossing branches of the Saskatchewan all the time and his account of his voyage down the Saskatchewan to the Pas. are unmistakable proofs of his whcrealxmts. Als< . he mentions the Eagle Indians re- !ly. These Indians dwelt brtwren the north and south branches of ^hr Saskatchewan. Whether the otlu-r rivers that he crossed were the AssiniU>inc or the Qu'Appelle or the Red Deer of Lake Winnipegosis I do not know. 353 The Conquest of the Great Northwest I had great trouble in identifying the Archithinue Indians of Hendry's Journal till I came on Matthew Cooking's Journal over the same ground. Dec. i, 1772, Cocking says: "This tribe is named Powestic Athinuewuck, Waterfall Indians. There are four tribes or nations which are all Equestrian Indians, viz : (1) Mithco Athinuwuck, or Bloody Indians. (2) Koskiton TVathcsitock, or Black Footed Indians. (3) Pegonow, or Muddy Water Indians. (4) Sassewuck, or Woody Country Indians. 354 CHAPTER XIX 1770-1800 EXTENSION OF TRADE TOWARD LABRADOR, QUEBEC AND ROCKIES HEAKNE FINDS THE ATHABASCA COUNTRY AND FOUNDS CUMBERLAND HOUSE ON THE SASKATCHEWAN COCKING PROCEEDS TO THE BLACKFEET HOWSE FINDS THE PASS IN ROCKIES WHILE Anthony Hendry, the English smuggler, was making his way up the Saskatchewan to the land of the Blackfeet the present province of Alberta the English Ad- venturers were busy making good their claim to Lab- rador. Except as a summer rendezvous, Rupert, the oldest of the Company's forts, at the southeast corner of the bay had been abandoned, but far up the coast of Labrador on the wildest part of this desolate shore, was that fort which the Company was shortly forced to dismantle at great loss Richmond. When Captain Coates was sent to cruise the east coast of Hudson Bay, thirty men under John Potts and Mr. Pollexfen, had been left on Richmond Gulf to build a fort. There was no more dangerous region on the bay. It was here Hudson's crew had been attacked 355 by the Eskimos, and here the Eskimos yearly came to winter and hunt the white whale. Between the rugged main shore and the outer line of barren islands was usually open water. Camped on the rocky islets, the timid Eskimos were secure from Indian foe, and if the white whale fisheries failed, they had only to scud across the open water or por- tage over the ice to the mainland and hunt partridge on Richmond Gulf. From one hundred and fifty to three hundred Eskimos yearly wintered within trading distance of Richmond. Quickly, storehouses, barracks, wareroom and guardroom were erected just inside the narrow en- trance from Hudson Bay to Richmond Gulf, and round all thrown a ten-foot palisade. This was in 1749. Coates had been attracted to Richmond Gulf which he calls Artiwinipack by its land-locked, sheltered position and the magnificent supply of lumber for building. The Eskimo whale fisheries were farther south at Whale River and East Main, with winter lodges subordinate to Richmond. The partridges of the wooded slopes promised abundance of food, and there was excellent fox and beaver trapping. Compared to the other rocky barrens of northern Labrador, Richmond Harbor seemed Para- dise, "but oh, my conscience" wrote Captain Coates, " there is so profound silence, such awful precipices, 356 Extension of Trade Toward Labrador no life, that the ^jorld seems asleep. The land is so tremendous high that wind and water reverberate between the cliffs entering two miles to our gulf. Inside are mountains, groves, cascades and vales adorned with trees. On the Hudson Bay side nothing is seen but barren rocks. Inside, all is green with stalely woods. . . . On the high mountains is only sno^i' moss; lower, a sort of rye grass, some snow drops and violets without odor, then rows 0} ever- greens down to the very sea. On the right of the gulf is Lady Lake's Grove under a stupendous mountain, whence falls a cascade through the grove to the sea. In short, such is the elegant situation of Richmond Fort that it is not to be paralleled in the world." Such were the high hopes with which Richmond Fort was founded. To-day it is a howling wilder- ness silent as death but for the rush of waters heard when white men first entered the bay. Partridge there were in plenty among the lonely evergreens, and game for trapping; but not the warmest over- tures of Chief Factor Potts and Mr. Pollexfen and Mr. Isbister, who yearly came up from Albany, rould \vin the friendship of the treacherous Eskimos. They would not hunt, and the white men dare not penetrate far enough inland to make their trapping pay. Potts kept his men whale fishing off Whale River, but in five years the loss to the Company had 357 The Conquest of the Great Northwest totaled more than 24,000. The crisis came in 1 754. Day and night, the stealthy shadow of Eskimo spies moved through the evergreens of the gulf. In vain Potts gave the chiefs presents of gold-laced suits, beaver hats with plumes, and swords. "They shaked my hands," he records, "and hugged and embraced and smiled"; but the very next trapper, who went alone to the woods, or attempted to drive his dog train south to Whale River, would see Eskimos ambushed behind rocks and have his cache rifled or find himself overpowered and plundered. One day in February, Mr. Pollexfen had gone out with his men from Whale River trapping. When they returned in the afternoon they found the cook boy had been kidnapped and the house robbed of every object that could be carried away stores of ammu- nition, arms, traps, food, clothes, even the door hinges and iron nails of the structure. Waiting only till it was dark, the terrified hunters hitched their dog sleighs up, tore off all bells that would betray flight, and drove like mad for the stronger fort of Richmond. Potts hurriedly sent out orders to recall his trappers from the hills and manned Richmond for siege. It was four days be- fore all the men came under shelter, and nightly the Eskimos could be heard trying to scale the palisades. The fort was so short of provisions, all hands were 358 Extension of Trade Toward Labrador reduced to one meal a day. Potts called for volun- teers, to go to the rescue of the kidnapped cook a boy, named Matthew Warden; and thirteen men offered to go. The Eskimos had taken refuge on the islands of the outer shore. Frost-fog thick as wool lay on the bay. Eskimos were seen lurking on the hills above the fort. A council was held. It was determined to catch three Eskimos as hostages for the cook's safety rather than risk the lives of thirteen men outside the fort. Some ten days later, when a few men ventured out for partridges, the forest again came to life with Eskimo spies. Potts recalled his hunters, sent two scouts to welcome the Eskimos to the fort and placed all hands on guard. Three Indians were conducted into the house. In a twink- ling, fetters were clapped on two, and the third bade go and fetch the missing white boy on pain of death to the hostages. The stolid Eskimo affected not to understand. Potts laid a sword across the throats of the two prisoners and signaled the third to be gone. The fellow needed no urging but scampered. "I had our men," relates Potts, "one by one pass through the guardroom changing their dresses every time to give the two prisoners the idea that I had a large garrison. They seemed surprised that I had one hundred men, but they spoke no word." The next day, the fettered prisoners drew knives on their 359 The Conquest of the Great Northwest guard, seized his gun and clubbed the Company men from the room. In the scuffle that followed, both Eskimos were shot. The danger was now increased a hundredfold. Friendly Montagnais Indians, especially one named Robinson Crusoe, warned Potts that if the shooting were known, nothing could save the fort. The bodies were hidden in the cellar till some Montagnais went out one dark night and weighting the feet with stones, pushed them through a hole in the ice. How quickly white men can degenerate to savagery is well illus- trated by the conduct of the cooped-up, starving garrison. Before sending away the dead bodies, they cut the ears from each and preserved them in spirits of alcohol to send down by Indian scouts to Isbister at Moose with a letter imploring that the sloop come to the rescue as soon as the ice cleared. For two months the siege lasted. Nothing more was ever heard of the captured boy, but by the end of May, Isbister had sent a sloop to Richmond. As told elsewhere, Richmond was dismantled in 1778 and the stores carried down to Whale River and East Main. Important changes had gradually grown up in the Adventurer's methods. White servants were no longer forbidden to circulate with the Indians but encouraged to go out to the hunting field and paid 360 Extension of Trade Toward Labrador bounties on their trapping. Three men had been sent out from York in January, 1772, to shoot par- tridges for the fort. It was a mild, open winter. The men carried provisions to last three weeks. Striking back through the marsh land, that lies between Hayes and Nelson Rivers, they camped for the first night on the banks of the Nelson. The next morning, Tuesday, the 7th of January, they were crossing the ice of the Nelson's broad current when they suddenly felt the rocking of the tide beneath their feet, looked ahead, saw the frost-smoke of open water and to their horror realized that the tidal bore had loosened the ice and they were adrift, bearing out to sea. In vain, dogs and men dashed back for the shore. The ice floe had separated from the land and was rushing seaward like a race horse. That night it snowed. The terrified men kept watch, hoping that the high tide would carry the ice back to some of the long, low sandbars at Port Nelson. The tide did sway back the third day but not near enough for a landing. This night, they put up their leather tents and slept drifting. When they awakened on Friday the loth, they were driving so direct for the shore that the three men simultaneously dashed to gain the land, leaving packs, provisions, tent and sleighs; but in vain. A tidal wave swept the floe off shore, and when they set back for their camp, they were appalled 361 to see camp kit, sleds, provisions, all drive past afloat. The ice floe had broken. They were now adrift without food or shelter, James Ross carrying gun, powder bag and blanket over his shoulders as he had risen from sleep, Farrant wearing only the beaver coat in which he had slept, Tomson bereft of either gun or blanket. This time, the ebb carried them far into the bay where they passed the fourth night adrift. The next day, wind and the crumbling of the ice added to their terrors. As the floe went to pieces, they leaped from float to float trying to keep together on the largest icepan. Farrant fell through the slush to his armpits and after being belted tightly in his beaver coat lay down behind a wind-break of ice blocks to die. Their only food since losing the tent kit had been some lumps of sugar one of them had chanced to have in his pockets. During Saturday night the nth of January, the ice grounded and great seas began sweeping over the floe. When Ross and Tomson would have dragged Farrant to a higher hummock of the ice field, they found that he was dead. On Monday, the weather grew cold and stormy. Tom- son's hands had swollen so that he could not move a muscle and the man became delirious, raving of his Orkney home as they roamed aimlessly over the illimitable ice fields. That night, the seventh they 362 Extension of Trade Toward Labrador had been adrift, just as the moon sank below the sea, the Orkneyman, Tomson, breathed his last. Ross was now alone. A great ice floe borne down by a wash of the tide, swept away Tomson's body. Ross scrambled upon the fresh drift and hoping against hope, scarcely able to believe his senses, saw that the new icepan extended to the land. Half blinded by sun glare, hands and feet frozen stiff, now laughing hysterically, now crying deliriously, the fellow managed to reach shore, but when the sun set he lost all sense of direction and could not find his way farther. That night, his hands were so stiff that he could not strike a light on his flint, but by tramping down brushwood, made himself a bed in the snow. Sunrise gave him his bearings again and through his half-delirium he realized he was only four miles from the fort. Partly walking, partly creeping, he reached York gates at seven that night. One of the dogs had followed him all the way, which probably explains how he was not frozen sleeping out uncovered for nine nights. Hands and feet had to be amputated, but his countrymen of Orkney took up a subscription for him and the Company gave him a pension of 20 a year for life. The same amount was bestowed on the widows of the two dead men. It is not surprising that Hudson Bay became ill-omened to Orkneymen who heard 363 such tales of fur hunting as have been related of Richmond and York. But the Company was now on the eve of the most momentous change in its history. Anthony Hendry had reported how the French traders had gone up the Saskatchewan to the tribes of equestrian Indians; and Hendry had been cashiered for his pains. Now anew fact influenced the Company. French power had fallen at Quebec, in 1759. Instead of a few French traders scattered through the West, were thousands of wildwood rovers, half-Indian, half -French, voy- ageurs and bush-lopers, fled from the new laws of the new English regime to the freedom of the wilderness. Beyond Sault Ste. Marie, the long hand of the law could not reach. Beyond the Sault, was law of neither God nor man. To make matters worse, English merchants, who had flocked to Montreal and Quebec, now outfitted these French rovers and personally led them to the far hunting field of the Pays d'en Haul a term that meant anything from Lake Superior to the Pole. The English Adven- turers sent more men up stream up the Moose toward Quebec as far as Abbittibbi, up the Albany toward what is now Manitoba past Henley House as far as Osnaburg, across what is now Keewatin toward Lake Superior as far as New Brunswick House. The catch of furs showed a decrease every 364 Extension of Trade Toward Labrador year. Fewer Indians came to the bay, fewer hunters to the outlying fur posts. Dividends dropped from 10 to 8 and from 8 to 6 and from 6 to 5 per cent. Instead of 100,000 beaver a year there came to the London market only 40,000 and 50,000 a year. To stand on the rights of monopoly conferred by an ancient charter while "interlopers and pedlars," as the Company called them ran away with the profits of that monopoly, was like standing on your dignity with a thief while he picked your pockets. The "smug ancient gentlemen," as enemies desig- nated the Company, bestirred themselves mightily. Moses Norton, governor of Churchill, was no more anxious to fight the French Canadians on the hunting field now than he had been in the days of Anthony Hendry, but being half-Indian he knew all the legends of the Indians knew that even if the French already had possession of the Saskatchewan, north of the Saskatchewan was an unclaimed kingdom, whence no white man had yet set foot, as large again as the bounds of Hudson Bay. Besides, the Company had not forgotten those legends of minerals in the North which had lured Captain Knight to his death. Chippewyan Indians still came to Churchill with huge masses of amor- phous copper strung on necklaces or battered into rough pots and pans and cooking utensils. Whence The Conquest of the Great Northwest came that copper? Oddly enough, the world cannot answer that question yet. The Indians said from "a Far- Away-Metal River" that ran to a vast sea where the tide ebbed and flowed. Once more hopes of finding a Northwest Passage rose ; once more hopes of those metals that had led Knight to ship- wreck. Norton euggetsed that this time the search should be made by land. Serving as a clerk on a brig at Churchill was a well-educated young English- man already mentioned Samuel Hearne. The yearly boats that came to Churchill in 1769, commissioned Hearne for this expedition, whose ostensible object was the finding of the Metal River now known as the Coppermine but whose real object was the occupation of a vast region not yet pre- empted by the Canadians. The story of Hearne' s travels would fill a volume. Norton, the governor, was a curious compound of ability and sham, strength and vice. Born of an Indian mother and English father, he seemed to have inherited all the supersti- tions of one and vices of the other. He was educated in England and married an English woman. Yet when he came to the wilderness, he had a seraglio of native wives that would have put a Mormon to the blush. These he kept apart in rudely but gor- geously furnished apartments to which he alone pos- sessed the keys. At the mess-room table, he wearied 366 Extension of Trade Toward Labrador the souls of his officers by long-winded and saintly sermons on virtue which were expounded as regu- larly as the night supper came round. Did some blackleg expiating dissipations by life in the wilds judge Norton's sermons by his conduct and emulate his example rather than his precepts, Norton had the culprit tied to the triangle and flogged till his back was raw. An Indian is never a hypocrite. Why would he be? His code is to do as he wishes, to follow his desires, to be stronger than his enemies, to impose on the weak. He has no religion to hold a higher example up like a mirror that reflects his own face as loathsome, and he has no science to teach him that what religion calls "evil" means in the long run, wretchedness and rottenness and ruin. But the hypocrisy in Norton was the white man strain the fig leaf peculiar to civilized man living a lie so long that he finally believes the lie himself. Knowl- edge of white man's science, Norton had ; but to the Indian in him, it was still mystery; "medicine," a secret means to kill an enemy, arsenic in medicine, laudanum in whiskey, or poison that caused con- vulsions to an Indian who refused either a daughter for the seraglio or beaver at Norton's terms. A white man who could wield such power was to the Indians a god, and Norton held them in the hollow of his hand. Equally successful was the half-breed 367 The Conquest of the Great Northwest governor managing the governing committee of the Hudson's Bay Company in London; for he sent them enormous returns in beaver at small outlay. Seven great guns roared their God-speed as the fort gates opened and Hearne sped out by dog train for his inland trip north on November 6, 1769. Norton waved a farewell and Hearne disappeared over the rolling drifts with two Indians as guides, two white men as packers to look after provisions. Striking northwest, Hearne was joined by other traveling Indians. Bitterly cold weather set in. One Indian guide deserted the first night out and the other proved himself an impudent beggar, who camped when it was cold and camped when it was wet and paused to hunt when it was fair, but laid up no stock of provisions, giving Hearne plainly to understand that the whole Indian cavalcade looked to the white men's sleighs for food. The travelers did not make ten miles a day. At the end of the month Hearne wakened one morning to find his stores plundered and gales of laughter ringing back as the Indians marched off with their booty. Not even guns were left. Rabbit and partridge-snaring saved the three white men from starving as they retreated. They were safe inside the fort once more by December u. Hearne's object setting out in midwinter had been to reach the North before 368 Extension of Trade Toward Labrador summer, and nothing daunted, he again set forth with five fresh guides on February 23, 1770, again depending on snares for food. April saw the marchers halted on the borders of the Barren Lands, scouring the wide wastes of treeless swamps and rock for game. Caribou had retreated inland and not yet begun their traverse to the bay. Until wild fowls came winging north, the camp lived on snow water, tobacco and such scraps of leather and dried meat as had not already been devoured. A chance herd of wandering deer relieved the famine till June, when rations were again reduced; this time, to wild cranberries. Then the traverse of the caribou herds came a rush of countless myriads with the tramp of an army and the clicking of a multitude of horns from west to east for weeks. Indians had gathered to the traverse in hundreds. Moss served as fuel. Provisions were abundant. Hearne had almost de- cided to winter with the wandering Chippewyans when they again began to plunder his store of am- munition. Wind had smashed some of the survey instruments, so he joined a band of hunters on their way to the fort, which he reached on November 25. Hearne had not found " Far- A way-Metal-River," nor the copper mines, nor the Northwest Passage, but he had found fresh tribes of Indians, and these were what Norton wanted. December 7, 1770, less 369 than a month from his home-coming, Hearne was again dispatched by Norton. Matonabbee, a famous guide of the Chippewyans, accompanied the explorer with a retinue of the Indian's wives to draw sleds and handle baggage. Almost as notable as Norton was Matonabbee, the Chippewyan chief an Indian of iron constitution and iron will, pitiless to his wives, whom he used as beasts of burden; relentless in his aims, fearless of all Indians, a giant measuring more than six feet, straight as an arrow, supple as willow, hard as nails. Imperturbable and good-natured Matonabbee set the pace at winged speed, pausing for neither hunger nor cold. Christmas week was celebrated by fasting. Matonabbee uttered no com- plaint; and the white man could not well turn back when the Indian was as eager for the next day's march as if he had supped sumptuously instead of going to bed on a meal of moss water. Self-pity, fear, hesitation, were emotions of which the guide knew nothing. He had undertaken to lead Hearne to " Far- Away-Metal-River," and only death could stop him. In the Barren Lands, caribou enough were killed to afford the whole company provisions for six months; and the marchers were joined by two hundred more Indians. Wood became scarcer and smaller as they marched north. Matonabbee halted 370 Extension of Trade Toward Labrador in April and ordered his wives to camp while the men made dugouts for the voyage down stream. The boats were heavy in front to resist the ice jams. If Hearne had marveled at the large company now following Matonabbee to a hard, dangerous hunting field he quickly guessed good reasons when wives and children were ordered to head westward and await the warrior's return at Lake Athabasca. Women are ordered away only when there is prospect of war, and Hearne could easily surmise whence the Chippewyans annually obtained eleven thousand of their best beaver pelts. The sun no longer set. It was continual day, and on June 12, 1771, the swamps of the Barrens converged to a narrow, rocky riyer bed whence roared a misty cataract "Far- Off-Metal-River" the Coppermine River, without any sign of the ebbing tide that was to lead to the South Sea. When Hearne came back to his Indian companions from the river bed, he found them stripped and daubed in war paint, gliding as if in ambush from stone to stone down the steep declivity of the waterfall. Then far below the rapids, like the tops of big bowlders, appeared the rounded leather tent-peaks of an Eskimo camp. The Eskimos were apparently sound asleep, for it was midnight though as light as day. Before Hearne could collect his senses or alarm The Conquest of the Great Northwest the sleeping victims, he had been left far to the rear by his villainous comrades. Then occurred one of the most deplorable tragedies in the history of the Hudson's Bay Company. Such of the horrors as are tellable, I have told elsewhere in the account of Hearne's travels. The raiders fell on the Eskimos like wolves on the sheepfold. Not content with plundering the camp of beaver pelts, they speared, stabbed, bludgeoned, men, women, children, old and young, till the river ran red with innocent blood. Rushing forward, Hearne implored Matonabbee to stop the slaughter. Matonabbee' s response was a shout of laughter. What were the weak for but to be the victims of the strong? What did these fool- Eskimos toil for but to render tribute of their toil to him, who had the force to take? The doctrine was not a new one. Neither is it yet old; only we moderns do our bludgeoning with financial coercion, competition, monopoly or what not, instead of the butt end of a gun, or stone spear; and it would be instructive to know if philosophers in a thousand years will consider our methods as barbarous as we consider the savages of two hundred years ago. The tortures of that raid have no place in a history of the Hudson's Bay Company. They are told in Hearne's life, and they haunted the explorer like a bloody nightmare. One day later, on July 17, 372 Extension of Trade Toward Labrador Hearne stood on the shores of the Arctic ocean the first white man to witness the tossing ice floes of that green, lone, paleocrystic sea; but his vision was not the exaltation of an explorer. It was a hideous memory of young girls speared bodily through and through and left writhing pinioned to the ground; of young boys whose hearts were torn out and devoured while warm; of old men and women gouged, buffeted, beaten to death. It does not make a pretty picture, that doctrine of the suprem- acy of strength, the survival of the fit, the extermi- nation of the weak it does not make a pretty picture when you reduce it to terms of the physical. How quickly wild-beast savagery may reduce men to the level of beasts was witnessed as Hearne rested on the shores of the Arctic a musk ox was shot. The warriors tore it to pieces and devoured it raw. Retreating up the shelving rocks of the Copper- mine twenty miles, Hearne found what he thought were the copper mines from which the Indians made their metal weapons. The company then struck westward for the famous Athabasca region where the wives were to camp for the winter. Athabasca proved a hunter's paradise as it has been ever since Hearne discovered it. Beaver abounded in the swampy muskegs. Buffalo roamed to the south. Moose yards were found in the wooded bluffs; mink, 373 The Conquest of the Great Northwest marten, fox, every fur bearer which the English Adventurers sought. In spring, a flotilla carried the Indians down to Churchill, where Hearne arrived on June 30, 1772. The geographical importance of Hearne's dis- covery the fact that he had found a region half the size of European Russia and proved that not a narrow strip of land lay between the Atlantic and Pacific but a vast continent was eclipsed by the importance of his discoveries for the fur traders. The region must be occupied by the English Com- pany before the French Canadians found it. Old Moses Norton sick unto death hastened to send word to the governing committee in London, and the governing committee voted Hearne a present of 200, 10 a year for a valet, 130 a year as a salary, and promotion as governor on Norton's death, which occurred on December 29, 1773. The death of Norton was of a piece with his life. The bully fell ill of some deadly intestinal trouble that caused him as excruciating tortures as ever his poisons had caused his victims. Calling the officers of the fort, he publicly made his will, leaving all his savings to his wife in England but directing that she should yearly set aside 10 for the clothing of his Indian wives at Churchill. As the Indian women stood round the dying tyrant's bed his eye detected 374 Extension of Trade Toward Labrador an officer whispering to one of the young Indian wives. With a roar, Norton leaped to his feet in the bed. "You - -," he roared, "I'll burn you alive! I'll burn you alive " The effort cost the bully his life. He fell back dead he whose hand had tyrannized over the fort for fifty years, a mass of corrupting flesh which men hurriedly put out of sight. Hearne was called from the Saskatchewan to become governor and under- take the opening of the inland trade. Hearne's report on his trip to the Coppermine and Athabasca was received at London in November, 1772. In May of 1773, the minutes recorded "that the com- pany having under consideration the interruptions to the trade from the Canadian Pedlars as reported by Isaac Batts at Basquia, do decide on mature de- liberation to send Samuel Hearne to establish a fort at Basquia with Mr. Cocking." They were accom- panied by Louis Primo, John Cole and half a dozen French renegades, who had been bribed to desert from the Canadians in all seventeen men. Hearne did better than he was instructed. Leaving Batts, Louis Primo and the Frenchmen at Basquia to compete against the Canadians, he established Cumberland House far above, on the Saskatchewan, at Sturgeon Lake, where the Indians could be intercepted before 375 The Conquest of the Great Northwest they came down to the French posts. Traders inland were paid 4.0 a year with a bounty of 2 when they signed their contract and a bonus of a shilling for every twenty beaver. When Hearne was recalled to Churchill to become governor, Matthew Cocking was left superintendent of inland trade. Cocking had earned laurels for himself by a voyage almost as important as Hearne's. The very week that Hearne came back to Churchill at the end of June, 1772, from the Athabasca, Cock- ing had set out from York for the South Saskatche- wan. He accompanied the Assiniboines returning from their yearly trip to the bay. By the end of July he had crossed the north end of Lake Winnipeg and gone up the Saskatchewan to Basquia. Louis Primo, the renegade Frenchman, was met leading a flotilla of canoes down to Hudson Bay, and it must have afforded Cocking great satisfaction to see that the activity of the Hudson's Bay Company had forced the French Canadians to desert both their posts on the lower Saskatchewan. He passed the empty houses on the banks of the river where the leaders of the French-Canadians had had their forts, Findlay's and Frobisher's and Curry's. Leaving canoes somewhere eastward of the Forks, Cocking struck south for the country of the Blackfeet at the foothills of the Rockies, near what is now the Inter- 376 Extension of Trade Toward Labrador national Boundary. The South Saskatchewan was crossed at the end of August in bull-boats tub-like craft made of parchment stretched on willows. In the Eagle Hills, Cocking met French traders, who had abandoned civilized life and joined the Indian tribes. The Eagle Hills were famous as the place where the Indians got tent poles and birch bark before crossing the plains to the east and south. Cocking spent the winter with the Blackfeet and the Bloods and the Piegans and the Sarcees, whom he names as the Confederacy of Waterfall Indians, owing to the numerous cataracts on the upper reaches of Bow River. He was amazed to find fields of cultivated tobacco among the Blackfeet and con- sidered the tribe more like Europeans than any Indians he had ever met. The winter was spent hunting buffalo by means of the famous "pounds." Buffalo were pursued by riders into a triangular en- closure of sticks round a large field. Behind the fences converging to a point hid the hunters, whose cries and clappings frightened the herds into rushing precipitately to the converging angle. Here was either a huge hole, or the natural drop over the bank of a ravine, where the buffalo tumbled, mass after mass of infuriated animals, literally bridging a path for the living across the bodies of the dead. The Blackfeet hunters thought nothing of riding for a 377 The Conquest of the Great Northwest hundred miles to round up the scattered herds to one of these "pounds" or "corrals." All that Hendry had said of the Blackfeet twenty years before, Cocking found to be true. All were riders men, women, chil- dren the first tribes Cocking had yet met where women were not beasts of burden. The tribe had earthen pots for cooking utensils, used moss for tinder, and recorded the history of the people in rude drawings on painted buffalo robes. In fact, Cocking's descrip- tion of the tribal customs might be an account of the Iroquois. The Blackfeet' s entire lives were spent doing two things hunting and raiding the Snakes of the South for horses. Men and women captives were tortured with shocking cruelty that made the Blackfeet a terror to all enemies ; but young captives were adopted into the tribe after the custom followed by the Iroquois of the East. Of food, there was always plenty from the buffalo hunts; and game abounded from the Saskatchewan Forks to the mountains. When Cocking tried to persuade the Blackfeet to come down to the fort with furs, they were re- luctant. They did not understand canoe travel and could not take their horses, and why should they go down? The Assiniboines would trade the furs for firearms to be brought to the Blackfeet. Cocking pointed out that with more firearms, they could be 378 Extension of Trade Toward Labrador masters of the entire country and by dint of present- ing cocked hats and swords and gold-laced red coats to the chiefs, induced them to promise not to trade with "the Canadian Pedlars." "We have done all in our power to keep them from trading with Fran- cois or Curry, who lie at the Portage (the Rapids) of the Saskatchewan to intercept the natives coming to us." On May 16, 1773, Cocking set out to return to the fort. For the first time, a few young Blackfeet joined the canoes going to York. At the Forks, two rival camps were found, that of Louis Primo who had come over to the Hudson's Bay from the French, and old Francois working for the French Canadians. The English traders had no liquor. Four gallons of rum diluted with water won the Indians over to old Francois, the Canadian, who picked out one hundred of the rarest skins and was only hindered taking the entire hunt because he had no more goods to trade. Francois' house was a long log structure divided into two sections, half for a kitchen and mess room, half for a trading room, and the furs were kept in the loft. Outside, were two or three log cabins for Francois' white men, of whom he had twenty. Round all ran ten-foot stockades against which lay the great canoes twenty-four feet long, twenty-two inches deep, which carried the furs to 379 Lake Superior. Cocking, who was used to factors ruling like little kings, was shocked to find old Francois "an ignorant Frenchman, who did not keep his men at proper distance and had no watch at night. It surprises me," he writes, "to observe what a warm side the natives hath to the French Canadians." Down at Grand Rapids near the mouth of the Saskatchewan, Cocking received another shock. Louis Primo and those Frenchmen bribed to join the Hudson's Bay, who had gone on from the Forks ahead of Cocking, were to join him at the last por- tage of the Saskatchewan to go down to York. He found that they had gone back to the French bag and baggage with all their furs and goods supplied by the Hudson's Bay and were already halfway down to Lake Superior. Spite of being only "an ignorant old Frenchman," Francois had played a crafty game. By June 18, Cocking was back at York. But the Company did not content itself with oc- casional expeditions inland. Henceforth "patroons of the woods," as they were called, were engaged to live inland with the Indians and collect furs. Fifty- one men were regularly kept at Cumberland House, and a bonus of 20 a year regularly paid to the patroons. Whenever a Frenchman could be bribed 380 Extension of Trade Toward Labrador to come over to the Hudson's Bay traders, he was engaged at 100 a year. Bonuses above salaries amounted to 200 a year for the factors, to 40 for the traders, to 80 for traveling servants. The Company now had a staff of five hundred white men on the field and ten times as many Indians. In 1785, Robert Longmore is engaged to explore inland up Churchill River as far as Athabasca, where, in 1799, Malcolm Ross is permanently placed as chief trader at 80 a year. In 1795, Joseph Howse is sent inland from York to explore the Rockies, where he gives his name to a pass, and "it is resolved that forts shall be erected in this country too." John Davidson explores the entire coast of Labrador on the east; and on the west of Hudson Bay Charles Duncan reports finally and, as far as the Company is concerned, forever there is no navigable North- west Passage. In all, the Company has spent 1 00,000 seeking that mythical passage, which is now written off as total loss. Up at Marble Island, the sea still takes toll of the brave, and James Mouat, the whaler, is buried in 1773, beside Captain Knight. At this stage too, I am sorry to say, 12,000 gallons of brandy are yearly sent into the country. It was in 1779 that The King George ship beat about the whole summer in the ice without entering York and was compelled to unload its cargo at The Conquest of the Great Northwest Churchill, for which Captain Fowler was suspended and lost his gratuity of 100. Such strenuous efforts brought big rewards in beaver, seventy, and eighty, and ninety thousand a year to London, but the expenses of competition had increased so enormously that dividends had fallen from 10 to 5 per cent. I suppose it was to impress the native mind with the idea of pomp, but about this time I find the Company furnished all its officers with " brass-barreled pistols, swords with inlaid handles, laced suits and cocked hats." A more per- fect example of the English mind's inability to grasp American conditions could not be found than an entry in the expense book of 1784 when the Com- pany buys "150 tracts on the Country Clergyman's Advice to Parishioners" for distribution among North American Indians, who could not read any language let alone English. It was no longer a policy of drift but drive, and in the midst of this came the shock of the French war. All hands were afield from Churchill but thirty-nine white servants one sleepy afternoon on August 8, 1782, and Governor Hearne was busy trading with some Indians whom Matonabbee had brought down, when the astounding apparition appeared of a fleet at sea. No appointed signals were displayed by the incoming ships they were not Company ships, 382 Extension of Trade Toward Labrador and they anchored five miles from the fort to sound. Churchill had not heard of war between France and England. No alarm was felt. The fort had been forty years in building and was one of the strongest in America, constructed of stone with forty great guns and an outer battery to prevent approach. Probably intending to send out a boat the next morning, Hearne went comfortably to bed. At three in the morning, which was as light as day, somebody noticed that four hundred armed men had landed not far from the fort and were marching in regular military order for the gates. Too late, a reveille sounded and bells rang to arms. Hearne dashed out with two men and met the invaders half- way. Then he learned that the fleet was part of the French navy and the four hundred invaders regular marines under the great officer La Perouse. Re- sistance was impossible now. The guns of the fort were not even manned. The garrison was too small to permit one man to a gun. At six in the morning, the British flag was lowered and a white tablecloth of surrender run up on the pole. Hearne and the officers were taken on board prisoners of war. Then the rough soldiery ran riot. Furs, stores, docu- ments all were plundered, and a second day spent blowing up the fortifications. Buildings were burned but the French were unable to do serious damage to 383 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the walls. Matonabbee the great chief looked on in horror. He had thought his English friends invin- cible, and now he saw his creed of brute strength turned upon them and upon himself. No longer he smiled contemptuously at the horror. It was one thing to glory in the survival of the strong another to be the under dog. Matonabbee drew away out- side the walls and killed himself. Old Norton's widows and children were scattered. On one the hardships fell with peculiar harshness. His daughter Marie he had always nurtured as a white girl. She fled in terror of her life from the brutal soldiery and perished of starvation outside the walls. Hearne has been blamed for two things in this sur- render, for not making some show of resistance and for not sending scouts overland south to warn York. For thirty-nine men to have fought four hundred would have invited extermination, and Hearne did not know that the invaders were enemies till he himself was captured and so could not send word to York. What he might have done was earlier in the game. If he had sent out a pilot to guide the ships into Churchill Harbor, it might have led the enemy to wreck among reefs and sandbars. On the third day, the three French men-of-war set sail for York, leaving Churchill in flames. Out- ward bound, one of the Company ships was sighted 384 Extension of Trade Toward Labrador coming into Churchill. The French gave chase till seven in the evening, but the English captain led off through such shoal water the French desisted with a single chance volley in the direction of the fleeing fur ship. On August 20, the Company ship lying at York observed a strange fleet some twenty miles off shore landing men on Nelson River behind York, which faced Hayes River. From plans taken at Churchill, La Perouse had learned that York was weakest to the rear. There were in the fort at that time sixty Eng- lish and twelve Indians with some twenty-five cannon and twelve swivel guns on the galleries. There was a supply of fresh water inside the fort with thirty head of cattle; but a panic prevailed. All the guns were overset to prevent the French using them, and the English ship scudded for sea at nightfall. The French meanwhile had marched across the land behind York and now presented themselves at the gates. The governor, Humphry Martin, wel- comed them with a white flag in his hand. Umfre- ville, who gives the account of the surrender, was among the captured. His disgust knew no bounds. "The enemy's ships lay at least twenty miles from the factory in a boisterous sea," he writes, "and could not co-operate with the troops on shore. The troops had no supplies. Cold, hunger and fatigue 385 The Conquest of the Great Northwest were hourly working in our favor. The factory was not in want of a single thing to withstand siege. The people showed no fear but the reverse. Yet the English governor surrendered without firing a gun." ' The French did not attempt to occupy the forts, which they had captured, but retired with the officers as prisoners, and with the plunder. By October the Company had received letters from the prison at Dinan Castle, France, asking for the ransom of the men. By May, the ransomed men were in London, and by June back at their posts on the bay. Notes to Chapter XIX. As stated elsewhere, Cocking classi- fied the Blackfeet Confederacy as Waterfall Indians, composed of Powestic Athinuewuck, Mithco Athinuewuck, (Blood) ; Koskiton Wathesitock (Blackfeet) ; Pegonow (Piegan) ; Sasse- wuck (Sarcee). Cocking's Journal is in the Hudson's Bay Com- pany House, London, and in the Canadian Archives, Ottawa. The account of Hearne's Voyages will be found in "Path- finders of the West," or in the accounts by himself, (i) the report submitted to the H. B. C., (2) his published journals in French and English, of which I used the French edition of 1799, which is later and fuller than either his report to the H. B. C. or the English book. I find the beaver receipts of this period as follows: A. F. (Albany Fort) 21,454 M. R. (Moose) 8,860 E. M. (East Main) 7,626 YF. & SF. (York & Severn) 37,86i C. R. (Churchill) 9,400 Churchill and York, of course, included the inland trade. In 1777, the minutes record the dismissal of Thomas Kelsey for ill behavior at P. of Wales (Churchill); the last of Henry Kelsey 's line. 3 86 Extension of Trade Toward Labrador In 1779, December, the warehouse of Lime Street was burned and all the records without which this history could not have been written narrowly escaped destruction. In 1797, communication was opened by way of London with the Russian fur traders of the west coast. In this year, too, 95,000 beaver was the total. The sums paid to ransom the officer, ran all the way from 6,000 to 4,000, so that it is no wonder, though receipts were large, there were no dividends this year. I find in the minutes of 1777, Samuel Hearne orders 20 yearly to Sarah La Petite, from which one may guess that Samuel had personal reasons for giving such a black picture of Moses Norton. In 1 780, Andrew Graham, whose journals give a great picture of this period, asks that his Indian boy be sent home. In 1782, the following names, famous in Manitoba history, came into the lists of the officers of the Company: Clouston, Ballantine, Linklater, Spencer, Sutherland, Kipling, Ross, Isbister, Umfreville. It was in 1787 that the fearful ravages of smallpox reduced the Indian population. This year of plague deserves a chapter by itself, but space forbids. No "black death" of Europe ever worked more terrible woe than the contagion brought back from the Missouri by wandering Assiniboines. The account of the siege of Richmond by the Eskimos is taken from Pott's report to the Company. A copy of this the Winnipeg Free Press recently published as a letter. The de- scription of Richmond is from Captain Coates' account. Strange that this Richmond should have gone back to the state of deso- lation in which Coates found it. It was Coates who named all the places of this region. Nearly every great mineral discovery of America was pre- ceded by the predictions of the fur trader. It will be interesting to watch if Hearne's copper mine is ever re-discovered. The story of Ross and Tomson and Farrant, I found first in the minutes of H. B. C. House and then in Umfreville's ac- count of life at York. I have throughout referred to Prince of Wales Fort as Church- ill, as the constant changing of names confuses the reader. From the records it is impossible to tell whether the post Whale River was Lit tl.- Whale, or Great Whale. Judging from the fact that the journey was performed by dog-sled in a night, to Richmond, it must have been the nearer post. 37 The Conquest of the Great Northwest I have not referred to the mistake in latitude made by Hearne in his journey North, for which so many critics censure him. It would be interesting to know how many men would have been in a condition to take any observation at all after a week's sleepless marching and the horrors of the massacre. Hearne's picture will be found in "Pathfinders of the West." 3 88 CHAPTER XX 1760-1810 "THE COMING OF THE PEDLARS" A NEW RACE OF WOOD-ROVERS THRONGS TO THE NORTHWEST- BANDITS OF THE WILDS WAR AMONG THEM- SELVES TALES OF BORDER WARFARE, WASSAIL AND GRANDEUR THE NEW NORTHWEST COM- PANY CHALLENGES THE AUTHORITY AND FEU- DALISM OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY LA PEROUSE'S raid on Churchill and York was the least of the misfortunes that now beset the English Adventurers. Within a year from the French victory, the English prisoners had been ransomed from France and the dismantled forts were rebuilt. It was a subtler foe that menaced the Hudson's Bay Company. Down at Abbittibbi, halfway to Quebec in at Henley House and Mai- tin's Falls and Osnaburg House on the way from Albany to the modern Manitoba up the Saskatche- wan, where Cocking and Batts and Walker held the forts for trade between Churchill and Athabasca, where Longmore and Ross had been sent on Hearne's trail yes, even at the entrance to the Rockies, 389 The Conquest of the Great Northwest where Mr. Howse and "the astronomer Turner had found a pass leading from the headwaters of the Saskatchewan, constantly there emerged from the woods, or swept gayly up in light birch canoes, strange hunters, wildwood rovers, free lances, men with packs on their backs, who knocked nonchalantly at the gates of the English posts for a night's lodging and were eagerly admitted because it was safer to have a rival trader under your eye than out among the Indians creating bedlam by the free distribution of rum. "Pedlars," the English called these newcomers, who overran the sacred territory of the Hudson's Bay Company as though royal charters were a joke and trading monopolies as extinct as the dodo. It was all very well to talk of the rights of your charter, but what became of your rights if interlopers stole them while you talked about them? And what was the use of sending men to drum up trade and bring Indians down to the bay with their furs, if pedlars caught the Indians halfway down at portage, carry- ing place and hunting rendezvous, and in spite of the fact that those Jndians owed the English for half-a-dozen years' outfit rifled away the best of the furs, sometimes by the free distribution of rum, sometimes by such seditious talk as that "the Eng- lish had no rights in this country anyway and the 390 "The Coming of the Pedlars 11 Indians were fools to become slaves to the Hudson's Bay Company?" This was a new kind of challenge to feudalism. Sooner or later it was bound to come. The ultimate umpire of all things in life is Fact. Was the charter valid that gave this empire of trade to a few Englishmen, or was it buncombe? "The Pedlars" didn't talk about their rights. They took them. That was to be supreme test of the English Com- pany's rights. Somebody else took the rights, and there were good reasons why the Hudson's Bay Company did not care to bring a question of its rights before the courts. When the charter was confirmed by act of Parliament in 1697, it was speci- fied for only seven years. At the end of that period the Company did not seek a renewal. Request for renewal would of itself be acknowledgment of doubt as to the charter. The Company preferred "to have and to hold," rather than risk adverse decision. They contented themselves with blocking the peti- tions of rivals for trade privileges on the bay, but the eruption of these wildwood rovers "The French Canadian Pedlars" was a contingency against which there seemed to be no official redress. It remained only for the old Company to gird itself to the fray a fight with bandits and free- booters and raiders in a region where was law of neither God nor man. Sales had fallen to a paltry .2,000 a year. Dividends stopped altogether. Value of stock fell from 250 to 50. The Company ad- vertised for men more men. Agents scoured the Orkneys and the Highlands of Scotland for recruits, each to sign for five years, a bounty of 8 to be paid each man. Five ships a year sailed to the bay. Three hundred "patroons" were yearly sent into the woods, and when their time expired strange to relate they did not return to Scotland. What be- came of them? Letters ceased to come home. In- quiries remained unanswered. The wilderness had absorbed them and their bones lay bleaching on the unsheltered prairie where the arrow of Indian raider inspired by a the Pedlars" had shot them as they traversed the plains. No wonder service with the Hudson's Bay Company became ill-omened in the Orkneys and the Highlands ! In spite of the bounty of 8 a man, their agents were at their wits' ends for recruits. When Hendry had gone up the Saskatchewan in 1754, he had seen the houses of French traders. French power fell at Quebec in 1759, and the French wood-rovers scattered to the wilds; but when Cock- ing went up the Saskatchewan in 1772, what was his amazement to find these French rovers organized under leadership of Scotch merchants from Montreal 392 "The Coming of the Pedlars" Curry, and Frobisher, and McTavish, and Todd, and McGill, and McGillivrays. Under French rule, fur trade had been regulated by license. Under English rule was no restriction. First to launch out from Montreal with a cargo of goods for trade, was Alexander Henry, senior, in 1760. From the Michilimackinac region and west- ward, Henry in ten years, from 1765 to 1775, brought back to Montreal such a wealth of furs, that peltry trade became a fever. No capital was needed but the capital of boundless daring. Montreal merchants advanced goods for trade. One went with the canoes as partner and commander. Three thousand dollars worth of goods constituted a load. French- men were engaged as hunters and voyageurs eight to a canoe, and before the opening of the century, as many as five hundred canoes yearly passed up the Ottawa from Montreal for the Pays d' en Haul, west of Lake Superior, ten and twenty canoes in a brigade. In this way, Thomas Curry had gone from Lake Superior to Lake Winnipeg, and Lake Winnipeg up the Saskatchewan, in 1766, as far as the Forks, bribing that renegade Louis Primo, to steal the furs bought by Cocking for the Hudson's Bay, and to lead the brigade on down to Montreal. One voyage sufficed to yield Curry $50,000 clear, a sum that was considered a fortune in those days, 393 The Conquest of the Great Northwest and enabled him to retire. The fur fever became an epidemic, a mania. James Finlay of Montreal, in 1771, pushed up the Saskatchewan beyond the Forks, or what is now Prince Albert. Todd, Mc- Gill & Company outfitted Joseph and Benjamin Frobisher for a dash north of the Saskatchewan in 1772-5, where, by the luckiest chance in the world, they met the Chippewyan and Athabasca Indians on their way to Churchill with furs for the Hudson's Bay Company. The Frobishers struck up friend- ship with "English Chief" leader of the Indian brigades plied the argument of rum night and day, bade the Indians ignore their debts to the English company, offered to outfit them for the next year's hunt and bagged the entire cargo of furs such an enormous quantity that they could take down only half the cargo that year and had to leave the other half cached, to the everlasting credit of the Indian's honesty and discredit of the white man's. Hence- forth, this post was known as Portage de Traite. It led directly from the Saskatchewan to the Athabasca and became a famous meeting place. Portage "of the Stretched Frog" the Indians called it, for the Frobishers had been so keen on the trade that they had taught the Indians how to stretch skins, and the Indians had responded in mischief by tacking a stretched frog skin on the door of the cabin. Push- 394 The Coming o] the Pedlars 1 ' ing yet farther toward Athabasca, the Frobisher brothers built another post norwestward, Isle a la Crosse, on an island where the Indians met for the sport of lacrosse. Besides the powerful house of McTavish, Frob- isher, Todd, McGill and McGillivray, were hosts of lesser traders who literally peddled their goods to the Indians. In 1778, these pedlars pooled their stock and outfitted Peter Pond to go on beyond the Frobisher posts to Athabasca. Here, some miles south of the lake, Pond built his fort. Pond was a Boston man of boundless ambition and energy but utterly unscrupulous. While at Athabasca, he heard from the Indians rumors of the Russian fur traders on the Pacific Coast and he drew that famous map of the interior, which was to be presented to the Empress of Russia. He seems to have been cherish- ing secret designs of a great fur monopoly. Fur posts sprang up on the waterways of the West like mushrooms. Rum flowed like water 50,000 gallons a year "the pedlars" brought to the Sas- katchewan from Montreal. Disorders were bound to ensue. At Eagle Hills near Battleford, in 1780, the drunken Crees became so obstreperous in their demands for more liquor that the three terrified traders cooped up in their house tried to save them- selves by putting laudanum in the liquor. An Indian 395 The Conquest of the Great Northwest was drugged to death. The sobered Crees sulky from their debauch, arose to a man, rammed the doors, stabbed the three whites and seven half-breed traders to death, burnt the fort and sent coureurs running from tribe to tribe across the prairie to conspire for a massacre of all white traders in the country. Down on the Assiniboine at what is now known as Portage la Prairie, where the canoemen portaged across to Lake Manitoba and so to Lake Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan, were three strong trading houses under two men called Brice and Boyer. With them were twenty-three Frenchmen. Three different companies had their rendezvous here. The men were scattered in the three houses and off guard when one night the darkness was made hideous by the piercing war cry of the Assiniboines. Before lights could be put out, the painted warriors had swooped down on two of the houses. The whites were butchered as they dashed out eleven men in as many seconds. The third house had warning from the shots at the others. Brice and Boyer were together. Promptly, lights were put out, muskets rammed through the parchment windows and chinks of the log walls, and a second relay of loaded weapons made ready. When the Assini- boines attempted to rush the third house, they were met with a solid crash of musketry that mowed 396 The Coming of the Pedlars" down some thirty warriors and gave the assailants pause. With checked ardor, the Indians retreated to the other houses. They could at least starve the white men out, but the white men wisely did not wait. While the Assiniboines rioted, drunk on the booty of rum in the captured cabins, Brice ordered all liquor spilt in his house. Taking what peltries he could, abandoning the rest, Brice led a dash for the river. Darkness favored the fugitive whites. Three only of the retreating men fell under the shower of random arrows Belleau, Facteau, La- chance. Launching canoes with whispers and muf- fling their paddles, the white men rowed all night, hid by day, and in three days were safe with the traders at the Forks, or what is now Winnipeg. Up at Athabasca, Pond, the indomitable, was setting a bad example for lawless work. Wadin was his partner; Le Sieur, his clerk. No greater test of fairness and manhood exists than to box two men in a house ten by ten in the wilderness, with no company but their own year in, year out. Pond was for doing impossibles or what seemed impos- sibles at that day. He had sent two traders down Big River (the MacKenzie) as far as Slave Lake. The Indians were furiously hostile. Wadin, the Swiss partner, opposed all risks. Lonely, unstrung and ill-natured, Pond conceived that hatred for his 397 The Conquest of the Great Northwest partner which men, who have been tied too close to an alien nature, know. The men had come to blows. One night the quarrel became so hot, Le Sieur with- drew from the house. He had gone only a few steps when he heard two shots. Rushing back, he found the Swiss weltering in his blood on the floor. "Be off! Never let me see your face again," shouted the wounded man, catching sight of Pond. Those were his last words. It is a terrible commentary on civilization that the first blood shed in the Athabasca was that of a white man slain by a white man; but the Athabasca was three thousand miles away from punishment and the merry game had only begun. Later, Pond was tried for this crime, but acquitted in Montreal. Roving Assiniboines had visited the Mandanes of the Missouri, this year. They brought back with them not only stolen horses, but an unknown, un- seen horror the germ of smallpox which ran like a fiery scourge for three years, from Red River and the Assiniboine to the Rockies, sweeping off two- thirds of the native population. Camp after camp, tribe after tribe, was attacked and utterly destroyed, leaving no monument but a heap of bleaching bones scraped clean by the wolves. Tent leather flapped lonely to the wind, rotting on the tepee poles where Death had spared not a soul of a whole encampment. 398 "The Coming of the Pedlars" In vain the maddened Indians made offerings to their gods, slew their children to appease this Death Demon's wrath, and cast away all their belongings. Warriors mounted their fleetest horses and rode like mad to outrace the Death they fancied was pur- suing them. Delirious patients threw themselves into the lakes and rivers to assuage suffering. The epidemic was of terrible virulence. The young and middle-aged fell victims most readily, and many aged parents committed suicide rather than live on, bereft of their children. There was an end to all conspiracy for a great uprising and massacre of the whites. The whites had fled before the scourge as terrified as were the Indians and for three years there was scarcely a fur trader in the country from the Missouri to the Saskatchewan. During the interval, the merchants of Montreal had put their heads together. Division and inter- necine warfare in the face of Indian hostility and the Hudson's Bay traders steady advancement in- land, were folly. The Montrealers must unite. The united traders were known as the Northwest Com- pany. The Company had no capital. Montreal partners who were merchants outfitted the canoes with goods. Men experienced in the trade led the brigades westward. The former gave credit for goods, the latter time on the field. The former acted as 399 The Conquest of the Great Northwest agents to sell the furs, the latter as wintering partners to barter for the furs with the Indians. To each were assigned equal shares a share apiece to each partner, or sixteen shares in all, in the first place; later increased to twenty and forty-six and ninety-six shares as the Company absorbed more and more of the free traders. As a first charge against the proceeds were the wages of the voyageurs 100 a year, five times as much as the Hudson's Bay Com- pany paid for the same workers. Then the cost of the goods was deducted $3,000 a canoe and in the early days ninety canoes a year were sent North. Later, when the Nor'Westers absorbed all opposi- tion, the canoes increased to five hundred. The net returns were then divided into sixteen parts and the profits distributed to the partners. By 1787, shares were valued at 800 each. At first, net re- turns were as small as 40,000 a year, but this divi- dend among only sixteen partners gave what was considered a princely income in those days. Later, net returns increased to 1*20,000 and 200,000, but by this time the number of partners was ninety-six. Often the yearly dividend was 400 a share. As many as 200,000 beaver were sold by the Nor'Westers in a year, and the heaviest buyer of furs at Montreal was John Jacob Astor of New York. Chief among the Eastern agents, were the two Frobisher brothers, 400 "The Coming of the Pedlars" Benjamin and Joseph McGill, Todd, Holmes, and Simon McTavish, the richest merchant of Montreal, nicknamed "the Marquis" for his pompous air of wearing prosperity. Chief among the wintering partners were Peter Pond, the American of Atha- basca fame, the McGillivrays, nephews of McTavish; the MacLeods, the Grants, the Camerons, Mac- intoshes, Shaws, McDonalds, Finlays, Erasers, and Henry, nephew of the Henry who first went to Michilimackinac. Not only did the new company forthwith send ninety canoes to the North by way of Lake Superior, but one hundred and twenty men were sent through Lake Ontario and Lake Erie to Detroit, for the fur region between Lake Huron and the Mississippi. It was at this period that the Canadian Government was besieged for a monopoly of trade west of Lake Superior, in return for which the Nor'Westers promised to explore the entire region between the Great Lakes and the Pacific Ocean. When the Government refused to grant the monopoly, the Nor'Westers stopped asking for rights. They pre- pared to take them. In Montreal, the Nor'Westers were lords in the ascendant, socially and financially, living with lavish and regal hospitality, keeping one strong hand on their interests in the West, the other hand on the 401 The Conquest of the Great Northwest pulse of the government. Some of the partners were members of the Assembly. All were men of public influence, and when a wintering partner re- tired to live in Montreal, he usually became a mem- ber of the governing clique. The Beaver Club with the appropriate motto, " Fortitude in Distress," was the partners' social rendezvous, and coveted were the social honors of its exclusive membership. Gov- ernors and councillors, military heroes and foreign celebrities counted it an honor to be entertained at the Beaver Club with its lavish table groaning under weight of old wines from Europe and game from the Pays d'en Haul. "To discuss the merits of a beaver tail, or moose nose, or bear's paw, or buffalo hump" was the way a Nor' West partner invited a guest to dinner at the Beaver Club, and I would not like to testify that the hearty partners did not turn night into day and drink themselves under the mahogany before they finished entertaining a guest. Most lordly of the grandees was, of course, "the Marquis," Simon McTavish, who built himself a magnificent manor known as "the Haunted House," on the mountain. He did not live to enjoy it long, for he died in 1804. Indeed, it was a matter of comment how few of the ninety-six partners lived to a good old age in possession of their hard-earned wealth. 402 "The Coming of the Pedlars" "No wonder," sarcastically commented a good bishop, who had been on the field and seen how the wealth was earned, "when the devil sows the seed, he usually looks after the harvest." But it was not all plain sailing from the formation of the Company. Pond and Pangman, the two Boston men, who had been in the North when the partnership was arranged, were not satisfied with their shares. Pond was won over to the Nor'Westers, but Pangman joined a smaller company with Greg- ory, and MacLeod, and Alexander MacKenzie, and Finlay. MacKenzie, who was to become famous as a discoverer, was sent to Isle a la Crosse to inter- cept furs on the way to Hudson Bay. Ross was sent up to oppose Peter Pond of the Nor'Westers in Athabasca. Bostonnais Pangman went up the Sas- katchewan to the Rockies, with headquarters at what is now Edmonton, and the rest of what were known as the Little Company faithfully dogged the Nor'Westers' footsteps and built a trading house wherever Indians gathered. Failing to establish a monopoly by law, the Nor'- Westers set themselves to do it without law. The Little Company must be exterminated. Because Alexander MacKenzie later became one of the Nor'- Westers, the details have never been given to the public, but at La Crosse where he waited to barter 403 The Conquest of the Great Northwest for the furs coming from the North to the Hudson's Bay, the Nor'Westers camped on his trail. The crisis in rivalry was to meet the approaching Indian brigades. The trader that met them first, usually got the furs. Spies were sent in all directions to watch for the Indians, and spies dogged the steps of spies. It was no unusual thing for one side to find the Indians first and for a rival spy to steal the victory by bludgeoning the discoverer into uncon- sciousness or treating him to a drink of drugged whiskey. In the scuffle and maneuver for the trade, one of Alexander MacKenzie's partners was mur- dered, another of his men lamed, a third narrowly escaping death through the assassin's bullet being stopped by a powderhorn ; but the point was MacKenzie got the furs for the Little Company. The Nor'Westers were beaten. Up at Athabasca. Pond, the Nor' Wester was op- posed by Ross, the Little Company man. Hearne, of Hudson's Bay, had been to Athabasca first of all explorers, but Pond was the first of the Montreal men to reach the famous fur region of the North, and he did not purpose seeing his labors filched away by the Little Company. When Laroux brought the Indians from Slave Lake to the Nor'Westers and Ross attempted to approach them, there was a scuffle. The Little Company leader fell pierced by 404 "TJie Coming of the Pedlars" a bullet from a revolver smoking in the hand of Peter Pond. Did Pond shoot Ross? Was it acci- dental? These questions can never be answered. This was the second murder for which Pond was responsible in the Athabasca, and ill-omened news of it ran like wildfire south to Isle a la Crosse and Portage de Traite where Alexander MacKenzie and his cousin Roderick were encamped. Nor'Westers and Little Company men alike were shocked. For the Montreal men to fight among themselves meant alienation of the Indians and victory for the Hud- son's Bay. Roderick MacKenzie of the Little Com- pany and William McGillivray of the Nor'Westers decided to hasten down to Montreal with the sum- mer brigades and urge a union of both organizations. Locking canoes abreast, with crews singing in unison, the rival leaders set out together, and the union was effected in 1787 by the Nor'Westers increasing their shares to admit all the partners of the Gregory and MacKenzie concern. Pond sold his interests to the MacGillivrays and retired to Boston. The strongest financial, social and political inter- ests of Eastern Canada were now centered in the Northwest Company. There were ways of dis- couraging independent merchants from sending ])(< liars to the North. Boycott, social or financial, the pulling of political strings that withheld a gov- 405 ernment passport, a hint that if the merchant wanted a hand in the trade it would be cheaper for him to pool his interests with the Nor'Westers than risk a $3,000 load on his own account kept the field clear or brought about absorption of all rivals till 1801. Then a Dominique Rousseau essayed an independ- ent venture led by his clerk, Hervieux. Grand Portage on Lake Superior was the halfway post between Montreal and the Pays d'en Haul the metropolis of the Nor'Westers' domain. Here came Hervieux' s brigade and pitched camp some hundred yards away from the Nor'West palisades. Hardly had Hervieux landed when there marched across to him three officers of the Northwest Company, led by Duncan McGillivray, who ordered the new- comers to be off on pain of death, as all the land here was Northwest property. Hervieux stood his ground stoutly as a British subject and demanded proof that the country belonged to the Northwest Company. To the Nor'Westers, such a demand was high treason. McGillivray retorted he would send proof enough. The partners withdrew, but there sallied out of the fort a party of the famous Northwest bullies prize fighters kept in trim for the work in hand. Drawing knives, they cut Herv- ieux' s tents to shreds, scattered his merchandise to the four winds and bedrubbed the little men, who 406 "The Coming of the Pedlars" tried to defend it, as if they had been so many school boys. "You demand our title to possession? You want proofs that we hold this country? Eh? Bien! Voila! There's proof! Take it; but if you dare to go into the interior, there will be more than tents cut! Look out for your throats." Totally ruined, Hervieux was compelled to go back to Montreal, where his master in vain sued the Nor'Westers. The Nor'Westers were not respon- sible. It was plain as day: they had not ordered those bullies to come out, and those bullies were a matter of three thousand miles away and could not be called as witnesses. Determined not to be beaten, Rousseau attempted a second venture in 1806, this time two canoes under fearless fellows led by one Delorme, who knew the route to the interior. He instructed Delorme to avoid clashing with the Nor'Westers by skirting round their headquarters on Lake Superior, if necesssary by traveling at night till beyond de- tection. Delorme was four days' march beyond Lake Superior when Donald McKay, a Nor'Wester, suddenly emerged from the underbrush leading a dozen wood-rovers. Not a word was said. No threats. No blustering. This was a no-man's- land where there was no law and everyone could do 407 The Conquest of the Great Northwest as he liked. McKay liked to do a very odd thing just at this juncture, just at this place. His bush- lopers hurried on down stream in advance of De- lorme's canoes and leveled a veritable barricade of trees across the trail. Then they went to the rear of Delorme and leveled another barricade. Delorme didn't attempt to out-maneuver his rivals. At most he had only sixteen men, and that kind of a game meant a free fight and on one side or the other- murder. He sold out both his cargoes to McKay at prices current in Montreal, and retreated from the fur country, leaving the sardonic Nor'Westers smiling in triumph. These were some of the ways by which the Nor'Westers dissuaded rivals from invading the Pays d'en Haul. On their part, they probably justified their course by arguing that rivalry would at once lead to such murders as those in the Atha- basca. In their secret councils, they well knew that they were keeping small rivals from the field to be free for the fight against the greatest rival of all the Hudson's Bay Company. Footnote to Chapter XX. The contents of this chapter are taken primarily from the records of the Hudson's Bay House; secondarily, from the Journals of the Nor'West partners as published by Senator Masson, Prof. Coues, and others; also, and most important, from such old missionary annals as those of the Oblates and other missionaries like Abbe Dugas, Tasse", Grandin, Provencher and others. In the most of cases, the missionary writer was not himself the actor (there are two ex- ceptions to this) but he was in direct contact with the living 408 Coining of the Pedlars" actor and took his facts on the spot, so that his testimony is even more non-partisan than the carefully edited Masson essay and records. I consider these various missionary legends the most authentic source of the history of the period, though their evidence is most damning to both sides. These annals are ex- clusively published by Catholic organizations and so unfor- tunately do not reach the big public of which they are deserving. The exact way in which the N. W. C. was formed, I found very involved in the Masson essay. A detailed account of all steps in the organization is very plainly given in the petitions of the Frobisher Brothers, Peter Pond and McGill to Gov. Haldi- mand for a monopoly of the fur trade. The petitions are in the Canadian Archives. A curious fear is revealed in all these peti- tions that the Americans may reach and possess the Pacific Coast first. As a matter of fact that is exactly what Grey and Lewis and Clarke did in the Oregon region. From the H. B. C. Archives I find the following data on this era : Batts and Walker and Peter Fidler held the mouth of the Saskatchewan for the English; one Goodwin worked south from Albany almost to Lake Superior and west to modern Manitoba; half a dozen French run-aways from the N. W. C. were engaged as spies at 100 a year; the Martin Falls House is built inland from Albany in 1782; in spite of ignominious surrender, Hearne and Humphrey Martin go back as Governors of Churchill and York; Edward Vmfreville leaves the H. B. C. (wages 141) and joins the X. W. C. ; Martin and Hearne, La Perouse's prisoners, were dropped at Stromness in November, whether on the way to France or back from France, I can't tell; their letters do not reach the H. B. C. till March, 1783; William Paulson is surgeon at East Main; no dividends from 1782 to 1786; Joseph Colen succeeds Martin at York in '86; William Auld succeeds Hearne at Churchill in '96; James Hourie is massacred by the Indians of East Main; H. B. C. servants from the growing dangers become mutinous, six are fined at East Main for mutiny; four at York fined 4 each, namely Magnus Tait, Alex. Gunn, John Irvine, Benj. Bruce, two at Churchill 20 each, Robert Pexman and Henry Hodges. Andrew Gra- ham, the old factor of Severn, being now destitute at Edinburg, is given thirty guineas in 1801. 409 CONTENTS OF VOLUME II PART III (Continued) CHAPTER XXI PAGE "The Coming of the Pedlars" (continued) Voyage up to Fort William, Life of Wild-wood Wassail and Grandeur There How the Wintering Partners Exploited in the Pays D'en Haut ....... 3 CHAPTER XXII "The Coming of the Pedlars" (continued) Henry's Adven- tures at Pembina The First White Woman in the West A Stolen Child and a Poisoner and a Scout How Harmon Found a Wife The Story of Marguerite Trot- tier . . . .26 CHAPTER XXIII "The Coming of the Pedlars" (continued} Thirty years of Exploration The Advance up the Saskatchewan to Bow River and Howse Pass The Building of Edmon- ton How MacKenzie Crossed the Pacific . . -47 CHAPTER XXIV "The Coming of the Pedlars" (continued") MacKenzie and McTavish Quarrel The Nor' westers Invade Hudson Bay Waters and Challenge the Charter Ruffianism of Nor'westers Murder and Boycott of Hudson's Bay Men Up-to-date Commercialism as Conducted in Terms of a Club and Without Law . . . .68 CHAPTER XXV David Thompson, the Nor'wester, Dashes for the Columbia He Explores East Kootenay, but Finds Aster's Men on the Field How the Astorians are Jockeyed out of Astoria Fraser Finds His Way to the Sea by Another Great River . . . . 81 Contents CHAPTER XXVI PAGE The Coming of the Colonists Lord Selkirk Buys Control of the H. B. C. Simon M'Gillivray and MacKenzie Plot to Defeat Him Robertson Says "Fight Fire with Fire" and Selkirk Chooses a M'Donell Against a M'Donell The Colonists Come to Red River Riot and Plot and Mutiny . . . . . .113 CHAPTER XXVII The Coming of the Colonists (continued) MacDonell Attempts to Carry Out the Rights of Feudalism on Red River Nor'westers Resent The Colony De- stroyed and Dispersed Selkirk to the Rescue Lajimoniere's Long Voyage Clarke in Athabasca . 141 CHAPTER XXVIII The Coming of the Colonists (continued) Governor Semple and Twenty Colonists are Butchered at Seven Oaks Selkirk to the Rescue Captures Fort William and Sweeps the Nor'westers from the Field The Suffering of the Settlers At Last Selkirk Sees the Promised Land at Red River . . . . . .166 CHAPTER XXIX Both Companies Make a Dash to Capture Athabasca Whence Came the Most Valuable Furs Robertson Overland to Montreal, Tried and Acquitted, Leads a Brigade to Athabasca He is Tricked by the Nor'westers, but Tricks Them in Turn The Union of the Companies Sir George Simpson, Governor . . . .202 PART IV CHAPTER XXX Reconstruction (continued) Nicholas Garry, the Deputy Governor, Comes Out to Reorganize the United Com- panies More Colonists from Switzerland The Rocky Mountain Brigades Ross of Okanogan . . -235 vi Contents CHAPTER XXXI PAGE Journals of Peter Skene Ogden, Explorer and Fur Trader, Over the Regions now Known as Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Utah He Relieves Ashley's Men of 10,000 Beaver He Finds Nevada He Discovers Mt. Shasta He Tricks the Americans at Salt Lake . .261 CHAPTER XXXII McLoughlin's Transmontane Empire (continued) Douglas* Adventures in New Caledonia, How He Punishes Mur- der and is Himself Almost Murdered Little Yale of the Lower Fraser Black's Death at Kamloops How Tod Outwits Conspiracy The Company's Operations in California and Sandwich Islands and Alaska Why did Rae Kill Himself in San Francisco? The Secret Diplomacy ........ 304 CHAPTER XXXIII The Passing of the Company The Coming of the Colonists to Oregon The Founding of Victoria North of the Boundary Why the H. B. C. Gave Up Oregon Mis- rule of Vancouver Island McLoughlin s Retirement . 352 CHAPTER XXXIV The Passing of the Company . . . . . -387 Vll PART III Continued THE CONQUEST OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST THE CONQUEST OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST CHAPTER XXI 1760-1810 : 'THE COMING OF THE PEDLARS" CONTINUED VOYAGE UP TO FORT WILLIAM, LIFE OF WILD- WOOD WASSAIL AND GRANDEUR THERE HOW THE WINTERING PARTNERS EXPLOITED THE NORTHWEST TALES OF THE WINTERERS IN THE PAYS D'EN HAUT IT WAS no easier for the Nor'Westers to obtain recruits than for the Hudson's Bay Com- pany. French habitants were no more anx- ious to have their heads broken in other men's quarrels than the Orkneymen of the Old Country; but the Nor'Westers managed better than the Hud- son's Bay. Brigades were made up as the ice cleared from the rivers in May. For weeks before, the Nor'Westers had been craftily at work. No agents were sent to the country parishes with clumsy offers 3 The Conquest of the Great Northwest of 8 bounty, which would be, of itself, acknowledg- ment of danger. Companies don't pay 8 bounty for nothing. Not agents were sent to the parishes, but "sly old wolves of the North" as one parish priest calls these demoralizers of his flock went from village to village, gay, reckless, daredevil veterans, old in service, young in years, clothed in all the picturesque glory of beaded buckskin, plumed hats, silk sashes, to tickle the vanity of the poor country bucks, who had never been beyond their own hamlet. Cocks of the walk, bullies of the town, slinging money around like dust, spinning yarns marvelous of fortune made at one coup, of adven- tures in which they had been the heroes, of freedom freedom like kings to rule over the Indian tribes these returned voyageurs lounged in the taverns, played the gallants at all the hillside dances, flirted with the daughters, made presents to the mothers, and gave to the youth of the parish what the priest describes as "dizziness of the head." It needed only a little maneuvering for our "sly wolves of the North" to get themselves lionized, the heroes of the parish. Dances were given in their honor. The contagion invaded even the sacred fold of the church. The "sons of Satan" maneuvered so well that the holy festivals even seemed to revolve round their person as round a sun of glory. The cure might 4 The Coming of the Pedlars" preach himself black in the face proving that a camp on the sand and a bed a la belle etoile, under the stars, are much more poetic in the telling than in life; that voyageurs don't pass all their lives clothed in picturesque costumes chanting ditties to the rhythmic dip of paddle blades; that, in fact, when your voyageur sets out in spring he passes half his time in ice water to mid-waist tracking canoes up rapids, and that where the portage is rocky glassed with ice, you can follow the sorry fellow's path by blood from the cuts in his feet. What did the cure know about it? There was proof to the contrary in the gay blade before their eyes, and the green country bucks expressed timid wish that they, too, might lead such a life. Presto! No sooner said than done ! My hero from the North jerks a written contract all ready for the signature of names and slaps down half the wages in advance before the dazzled greenhorns have time to retract. From now till the brigades depart our green recruit busies himself playing the hero before he has won his spurs. He dons the gay vesture and he dons the grand air and he passes the interval in a glorious oblivion of all regrets drowned in potions at the parish inn; but it is our drummer's business to round up the recruits at Montreal, which he does as swiftly as they sober up. And they usually sober 5 The Conquest of the Great Northwest up to find that all the advance wages have melted in the public house. No drawing back now, though the rosy hopes have faded drab! A hint at such a thought brings down on the poltroon's head threats of instant imprisonment a fine ending, indeed, to all the brag and the boast and the brass-band flourish with which our runaway has left his native parish. Crews and canoes assemble above Lachine, nine miles from Montreal, ninety or one hundred canoes with eight men to each, including steersman, and a pilot to each ten canoes. Thirty or forty guides there will, perhaps, be to the yearly brigade men who lead the way and prevent waste of time by fol- lowing wrong water courses. And it is a picturesque enough scene to stir the dullest blood, spite of all the cure's warning. Voyageurs and hunters are dressed in buckskin with gayest of silk bands round hair and neck. Partners are pompous in ruffles and lace and gold braid, with brass-handled pistols and daggers in belt. In each canoe go the cargoes two- thirds merchandise, one-third provisions oilcloth to cover it, tarpaulin for a tent, tow lines, bark and gum for repairs, kettles, dippers and big sponges to bail out water. As the canoes are loaded, they are launched and circle about on the river waiting for the signal of the head steersman. The chief steers- man's steel-shod pole is held overhead. It drops 6 The Coming of the Pedlars" five hundred paddles dip as with one arm, and there shoots out from the ninety-foot canoes the small, narrow, swift craft of the partners, racing ahead to be at the rendezvous before the cargoes arrive. Freight packers ashore utter a shout that makes the echoes ring. The voyageurs strike up a song. The paddles dip to the time of the song. The deep- throated chorus dies away in echo. The life of the Pays d'en Haul has begun. Ste. Anne's the patron saint of canoemen is the last chapel spire they will see for many a year. The canoemen cross themselves in prayer. Then the Lake of the Two Mountains comes, and the Long Sault Rapids and the Chaudiere Falls, of what is now Ottawa City, and the Chat Rapids and thirty-six other portages in the four hundred miles up the Ottawa from Montreal, each portage being reckoned as many "pipes" long as the voyageur smokes, when carrying the cargo overland in ninety-pound packs on his back. Leaving the Mattawa at the head- waters of the Ottawa, the brigades strike westward for the Great Lakes, down stream through Nipissing Lake and French River to Lake Huron ; easier going now with the current and sheer delight once the canoes are out on the clear waters of the lake, where if the wind is favorable, blankets are hoisted for a sail and the canoes scud across to the Sault. But it is 7 not always easy going. Where French River comes out of Nipissing Lake, ten crosses mark where voyageurs have found a watery grave, and sometimes on the lake the heavily laden canoes are working straight against a head wind that sends choppy waves ice-cold slapping into their laps till oilcloth must be bound round the prow to keep from ship- ping water where a wave-crest dips over and the canoe has failed to climb. Even mounting the waves and keeping the gun'els clear of the wash, at every paddle dip the spray splashes the voyageur to his waist. The "old wolves" smoke and say nothing. The bowman bounces back athwart so that the prow will lighten and rise to the climbing wave, but the green hands the gay dons who left home in such a flush of glory mutter "c'est la misere, c'est la misere, mon bourgeois" bourgeois being the habi- tant's name for the partners of the Company; and misery it is, indeed, if ice glasses the canoe and the craft becomes frost-logged. They must land then and repair the canoe where the bark has been jagged, new bark being gummed on where the cuts are deep, resin and tar run along all fissures. And these Nor' Westers are very wolves for time. Repairs must be done by torchlight at night. In fair weather, the men sleep on the sand. In bad weather, tar- paulin is put up as a wind-break. Reveille is sounded 8 The Coming of the Pedlars" at first dawn streak a bugle call if a partner is in camp, a shout from the chief steersman if the bri- gades have become scattered "Level Level" By four in the morning, canoes are again on the water. At eight, the brigades land for breakfast. If weather be favorable for speed, they will not pause for mid- day meal but eat a snack of biscuit or pemmican as they run across the portages. Night meal comes when they can see to go no farther, and often relays of paddles are put on and the brigades paddle all night. The men have slim fare grease and barley meal and pemmican, and the greenhorns frequently set up such a wail for the pork diet of the home table that they become known as the "mangeurs de lard" "the pork eaters," between Montreal and Lake Superior, or "the comers and goers," because the men on this part of the voyage to the Up Country are freighters constantly coming and going. At each fresh portage the new hand must stand for treats to his comrades, or risk a ducking, or prove himself a better wrestler than they. At the hardest places and the hardest pace, the bourgeois unbends and gives his men a regale, which means rum. The Sault at the west side of Lake Huron leading up to Lake Superior is the last military post the outermost reach of the law's arm. Beyond the Sault as the priests had warned is law of neither 9 The Conquest of the Great Northwest God nor man. Beyond the Sault, letters from home friends to the voyageurs bear the significant address, "Wherever He May Be Found" At the Sault on the north side, the Nor'Westers constructed a canal with locks, for they had two sailing vessels patrolling the lakes The Otter and The Beaver one bound for the Detroit trade, the other from the Sault across Lake Superior. As the superstitious half-breeds passed from the Sault to Lake Superior, it was an Indian custom to drop an arrow on the shore as an offering to keep the devil from doing them harm on the boisterous waters of Lake Superior. Many a canoe was swamped by head winds crossing Lake Superior. To avoid risk, the brigades skirted close to the north shore, till they came to the Company's headquarters at Fort William, formerly known as Grand Portage. Grand Portage was eighteen hundred miles from Montreal and lay at the foot of a hill, the buildings engirt by eighteen-foot palisades. It was here rival traders were usually stopped. When the Montreal merchants first went to the Northwest, their head- quarters had been Michilimacinac, but this was too close to rival traders. The Frobishers and Mc- Gillivrays and McTavishes decided to seek some good location on the north shore of the lake leading directly to the Up Country. Grand Portage on 10 The Coming of the Pedlars Pigeon River leading up to the height of land drained by Rainy River, was chosen for the fort, but when the American Boundary was specified by treaty, it was found that Grand Portage was in foreign territory. The partners looked for an eastern site that would still be on waterways leading toward Rainy River. The very year, 1785, that the Nor' Westers had petitioned the government for monopoly, they sent voyageurs seeking such a site. The man who led the voyageurs was that Edward Umfreville, who had been captured by the French on Hudson Bay, in 1782, and had now come to join the Nor'Westers. Umfreville found a chain of waterways leading up from Lake Superior to Lake Nipigon and from Nip- igon west to Winnipeg River, but later, in 1797, Roderick MacKenzie found the trail of the fur traders in the old French regime by way of Kaministiquia; and to the mouth of the Kaministiquia headquarters were moved by 1800, and the post named Fort William in honor of that William McGillivray who had bought out Peter Pond. The usual slab-cut palisades surrounded the fort. In the center of the square stood the main building surmounted by a high balcony. Inside was the great saloon or hall sixty feet by thirty decorated with paintings of the leading partners in the full flush of ruffles and court costume. Here the partners ii The Conquest of the Great Northwest and clerks and leading guides took their meals. Round this hall were the partners' bedrooms; in the basement, the kitchen. Flanking the walls of the courtyard were other buildings equally large the servants' quarters, storehouses, warerooms, clerks' lodgings. The powder magazine was of stone roofed with tin with a lookout near the roof com- manding a view of the lake. There was also a jail which the voyageurs jocularly called their pot au beurre, or butter tub. The physician, Doctor Mc- Loughlin, a young student of Laval, Quebec, who had been forced to flee west for pitching a drunken British officer of Quebec Citadel on his head in the muddy streets, had a house to himself near the gate. Over the gate was a guardhouse, where sentry sat night and day. Inside the palisades was a popula- tion of from twelve hundred, to two thousand people. Outside the fort a village of little log houses had scattered along the river front. Here dwelt the Indian families of the French voyageurs. Here, then, came the brigades from Montreal seven hundred, and one thousand strong, preceded by the swift-traveling partners whose annual meet- ing was held in July. A great whoop welcomed the men ashore and they were at once rallied to the Can- teen, where bread, butter, meal and four quarts of rum were given to each man. About the same time 12 " The Coming of the Pedlars as the canoes from the East arrived, the fur brigades from the West came in smaller canoes, loaded to the waterline with skins valued at ^40 a pack. To these also was given a regale. Then twenty or a dozen kegs of rum were distributed to the Indian families; "and after that," says one missionary, "truly the furies of Hell were let loose." The gates were closed for reasons that need not be given, and the Nor'Westers often took the precaution of gather- ing up all the weapons of the Indians before the boisson or mad drinking bout began, but the rum- frenzied Indians still had fists and teeth left, and never a drinking bout passed but from one to a dozen Indians were murdered frequently wives and daughters because they were least able to defend themselves though the Indian murderer when so- bered was often plunged in such grief for his deed that he would come to the white men and beg them to kill him as punishment. The stripping of all restraint moral, physical, legal has different effects on different natures. Some rise higher in the free- dom. Others go far below the level of the most vicious beast. Men like Alexander MacKenzie and Doctor McLoughlin braced themselves to the shock of the sudden transition from civilization to bar- Kuism and rose to renown one as explorer, the other as patriot ; but in the very same region where The Conquest of the Great Northwest Alexander MacKenzie won his laurels was another MacKenzie James a blood relative, who openly sold native women to voyageurs and entered them as an asset on the Company's books; and in that very Oregon where McLoughlin won his reputation as a saint, was his son McLoughlin, notorious as a sot. Perhaps the crimes of the fur country were no greater than those committed under hiding in civili- zation, but they were more terrific, for they were un- disguised and in open day where if you would not see them you must close your eyes or bolt the gates. Inside the bolted gates where the partners lived, the code was on the whole one of decency and high living and pomp. In the daytime, the session of the annual meeting was held in secret behind barred doors. The entire Up Country was mapped out for the year's campaign. Reports were received on the past season, men and plans arranged for the coming year, weak leaders shifted to easy places, strong men, "old winterers," "the crafty wolves of the North," dispatched to the fields where there was to be the hardest fighting against either Indians or English, and English always meant Hudson's Bay. But at night the cares of the campaign were laid aside. The partners dressed for dinner ruffles and gold lace and knee breeches with gold-clasped garters and silver-buckled shoes. Over the richly laden " The Coming of the Pedlars" dinner table was told many a yarn of hardship and danger and heroism in the Up Country. The rafters rang with laughter and applause and song. Out- side the gates among the voyageurs the songs were French; inside among the partners, Scotch. When plates were cleared away, bagpipes of the beloved Highlands, and flutes, and violins struck up and "we danced till daylight," records Rod. MacKenzie; or "we drank the ten gallon kegs empty," confesses Henry; it was according to the man. Or when more wine than wisdom had flowed from the festive board, and plates were cleared, the jolly partners sometimes straddled wine kegs, chairs, benches, and "sauted" as one relates it shot the rapids from the dining table to the floor ending up a wild night with wild races astride anything from a broom to a paddle round and round the hall till daylight peeped through the barred windows, or pipers and fiddlers fell asleep, and the servants came to pilot the gay gentlemen to bed. Altogether, it wasn't such a dull time those two weeks' holidays at Fort William and such revel was only the foam ("bees' winds'' one journal calls it) of a life that was all strong wine. Outside the gates were the lees and the dregs of the life riot and lust. It was part of the Nor'Westers' policy to encourage a spirit of bluster and brag and bullying among the '5 The Conquest of the Great Northwest servants. Bluff was all very well, but the partners saw to it that the men could back up their bluff with brawn. Wrestling matches and boxing bouts were encouraged between the Scotch clerks and the French voyageurs. These took place inside the walls. Half the partners were Catholics and all the voyageurs. The Catholic Church did not purpose losing these souls to Satan. Not for nothing had the good bishop of Quebec listened to confessions from re- turned voyageurs. When he picked out a chaplain for Fort William, he saw to it that the man chosen should be a man of herculean frame and herculean strength. The good father was welcomed to the Fort, given ample quarters and high precedence at table, but the Catholic partners weren't quite sure how he would regard those prize fights. "Don't go out of your apartments to-morrow! There's to be a regale! There may be fighting," they warned him. "I thank you," says the priest politely, no doubt recalling the secrets of many a confessional. From his window, he watched the rough crowds gather next day in the courtyard. As he saw the two champions strip to their waists, he doubtless guessed this was to be no chance fight. Hair tied back, at a signal, fists and feet, they were at it. The priest grew cold and then hot. He began to strip off gar- 16 "The Coming of the Pedlars" ments that might hinder his own shoulder swing, and clad in fighting gear burst from his room and marched straight to the center of the crowd. No one had time to ask his intentions. He was a big man and the crowd stood aside. Shooting out both his long arms, the priest grabbed each fighter by the neck, knocked their heads together like two billiard balls, and demanded: "Heh? That's the way you bullies fight, is it? Eh? Bien! You don't know anything about it ! You're a lot of old hens! Here's the way to do it! I'll show you how," and with a final bang of cracking skulls, he spun them sprawl- ing across the courtyard half stunned. "If you have any better than these two, send them along! I'll continue the lessons," he proffered; and for lack of learners withdrew to his own apartments. It is now necessary to examine how the Nor'- Westers blocked out their Northern Empire over which they kept more jealous guard than Bluebeard over his wives. Take a map of North America. Up on Hudson Bay is the English Company with forts around it like a whirl. Of this circle, the bay is the hub. East- ward are the forts in Labrador; southward, Abbittibbi toward Quebec; westward, three lines of fur posts extending inland like spokes of the whirl ist, The Conquest of the Great Northwest up Albany River toward the modern Manitoba (Mine, water; toba, prairie, that is, country of the prairie water), along the valley of Red River to modern Minnesota (Mine, water; sotar, sky-colored, that is, country of the sky-colored water), and up the winding Assiniboine (country of the stone boilers where the Assiniboines cooked food on hot stones) to the central prairie; 2nd, up Hayes River from York (Nelson) to the Saskatchewan as far as the Rockies; 3rd, up Churchill River from Churchill Fort to Portage de Traite and Isle a la Crosse and far-famed Athabasca and MacKenzie River. The wheel that has for its hub Hudson Bay, has practically only five spokes two, eastward; three, westward. Between these unoccupied spokes are areas the size of a Germany or a Russia or a France. Into these the Nor 'Westers thrust themselves like a wedge. Look at the map again. This time the point of radiation is Fort William on Lake Superior. Be- tween Lake Superior and Hudson Bay northward for seven hundred miles is not a post. Into these dark, impenetrable, river-swamped forests the Nor'- Westers send their men. Dangerous work, this! For some unaccountable reason the Indians of these shadowy forests are more treacherous and gloomy than the tribes of the plains. Umfreville passes 18 The Coming of the Pedlars" through their territory when he tries to find a trail westward not on American soil. Shaw, the partner, and Long, the clerk, are sent in to drum up trade. The field is entered one hundred miles east of Fort William at Pays Plat, where canoes push north to Lake Nipigon. First, a fort is built on Lake Nipi- gon named Duncan, after Duncan Cameron. Long stays here in charge. Shaw, as partner, pushes on to a house half way down to Albany on Hudson Bay. The Indians call Mr. Shaw "the Cat" from his feeble voice. A third hand, Jacque Santeron, is sent eastward to the Temiscamingue Lakes south of Abbittibbi. The three Nor'Westers have, as it were, thrust themselves like a wedge between the spokes of the Hudson's Bay Company from Moose River to Albany; but a thousand perils assail them, a thousand treacheries. First, the Frenchman San- teron loses courage, sends a farewell written on a birch-bark letter down to Long at Nipigon, and deserts bag and baggage, provisions and peltries, to the Hudson's Bay at Abbittibbi. Determined to prevent such loss, Long tears across country to 'I Vmiscamingue only to find Santeron's cabins aban- doned and these words in charcoal on bark: "Fare- well my dear comrade; I go with daring and expect a good price for my furs with the English. With the best heart, I wish you luck. My regards to my 19 partners. Good-by" But desertion and theft of Company goods are not the worst of it. Down at Nipigon, Long hears that the Indians of the North are going to murder "the Cat" Mr. Shaw prob- ably to carry the plundered furs down to the Hud- son's Bay. Long rushes to the rescue to find Shaw cooped up in the cabin surrounded by a tribe of frenzied Indians whom he tried in vain to pacify with liquor. "My God! But I'm glad to see you," shouts Shaw, drawing Long inside the door. For a week the In- dians had tried to set fire to his house by shooting arrows of lighted punk wood at it, but every window and crevice of the cabin bristles with loaded muskets twenty-eight of them that keep the assailants back. The Indians demand more liquor. Shaw gives it to them on condition they go away, but at daybreak back they come for more, naked and daubed with war paint from head to foot. "More," shouts Long. "Come on then," throw- ing the doors wide open and rolling across the en- trance a keg of gunpowder from which he knocks the lid. " One step across the door and we all perish together," cocking his pistol straight for the powder. Pell-mell off dashed the terrified Indians paddling canoes as fast as drunken arms could work the blades. Another time, Long discovers that his 20 The Coming of the Pedlars" Indian guide is only awaiting a favorable chance to assassinate him. A bottle of drugged liquor puts the assassin to sleep and another Indian with a tomahawk prevents him ever awakening. When Long retires, Duncan Cameron, son of a royalist in the American Revolution, comes to command Nipi- gon. Cameron pushes on up stream past Nipigon two hundred miles to the English post Osnaburg, where the Hudson's Bay man, Goodwin, welcomes the Nor' Wester a rival is safer indoors than out, especially when he has no visible goods; but Cameron manages to speak with the Indians during his visit and when he departs they follow him back to the place where he has cached his goods and the trade takes place. Henceforth traders of the Nipigon do not stay in the fort on the lake but range the woods drumming up trade from Abbittibbi east, to Albany west. Meanwhile, what are the brigades of Fort William doing? Fifteen days at the most it takes for the "goers and comers" of Montreal to exchange their cargo of provisions for the Northerners' cargo of furs. When the big canoes head back for the East at the end of July, the Montreal partners go with them. Smaller canoes, easier to portage and in more numerous brigades, set out for the West with the wintering partners. These are "the wolves of 21 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the North" the MacKenzies and Henry and Har- mon and Fraser and a dozen others each to com- mand a wilderness empire the size of a France or a Germany. By the new route of Kaministiquia, it is only a day's paddling beyond the first long portage to the height of land. Beyond this, the canoes launch down stream, gliding with the current and "somer- seting" or shooting the smaller rapids, portaging when the fall of water is too turbulent. Wherever there is a long portage there stands a half-way house wayside inn of logs and thatch roof where some stray Frenchman sells fresh food to the voyageurs a great nuisance to the impatient partners, for the men pause to parley. First of the labyrinthine waterways that weave a chain between Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg is Rainy River, flowing north- west to Lake of the Woods, or Lake of the Isles as the French called it. On Rainy River are the ruins of an old fort of the French traders. Here the North- bound brigades often meet the Athabasca canoes which can seldom come down all the way as far as Fort William and go back to Athabasca before winter. Again an exchange of goods takes place, and the Athabasca men head back with the North- bound brigades. Wherever the rivers widen to lakes as at Lake 22 The Coming of the Pedlars" Francis and Lake of the Woods, the canoes swing abreast, lash gun'els together by thwarting paddles, hoist sails and drift lazily forward on the forest- shadowed, placid waters, crews smoking, or singing with weird cadences amid the loneliness of these silent places. In this part of the voyage, while all the brigades were still together, there were often as many as five hundred canoes spread out on the lakes like birds on wing. Faces now bronzed almost to the shade of woodland creatures, splashes of color here and there where the voyageurs' silk scarf has not faded, blue sky above with a fleece of clouds, blue sky below with a fleece of clouds and all that marked where sky began and reflection ended the margin of the painted shores etched amber in the brown waters the picture was one that will never again be witnessed in wilderness life. Sometimes as the canoes cut a silver trail across the lakes, leather tepee tops would emerge from the morning mists telling of some Cree hunters waiting with their furs, and one of the partners would go ashore to trade, the crew camping for a day. Every such halt was the chance for repairing canoes. Camp furs sprang up as if by magic. Canoes lay keel up and tar was applied to all sprung seams, while the other boatmen got lines out and laid up supplies of fresh fish. That night the lake would twinkle with -'3 The Conquest of the Great Northwest a hundred fires and an army of voyageurs lie listen- ing to the wind in the pines. The next day, a pace would be set to make up for lost time. Lake of the Woods empties into Winnipeg River through a granite gap of cataract. The brigades skirted the falls across the Portage of the Rat (modern Rat Portage) and launched down the swift current of Winnipeg River that descends northward to Lake Winnipeg in such a series of leaps and waterfalls it was long known among the voyageurs as White or Foaming River. Where the river entered the south- east end of Lake Winnipeg, were three trading posts the ruins of the old French fort, Maurepas, the Nor' Westers' fort known as Bas de la Riviere, and the Hudson's Bay Post, now called Fort Alexander some three miles from the lake. This was the lake which Kelsey, and perhaps Radisson and Hendry and Cocking, had visited from Hudson Bay. It was forty days straight west from Albany, three weeks from York on the Hayes. At this point the different brigades separated, one going north to the Athabasca, one west up the Sas- katchewan to the Rockies, one southwest across the lake to Dauphin and Swan Lake and what is now northwestern Manitoba, two or three south up Red River destined for Pembina at the Boundary, Grand Forks, the Mandanes on the Missouri, and the posts 24 The Coming of the Pedlars' 1 along the Assiniboine River of the middle West. Look again to the map. What kind of an empire do these Nor'Westers encompass? All of the great West, all except the unknown regions of the Pacific Coast. In size how large? The area of the Russian Empire. No wonder Simon McTavish, founder of the Company, wore the airs of an emperor, and it is to be remembered that Nor'W T esters ruled with the despotism of emperors, too. Let us follow the different brigades to their desti- nations. Notes to Chapter XXI. The contents of Chapter XXI are drawn from the Journals of the Northwest partners as pub- lished by Senator Masson, from Long's Voyages, from private journals in my own collection of manuscripts, chiefly Colin Rob- ertson's, and from the Abbe" Dugas' inimitable store of North- west legends in several volumes. The story of the recruiting officers and of the holy father comes chiefly from Dugas. Um- freville's book does not give details of his voyage for the N. W. C. to Nipigon, but he left a journal from which Masson gives facts, and there are references to his voyage in N. W. C. petitions to Parliament. Cameron tells his own story of Nipigon in the Masson Collection. The best descriptions of Fort William are in Colin Robertson's letters (M. S.) and "Franchere's Voyage." In following N. W. C. expansion, it was quite impossible to do so chronologically. It could be done only by grouping the actors round episodes. For instance, in Nipigon, Long was there off and on in 1768, '72, '82. Cameron did not come on the scene till '96 and did not take up residence till 1802 to 1804. To scatter this account of Nipigon chronologically would be to confuse it. Again, Umfreville found the Nipigon trail to the Up Country, in 1784. Rod. MacKenzie did not find the old Kaministiquia road till the nineties. Or again, Grand Portage was a rendezvous till 1797 and was not entirely moved to Fort William till 1801 and 1802. Why separate these events by the hundred other episodes of the Company's history purely for the sake of sequence on dates? I have tried to keep the story grouped round the main thread of one forward movement the domination of the Up Country by the N. W. C. 25 CHAPTER XXII 1790-1810 "THE COMING OF THE PEDLARS" CONTINUED HENRY'S ADVENTURES AT PEMBINA THE FIRST WHITE WOMAN IN THE WEST A STOLEN CHILD AND A POISONER AND A SCOUT HOW HARMON FOUND A WIFE THE STORY OF MARGUERITE TROTTIER. STRIKING across Lake Winnipeg from Winni- peg River, the southbound canoes ascend the central channel of the three entrances to Red River, passing Nettley Creek on the west, or River au Mort, as the French called it, in memory of the terrible massacre of Cree families by Sioux raiders in 1780, while the women and children were waiting here for the men to return from York Fac- tory. South of Lake Winnipeg, the woodland banks of the mud-colored river give place to glimpses and patches of the plains rolling westward in seas of billowing grass. It was August when the brigades left Fort William. It is September now, with the crisp nutty tang of parched grasses in the air, a shimmer as of Indian summer across the horizon 26 "The Coming of the Pedlars" that turns the setting sun to a blood-red shield. Bluest of blue are the prairie skies. Scarcely a feathering of wind clouds, and where the marsh lands lie "sloughs" and "muskegs," they are called in the West so still is the atmosphere of the primeval silences that the waters are glass with the shadows of the rushes etched as by stencil. Here and there, thin spirals of smoke rise from the far prairie camp fires of wandering Assiniboine and Cree and Saulteur. The brigades fire guns to call them to trade, or else land on the banks and light their own signal fires. Past what is now St. Peter's Indian Reserve, and the two Selkirk towns, and the St. Andrew Rapids where, if water is high, canoes need only be tracked, if low the voyageurs may step from stone to stone; past the bare meadow where to-day stands the last and only walled stone fort of the fur trade, Lower Fort Garry the brigades come to what is now Winnipeg, the Forks of the Red and Assiniboine. Of the French fur traders' old post here, all that remains are the charred ruins and cellars. Near the fiats where the two rivers overflow in spring are" the high scaffoldings of a Cree graveyard used during the smallpox plague of the eighties. Back from the swamp of the forks are half a dozen tents Hudson's Bay traders that same Robert Good- 27 The Conquest of the Great Northwest win whom Cameron tricked at Osnaburg, come up the Albany River and across country to Manitoba- forty days from the bay with another trader, Brown. The Nor'West brigades pause to divide again. A dozen canoes go up the Assiniboine for Portage la Prairie and Dauphin, and Swan Lake, and Lake Manitoba and Qu'Appelle, and Souris. Three or four groups of men are detailed to camp at the Forks (Winnipeg) and trade and keep an eye on the doings of the Hudson's Bay above all keep them from obtaining the hunt. When not trading, the men at the Forks are expected to lay up store of pemmican meat for the other departments, by buffalo hunting. Not till the winter of 1807-8 does Mac- Donald of Garth, a wiry Highlander of military family and military air, with a red head and a broken arm build a fort here for the Nor'Westers, which he ironically calls Gibraltar because it will command the passage of both rivers, though there was not a rock the size of his hand in sight. Gibraltar is very near the site of the Cree graveyard and boasts strong palisades with storage cellars for liquors and huge warehouses for trade. Not to be outdone, the Hud- son's Bay look about for a site that shall also com- mand the river, and they choose two miles farther down Red River, where their cannon can sweep all 28 The Coming of the Pedlars" incoming and outgoing canoes. When this fort is built a few years later, it is called Fort Douglas. Two brigades ascend the Red as far south as Pembina south of the Boundary, one to range all regions radiating from Grand Forks and Pembina, the other to cross country to the Mandanes on the Missouri. Charles Chaboillez sends Antoine Larocque with two clerks and two voyageurs from the Assiniboine and the Red to the Missouri in 1804, where they meet the American explorers, Lewis and Clarke, with forty men on their way to the Pacific; and, to the Nor'Westers' amazement, are also Hudson's Bay traders. The American officers draw the Ca- nadians' attention to the fact this is American territory. British flags must not be given to the Indians and no "deroumes" are to take place a trade term meaning that the drummers who come to beat up trade are not to draw the Indians away to British territory. Charbonneau, the Northwest voyageur, ignores his debt to the Company and deserts to become guide for Lewis and Clarke. "I can hardly get a skin when the Hudson's Bay trader is here," complains Larocque, "for the Eng- lishmen speak the Mandan language." Neverthe- less Larocque dispatches to the bourgeois Mr. Chaboillez on the Assiniboine, six packs worth 40 29 The Conquest of the Great Northwest each. Charles MacKenzie, the clerk, remains three years trading among the Mandans for the Nor'- Westers, and with true trader's instinct chuckles within himself to hear Old Serpent, the Indian Chief, boast that if he had these forty Americans "out on the plains, his young warriors would do for them as for so many wolves." Two main trails ran from the Red River to the Missouri: one from Pembina, west; the other from the Assiniboine, by way of Souris, south. The latter was generally followed, and from the time that David Thompson, the Northwest surveyor, first led the way to the Mandans, countless perils assailed the traveler to the Missouri. Not more than $3000 worth of furs were won a year, but the traders here were the buffalo hunters that supplied the Northern departments with pemmican; and on these hunts was the constant danger of the Sioux raiders. Eleven days by pony travel was the distance from the Assini- boine to the Missouri, and on the trail was terrible scarcity of drinking water. "We had steered to a lake," records MacKenzie of the 1804 expedition, "but found it dry. We dug a pit. It gave a kind of stinking liquid of which we all drank, which seemed to increase our thirst. We passed the night with great uneasiness. Next day, not a drop of water was to be found on the route and our distress , 30 "The Coming of the Pedlars" became unsupportable. Lafrance (the voyageur) swore so much he could swear no more and gave the country ten thousand times to the Devil. His eyes became so dim or blurred we feared he was nearing a crisis. All our horses became so unruly we could not manage them. It struck me they might have scented water and I ascended the top of the hill where to my great joy I discovered a small pool. I ran and drank plentifully. My horse had plunged in before I could stop him. I beckoned Lafrance. He seemed more dead than alive, his face a dark hue, a thick scurf around his mouth. He instantly plunged in the water . . . and drank to such excess I fear the consequences." In winter, though there was no danger of perishing from thirst where snow could be used as water, perils were increased a hundredfold by storm. The ponies could not travel fast through deep drifts. Instead of eleven days, it took a month to reach the Assiniboine, one man leading, one bringing up the rear of the long line of pack horses. If a snow storm caught the travelers, it was an easy matter for marauding Indians to stampede the horses and plunder packs. In March, they traveled at night to avoid snow glare. Sleeping wrapped in buffalo robes, the men sometimes wakened to find them- selves buried beneath a snow bank with the horses The Conquest of the Great Northwest crunched up half frozen in the blizzard. Four days without food was a common experience on the Man- dane trail. Of all the Nor'Westers stationed at Pembina, Henry was one of the most famous. Cheek by jowl with the Nor'Westers was a post of Hudson's Bay men under Thomas Miller, an Orkneyman; and hosts of freemen half-breed trappers and buffalo runners made this their headquarters, refusing allegiance to either company and selling their hunt to the highest bidder. The highest bidder was the trader who would give away the most rum, and as traders do not give away rum for nothing, there were free fights during the drunken brawls to plunder the intoxicated hunters of furs. Henry commanded some fifty -five Nor'Westers and yearly sent out from Pembina one hundred and ten packs of furs by the famous old Red River ox carts made all of wood, hubs and wheels, that creaked and rumbled and screeched their way in long procession of single file to waiting canoes at Winnipeg. Henry had come to the wilderness with a hard, cynical sneer for the vices of the fur trader's life. Within a few years, the fine edge of his scorn had turned on himself and on all life besides, because while he scorned savage vices he could never leave them alone. Like the snare round the feet of a man 32 "The Coming of the Pedlars" who has floundered into the quicksands, they sucked him down till his life was lost on the Columbia in a drunken spree. One can trace Henry's degeneration in his journals from cynic to sinner and sinner to sot, till he has so completely lost the sense of shame, lost the memory that other men can have higher codes, that he unblushingly sets down in his diary how, to-day, he broke his thumb thrashing a man in a drunken bout; how, yesterday, he had to give a squaw a tremendous pommelling before she would let him steal the furs of her absent lord; how he "had a good time last night with the H. B. C. man playing the flute and the drum and drinking the ten- gallon keg clean." Henry's regime at Pembina became noted, not from his character, but from legends of famous characters who gathered there. One night in December, 1807, Henry came home to his lodge and found a young Hudson's Bay clerk waiting in great distress. The Nor'Wester asked the visitor what was wanted. The intruder begged that the others present should be sent from the room. Henry complied, and turned about to discover a young white woman disguised in man's clothes, who threw herself on her knees and implored Henry to take pity on her. Her lover of the Orkney Islands had abandoned her. Dressed in man's garb, she had joined the Hudson's Bay service and pursued him 33 The Conquest of the Great Northwest to the wilderness. In Henry's log cabin, her child was born. Henry sent mother and infant daughter across to Mr. Haney of the Hudson's Bay Company, who forwarded both to the recalcitrant Orkneyman -John Scart, at Grand Forks. Before her secret was discovered, according to legend, the woman had been in Hudson's Bay service of Red River Depart- ment for four years. Mother and child were sent back to the Orkneys, where they came to destitution. [;. At Pembina, there always camped a great com- pany of buffalo hunters. Among these had come, in the spring of 1806, a young bride from Three Rivers the wife of J. Ba'tiste Lajimoniere, one of the most famous scouts of the Hudson's Bay Company. J. Ba'tiste had gone down to Quebec the year before and cut a swath of grandeur in the simple parish of Three Rivers that captured the heart of Marie Anne Gaboury, and she came to the wilderness as his wife. To the Indian wives of the Frenchmen in the free- men's camp, Madame Lajimoniere was a marvel the first white woman they had ever beheld. They waited upon her with adoration, caressed her soft skin and hair, and handled her like some strange toy. One, especially, under show of friendliness, came to Marie's wigwam to cook, but J. Ba'tiste's conscience took fright. The friendly squaw had 34 The Coming of the Pedlars" been a cast-off favorite of his own wild days, and from the Indians he learned that she had come to cook for Marie in order to poison her. J. Ba'tiste promptly struck camp, packed his belongings and carried his wife back to the safety of the fort at Pembina. There, on the 6th of January 1807, tne first white child of the West was born; and they called her name Reine, because it was the king's birthday. When Henry moved his fifty men from Pembina up the Saskatchewan, in 1808, among the free traders who went up with the brigades were the Lajimoni- eres. Word of the white woman ran before the ad- vancing traders by " moccasin telegram," and wher- ever pause was made, Indians flocked in thousands to see Marie Gaboury. Belgrade, a friend of Ba'tiste's, thought it well to protect her by spread- ing in advance the report that the white woman had the power of the evil eye; if people offended her, she could cause their death by merely looking at them, and the ruse served its purpose until they reached Edmonton. This was the danger spot the center of fearful wars waged by Blackfeet and Cree. Ma- rauding bands were ever on the alert to catch the traders short-handed, and in the earliest days, when Longmore, and Howse, and Bird, and Turner, the astronomer, were commanders of the Hudson's Bay 35 The Conquest of the Great Northwest fort, Shaw and Hughes of Nor'Westers, the dangers from Indian attack were so great that the rival traders built their forts so that the palisades of one joined the stockades of the other, and gates between gave passage so the whites could communicate with- out exposing themselves. Towers bristling with muskets commanded the gates, and many a time the beleaguered chief factor, left alone with the women while his men were hunting, let blaze a fire of mus- ketry from one tower, then went to the other tower and let go a cross fire, in order to give the Indians the impression that more than one man was on guard. This, at least, cleared the ambushed spies out of the high grass so that the fort could have safe egress to the river. Here, then, came Marie Gaboury, in 1808, to live at Edmonton for four years. Ba'tiste, as of old, hunted as freeman, and strange to say, he was often accompanied by his dauntless wife to the hunting field. Once, when she was alone in her tepee on the prairie, the tent was suddenly surrounded by a band of Cree warriors. When the leader lifted the tent flap, Marie was in the middle of the floor on her knees making what she thought was her last prayer. A white renegrade wandering with the Crees called out to her not to be afraid they were after Black- feet. Ba'tiste's horror may be guessed when he came 36 "The Coming of the Pedlars" dashing breathless across the prairie and found his wife's tent surrounded by raiders. "Marie! Marie!" he shouted, hair streaming to the wind, and unable to wait till he reached the tepee, "Marie are you alive?" "Yes," her voice called back, "but I am dying -of fright." Ba'tiste then persuaded the Crees that white women were not used to warriors camping so near, and they withdrew. Then he lost no time in shifting camp inside the palisades of Edmonton. The Abbe Dugas tells of another occasion when Marie was riding a buffalo pony one of the horses used as a swift runner on the chase her baby dangling in a moss bag from one of the saddle pommels. Turning a bluff, the riders came on an enormous herd of buffalo. The sudden appearance of the hunters startled the vast herd. With a snort that sent clouds of dust to the air, there was a mad stam- pede, and true to his life-long training, Marie's pony took the bit in his mouth and bolted, wheeling and nipping and kicking and cutting out the biggest of buffaloes for the hunt, just as if J. Ba'tiste himself were in the saddle. Bounced so that every breath seemed her last, Marie Gaboury hung to the baby's moss bag with one hand, to the horse's mane with the other, and commended her soul to God; but J 37 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Ba'tiste's horse had cut athwart the race and he rescued his wife. That night she gave birth to her second daughter, and they jocularly called her "Laprairie." Such were the adventures of the pioneer women on the prairie. The every day epi- sodes of a single life would fill a book, and the book would record as great heroism as ever the Old World knew of a Boadicea or a Joan of Arc. We are still too close to these events of early Western life to ap- preciate them. Two hundred years from now, when time has canonized such courage, the Marie Ga- boury's of pioneer days will be regarded as the Boadiceas and Joan of Arcs of the New World. There was constant shifting of men in the different departments of the Northwest Company. When Henry passed down Red River, in 1808, to go up the Saskatchewan, half the brigades struck west- ward from the Forks (Winnipeg), up the Assiniboine River to Portage la Prairie and Souris, and Qu' Ap- pelle and Dauphin and Swan Lake. Each post of this department was worth some 700 a year to the Nor'Westers. Not very large returns when it is considered that a keg of liquor costing the Company less than $10 was sold to the Indians for one hun- dred and twenty beaver valued at from $2.00 to $3.00 a skin. "Mad" McKay, a Mr. Miller and James Sutherland were the traders for the Hudson's 38 "The Coming o] the Pedlars" Bay in this region, which included the modern provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Among the Nor'Westers, McLeod was the wintering partner and his chief clerks were the mystic dreamers Harmon, that Louis Primo, who had deserted from Matthew Cocking on the Saskatchewan, and Cuth- bert Grant, the son of a distinguished Montreal merchant and a Cree mother, who combined in himself the leadership qualities of both races and rapidly rose to be the chosen chief of the Freemen or Half-Breed Rangers known as the Bois ttrulcs men of "the burnt or blazed woods." The saintly Harmon had been shocked to find his bourgeois Norman McLeod with an Indian spouse, but to different eras are different customs and he presently records in his diary that he, too, has taken an Indian girl for a wife the daughter of a powerful chief because, Harmon explains to his own uneasy conscience, "if I take her I am sure I shall get all the furs of the Crees," and who shall say that in so doing, Harmon did either tetter or worse than the modern man or woman, who marries for worldly interests? Let it be added that, having married her, Harmon was faithful to the daughter of the Cree chief all his days and gave her the honor due a white wife. In the case of the fur traders, there was a deep, potent reason for these marriages The Conquest of the Great Northwest between white men and Indian women. The white trader was one among a thousand hostiles. By marrying the daughter of a chief, he obtained the protection of the entire tribe. Harmon was on the very stamping ground of the fights between Cree and Sioux. By allying himself with his neighbors, he obtained stronger defense than a hundred pali- saded forts. The danger was not small, as a single instance will show. Until May each year, Harmon spent the time gathering the furs, which were floated down the Assiniboine to Red River. It was while the furs were being gathered that the Sioux raiders would swoop from ambush in the high grasses and stam- pede the horses, or lie in hiding at some narrow place of the river and serenade the brigades with showers of arrows. Women and girls, the papoose in the moss bag, white men and red none were spared, for the Sioux who could brandish the most scalps from his tent pole, was the bravest warrior. Among the hunters of Pembina was a French Canadian named Trottier married to a Cree woman. The daughter Marguerite, a girl of sixteen was renowned for her beauty. Indian chiefs offered for her hand, but the father thought she would be better cared for as the wife of a white man and gave her in marriage to a hunter named Jutras, who left Pem- 40 "The Coming of the Pedlars" bina with Henry's brigades in 1808. Jutras went up the Assiniboine. A year later, Daniel Mac- Kenzie appointed him and five others to take the Qu' Appelle furs down the Assiniboine to Red River. As usual, some of the partners accompanied the brigades for the annual meetings at Fort William. Daniel MacKenzie and McDonald of Garth the bourgeois were riding along the river banks some distances behind the canoes. Marguerite Trottier was in the canoe with Jutras, and the French were advancing, light of heart as usual, passing down Qu' Appelle River toward the Assiniboine. A day's voyage above the junction of the two rivers, the current shoaled, and just where brushwood came close to the water's edge, Jutras was startled by a weird call like a Sioux signal from both sides. An- other instant, bullets and arrows rained on the canoes! Four of the six voyageurs tumbled back wounded to the death. Jutras and the remaining man lost their heads so completely they sprang to midwaist in the water, waded ashore, and dashed in hiding through the high grass for the nearest fort, forgetting the girl wife, Marguerite Trottier, and a child six months old. MacKenzie and McDonald of Garth sent scouts to rally help from Qu' Appelle to recover the furs. When the rescue party reached the place of plunder not very far from the modern The Conquest of the Great Northwest Whitewood they found the four voyageurs lying on the sand, the girl wife in the bottom of the canoe. All had been stripped naked, scalped and horribly mutilated. Two of the men still lived. MacKenzie had advanced to remove the girl's body from the canoe when faint with horror at the sight hands hacked, an eye torn out, the scalp gone the old wintering partner was rooted to the ground with amazement to hear her voice asking for her child and refusing to be appeased till they sought it. Some distance on the prairie in the deep grass below a tree they found it still breathing. The English mind cannot contemplate the cruelties of such tortures as the child had suffered. Such horrors mock the soft philosophies of the life natural, being more or less of a beneficent affair. They stagger theology, and are only explainable by one creed the creed of Strength; the creed that the Powers for Good must be stronger than the Powers for Evil stronger physically as well as stronger spiritually, and until they are, such horrors will stalk the earth rampant. The child had been scalped, of course! The Sioux warrior must have his trophy of courage, just as the modern grinder of child labor must have his dividend. It had then been suspended from a tree as a target for the arrows of the braves. Hardened old roue as MacKenzie was it was too much for his blackened 42 The Coming of the Pedlars" heart. He fell on his trembling knees and according to the rites of his Catholic faith, ensured the child's entrance to Paradise by baptism before death. It might die before he could bring water from the river. The rough old man baptized the dying infant with the blood drops from its wounds and with his own tears. Returning to the mother, he gently told her that the child had been killed. Swathing her body in cotton, these rough voyageurs bathed her wounds, put the hacked hands in splinters, and in all proba- bility saved her life by binding up the loose skin to the scalp by a clean, fresh bladder. That night voyageurs and partners sat round the wounded where they lay, each man with back to a tree and musket across his knees. In the morning the wounded were laid in the bottom of the canoes. Scouts were ap- pointed to ride on both sides of the river and keep guard. In this way, the brigade advanced all day and part of the following night, "the poor woman and men moaning all the time," records McDonald of Garth. Coming down the Assiniboine to Souris, where the Hudson's Bay had a fort under Mr. Pritrhard, the Nor'Westers under Pierre Falcon, the rhyming minstrel of the prairie the wounded were left here. Almost impossible to believe, Mar- guerite Trottier recovered sufficiently in a month 43 The Conquest of the Great Northwest to join the next brigade bound to Gibraltar (Winni- peg). Here she met her father and went home with him to Pembina. Jutras the poltroon husband who had left her to the raiders, she abandoned with all the burning scorn of her Indian blood. It seems after the Sioux had wreaked their worst cruelty, she simulated death, then crawled to hiding under the oilcloth of the canoe, where, lying in terror of more tortures, she vowed to the God of the white men that if her life were spared she would become a Christian. This vow she fulfilled at Pembina, and afterward married one of the prominent family of Gingras, so becoming the mother of a distinguished race. She lived to the good old age of almost a hundred. Another character almost as famous in Indian legend as Marguerite had been with Henry at Pem- bina and come north to Harmon on the Assiniboine. This was the scout, John Tanner, stolen by Shawnees from the family of the Rev. John Tanner on the Ohio. The boy had been picking walnuts in the woods when he was kidnapped by a marauding party, who traded him to the Ottawas of the Up Country. Tanner fell in good hands. His foster mother was chief of the Mackinaw Indians and quite capable of exercising her authority in terms of the physical. Chaboillez, the wintering partner, saw the boy at the Sault and inquiries as to who he 44 The Coming of the Pedlars" was put the foster mother in such a fright of losing him that she hid him in the Sault cellars. Among the hunters of Pembina were Tanner and his Indian mother, and later his Indian wife. He will come into this story at a later stage with J. Ba'tiste Laji- moniere. Notes to Chapter XXII. I have purposely hung this chapter round Henry as a peg, because his adventures at Pembina, whence journeys radiated to the Missouri and the Assiniboine, merge into his fife on the Saskatchewan and so across the Rockies to the Columbia giving a record of all the N. W. C.'s depart- ments, as if one traveled across on a modern railroad. Henry's Adventures are to be found in his Journals edited by Dr. Coues and published by Francis P. Harper. Several reprints of Harmon's Journals have recently appeared. Harmon was originally from Vermont and one of his daughters until recently was prominent in Ottawa, Canada, as the head of a fashionable school. I can imagine how one of the recent re- prints would anger Harmon's familv, where the introduction speaks glibly of Harmon having taken a "native wife ad in- terim." What those words "ad interim" mean, I doubt if the writer, himself, knows unless his own unsavory thought, for of all fur traders Harmon was one of the most saintly, clean, honorable, and gentle, true to his wife as to the finest white woman. I have referred to Daniel MacKenzie as an old roue. The reasons for this will appear in a subsequent chapter on doings at Fort William. The adventures of Tanner will be found in James' life of him, in Major Long's travels, in Harmon, and in the footnotes of Coues's Henry, also by Dr. Bryce in the Manitoba History Coll., most important of all in the Minnesota Hist. Collections, where the true story of his death is recorded. The adventures of Marguerite Trottier are taken from two sources: from McDonald of Garth's Journal (Masson Journals) and from the Abbe" Dugas' Legends. I hesitated whetht-r to give this shocking and terrible story, for the most thoughtless reader will find between the lines (and it is intended) more than is told. What determined me to give the story was this: Again and again in the drawing rooms of London and New York, I have 45 The Conquest of the Great Northwest heard society men and women, who hold high place in social life refer to those early marriages of the fur traders to native women as something sub rosa, disreputable, best hidden behind a lie or a fig leaf. They never expressed those delicate senti- ments to me till they had ascertained that tho' I had lived all my life in the West, I had neither native blood in my veins nor a relationship of any sort to the pioneer not one of them. Then some such expressions as this would come out apologetically with mock modest Pharisaic blush "Is it true that So and So married a native woman?" or "Of course I know they were all wicked men, for look how they married Squaws!" I confess it took me some time to get the Eastern view on this subject into my head, and when I did, I felt as if I had passed one of those sewer holes they have in civilized cities. Of course, it is the natural point of view for people who guzzle on problem plays and sex novels, but what I wondered would those good people think if they realized that "the squaws" of whom they spoke so scornfully were to Northwest life what a Boadicea was to English life the personification of Purity that was Strength and Strength that was Purity a womanhood that the vilest cruelties could not defile. Then, to speak of fur traders who married native women as "all wicked" is a joke. Think of the religious mystic, Harmon, teaching his wife the English language with the Bible, and Alexander MacKenzie, who had married a native woman before he had married his own cousin, and the saintly patriot, Dr. McLoughlin think of them if you can as "wicked." I can't! I only wish civilized men and women had as good records. In this chapter I wished very much to give a detailed ac- count of each N. W. C. department with notes on the chief actors, who were in those departments what the feudal barons were to the countries of Europe, but space forbids. It is as im- possible to do that as it would be to cram a record of all the countries of Europe into one volume. I have throughout referred to the waters as Hudson Bay ; to the company as Hudson's. This is the ruling of the Geograph- ical societies and is, I think, correct, as the charter calls the company "Hudson's Bay." The N. W. C. were sometimes referred to as "the French." Charles MacKenzie and Larocque in their Journals (Masson Coll.) give the details of the Mandane trade. Henry also touches on it. CHAPTER XXIII 1780-1810 "THE COMING OF THE PEDLARS" CONTINUE! THIRTY YEARS OF EXPLORATION THE ADVANCE UP THE SASKATCHEWAN TO BOW RIVER AND HOWSE PASS THE BUILDING OF EDMONTON HOW MACKENZIE CROSSED TO THE PACIFIC. WHILE fifty or a hundred men yearly as- cended Red River as far as Grand Forks, and the Assiniboine as far as Qu' Appelle, the main forces of the Nor'Westers the great army of wood-rovers and plain rangers and swelling, blus- tering bullies and crafty old wolves of the North, and quiet-spoken wintering partners of iron will, who said little and worked like demons were destined for the valley of the Saskatchewan that led to the Rockies. Like a great artery with branches south leading over the height of land to the Missouri and branches north giving canoe passage over the height of land to the Arctic, the Saskatchewan flowed for twelve hundred miles through the fur traders' stamping ground, freighted with the argosies of a thousand 47 The Conquest of the Great Northwest canoes. From the time that the ice broke up in May, canoes were going and coming; canoes with blankets hoisted on a tent pole for sail; canoes of birch bark and cedar dugouts; canoes made of dried buffalo skin stitched and oiled round willow withes the shape of a tub, and propelled across stream by lapping the hand over the side of the frail gun' els. Indians squatted flat in the bottom of the canoes, dipping paddles in short stroke with an ease born of lifelong practice. White men sat erect on the thwarts with the long, vigorous paddle-sweep of the English oars- man a'nd shot up and down the swift-flowing waters like -birds on wing. The boats of the English traders from Hudson Bay were ponderously clumsy, almost as large as the Mackinaws, which the Company still uses, with a tree or rail plied as rudder to half-punt, half-scull; rows of oarsmen down each side, who stood to the oar where the current was stiff, and a big mast pole for sails when there was wind, for the tracking rope when it was necessary to pull against rapids. Where rapids were too turbulent for track- ing, these boats were trundled ashore and rolled across logs. Little wonder the Nor'Westers with their light birch canoes built narrow for speed, light enough to be carried over the longest portage by two men, outraced with a whoop the Hudson's Bay boats whenever they encountered each other on the 48 The Coming of the Pedlars" Saskatchewan! Did the rival crews camp for the night together, French bullies would challenge the Orkneymen of the Hudson's Bay to come out and fight. The defeated side must treat the conquerors or suffer a ducking. Crossing the north end of Lake Winnipeg, canoes bound inland passed Horse Island and ascended the Saskatchewan. Only one interruption broke navi- gation for one thousand miles Grand Rapids at the entrance of the river, three miles of which could be tracked, three must be portaged in all a trail of about nine miles on the north shore where the English had laid a corduroy road of log rollers. The ruins of old Fort Bourbon and Basquia or Pas, where Hendry had seen the French in '54, were first passed. Then boats came to the metropolis of the Saskatche- wan the gateway port of the great Up Country Cumberland House on Sturgeon Lake. Here, Hearne had built the post for Hudson's Bay, and Frobisher the fort for the Nor'Westers. Here, boats could go on up the Saskatchewan, or strike north- west through a chain of lakes past Portage de Traite and Isle a la Crosse to Athabasca and MacKenzie River. Fishing never failed, and when the fur traders went down to headquarters, their families remained at Cumberland House laying up a store of dried fish for the winter. Beyond Cumberland 49 The Conquest of the Great Northwest House came those forts famous in Northwest annals, Lower Fort des Prairies, and the old French Nipawi, and Fort a la Come, and Pitt, and Fort George, and Vermilion, and Fort Saskatchewan and Upper Fort des Prairies or Augustus many of which have crumbled to ruin, others merged into modern cities like Augustus into Edmonton. On the south branch of the Saskatchewan and between the two rivers were more forts oases in a wilderness of savagery- Old Chesterfield House where Red Deer River comes in and Upper Bow Fort within a stone's throw of the modern summer resort at Banff, where grassed mounds and old arrowheads to-day mark the place of the palisades. More dangers surrounded the traders of the South Saskatchewan than in any part of the Up Country. The Blackfeet were hostile to the white men. With food in abundance from the buffalo hunts, they had no need of white traders and resented the coming of men who traded firearms to their enemies. There was, beside, constant danger of raiders from the Missouri Snakes and Crows and Minnetaries. Hudson's Bay and Nor'Westers built their forts close together for defence in South Saskatchewan, but that did not save them. At Upper Bow Fort in Banff Valley, in 1796, Missouri raiders surrounded the English post, scaled 50 "The Coming of the Pedlars" the palisades, stabbed all the whites to death except one clerk, who hid under a dust pile in the cellar, pillaged the stores, set fire, then rallied across to the Nor'Westers, but the Nor'Westers had had warning. Jaccot Finlay and the Cree Beau Parlez, met the assailants with a crash of musketry. Then dashing out, they rescued the Hudson's Bay man, launched their canoes by night and were glad to escape with their lives down the Bow to Old Chesterfield House at Red Deer River. Two years later, the wintering partners, Hughes and Shaw, with McDonald of Garth, built Fort Augustus or Edmonton. Longmore was chief factor of the Hudson's Bay at Edmonton, with Bird as leader of the brigades down to York Fort and Howse as "patroon of the woods" west as far as the Rockies. With the Nor'Westers was a high-spirited young fire eater of a clerk Colin Robertson, who, coming to blows with McDonald of the Crooked Arm, was promptly dismissed and as promptly stepped across to the rival fort and joined the Hudson's Bay. Around Edmonton camped some three hundred Indians. In the crowded quarters of the courtyards, yearly thronged by the eastern brigades so that each fort housed more than one hundred men, it was impos- sible to keep all the horses needed for travel. These were hobbled and turned outside the palisades. It The Conquest of the Great Northwest was easy for the Indians to cut the hobbles, mount a Company horse, and ride free of punishment as the winds. Longmore determined to put a stop to this trick. Once a Cree horse thief was brought in. He was tried by court martial and condemned to death. Gathering together fifteen of his hunters, Longmore plied them with liquor and ordered them to fire simultaneously. The horse thief fell riddled with bullets. It is not surprising that the Indians' idea of the white man's justice became confused. If white men shot an Indian for stealing a horse, why should not Indians shoot white men for steal- ing furs? From the North Saskatchewan to the South Sas- katchewan ran a trail pretty much along the same region as the Edmonton railroad runs to-day. In May the furs of both branches were rafted down the Saskatchewan to the Forks and from the Forks to Cumberland House whence Hudson's Bay and Nor' Wester brigades separated. In 1804, McDon- ald of Garth had gone south from Edmonton to raft down the furs of the South Saskatchewan. Hud- son's Bay and Nor'Westers set out together down stream, scouts riding the banks on each side. Half way to the Forks, the Nor'Westers got wind of a band of Assiniboines approaching with furs to trade. This must be kept secret from the Hudson's Bays. 52 "The Coming of the Pedlars" Calling Boucher, his guide, McDonald of Garth, bade the voyageurs camp here for three days to hunt buffalo while he would go off before daybreak to meet the Assiniboines. The day following, the buffalo hunters noticed movements as of riders or a herd on the far horizon. They urged Boucher to lead the brigade farther down the river, but Boucher knew that McDonald was ahead to get the furs of the Assiniboines and it was better to delay the Hud- son's Bay men here with Northwest hunters. All night the tom-tom pounded and the voyageurs danced and the fiddlers played. Toward daybreak during the mist between moonlight and dawn, when the tents were all silent and the voyageurs asleep beneath inverted canoes, Missouri raiders, led by Wolf Chief, stole on the camp. A volley was fired at Boucher's tent. Every man inside perished. Out- side, under cover of canoes, the voyageurs seized their guns and with a peppering shot drove the Indians back. Then they dragged the canoes to water, still keeping under cover of the keel, rolled the boats keel down on the water, tumbled the baggage in helter-skelter and fled abandoning five dead men and the tents. When the raiders carried the booty back to the Missouri they explained to Charles MacKenzie, the Nor'Wester there, that they \vm- sorry they had shot the white traders. It was a 53 The Conquest of the Great Northwest mistake. When they fired, they thought it was a Cree camp. From Edmonton was an important trail to Atha- basca, ninety miles overland to what is now known as Athabasca Landing on Athabasca River and down stream to Fort Chippewyan on Athabasca Lake. This was the region Peter Pond had found, and when he was expelled for the murder of two men, Alex- ander MacKenzie came to take his place. Just as the Saskatchewan River was the great artery east and west, so the fur traders of Athabasca now came to a great artery north and south a river that was to the North what the Mississippi was to the United States. The Athabasca was the south end of this river. The river where it flowed was called the Grand or Big River. Athabasca was seventy days' canoe travel from the Nor' Westers' headquarters on Lake Superior. It was Alexander MacKenzie' s duty to send his hunters out, wait for their furs, then conduct the brigades down to Rainy Lake. Laroux and Cuth- bert Grant, the plains ranger, were his under officers. When he came back from Lake Superior in '88, MacKenzie sent Grant and Laroux down to Slave Lake. Then he settled down to a winter of loneli- ness and began to dream dreams. Where did Big River run beyond Slave Lake? It was a river 54 "The Coming of the Pedlars" broader than the St. Lawrence with ramparts like the Hudson. Dreaming of explorations that would bring him renown, he planned to accompany the hunters next year, but who would take his place to go down with the yearly brigades, and what would the other Northwest partners say to these exploring schemes? He wrote to his cousin Rory to come and take his place. As to objections from the partners, he told them nothing about it. The first thing Rory MacKenzie does is to move Pond's old post down stream to a rocky point on the lake, which he calls Chippewyan from the Indians there. This will enable the fort to obtain fish all the year round. May, '89, Alexander MacKenzie sees his cousin Rory off w r ith the brigades for Lake Superior. Then he outfits his Indian hunters for the year. Norman McLeod and five men are to build more houses in the fort. Laroux's canoe is loaded for Slave Lake. Then MacKenzie picks out a crew of one German and four Canadians with two wives to sew moccasins and cook. "English Chief" whom Frobisher met down at Portage de Traite years ago, goes as guide, accompanied by two wives and two Indian paddlers. Tuesday, June 2nd, is spent gumming canoes and celebrating farewells. June 3rd, 1789, at nine in the morning, the canoes push out, Mr. McLeod on the shore firing a salute 55 The Conquest of the Great Northwest that sets the echoes ringing over the Lake of the Hills (Athabasca). Twenty-one miles from Chip- pewyan, the boats enter Slave River on the north- west, where a lucky shot brings down a goose and a couple of ducks. It is seven in the evening when they pitch camp, but this is June of the long daylight. The sun is still shining as they sit down to the lus- cious meal of wild fowl. The seams of the canoes are gummed and the men " turn- in" early, bed being below upturned canoes; for henceforth, MacKenzie tells them, reveille is to sound at 3 A. M., canoes to be in the water by four. Peace River, a mile broad at its mouth, is passed next day, and MacKenzie won- ders does this river flowing from the mountains lead to the west coast where Captain Cook found the Russians? Slave River flows swifter now. The canoes shoot the rapids, for the water is floodtide, and " English Chief" tells them the Indians of this river are called Slaves because the Crees drove them from the South. Sixty miles good they make this day before camping at half-past seven, the Indian wives sewing moccasins as hard as the men paddle, so hard indeed that when they come to a succession of dangerous rapids next day and land to unload, one canoe is caught in the swirl and carried down with the squaw, who swims ashore little the worse. This is the place Portage des Noyes where Cuthbert 56 "The Coming of the Pedlars" Grant lost five voyageurs going to Slave Lake three years before. June gth, mid fog and rain and float- ing ice and clouds of mosquitoes, they glide into the beaver swamps of Slave Lake. Wild fowl are in such flocks, the voyageurs knock geese and ducks enough on the head for dinner. Laroux drops off here at his fort. The men go hunting. The women pick berries and Alexander MacKenzie climbs a high hill to try and see a way out of this foggy swamp of a lake stretching north in two horns two hundred miles from east to west. There was ice ahead and there was fog ahead, and it was quite plain " English Chief" did not know the way. MacKenzie followed the direction of the drifting ice. Dog Rib Indians here vow there is no passage through the ice, and the cold rains slush down in torrents. It is not dark longer than four hours, but the nights are so cold the lake is edged with ice a quarter of an inch thick. Mac- Kenzie secures a Red Knife Indian as guide and pushes on through the flag-grown swamps, now edging the ice fields, now in such rough water men must bail to keep the canoes afloat, now trying to escape from the lake east, only to be driven back by the ice, west; old "English Chief" threatening to cut the Red Knife's throat if he fails them. Three weeks have they been fog-bound and ice-bound and lost on Slave Lake, but they find their way out by 57 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the west channel at last, a strong current, a stiff wind and blankets up for sail. July ist, they pass the mouth of a very large river, the Liard; July 5th, a very large camp of Dog Rib Indians, who warn them "old age will come before" MacKenzie "reaches the sea" and that the wildest monsters guard Big River. MacKenzie obtains a Dog Rib for a guide, but the Dog Rib has no relish for his part, and to keep him from running away as they sleep at night, MacKenzie takes care to lie on the edge of the filthy fellow's vermin-infested coat. A greenish hue of the sea comes on the water as they pass Great Bear Lake to the right, but the guide has become so terrified he must now be bodily held in the canoe. The banks of the river rise to lofty ram- parts of white rock. Signs of the North grow more frequent. Trees have dwindled in size to little sticks. The birds and hares shot are all whitish- gray with fur pads or down on their feet. On July 8th, the guide escapes, but a Hare Indian comes along, who, by signs, says it is only ten days to the sea. Presently, the river becomes muddy and breaks into many channels. Provisions are almost gone, and MacKenzie promises his men if he does not find the sea within a week, he will turn back. On the nth of July, the sun did not set, and around de- serted camp fires were found pieces of whalebone. 58 "The Coming of the Pedlars" MacKenzie's hopes mounted. Only the Eskimos use whalebone for tent poles. Footprints, too, were seen in the sand, and a rare beauty of a black fox with a pelt that was a hunter's fortune scurried along the sands into hiding. The Hare Indian guide began talking of "a large lake" and "an enor- mous fish" which the Eskimo hunted with spears. "Lake?" Had not MacKenzie promised his men it was to be the sea? The voyageurs were dis- couraged. They did not think of the big "fish" being a whale, or the riffle in the muddy channels the ocean tide, not though the water slopped into the tents under the baggage and "the large lake" appeared covered with ice. Then at three o'clock in the morning of July i4th, the ice began floundering in a boisterous way on calm waters. There was no mistaking. The floundering ice was a whale and this was the North Sea, first reached overland' by Hearne of the Hudson's Bay, and now found by Alexander MacKenzie. The story of MacKenzie's voyages is told else- where. He was welcomed back to Chippewyan by Norman McLeod on October the i2th at 3 P. M., and spent the winter there with his cousin, Rory. Hurrying to Lake Superior with his report next sum- mer, Alexander MacKenzie suffered profound dis- appointment. He was received coldly. The truth 59 The Conquest of the Great Northwest is, the old guard of the original Nor'Westers Simon McTavish and the Frobishers were jealous of the men, who had come in as partners from the Little Company. They had no mind to see honors cap- tured by a young fellow like MacKenzie, who had only two shares in the Company, or $8000 worth of stock, compared to their own six shares or $24,000, and found bitter fault with the returns of furs from Athabasca, and this hostility lasted till McTavish's death in 1804. MacKenzie came back to pass a depressing winter ('QO-'QI) at Chippewyan when he dispatched hunters down the newly discovered river, which he ironically called "River Disappoint- ment." But events were occurring that spurred his thoughts. Down at the meeting of the partners he had heard how Astor was gathering the American furs west of the Great Lakes; how the Russians were gathering an equally rich harvest on the Pacific Coast. Down among the Hare Indians of Mac- Kenzie River, he had heard of white traders on the West coast. If a boat pushed up Peace River from Athabaska Lake, could it portage across to that west coast? The question stuck and rankled in MacKenzie's mind. "Be sure to question the In- dians about Peace River," he ordered all his winter hunters. Then came the Hudson's Bay men to Athabasca: Turner, the astronomer, and Howse, 60 "The Coming of the Pedlars" who had been to the mountains. If the Nor'Westers were to be on the Pacific Coast first, they must bestir themselves. MacKenzie quietly asked leave of absence in the winter of '91 -'9 2, and went home to study in England sufficient to enable him to take more accurate astronomic observations. The sum- mer of '92 found him back on the field appointed to Peace River district. The Hudson's Bay men had failed to pass through the country beyond the mountains. Turner and Howse had gone down to Edmonton. Thompson, the surveyor, left the English Company and coming overland to Lake Superior, joined the Nor'Westers. It was still possible for MacKenzie to be first across the mountains. The fur traders had already advanced up Peace River and half a dozen forts were strung up stream toward the Rockies. By October of '92, MacKenzie advanced beyond them all to the Forks on the east side and there erected a fort. By May, he had dis- patched the eastern brigade. Then picking out a crew of six Frenchmen and two Indians, with Alex- ander McKay as second in command, McKenzie launched out at seven o'clock on the evening of May 9, 1793, from the Forks of Peace River in a birch canoe of three thousand pounds capacity. If the voyage to the Arctic had In-m difficult, it 61 The Conquest of the Great Northwest was child's play compared to this. As the canoe entered the mountains, the current became boister- ously swift. It was necessary to track the boat up stream. The banks of the river grew so precipitous that the men could barely keep foothold to haul the canoe along with a one hundred and eighty-foot rope. MacKenzie led the way cutting steps in the cliff, his men following, stepping from his shoulder to the shaft of his axe and from the axe to the place he had cut, the torrent roaring and re-echoing below through the narrow gorge. Sulphur springs were passed, the out-cropping of coal seams, vistas on the frosted mountains opening to beautiful uplands, where elk and moose roamed. An old Indian had told MacKenzie that when he passed over the moun- tains, Peace River would divide one stream, now known as the Finlay, coming from the north; the other fork, now known as the Parsnip, from the south. MacKenzie, the old guide said, should as- cend the south; but it was no easy matter passing the mountains. The gorge finally narrowed to sheer walls with a raging maelstrom in place of a river. The canoe had to be portaged over the crest of a peak for nine miles MacKenzie leading the way chopping a trail, the men following laying the fallen trees like the railing of a stair as an outer guard up the steep ascent. Only three miles a day were made. 62 The Coming of the Pedlars" Clothes and moccasins were cut to shreds by brush- wood, and the men were so exhausted they lay down in blanket coats to sleep at four in the afternoon, close to the edge of the upper snow fields. Mac- Kenzie wrote letters, enclosed them in empty kegs, threw the kegs into the raging torrent and so sent back word of his progress to the fort. Constantly, on the Uplands, the men were startled by rocketing echoes like the discharge of a gun, when they would pass the night in alarm, each man sitting with his back to a tree and musket across his knees, but the rocketing echoes so weird and soul-stirring in the loneliness of a silence that is audible were from huge rocks splitting off some precipice. Sometimes a boom of thunder would set the mountains rolling. From a far snow field hanging in ponderous cornice over bottomless depths would puff up a thin, white line like a snow cataract, the distant avalanche of which the boom was the echo. Once across the divide, the men passed from the bare snow uplands to the cloud line, where seas of tossing mist blotted out earth, and from cloud line to the Alpine valleys with larch-grown meadows and painters' flowers knee deep, all the colors of the rainbow. Beside a rill trickling from the ice fields pause would be made for a meal. Then came tree line, the spruce and hemlock forests gigantic trees, branches interlaced, 63 The Conquest of the Great Northwest festooned by a mist-like moss that hung from tree to tree in loops, with the windfall of untold centuries piled criss-cross below higher than a house. The men grumbled. They had not bargained on this kind of voyaging. Once down on the west side of the Great Divide, there were the Forks. MacKenzie's instincts told him the north branch looked the better way, but the old guide had said only the south branch would lead to the Great River beyond the mountains, and' they turned up Parsnip River through a marsh of beaver meadows, which MacKenzie noted for future trade. It was now the 3rd of June. MacKenzie ascended a mountain to look along the forward path. When he came down with McKay and the Indian Cancre, no canoe was to be found. MacKenzie sent broken branches drifting down stream as a signal and fired gunshot after gunshot, but no answer! Had the men deserted with boat and provisions? Genuinely alarmed, MacKenzie ordered McKay and Cancre back down the Parsnip, while he went on up stream. Whichever found the canoe was to fire a gun. For a day without food and in drenching rains, the three tore through the underbrush shouting, seeking, despairing till strength was exhausted and moccasins worn to tatters. Barefoot and soaked, MacKenzie was just lying down for the night when a crashing 64 "The Coming of the Pedlars" echo told him McKay had found the deserters. They had waited till he had disappeared up the mountain, then headed the canoe north and drifted down stream. The Indians were openly panic- stricken and wanted to build a raft to float home. The French voyageurs pretended they had been delayed mending the canoe. MacKenzie took no outward notice of the treachery, but henceforth never let the crew out of his own or McKay's sight. A week later, Indians were met who told Mac- Kenzie of the Carrier tribes, inlanders, who bartered with the Indians on the sea. One old man drew a birch bark map of how the Parsnip led to a portage overland to another river flowing to the sea. Prom- ising to return in two moons (months), MacKenzie embarked with an Indian for guide. On the evening of June 1 2th, they entered a little lake, the source of Peace River. A beaten path led over a low ridge to another little lake the source of the river that flowed to the Pacific. This was Bad River, a branch of the Fraser, though MacKenzie thought it was a branch of the Great River the Columbia. The little lake soon narrowed to a swift torrent, which swept the canoe along like a chip. MacKenzie wanted to walk along the shore, for some one should go ahead to look out for rapids, but the crew insisted if they were -to perish, he must perish with them, and 65 The Conquest of the Great Northwest all hands embarked. The consequence was that the canoe was presently caught in a swirl. A rock banged through the bottom tearing away the keel. Round swung the tottering craft to the rush! An- other smash, and out went the bow, the canoe flat- tening like a board, the Indians weeping aloud on top of the baggage, the voyageurs paralyzed with fear, hanging to the gun'els. On swept the wrecked canoe! The foreman frantically grabbed the branch of an overhanging tree. It jerked him bodily ashore and the canoe flat as a flap-jack came to a stop in shallow sands. There was not much said for some minutes. Bad River won a reputation that it has ever since sus- tained. All the bullets were lost. Powder and bag- gage had to be fished up and spread out to dry in the sun. One dazed voyageur walked across the spread- out powder with a pipe between his teeth when a yell of warning that he might blow them all to eternity brought him to his senses and relieved the terrific tension. The men were treated to a regale, and then sent to hunt bark for a fresh canoe. There now succeeded such an impenetrable morass blocked by windfall that the voyageurs made only two miles a day. Though MacKenzie and McKay watched their guide by turns at night, he succeeded in escaping, 66 The Coming of the Pedlars" and the white men must risk meeting the inland Carriers without an interpreter. On the i5th of June, Bad River turned westward into the Fraser. Of his parley with the Carriers, there is no space to tell. I have told the story in another volume, but somewhere between what are now known as Quesnel and Alexandria named after him it became ap- parent that the river was leading too far south. Besides, the passage was utterly impassable. Mac- Kenzie headed his canoe back up the western fork of the Fraser the Blackwater River, and thence on July 4th, leaving the canoe and caching provisions, struck overland and westward. The Pacific was reached on the 22nd of July, 1793, in the vicinity of Bella Coola. By the end of August he was back at the Forks on Peace River, and at once proceeded to Chippewyan on Athabasca Lake, where he passed the winter. CHAPTER XXIV 1780-1810 "THE COMING OF THE PEDLARS" CONTINUED- MACKENZIE AND MCTAVISH QUARREL THE NOR'WESTERS INVADE HUDSON BAY WATERS AND CHALLENGE THE CHARTER RUFFIANISM OF NOR'WESTERS^ MURDER AND BOYCOTT OF HUD- SON'S BAY MEN UP-TO-DATE COMMERCIALISM AS CONDUCTED IN TERMS OF A CLUB AND WITHOUT LAW. THE next spring, MacKenzie left the West forever. Again his report of discovery was coldly received by the partners on Lake Superior. The smoldering jealousy between Simon McTavish of the old Nor'Westers and Alex- ander MacKenzie broke out in flame. MacKenzie seceded from the Nor'Westers and with Pierre de Rocheblave and the Ogilvies of Montreal reorgan- ized the Little Company variously known as "The Potties," from "Les Petits," and "the X. Y.'s" from the stamp on their pelts, X. Y., to distinguish them from the N. W. MacKenzie' s Journal was published. He was given a title in recognition of his services to the Empire. Now in possession of an 68 "The Coming of the Pedlars" independent and growing fortune, he bought him- self an estate in Scotland where the fame of his journal attracted the attention of another brilliant young Scotchman Lord Selkirk. The two became acquainted and talked over plans of forming a vast company, that would include not only the X. Y.'s and Nor'Westers, but the Hudson's Bay and Russian companies. Hudson's Bay stock had fallen from 250 to 50 a share. With the aim of a union, Mac- Kenzie and Selkirk began buying shares in the Hud- son's Bay, and Selkirk comes on a visit to Canada. Meanwhile out in Canada Simon McTavish, "the Marquis," was not idle up to the time of his death. The Hudson's Bay had barred out other traders from Labrador. Good! Simon McTavish accepted the challenge, and from the government of Canada rented the old King's Domain of Southern Labrador for 1000 a year. The English company had forbidden interlopers on the waters of Hudson Bay. Good! The Nor'Westers accepted that chal- lenge. Duncan McGillivray, a nephew of Mc- Tavish, dictates a letter to the ancient English com- pany begging them to sue him for what he is going to do, so that the case may be forever settled in the courts. Then he hires Captain Richards away from the Company and sends him on the ship EddyStone, in 1803, straight into Hudson Bay, to establish a 69 trading post at Charlton Island and another at Moose for the Nor' Westers. The Hudson's Bay Company declines the challenge. They will not sue the North- West Company and so revive the whole question of their charter; but they sue their old Captain, John Richards, and order Mr. Geddes to hire more men in the Orkneys, and they freeze those interlopers out of the bay by bribing the Indians so that Simon McTavish's men retire from Charlton and Moose with loss. And the English Adventurers go one farther: they petition Parliament, in 1805, for "au- thority to deal with crimes committed in the Indian country." Simon McTavish dies in 1804. The X. Y.'s and the Nor'Westers unite, and well they do, for clashes are increasing between Hudson's Bays and Nor'- Westers, between English and French, from Lake Superior to the Rockies. Down at Nipigon in 1800, where Duncan Cameron had attracted the Indians away from Albany, first blood is shed. Young Labau, a Frenchman, whose goods have been advanced by the Nor'Westers, deserts for the Hudson's Bay. Schultz, the North- west clerk, pursues and orders the young Frenchman back. Labau offers to pay for the goods, but he will not go back to the Northwest Company. Schultz draws his dagger and stabs the boy to death. For 70 "The Coming of the Pedlars" this, he is dismissed by the Nor'Westers, but no other punishment follows for the murder. Albany River at this time was the trail inland from Hudson Bay to the plains, to the Red River and the Missouri and modern Edmonton. The Nor'Westers determined to block this trail. The Northwest partner, Haldane, came to Bad Lake in 1806 with five voyageurs and knocked up quarters for them- selves near the Hudson's Bay cabins. By May, William Corrigal, the Hudson's Bay man, had four hundred and eighty packs of furs. One night, when all the English were asleep, the Nor'West bullies marched across, broke into the cabins, placed pistols at the head of Corrigal and his men, and plundered the place of furs. Never dreaming that Haldane, the Northwest partner, would countenance open robbery, Corrigal dressed- and went across to the Northwest house to complain. Haldane met the complaint with a loud guffaw. "I have come to this country for furs," he explained, "and I have found them, and I intend to keep them." Red Lake in Minnesota belonged to the same Albany department. Before Corrigal could dispatch the furs to the bay, Haldane's bullies swooped down and pillaged the cabins there, this time not only of furs, but provisions. Up at Big Falls near Lake Winnipeg, John Crear The Conquest of the Great Northwest and five men had built a fort for the English. One night toward fall a party of Northwest voyageurs, led by Alexander MacDonell, landed and camped. Next morning when all of Crear's men had gone fishing but two, MacDonell marched to the Hud- son's Bay house, accused Crear of taking furs owed in debt to the Nor' Westers, and on that excuse broke open the warehouse. Plowman, a Hudson's Bay hunter, sprang to prevent. Quick as flash, Mac- DonelPs dagger was out. Plowman fell stabbed and the voyageurs had clubbed Crear to earth with the butt ends of their rifles. Furs and provisions were carried off. As if this were not enough and ample proof that the accusation had simply been an excuse to drive the Hudson's Bay men off the field, Mac- Donell came back in February of 1807, surrounded Crear's house with bullies, robbed it of everything and had Crear beaten till he signed a paper declaring he had sold the furs and that he would never again come to the country. This was no fur trading. It was raiding such raiding as the Highlanders carried into the Low- lands of Scotland. It was a banditti warfare that was bound to bring its own punishment. Besides Albany River, the two great river trails inland to the plains from Hudson's Bay were by Churchill River to Athabasca and by Hayes River to 72 "The Coming of the Pedlars" Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan. From 1805 J. D. Campbell was the Northwest partner ap- pointed to block the advance inland to this region. John Spencer was at Reindeer Lake for the Hudson's Bay in 1808. Knowing when the Indians from the Athabasca were due, he had sent William Linklater out to meet them, and Linklater was snowshoeing leisurely homeward drawing the furs on a toboggan, when toward nightfall he suddenly met the North- west partner and his bullies on the trail. There was the usual pretence that the furs were a debt owed to the Nor'Westers, and the hollowness of that pre- tence was shown by the fact that before Linklater could answer, a Northwest bully had seized his snowshoes and sent him sprawling. Campbell and the bullies then marched off with the furs. This happened twice at Caribou Lake. But the worst warfare waged round Isle a la Crosse, the gateway to Athabasca. Peter Fidler \\cnt there in 1806 with eighteen men for the Hud- son's Bay. Then came J. D. Campbell, the Nor'- \\V-ter, with an army of bullies, forbidding the Indians to enter Fidler's fort or Fidler and his men to stir beyond a line drawn on the sands. On this line was built a Nor'West sentry box, where the bullies kept guard night and day. For three years, Peter Fidler stuck it out, sending men across the line 73 The Conquest of the Great Northwest secretly at night, directing the Indians by a detour down to the other Hudson's Bay forts and in a hun- dred ways circumventing his enemies. Then Camp- bell's bullies became bolder. Fidler's firewood was stolen, his fish nets cut, his canoes hacked to pieces. He was literally starved off the field and compelled to retire in 1809. Down in Albany, things were going from bad to worse with Corrigal. The contest concentrated at Eagle Lake, half "way between Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg just where Wabigoon River inter- sects with the modern Canadian Pacific Railroad. The English company had strengthened Corrigal with more Orkneymen, and he had a strongly pali- saded fort. But the Nor'Westers set the Mac- Donell clan with their French bullies on his trail. An Indian had come to the post in September. Corrigal outfitted him with merchandise for the winter's hunt, and three English servants accom- panied the Saulteur down to the shore. Out rushed the Nor'Wester, MacDonell, flourishing his sword accompanied by a bully, Adhemer, raging aloud that the Indian had owed furs to the Nor'Westers and should not be allowed to hunt for the Hudson's Bay. The two Corrigal brothers and one Tait ran from the post to the rescue. With one sweep of his sword Eneas MacDonell cut Tait's wrist off and with an- 74 "The Coming of the Pedlars 1 other hack on his neck felled him to the ground. The French bully had aimed a loaded pistol at the Corrigals daring them to take one step forward. John Corrigal dodged into the lake. MacDonell then rushed at the Englishmen like a mad man, cutting off the arm of one, sending a hat flying from another whose head he missed, hacking the shoulder of a third. Unarmed, the Hudson's Bay men fled for the fort gates. The Nor'Westers pursued. Com- ing from the house door, John Mowat, a Hudson's Bay man, drew his pistol and shot Eneas MacDonell dead. Coureurs went flying to Northwest camps for reinforcements. Haldane and McLellan, two partners, came with a rowdy crew and threatened if Mowat were not surrendered they would have the Indians butcher every soul in the fort if it cost a keg of rum for every scalp. Mowat promptly surren- dered and declared he would shoot any Nor'Wester on the same provocation. For this crime and before the Company in Eng- land could be notified, Mowat was carried away in irons. Two servants McNab and Russell and one of the Corrigals volunteered to accompany him as witnesses for the defense. For a winter Mowat was imprisoned in the miserable butter vat'of a jail at Fort William, and when it was found that every indignity and insult would not drive the three wit- 75 The Conquest of the Great Northwest nesses away, they were arrested as abettors of the so- called crime. At Mowat's trial in Montreal, of the four judges who presided, one was notoriously cor- rupt and two, the fathers of Northwest partners. Of the jury, half the number were Nor'Westers. Naturally, Mowat was pronounced guilty. He was sentenced to six months' imprisonment and brand- ing. When he was discharged penniless, he set out through the United States to take ship for England. It is supposed that he was lost in a storm, or drowned crossing some of the New England rivers. The rivalry between Hudson's Bay and Nor'- Westers had become lawless outrage. The Com- pany in England is meantime having troubles of its own. The English government desires them in 1807 to state what "the boundaries of Louisiana ought to be" in the impending treaty with the United States, which is to give access for American traders to the country north of Louisiana in return for similar free access for British traders to American territory. The English traders state what the boundaries of Louisiana ought to be, and to the ignorance of the English shareholders do we owe in this case, as in a hundred others, the fifty years' boundary dispute as to limits -from the Lake of the Woods to Oregon. As for reciprocity of access to each other's hunting field, the Hudson's Bay Company opposes it furi- 76 "The Coming of the Pedlars" ously. Access to American territory they already have without the asking and are likely to have for another fifty years, as there is no inhabitant to pre- vent them, but to grant the Americans access to Hudson's Bay territory is another matter; so in the treaty of reciprocal favors across each other's terri- tory, My Lord Holland provides "always the ac- tual settlements of the Hudson's Bay Company excepted." If the Hudson's Bay Company is to hold its monop- oly by virtue of settlements, it must see to the wel- fare of those settlements, so in June, 1808, the first schoolmasters of the Northwest are sent out at sal- aries of 30 a year James Clouston, and Peter Sinclair, and George Geddes. There is no dividend, owing to the embargo of war, and the Company is driven, in 1809, to petition the Lords of Trade for help. They aver there are six hundred families at their settlements, that the yearly outfits cost the Company 40,000; that the sales never exceed 30,000 and this year are only 3,000; they apply for remission of duty on furs and a loan of 60,000 from the imperial treasury. The duty is remitted but the loan is not granted, and My Lord Selkirk becomes, by virtue of having purchased nearly 40,000 of stock, a leading director in the Hudson's Bay Company. My Lord Selkirk has been out to 77 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Montreal. He has been feted and feasted and dined and wined by the Beaver Club of the Nor'- Westers, whom he pumps to a detail about the fur trade. Also he meets John Jacob Astor and learns what he can from him. Also he meets that North- west clerk who had been dismissed up the Saskatche- wan and came over to the Hudson's Bay Company- Colin Robertson. He brings Colin Robertson back with him to England, and the aforetime North- west clerk is called on January 3, 1810, to give advice to the Hudson's Bay directors on the state of the fur trade in Canada. But to return to that Louisiana Boundary it is as great a shock to the Nor'Westers as to the Hud- son's Bay. In the first place, as told elsewhere, the boundary treaty of 1798 has compelled them to move headquarters from Grand Portage to Fort William. The Nor'Westers suddenly awaken to the value of Alexander MacKenzie's voyage to the Pacific. Sup- posing he had followed that great river on down to the sea, would it have led him where the American, Robert Gray, found the Columbia, and where the explorers, Lewis and Clarke, later coming overland from the Missouri, wintered? It was determined to follow MacKenzie's explorations up with all speed. It became a race to the Pacific. Which fur traders 78 "The Coming of the Pedlars" should pre-empt the vast domain first Hudson's Bay, Astor's Americans, or Nor'Westers? It is barely twenty years since Peter Pond came to Athabasca and Peace River region, but already there are six forts between Athabasca Lake and the Rockies Vermilion and Encampment Island under the management of the half-breed son of Sir Alexander MacKenzie,then Dunvegan and St. John's and Rocky Mountain House managed by the McGillivrays and Archibald Norman McLcod. By 1797, James Fin- lay had followed MacKenzie's trail across the Di- vide, then struck up the north branch of Peace River, now known as Finlay River; but it was not till 1805 that the fur traders, who made flying trips across the mountains, remained to build forts. In 1793, when MacKenzie crossed the mountain, there had joined the Northwest Company as clerk, a lad of nineteen, the son of a ruined loyalist in New York State, whose widow came to live in Cornwall, Ontario. This boy was Simon Fraser. Two years later, in 1795, there had come to the Northwest Company from Hudson Bay that English surveyor, David Thomp- son, whom the MacKenzies had met in Athabasca working for the Hudson's Bay traders. David Thompson had been born in 1770 and was educated in the Blue Coat School, London. In 1789 he had come as surveyor to Churchill and York, penetrating 79 The Conquest of the Great Northwest inland as far as Athabasca; but Colen, chief factor of York, did not encourage purely scientific explora- tions. Thompson quit the English service in dis- gust, coming down to the Nor'Westers on Lake Superior. These were the two young men Eraser, son of the New York loyalist; Thompson, the English sur- veyor that the Northwest Company appointed in 1805 to explore the wilderness beyond the Rockies. CHAPTER XXV 1800-1810 DAVID THOMPSON, THE NOR J WESTER, DASHES FOR THE COLUMBIA HE EXPLORES EAST KOOTENAY, WEST KOOTENAY, WASHINGTON AND OREGON, BUT FINDS ASTOR'S MEN ON THE FIELD HOW THE ASTORIANS ARE JOCKEYED OUT OF ASTORIA FRASER FINDS HIS WAY TO THE SEA BY AN- OTHER GREAT RIVER. E' us follow Thompson first. He had joined the Nor'Westers just when the question of the International Boundary was in dispute between Canada and the United States. (1) In 1796, lest other Northwest forts were south of the Boundary, he first explored from Lake Supe- rior to Rainy Lake and the Lake of the Woods and Winnipeg River and Winnipeg Lake, advancing as fast as the brigades traveled, running his lines at lightning pace. Then he struck across to Lake Manitoba and the Assiniboine and Qu' Appelle. His first survey practically ran in a circle round the bounds of the modern Manitoba, except on the south. (2) After wintering on the Assiniboine, he pre- 81 The Conquest of the Great Northwest pared in the summer of 1797 for exploration south to the Missouri, but his work must pay in coin of the realm to the Company. This was accomplished by Thompson obtaining credit from McDonell of the Assiniboine Department for goods to trade with the Mandanes. With three horses, thirty-eight dogs and several voyageurs, he set out southwest, in mid- winter, 1797. This was long before Henry or Cha- boillez of the Assiniboine had sent men from Pem- bina to the Missouri. The cold was terrific. The winds blew r keen as whip lashes, and the journey of three hundred miles lasted a month. To Thomp- son's amazement, he found Hudson's Bay traders from the Albany Department on the Missouri. They must have come south across Minnesota. (3) By February of '98, Thompson was back on the Assiniboine, and now to complete the southern survey of Manitoba, he struck east for Red River, and in March up Red River to Pembina where the partner, Charles Chaboillez, happened to be in charge.. No doubt it was what Thompson told Chaboillez of the Missouri that induced the Nor'- Westers to go there. Still ascending the Red, Thompson passed Grand Forks then a cluster of log houses inhabited by traders and struck east- ward through what is now Minnesota to that Red Lake, where Hudson's Bays and Nor'Westers were 82 David Thompson to have such bitter fights. Six miles farther east he made the mistake of thinking he had found the sources of the Mississippi in Turtle Lake. Still pressing eastward, he came to Lake Superior and along the north shore to the Company's headquarters. From 1799 to 1805 he ranges up the South Sas- katchewan to that old Bow Fort near Banff; then up the North Saskatchewan all the way from Lesser Slave Lake to Athabasca. This, then, was the man whom the Nor'Westers now appointed to explore the Rockies. Only two passes across the mountains north of Bow River were known to the fur traders Peace River Pass and Howse River Pass of the Upper Sas- katchewan. It was perfectly natural that Thomp- son should follow the latter the trail of his old co- workers in the Hudson's Bay service. Striking up the Saskatchewan from Edmonton in the fall of 1806, by October Thompson was in that wonderful glacier field which has only been thoroughly ex- plored in recent days where Howse River leads over to a branch of the Blaeberry Creek, with Mt. Hector and Mt. Thompson and Mt. Balfour and the beau- tiful Bow Lakes on the southeast; and Mt. Brycc, and Mt. Athabasca and Mt. Stutfield and the won- derful Freshfield Glaciers on the northwest. This is one of the largest and most wonderful glacial fields 83 The Conquest of the Great Northwest of the world. It is the region where the tourists of Laggan, and Field, and Golden, and Donald strike north up the Pipestone and Bow and Blaeberry Creek raging torrents all of them, not in the least like creeks, broad as the Upper Hudson, or the Thames at Chelsea, wild as the cataracts of the St. Lawrente. From the Pipestone, or Bow, or Blae- berry, one can pass northeast down to the tributaries of the Saskatchewan. Cloud-capped mountains, whose upland meadows present fields of eternal snow, line each side of the river. Once when I at- tempted to enter this region by pack horse late in September, we wakened below Mt. Hector to find eight inches of snow on our tent roof, the river swollen to a rolling lake, the valley swamped high as the pack horses' saddles. Hither came Thompson by a branch of the Sas- katchewan, and Howse's River and Howse's Pass to Blaeberry Creek. Dense spruce and hemlock forests covered the mountains to the water's edge. The scream of the eagle perched on some dead tree, the lonely whistle of the hoary marmot a kind of large rock squirrel the roar of the waters swelling to a great chorus during mid-day sun, fading to a long-drawn, sibilant hush during the cool of night, the soughing of the winds through the great forests like the tide of a sea only emphasize the solitude, 84 David Thompson the stillness, the utter aloneness of feeling that comes over man amid such wilderness grandeur. On the Upper Blaeberry, Thompson constructs a rough log raft safer than canoe, for it will neither sink nor upset whipsawing two long logs over a dozen spruce rollers. A sapling tree for a pole, packs in a heap in the center on brush boughs to keep them free of damp, and down the Blaeberry whirls the explorer with his Indian guides. Here, the water is clearest crystal from the upland snows. There, it becomes milky with the silt of glaciers grinding over stone beds; and glimpses through the forests reveal the boundless ice fields. By October, snow begins to fall on the uplands. The hoary ever- greens become heaped with drifts in huge mush- rooms. The upper snow fields curl over the edges of lofty precipices in great cornices that break and fall with the boom of thunder, setting the avalanches roaring down the mountain flanks, sweeping the slopes clean of forests as if leveled by some giant trowel. Somewhere between Howse's Pass and the Blae- berry, Thompson had wintered, following his old custom of making the explorations pay by having his men trap and hunt and trade with the Sarcees and Kootenay Indians as he travrUd. Advancing in this slow way, it was June of 1807 before he had launched his raft on the Blaeberry. Spring thaw 85 The Conquest of the Great Northwest has set the torrents roaring. The river is a swollen flood that sweeps the voyageurs through the forests, past the glaciers, on down to a great river, which Thompson does not recognize but which is the Columbia just where it takes a great bend north- ward at the modern railway stations of Moberly and Golden. But the question is which way to go? The river is flowing north, not south to the sea, as Alexander MacKenzie thought. Thompson does not guess this is not the river, which MacKenzie saw. "May God in His mercy give me to see where the waters of this river flow to the western ocean," records Thomp- son in his journal of June 22nd; but if he goes north, that will lead to a great detour that much he can guess from what the Indians tell him the Big Bend of the Columbia. He is facing the Rockies on the east. On the west are the Selkirks. He does not know that after a great circle about the north end of the Selkirks, the Columbia will come down south again through West Kootenay between the Selkirks and the Gold Range. To Thompson, it seems that he will reach the Pacific soonest, where American traders are heading, by ascending the river; so he follows through East Kootenay southward through Windermere Lake and Columbia Lake to the sources of the Columbia east of Nelson Mountain. There, 86 David Thompson where the Windermere of to-day exists, he builds a fort with Montour, the Frenchman, in charge the Upper Kootenay House. Then he discovers that beyond the sources of the Columbia, a short portage of two miles, is another great river flowing south the Kootenay. The portage he names after the Northwest partner McGillivray, also the river, which we now know as Kootenay, and which Thomp- son follows, surveying as he goes, south of the Boun- dary into what are now known as Idaho and Mon- tana, past what is now the town of Jennings and westerly as far as what is now Bonner's Ferry the roaring camp of old construction days when the Great Northern Railroad passed this way. Here Thompson is utterly confused, for the Kootenay River turns north to British Columbia again, not west to the Pacific, and he has no time to follow its winding course. His year is up. He must hasten eastward with his report. Leaving the fort well manned, Thompson goes back the way he has come, by Howse Pass down the Saskatchewan to Fort William. While Thompson is East, the Hudson's Bay Com- pany of Edmonton is not idle. Mr. Howse, who found the pass, follows Thompson's tracks over the mountains and sets hunters ranging the forests of the Big Bend and south to Kootenay Lake. 87 When he returns to the mountains in 1808, Thomp- son joins Henry's brigade coming west from Pem- bina. It is September when they reach Edmonton, and both companies have by this time built fur posts at Howse's Pass, known as Rocky Mountain House, of which Henry takes charge for the Nor'- Westers. Sixteen days on horseback bring Thomp- son to the mountains. There horses are exchanged for dogs, and the explorer sleds south through East Kootenay to Kootenay House on Windermere Lake, where provisions and furs are stored. Thompson winters at Windermere. In April of 1809 he sets out for the modern Idaho and Montana and estab- lishes trading posts on the Flathead Lake southeast, and the Pend d'Oreille Lakes southwest, leaving Firman McDonald, the Highlander, as commander of the Flathead Department, with McMillan and Methode and Forcier and a dozen others as traders. He is back in Edmonton by June, 1810 "thank God" he ejaculates in his diary, and at once pro- ceeds East, where he learns astounding news at Fort William. John Jacob Astor, the New York mer- chant, who bought Nor' Westers' furs at Montreal, has organized a Pacific Fur Company, and into its ranks he has lured by promise of partnership, friends of Thompson, such good old Nor'Westers as John Clarke " fighting Clarke," he was called and 88 David Tlwmpson Duncan McDougall of the Athabasca, and that Alex. McKay, who had gone to the Pacific with Sir Alexander MacKenzie, and Donald MacKenzie, a relative of Sir Alexander's, and the two Stuarts- David and Robert kin of the Stuart who was with Simon Fraser on his trip to the sea. These Nor'- Westers, who have joined Astor, know the mountain country well, and they have engaged old Nor'West voyageurs as servants. Half the partners are to go round the Horn to the Pacific, half overland from the Missouri to the Columbia. If the Nor'Westers are to capture the transmontane field first, there is not a moment to lose. Thompson is forthwith dispatched back to the mountains in 1810, given a crew of eighteen or twenty and urged forward to the Pacific; but the Piegans are playing the mischief with the fur trade this year. Though Henry drowns them in whiskey drugged with laudanum at Rocky Mountain House, they infest Howse's Pass and lie in wait at the Big Bend to catch the canoes bringing up the furs from Idaho and to plunder Thompson's goods bound south to Kootenay House. Thompson's voyageurs scatter like lambs before wolves. He retreats under pro- tection of Henry's men back through Howse's Pass to Rocky Mountain House, but he is a hard man to beat. Reach the Pacific before Astor's men he 89 The Conquest of the Great Northwest must, Piegans or no Piegans; so he forms his plans. Look at the map! This Kootenay River flowing through Idaho does not lead to the Pacific. It turns north into Kootenay Lake of West Kootenay. The Columbia takes a great circle north. Thompson aims for the Big Bend. He hurries overland by pack horse to the Athabasca River, enters the moun- tains at the head of the river on December 20, 1810, at once cuts his way through the forest tangle up between Mt. Brown and Mt. Hooker, literally "swims the dogs through snowdrifts, the brute Du Nord beating a dog to death," and finds a new trail to the Columbia Athabasca Pass! Down on the west side of the Divide flows a river southwest, to the Big Bend of the Columbia. Thompson winters here to build canoes for the spring of 1811, naming the river that gladdens his heart Canoe River. Down in Idaho, his men on Flathead Lake and the Pend d'Oreille are panicky with forebodings. Thompson has not come with provisions. Their fur brigade has been driven back. The Piegans are on the ramp, and there are all sorts of wild rumors about white men Astor's voyageurs, of course coming through the mountains by way of the Snake Indian's territory to "the rivers of the setting sun." Up on Canoe River, Thompson and his voyageurs worked feverishly building canoes, and getting the 90 David Thompson fur packs ready against spring. Toward spring, ten men are sent back with the furs; seven are to go on with Thompson down Columbia River for the Pacific. Their names are Bordeaux, Pariel, Cote, Bourland, Gregoire, Charles and Ignace. His men are on the verge of mutiny from starvation, but pro- visions come through from Henry at Howse's Pass, and when these provisions run out, Thompson's party kill all their horses and dogs for food. Very early in the year, the river is free of ice, for Thomp- son is in a warmer region than on the plains, and the canoe is launched down the Columbia through the Big Bend a swollen, rolling, milky tide, past what is now Revelstoke, past Nakusp, through the Upper and Lower Arrow Lakes and what is now known as the Rossland mining region. It is a region of shadowy moss-grown forests, of hazy summer air resinous with the odor of pines, of mountains rising sheer on each side in walls with belts of mist mark- ing the cloud line, the white peaks opal and shim- mering and fading in a cloudland. Each night careful camping ground was chosen ashore with unblocked way to the water in case of Pieman attack. July 3rd, Thompson reached Ket- tle Falls. For a week he followed the great circular sweep of the Columbia south through what is now Washington. At Spokane River, at Okanogan 9' River, near Walla Walla where the Snake comes in, he heard rumors among the Indians that white men from the East had come to the sea, whether overland or round the world he could not tell, so on Tuesday, July gth, Thompson judges it wise to pre- empt other claimants. Near Snake River, "I erected a small pole," he writes, "with a half sheet of paper tied about it, with these words: " Know hereby, this country is claimed by Great Britain and the N W Company from Canada do hereby intend to erect a factory on this place for the commerce of the country D. Thompson." Broader spread the waters, larger the empire rolling away north and south as the river swerved straight west. The river, that he had found up at Blaeberry Creek near Howse's Pass, was sweeping him to the sea. This was the river, Gray, the Boston man, had found, and Alexander MacKenzie had missed when he touched the Fraser. Thompson had now explored it from source to sea, from the Columbia and Windermere Lakes north through East Koote- nay, south through West Kootenay, south through Washington, west between Washington and Oregon to the Pacific a region in all as large as Germany and France and Spain. But from Walla Walla to the sea was a dangerous 92 David Thompson stretch. At the Dalles camped robber Indians to pillage travelers as they portaged overland. Thomp- son kept sleepless vigil all night and by launching out at dawn before the mountain mists had lifted from the water gave ambushed foes the slip. Came a wash and a ripple in the current. It was the tide. The salt water smell set the explorer's pulses beating. Then the blue line of the ocean washes the horizon of an opening vista like a swimming sky. The voy- ageurs gave a shout and beat the gun'els of the canoe. A swerve to left chips floating on the water tell Thompson that Astor's men are already here, and there stands the little palisaded post all raw in its newness with cannons pointing across the river from the fort gates. Precisely at i P. M., Monday, July 15, 1811, Thompson arrives at Astoria. The Astor men have beaten in the race to the Pacific. Thomp- son is just two months too late for the Nor'Westers to claim the mouth of the Columbia. Then all his old friends of the Athabasca, McDou- gall and the Stuarts and fighting John Clarke all his old friends but Alex. McKay, who has been cut to pieces by the Indians in the massacre of "the Ton-quints crew," all but McKay and Donald Mac- Kerr/jc, who has not yet arrived from overland- rush down to welcome him. The Astorians receive the Nor'Westers with open arms. It is good fellow- 93 The Conquest of the Great Northwest ship. It is not good policy. "He had access every- where," writes Ross, a clerk in the employment of Astor. "He saw and examined everything." He heard how the overland party of Astor 's men from the Missouri had not yet come. He probably heard, too, that the crew of the ship Tonquin had been massacred, and he was not slow to guess that Mc- Dougall, head of Astor's fort, was homesick for his old Northwest comrades. Thompson remained only a week. McDougall gave him what provisions were necessary for the return voyage, and July 22nd he set out to ascend the Columbia with a party of Astorians bound inland to trade. Bourland, his voyageur, wanted to stay at Astoria, so Thompson traded his services to Mc- Dougall for one of Astor's Sandwich Island men. The Astor hunters struck up Okanogan River to trade. Thompson pushed on up the Columbia through the Arrow Lakes at feverish pace, noticing with disgust that the Hudson's Bay man, Howse, was camping hard on his trail, forming trading con- nections with Sarcees and Piegans and Kootenays. Snow comes early in the mountains. Thompson must succeed in crossing the pass before winter sets in so that the report of what he learned at Astoria can be sent down to Fort William in time for the annual meeting of July, 1812. He pauses only for a 94 David Thompson night with Harmon and Henry at Rocky Mountain Pass and curses his stars at more delay caused by the Piegan raiders, who are keeping his men of the Big Bend at East Kootenay cooped up in fear of their lives, but he reaches Edmonton in three months, and is present at the annual meeting of the partners at Fort William in July, 1812. This is a fateful year. War is waged between the United States and Canada. True soldiers of fortune as the Nor'Westers ever were, they decided to take advantage of that war and capture Astoria. John George McTavish and Alexander Henry of Howse's Pass, with Larocque of the Missouri, are to lead fifty voyageurs overland and down the Columbia to Astoria, there to camp outside the palisades and parley with Duncan McDougall. Old Donald Mc- Tavish, as gay an old reprobate as ever graced the fur trade, is to sail with McDonald of Garth, the Highlander of the Crooked Arm, from London on the Northwest ship, the Isaac Todd, under convoy of the man-of-war, Raccoon, to capture Astoria. Thompson has fulfilled his mission. Though he was late in reaching the mouth of the Columbia, he has played his fur trade tactics so skillfully that Astoria will fall to his Company's hands. The story of John George McTavish's voyage from Fort William, Lake Superior to Astoria, or of old Donald 95 The Conquest of the Great Northwest McTavish's drunken revels round the world in the Isaac Todd, would fill a volume. John George Mc- Tavish and Larocque reached Astoria first, sweeping gaily down the rain-swollen flood of the Columbia on April nth in two birch canoes, British flags flying at the prow, voyageurs singing, Indians agape on the shore in sheer amaze at these dare-devil fellows, who flitted back and forward thinking no more of crossing the continent than crossing a river. Again McDougall welcomed his rivals in trade, his friends of yore, with open arms. Had he trained his cannon on them, they had hardly camped so smugly under his fort walls, nor stalked so surely in and out of his fort, spreading alarm of the war, threatening what the coming ships would do, offering service and partnership to any who would desert Astor's company for the Northwest. McDougall was tired of his service with the Astor company. The Tonquin had been lost. No word yet of the second ship that was to come. The fort was de- moralized, partly with fear, partly with vice. There had been no strong hand to hold the riotous voy- ageurs in leash, and loose masters mean loose men. Now with news of a coming war vessel, all the pot valor of the drunken garrison evaporated in cowardly desire to capitulate and avoid bloodshed. The voy- ageurs were deserting to McTavish. On October 96 Da-rid Thompson 16, 1813, Duncan McDougall sold out Astor's fort furs and provisions worth $100,000 for $40,000. Four weeks later, on November i5th, came Alex- ander Henry and David Thompson to convey the furs overland to Fort William. While the men are packing the furs, at noon, November 3oth, "being about half-tide, a large ship appeared, standing in over the bar with all sails spread." Is it friend or enemy; the British man-of-war, Raccoon, or Astor's delayed ship? Duncan McDougall goes quakingly out in a small boat to reconnoiter, to pacify the Brit- ish if it is a man-of-war, to welcome the captain if it is Astor's ship. John George McTavish and Alexander Henry and David Thompson scuttle up- stream to hide ninety-two packs of furs and all am- munition and provisions and canoes, but game in his blood like a fighting cock, Henry can't resist stealing back at night to see what is going on. There is sing- ing on the water. A canoe is rocking outrageously. In it is a tipsy man, who shouts the welcome news that the ship was the man-of-war, Raccoon, under Captain Black, and that all the gentlemen are glor- iously drunk. Thompson and Henry and John George McTavish come downstream to witness, on December i3th, the ceremony of a bottle of wine cracked on the flagstaff, guns roaring from fort and ship, the American flag run down, the British 97 The Conquest of the Great Northwest run up, and "Astoria" re-named Fort George. From all one can infer from the old journals, the most of the gentlemen remained "intoxicated" during the stay of The Raccoon. "Famous fellows for grog," records Henry. The Raccoon puts to sea New Year's Day of 1814. David Thompson has long since left for his posts on the Kootenay, and in April, John George McTavish conducts a brigade made up of Astor's men enlisted as Nor'Westers in ten canoes, seventy-six men in all, with the furs for Fort William. Henry stays on with McDougall awaiting the coming of Donald McTavish on the Isaac Todd. The long delayed, storm-battered Northwest ship comes tottering in on April 23rd with Governor Donald McTavish drunk as a lord, accompanied by a barmaid, Jane Barnes, to whose charms the dissi- pated old man had fallen victim at Portsmouth. Old punk takes fire easiest. What with rum and Jane Barnes to ply it, Astoria was not a pretty place for the next few weeks. Masters and men "gave themselves up to feasting and drinking all the day." Sometimes in his cups, McDougall would forget that he had become a Nor'Wester and rising in his place at the governor's table would hurrah for the Americans till the rafters were ringing. Then Henry would overset table and chairs hiccoughing a chal- lenge to a duel, and the maudlin old governor would 98 David Thompson troll off a stave that would turn fighting to singing till daylight came in at the windows revealing the gentlemen asleep on the floor, the servants sodden drunk on the sands outside. In May, the weather clears and my pleasure-loving gentlemen setting such an edifying example to the benighted heathen around Astoria, must enjoy a sail across the flooded Colum- bia. Five voyageurs rig a small boat. In it step the partners, Donald McTavish and Alexander Henry. A stiff breeze is blowing, and a heavy sea running; but they must have a sail up. The boat tilts to the gun'els. A heavy wave struck her and washed over. She sank at once, carrying all hands down but one voyageur, who was rescued by the Chinooks. Thus perished Donald McTavish ^nd Alexander Henry. Meanwhile, what had Simon Fraser accomplished in the North, while Thompson was exploring the South? Like Thompson, he, too, was ordered to the mountains in 1805. James McDougall, a North- west clerk, had already followed MacKenzie's foot- steps up Peace River across the mountains to the Forks, when Simon Fraser came on the scene in the fall of 1805. If Nor' Westers are to pass this way to the Western hunting ground, first of all there must be a fort at the entrance to the Pass. Fraser knocks 99 The Conquest of the Great Northwest up a cluster of cabins, leaves two clerks and twelve voyageurs in charge and ascends the south fork the Parsnip. This was the stream where Mac- Kenzie had such tremendous difficulties. Fraser avoids these rapids by going up a western branch of the Parsnip to a little lake narrow and seventeen miles long, set like an emerald among the mountains. There on a point of land beside a purling brook, he built the first fur post west of the Rockies, which he named after the partner, Archibald Norman Mc- Leod. To this day it stands exactly where and as Fraser built it. James McDougall and La Malice, a blackguard half-breed, are left at the fort. Fraser spent three months at the post in the pass, but Mc- Dougall goes westward from Fort McLeod to a magnificent lake surrounded by forests and moun- tains. This lake is the center of the Carrier Indians' country. To an old Shaman or Medicine Man, Mc- Dougall presents a piece of red cloth, telling him white men will come to trade in the spring. Blazing initials on the trees, he takes possession of the coun- try for the Northwest Company. Fraser, at Peace River Pass, has sent the furs East and been joined by the wintering partner, Archibald McGillivray, who has come to take charge, while Fraser explores. Now it must be kept in mind that Fraser, like MacKenzie, thought the great river flowing south 100 David TJwmpson was the Columbia, and setting out from the Pass in May with John Stuart as second in command, Fraser follows the exact trail of MacKenzie up the Parsnip, down Bad River to the great unknown river. Sweep- ing south, they come to a large stream coming in from the west the Nechaco. Will that lead to the Pacific? Fraser ascends it June nth, only to find that like an endless maze the Nechaco has another branch, the Stuart. They proceed leisurely, hunting along shore, blazing a trail through the forests as the canoes advance, encountering two grizzly bears that pursue the Indian hunter so furiously they flounder over the hunter's wife, who has fallen to the ground flat on her face with fright, tear the man badly and are only driven off by dogs. It is the end of July before the canoes emerge from the second branch on a windy lake, surrounded by mountains with forests to the water's edge the lake McDougall had found the preceding autumn. Carrier Indians tell the legends yet of their tribe's amazement that July day to see two huge things float out on the water and come galloping galloping (such is the appear- ance of rows of paddlers at a distance) across the waves of their lake; but the old Medicine Man dashes out in a small canoe flourishing his red cloth and welcomes the white men ashore. To impress the Carrier Indians, the white men fire a volley that sets 101 The Conquest of the Great Northwest echoes rocketing among the peaks; and the Indians fall prostrate with terror. Fraser allays fear with presents, and bartering begins on the spot, for the Carriers are clothed in fine beaver. The white men then clear the ground for a fort. The lake, which McDougall had found the preceding fall and to which Fraser had now ascended, was named Stuart after Fraser's second officer. It was fifty miles long, dotted with islands, broken by beautiful recesses into the forests and mountains. East were the snowy summits of the Rockies, west and north and south, the mighty hills rolling back in endless tiers to the clouds. Fraser names the region New Caledonia and the fort, St. James. For some reason, salmon were tardy coming to Lake Stuart this year. Fraser's provisions were exhausted and his men were now dependent on wild fruit and chance game. Forty-five miles to the south was another lake also drained by the Nechaco to the great unknown river. To avoid having so many hungry men in one camp, Fraser at the end of Au- gust sent Stuart and two men southward to this new lake, which Stuart named in honor of Fraser. Blais remains for the winter with voyageurs at Stuart Lake. Fraser goes on downstream, and where the Stuart joins the Nechaco meets John Stuart and hears so favorably of the new lake that the two pole 102 David Thompson back and build on Fraser Lake the third fort west of the Rockies. The winter of 1806-7 was passed collecting furs at these posts; and the eastern brigade sent to Peace River with the furs carried out a request from Fraser to the partners of Fort William for more men and merchandise for farther exploration. Back with the autumn brigade in answer to his request came Jules Maurice Quesnel and Hugh Faries with orders for Fraser to push down the unknown river to the Pacific at all hazards. Where the Nechaco joined the great river, Fraser in the fall of 1807 built a fourth post St. George. Somewhere from the vicinity of this post, at five in the morning toward the end of May, 1808, Fraser launched four canoes downstream for tide water, firmly believing he was on the Columbia. With him went Stuart and Quesnel and nineteen voyageurs. Eighteen miles down came Fort George canon with a roar of rapids that swirled one canoe against a precipice almost wrecking it; then smooth going till night camp, when all slept with firearms at hand. Next day, the real perils of the voyage began. Canoes \\cre on the water before the mists had rolled up the hills and the river had presently contracted to a violent whirlpool between rock walls Cottonwood Canon. Portaging baggage overland, Fraser ran 103 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the lightened canoes safely down. The river passed on the east was later to be known as Quesnel, famous for its gold fields. At Soda Creek, those natives, who had opposed MacKenzie, suddenly appeared along the banks on horseback, and called to Fraser " that the river below was but a succession of falls and cascades," which no boats could pass. An old chief and a slave joined Fraser as guides and soon enough, the worst predictions were verified. "June ist, we found the channel contracted to fifty yards, an im- mense body of water passing through the narrow space forming gulfs and cascades and making a tre- mendous noise. It was impossible to carry the canoes across land, owing to the steepness of the hills, and it was resolved to venture them," writes Fraser. "Leaving Mr. Stuart and two men at the lower end of the rapid to watch the natives, I returned to camp and ordered the five best men into a canoe lightly loaded, and in a moment it was under way. Passing the first cascade, she lost her course and was drawn into the eddy where she was whirled about, the men having no power over her. In this manner, she flew from one danger to another till the last cas- cade but one, where in spite of every effort the whirl- pools forced her against a low rock. The men de- barked, saving their lives; but to continue would be 104 David Thompson certain destruction. Their situation rendered our approach perilous. The bank was high and steep. We had to plunge our daggers into the bank to keep from sliding into the river. We cut steps in the declivity, fastened a line to the front of the canoe, which the men hauled up, others supporting it, our lives hanging on a thread, as one false step would have hurled us all to eternity. We cleared the bank before dark." The amazed Indians made no motion to molest these mad white men, but tried to explain by signs to Fraser that another great river (the Columbia) led by smooth water to the sea. But Fraser thought he was on the Columbia; and "going to the sea by an indirect way was not the object of the under- taking; I therefore continued our route." Nevertheless, the Indians were right. The river grew worse and worse. Fraser bought four horses from them and went on, half the men along the shore, half in the canoes. The task of bringing the baggage overland "was as difficult as going by water. We were obliged to pass a declivity, the border of a huge precipice, where the loose gravel slid under our feet. One man with a large pack on his back got so entangled on the rocks he could move neither for- ward nor backward. I crawled out to the edge and saved his life by dropping his load over the precipice 105 The Conquest of the Great Northwest into the river. This carrying place, two miles long, shattered our shoes so that our feet were covered with blisters. A pair of shoes" (moccasins) "does not last a day." The river grew worse and worse. On the gth of June "the river contracts to forty yards, enclosed by two precipices of immense height narrower above than below. The water rolls down in tumultuous waves with great velocity. It was impossible to carry canoes by land, so all hands without hesitation embarked as it were a corps perdu upon the mercy of this awful tide. Once in, the die was cast. Our great difficulty was in keeping the canoes clear of the precipice on one side and the gulfs formed by the waves on the other. Skimming along as fast as light- ning the crews, cool and determined, followed each other in awful silence; and when we arrived at the end, we stood gazing at each other in silent congratu- lation at our escape." Again the Indians waited at the end of the rapids and again they drew maps on Eraser's oilcloth cover- ings for baggage, showing which way the river flowed and that canoes could not pass down. The loth of June, Fraser places his canoes on a shaded scaffolding where the gummed seams will not be melted and hides his baggage in a cache. At five A. M. on the nth, all the crews set out on foot, each 106 David Thompson man carrying a pack of eighty pounds. Fraser is now between Lillooet and Thompson River, or where the passing traveler can to-day see the old Caribou trail from Lytton to Ashcroft clinging to the mountain like basket work stuck on a huge wall. The river becomes calmer, and on the fifteenth Fraser buys a canoe from the Chilcotins, which Stuart and two voyageurs pilot, while the rest of the men walk along the banks. June 2oth, a great river comes in on the east. Knowing that Thompson is somewhere exploring these same mountains to the south, Fraser names the river after his friend of the Kootenay. At the Thompson, all hands once more embark in the canoes. A canoe goes to smash in what is now known as Fraser Canon, but no lives are lost; so above modern Yale it is deemed safer to portage past the worst places. The portage is almost as dangerous as the rapids, for where the rock is sheer wall, the Indians have made rope ladders across chasms "or hung twigs across poles," the ends fast- ened from precipice to precipice, and across these swaying gangways the voyageurs had to carry canoe and parks. That night, June 26th, camp was made at Spuzzum. The river now swerved directly west. Fraser knew where the Columbia turned west was south of 107 the Boundary. There was only one conclusion this was not the Columbia. He had been exploring a new river. It was the wildly magnificent stream now called after Fraser.. The coast Indians were always notoriously hos- tile. The mountain tribes warned Fraser not to go on. Mount Baker loomed south an opal fire, and on the river near what is now New Westminster Fraser saw the ripple of the tide. Where the river divided into two channels, armed Indians pursued in their canoes "singing war songs, beating time with paddles, howling like so many wolves," flour- ishing spears. A few hours would have carried Fraser to the sea ; but these warriors barred the way. He had fulfilled his order. He had followed the unknown river to tide water. On the 3rd of July, Fraser turned back up the river. The coast Indians pursued, pillaging packs when the white men camped, threatening violence when the voyageurs embarked. Two warriors feigned friendship and asked passage in Fraser' s canoe. Thinking their presence might afford protection, Fraser took them on board. No sooner was the canoe afloat pursued by a flotilla of Indian warriors than the two struck up a war song. One was caught in the act of stealing a voyageur's dagger. Fraser hurriedly put the traitor ashore; but that night, July 6th, hostile Indians were swarming 1 08 David Thompson like hornets round the camp and every man kept guard with back to tree and musket in hand. The voyageurs became panicky. They were for throw- ing their provisions to the winds and scattering in the forest. Fraser listened to the mutiny without word of reproach, showed the men how desertion would be certain death and how they might escape by keeping together. Then he shook hands all round, and each voyageur took oath " to perish sooner than forsake the crew." Fear put speed into the paddles. They decamped from that place "singing" to keep the men's spirits up, and the hostiles were left far behind. Fraser had been forty days going downstream. He was only thirty-three going up to Fort George. In thirty years " the Pedlars" as the English called the Nor' Westers had explored from Lake Superior to the Pacific, from the Missouri to the Arctic. Notes to Chapters XXIII, XXIV, XXV. Details of the ad- vance up the Saskatchewan are to be found in Alexander Henry's Journals, in Harmon's Journals, and in those fur trade journals <>f the Masson Collection. Of unpublished data I find the most about the Saskatchewan and Athabasca in Colin Robertson's letters, of which only two copies exist the original in H. B. C. Archives, a transcript which I made from them. About Chippewyan for which there are as many spellings as there are writers Pond built the first fort thirty miles south of the lake on what he called Elk River; Roderick MacKenzie built the next fort on the south side of the lake. In the iSoo's this was abandoned for a post on the north side. 109 The Conquest of the Great Northwest About Slave Lake it is named after the Slave Indians, who were called "Slaves, " not because they were slaves, but because they had been driven from their territory of the South. MacKenzie's Voyage, I have told fully in "Pathfinders of the West." The authority for that volume is to be found in Mac- Kenzie's Journals, and in MacKenzie's letter to his cousin, Roderick. Norman McLeod, the clerk under MacKenzie, be- came the aggressive partner of a later day. The dates of Thompson's service with the H. B. C. are vari- ously given. I do not find him in H. B. C. books after 1789, and rather suspect that he wintered with Alexander MacKenzie as well as Rory before the former went to the Pacific ; but I left this unsaid. It is well to note that Howse did as great service as an explorer as Thompson, but Thompson's services became known to the world. Howse's work passed unnoticed, owing to the policy of secrecy followed by the H. B. C. Father Morice's "History of Northern B. C. ' traces MacKenzie's course very clearly. In H. B. C. Archives of 1804 is Duncan McGillivray's letter to the English company proposing division of the hunting field, the H. B. C. to keep the bay, the Nor' Westers to have inland which was very much like the boy's division of the apple when he offered the other boy the core. November 16, 1808, Minutes record 800 of stock trans- ferred to Sir Alexander MacKenzie, 742-10 to Earl of Sel- kirk. This marks as far as I could find the beginning of the end. Selkirk's visit to Canada was in 1803. His observations will be found in his book on "Sketch of the British Fur Trade," 1815, pp. 38-52. The Minutes of H. B. C., 1804, order suit against John Richards, "late commander for the Co'y," for entering H. B. in the month of August in the Eddy stone, and erecting a fort at "Charlton Island and leaving men with goods for trade." Details of clashes between 1800 and 1810 will be found in the court records and Canadian Archives. I have given the explorations of Thompson in great detail because it has never before been done, and it seems to me is very essential to the exploration period of the West. Thomp- son's MS. is in the Parl. Building, Toronto, Ontario. The Ontario Boundaries Report gives brief account of his Eastern explorations. Henry's Journal, Harmon's Journal, Ross, Cox, Franchere of the Astor expedition give in their journals his movements in the West. Fraser's voyage is to be found in his own MS. Masson Collection. It ought not to be necessary to say here that I know both regions traversed by Thompson well, very well, from personal travel. Nor ought it to be neces- IIO David Thompson sary to forewarn that Thompson's Journals do not use the same names as apply to modern regions. To avoid confusion, I have used in every case possible, only the modern names. The men who went with Thompson to the Mandane country were Rene Jussuame, Boisseau, McCracken, Hoole, Gilbert, Mimie, Perrault, Vaudriel. Who the H. B. C. men were who had been on the Missouri before Thompson, I could not find out. Who- ever they were, they preceded Lewis and Clarke on the Missouri by ten years. That is worth remembering, when the H. B. C. is accused of being torpid. Thompson never received any recog- nition whatever for explorations that far exceeded Alexander Mackenzie's. He died unknown in Longeuil, opposite Montreal, in 1857. The H. B. C. Minutes of 1805 record that "Mad McKay" (Donald) cannot procure a man in the Orkneys. They also record that the copper brought by Hearne from the North, was given to the British Museum. I regret space forbids quoting the Minutes on the Louisiana Boundary. 1808, Peter Fidler is paid 25 bonus, which he surely had won. Morice says the Indians of Stuart Lake are called "Carriers" from their habit of burning the dead and carrying the ashes. It may be explained that Mt. Thompson of the Howse Pass region was not named after the explorer, but after a Mr. Thomp- son of Chicago, who with Mr. Wilcox and Professor Fay and Professor Parker of the U. S. and Mr.-Stutfield and Professor Collie and Rev. James Outram, London, explored all this region from 1900 to 1904. I was in the mountains at the time this was done and attempted to go up Bow River, but in those days there was no trail. We were late going up the river and were stopped by the early autumn rains, just beyond Mt. Hector. On a previous occasion, when I was in the mountains, I hap- pened to be delayed at Kootenay Lake for two days. Mr. Mara, who was then president of the Navigation Co., offered me the opportunity to go down on one of his steamers to this very region of Idaho, past the reclamation workers attempting the im- possible task of draining the floods of Kootenay Lake. In Thompson's trip from Canoe River, in 181 1, to Astoria are some discrepancies I cannot explain, and I beg to state them; other- wist- I shall be charged with them. Thompson says hi- lift Canoe River in January. That is a very early date to navigate a mountain river, even though there is no ice. Snow swrlls tin- streams to a torrent. Pass that: His journal shows that he did not reach Astoria till July nearly seven months on a age that was usually accomplished in forty or at most sixty III The Conquest of the Great Northwest days. He may, of course, have been hunting and caching furs on the way, or he may have been exploring east and west as he went on. The reliability of Thompson's Journal is beyond cavil. I merely draw attention to the time taken on this voy- age. In the text I "dodge" the difficulty by saying Thompson set out "toward spring." For his exploration, Fraser was offered knighthood, but declined the honor on the plea that it would entail expense that he could not afford. 112 CHAPTER XXVI 1810-1813 THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS LORD SELKIRK BUYS CONTROL OF THE H. B. C. SIMON M'- GILLIVRAY AND MACKENZIE PLOT TO DEFEAT HIM ROBERTSON SAYS "FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE" AND SELKIRK CHOSES A M J DONELL AGAINST A M'DONELL THE COLONISTS COME TO RED RIVER RIOT AND PLOT AND MUTINY. NOT purely as a fur trader does my lord viscount, Thomas Douglas of Selkirk, begin buying shares in the Company of Honorable Adventurers to Hudson's Bay. Not as a speculator does he lock hands with Sir Alexander MacKenzie, the Nor'West explorer, to buy Hudson's Bay stock, which has fallen from 250 to 50 a share. To every age its dreamer! Radisson had dreamed of becoming a voyageur to far countries; and his dream was realized in finding the Great North- west. Iberville's ambition was to be conqueror, and he drenched the New World with the blood that was the price of this ambition ; and now comes on the scene the third great actor of Northwest drama, a "3 The Conquest of the Great Northwest figure round whom swings the new era, a dreamer of dreams, too, but who cares not a farthing for dis- covery or conquest, whose dream marvel of marvels is neither gain nor glory, but the phantom thing men call Good! Born in 1771, Selkirk came to his title in 1779, and in 1807 married the daughter of James Colville, one of the heaviest shareholders in the Hudson's Bay Company. All that life could give the young nobleman possessed, wealth, position, love, power. \ But he possessed something rarer than these a realizing sense that in proportion as he was possessed of much, so much was he debtor to humanity. During his youth great poverty existed in Scot- land. Changes in farming methods had driven thousands of humble tenants from the means of a livelihood. Alexander MacKenzie's voyages had keenly interested Selkirk. Here, in Scotland, were multitudes of people destitute for lack of land. There, in the vast regions MacKenzie described, was an empire the size of Europe idle for lack of people. Young Selkirk's imagination took fire. Here was avenue for that passion to help others, which was the mainspring of his life. He would lead these desti- tute multitudes of Scotland Earth's Dispossessed to this Promised Land of MacKenzie's voyages. 114 The Coming of tlie Colon i*(* The one fact that Selkirk failed to take into con- sideration was how the fur traders, how the lust of gain, would regard this aim of his. He address a memorial to the British Government on the sub- ject, which the British Government ignores with a stolid ignorance characteristic of all its dealings in colonial affairs. "It appears," says Selkirk, "that the greatest impediment to a colony would be the Hudson's Bay Company monopoly." Meanwhile he sends eight hundred colonists to* Eastern Canada some to Prince Edward Island, * some to Baldoon in Ontario; but neither of these N regions satisfies him as does that unseen Eldorado which MacKenzie described. Then he comes to Montreal, himself, where he is the guest of all the ostentatious hospitality that the pompous Nor'- Westers can lavish upon him. At every turn, at the Beaver Club banquets, in the magnificent private houses of the Nor'Westers, Selkirk learns for the first time that there is as great wealth in the fur trade as in Spanish mine. Then, he meets Colin Robert- son, the young Nor'West clerk, who was dismissed by McDonald of Garth out on the Saskatchewan; and Colin Robertson tells even more marvelous tales than MacKenzie, of a land where there are no forests to be cleared away; where the turning of a plowshare will yield a crop; where cattle and horses The Conquest of the Great Northwest can forage as they run; where, Robertson adds enthusiastically, "there will some day be a great empire." "What part of the great Northwest does Mr. Robertson think best fitted for a colony?" Selkirk asks. "At the forks of the Red and the Assiniboine," the modern Manitoba, Robertson promptly answers. Selkirk's imagination leaps forward. Difficulties? Ah, yes, lots of them! The Hudson's Bay Company holds monopoly over all that region. And how are settlers to be sent so far inland? And to whom will they sell their produce two thousand miles from port or town? But where would humanity be if imagi- nation sat down with folded hands before the first blank wall? Selkirk takes no heed of impossibles. He invites Colin Robertson to come back with him to meet the Hudson's Bay Company directors, and he listens to Sir Alexander MacKenzie's big scheme to monopolize all the fur trade by buying up Hud- son's Bay stock, and he makes mental note of the fact that if stock can be bought up for a monopoly, it can also be bought up for a colony. At the table of the Beaver Club dinner sit Sir Alexander MacKenzie and Simon MacGillivray. "He asks too many questions," says MacGillivray, nodding toward Selkirk's place. 116 The Coming of the Colonists "But if we spent 20,000, the North-West Com- pany could buy up a controlling share of H. B. C.," laconically answers Sir Alexander. "Tush," says the Highlander MacGillivray, re- splendent in the plaids of his clan. "Why should we spend money for that? We can control the field without buying stock. Only 2,000 of furs did they sell last year; and only two dividends in ten years!" "If you don't buy control of H. B. C.," says Mac- Kenzie, "take my advice! beware of that lord!" "And take my advice don't buy!" repeats the Highlander. Selkirk goes back to Scotland. By 1810, he con- trols 40,000 out of the 105,000 capital of the Hud- son's Bay Company. Another 20,000 is owned by minors, with no vote. Practically, Selkirk and his relatives, the Colvilles, own the Company. Sir Alexander's anger knows no bounds. It is common gossip on what we would to-day call "Change" that Selkirk has bought control, not for the sake of the fur trade, but for a colony. Sir Alexander quarrels violently with my Lord Selkirk, whom he regards as an enthusiast gone mad. MacKenzie turns over to MacGillivray, what Hudson's Bay stock he owns and again urges the Nor'Westers to buy on the open market against Selkirk. Not so does the canny Simon MacGillivray lose 117 The Conquest of the Great Northwest his head! To the Hudson's Bay Company he writes proposing a division of territory. If the Hudson's Bay will keep entirely to the bay and the rivers run- ning into the bay, the Nor'Westers will keep ex- clusively to the inland country and the Athabasca, which is pretty much like playing Hamlet with Ham- let left out, for the best furs are from the inland country and the Athabasca. Among his own part- ners, MacGillivray throws off all masks. "This colony of his 'will cause much expense to us" he writes from London on April 9, 1812, to the winter- ing partners, "before Selkirk is driven to abandon the project; yet he must be driven to abandon it, for his success would strike at the very existence of our trade." While the lords of finance are fighting for its stock, the old Company is floundering through a slough of distraction not far from bankruptcy. The Bank of England advances 50,000 credit, but the Company can barely pay interest on the advance. . Two hun- dred and fifty servants came home in 1810, and not a recruit can be hired in the Orkneys, so terrible are the tales now current of brutality in the fur coun- try. Corrigal and Russell and McNab came home from Albany with news of the McDonell clan's murderous assaults and of Mowat's forcible abduc- tion to Montreal. All these are voted a bounty of 118 The Coming of the Colonists 50 each from the Compnay. Joseph Howse sends home word of his wild wanderings in the Rockies on the trail of David Thompson, and the Company gives him a present of 150 "as encouragement" to hold the regions west of the Rockies. Governor Auld reports that the Canadians have stopped an trade west of Churchill. Governor Cook reports the same of York. Governor Thomas reports worse than loss from Albany his men are daily murdered. They go into the woods and never return. On Selkirk's advice, the Company calls for Colin Robertson, the dismissed Northwest clerk. For three years Robertson remains in London and Liver- pool, advisor to the Company. "If you cannot hire Orkneymen, get Frenchmen from Quebec as the Nor' Westers do," he advises. "Fight fire with fire! Your Orkneymen are too shy, shy of breaking the l;i\v in a lawless land, shy of getting their own heads broken! Hire French bullies! I can get you three hundred of them!" The old Company sec-saws is afraid of such advice, is still more afraid not to take it. They vote to reject "Mr. Robertson's proposals" in January of 1 8 10, and in December of the same year vote a complete turn-about "to accept Mr. Robertson's suggestions," authorizing Maitland, Garden fr 9 Auddjo, a legal firm of Montreal, to spend 1,000 a 119 The Conquest of the Great Northwest year and as high as 20,000 if necessary, to equip expeditions for the North. William Bachelor Colt- man is appointed to look after the Company's clients in Quebec city, and the Hudson's Bay changes its entire system of trade. Barter is to be abolished. Accounts are to be kept. Each year's outfit is to be charged against the factor, and that factor is to have his own standard of money prices. One-half of all net profits goes to the servants one-sixth to the chief factor, one-sixth to the traveling traders, one-sixth to the general laborers. General superintendents are to have salaries of ^400 a year; factors, 150; traders, ^100; clerks, 50; and servants are to have in addition to their wages thirty acres of land, ten extra acres for every two years they serve. It was as if the Governing Committee of London were the heart of a dying body and these proposals the spasmodic efforts to galvanize the outer ex- tremities of the system into life. At this stage Lord Selkirk came into action with a scheme that not only galvanized the languid Company into life, but para- lyzed the rival Nor'Westers with its boldness. After buying control in the Company, Selkirk had laid the charter before the highest legal critics of England. Was it valid? Did the Company possess exclusive rights to trade, exclusive rights to property, power to levy war? That was what the charter set 1 20 The Coming of the Colonists forth. Did .the Company possess the rights set forth by the charter? Yes or no did they?" The highest legal authorities answered unequivo- cally Yes: the Company possessed the rights. It was perfectly natural that legal minds trained in a country, where feudalism is revered next to God, should pronounce the chartered rights of the Hudson's Bay Company valid. One fact was ignored the rights given by the charter applied only to regions not possessed by any other Christian subject. Before the Hudson's Bay Company had ascended the Saskatchewan, French traders had gone west as far as the Rockies, south as far as the Missouri, and when French power fell, the Nor'Westers as successors to the French had pushed across the Rockies to the Pacific, north as far as the Arctic, south as far as the Snake. It was perfectly natural that the Nor'Westers should regard the rights of first possession as stronger than any English charter. Which was right, Nor' Wester, or Hudson's Bay? Little gain to answer that burning question at this late day! From their own view, each was right; and to-day looking back, every person's verdict will be given just and in exact proportion as feudalism or democracy is regarded as the highest tribunal. All unconscious of the part he was acting in des- 121 The Conquest of the Great Northwest tiny, thinking only of the fearful needs of Earth's Dispossessed, dreaming only of his beloved colony, Lord Selkirk was pushing feudalism to its supreme test in the New World. Of the nobility, Selkirk was a part of feudalism. He believed the powers conferred by the charter were right in the highest sense of the word, valid in the eyes of the law; and no premonition warned that he was to fall a noble sacrifice to his own beliefs. Where would the world's progress be if the onward movements of the race could be stopped by a victim more or less? Selkirk saw only People Dispossessed in Scotland, Lands Unpeopled in America! The difficulties that lay between, that were to baffle and beat and send him heartbroken to an early grave Selkirk did not see. The rights of the Company had been pronounced valid. On February 6, 1811, Lord Selkirk laid his scheme before the Governing Committee. The plan was of' such a revolutionary nature, the Com- mittee begs to lay the matter before a General Court of all shareholders. After various adjourned meet- ings the General Court meets on May 30, 1811. A pin fall could have been heard in the Board Room as the shareholders mustered. Governor William Mainwaring is in the chair. My Lord Selkirk is 122 The Coming of the Colonists present. So are all his friends. So are six Nor'- Westers black with anger, among them Sir Alex- ander MacKenzie, and Edward Ellice, son of the Montreal merchant. Their anger grows deeper when they learn that two of the six Nor'Westers * cannot vote because the ink is not yet dry with which , they purchased their Hudson's Bay stock ; for share- \ holders must have held stock six months before they ' may vote. In brief, Lord Selkirk's scheme is that the Com- \ pany grant him a region for colonizing on Red River, in area now known to have been larger than the t British Isles, and to have extended south of modern ( Manitoba to include half Minnesota. t In return, Lord Selkirk binds himself to supply the Hudson's Bay Company with two hundred servants a year for ten years whether over and above that colony or out of that colony is not stated. Their wages are to be paid by the Company. Selkirk guarantees that the colony shall not interfere with the Hudson's Bay fur trade. Other details are given how the colonists are to reach their country, how much they are to be charged for passage, how much for duty. The main point is my Lord Selkirk owning 40,000 out of 105,000 capital and controlling another 20,000 through his friends asks for an enormous grant of land larger than the modern province of The Conquest of the Great Northwest Manitoba the very region that Colin Robertson had described to him as a seat of empire the stamp- ing ground of the great fur traders. Promptly, the Nor'Westers present rise and lay on the table a protest against the grant. The pro- test sets forth that Lord Selkirk is giving no ade- quate returns fojr such an enormous gift which was very true and might have been added of the entire territory granted the Hudson's Bay Company by Charles II. If it was to the interests of the Hud- son's Bay Company to sell such valuable territory, it should have been done by public sale. Then there are no penalties attached to compel Selkirk to form a settlement. Also, the grant gives to the Earl of Selkirk without any adequate return "an immensely valuable landed estate." And, "in event of settlement, colonization is at all times unfavor- able to the fur trade." Other reasons the memori- alists give, but the main one is the reason they do not give that if Selkirk owns the central region of the fur country, he may exclude the Nor'Westers. The protest is tabled and ignored. Sir Alexander MacKenzie is so angry he cannot speak. This does not mean the grand monopoly of the fur trade which he had planned. It means the smashing of the fur trade forever. Ellice, son of the Montreal poten- tate, sees the wealth of that city crumbling to ruins 124 The Coming of the CO/OH /*/* for the sake of a blind enthusiast's philanthropic scheme. Some one asks what the Hudson's Bay Company is to receive for their gift in perpetuity to the Earl. Two hundred servants a year for ten years! But interjects a Nor'Wester Selkirk doesn't pay those servants. That comes out of the Company. To that, the Company, being Selkirk himself, has no answer. What will Selkirk, himself, make out of this grant? Then Alexander MacKenzie tells of agents going the rounds of Scotland to gather subscribers at 100 a piece to a joint stock land company of 200 shares. This land company is to send people out to Red River, either as servants to the Hudson's Bay Com- pany, which is to pay them 20 a year in addition to a free grant of one hundred acres, or as bona fide settlers who purchase the land outright at a few pence an acre. The servants will be sent out on free passage. The settlers must pay 10 ship money. It needed no prophet to foretell fortune to the share- holders of the land company by the time settlers enough had come out to increase the value of the grant. This and more, the six Nor'Westers argue at the General Court of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany in the hot debate over Selkirk's scheme. To the Nor'Westers, Selkirk, the dreamer, with his 125 head in the clouds and his vision set on help to the needy and his feet treading roughshod over the t privileges of fur traders to the Nor' Westers this .Selkirk is nothing but a land speculator, a stock 'jobber, gambling for winnings. But the chairman, Governor Mainwaring, calls the debaters to order. The Selkirk scheme is put to the vote. To a man the Hudson's Bay Company shareholders declare for it. To a man there vote against it all those Nor 'Westers who have bought Hudson's Bay stock, except the two whose purchase was made but a week before: 29,937 of stock for Selkirk, 14,823 against him. By a scratch of the pen he has received an empire larger than the British Isles. Selkirk believed that he was lord of , this soil as truly as he was proprietor of his Scottish estates, where men were arrested as poachers when ! they hunted. "The North-West Company must be compelled to quit my lands" he wrote on March 31, 1816, "espe- cially my post at the forks. As it will be necessary to use force, I am anxious this should be done under legal warrant" " You must give them (the Northwest Company) solemn warning" he writes his agent, "that the land belongs to the Hudson's Bay Company. After this warning, they should not be allowed to cut any 126 The Coming of the Colonial* limber either for building or juel. What they have cut should be openly and forcibly seized and their buildings destroyed. They should be treated as poachers. We are so jully advised of the unimpeach- able validity of these rights of property, there can be no scruple in enforcing them when you have the physical means." It was the tragic mistake of a magnificent life that Selkirk attempted to graft the feudalism of an old order on the growing democracy of a New World. That his conduct was inspired by the loftiest motives only renders the mistake doubly tragic. Odd trick of destiny! The man who sought to build up a feudal system in the Northwest, was the man who forever destroyed the foundations of feudalism in America. Let us follow his colonists. Long before the vote had granted Selkirk an empire, Scotland was being scoured for settlers and servants by Colin Robertson. The new colony must have a forceful, aggressive leader on the field. For Governor, Selkirk chose a forest ranger of the Ottawa, who had been an officer in the Revolutionary War of America Captain M ik-s MacDonell of the riotous clan, that had waged such murderous warfare for the Nor'Westers in Albany Department. This was fighting fire with fire, with a vengeance a MacDonell against a MacDonell. 127 The Conquest of the Great Northwest It was the end of June, in 1811, before the Hud- son's Bay ships sheered out from the Thames on their annual voyage. Of the three vessels The Prince of Wales, The Edward and Anne, The Eddy- stone destined to convey the colonists to the Great Northwest The Eddystone was the ship which the Nor'Westers had formerly sent to the bay. Furious gales drove the ships into Yarmouth for shelter, and while he waited, Miles MacDonell spent the time buying up field pieces and brass cannon for the colony. "/ have learned" he writes to Selkirk, "that Sir Alexander MacKenzie has pledged himself so opposed to this project that he will try every means in his power to thwart it." He might have added that Simon McGillivray, the Nor'Wester, was busy in London in the same sinister conspiracy. Writes McGillivray to his Montreal partners from London i on June i, 1811, that he and Ellice "will leave no ( means untried to thwart Selkirk's schemes, and being ( stockholders of the Hyson's Bay Company we can ^ annoy him and learn his measures in time to guard \ against them" Soon enough MacDonell learned what form the sinister plot was to take. Colonists enlisted were waiting at Stornoway in the Hebrides. In all were one hundred and twenty-five people, seventy settlers, fifty-nine clerks and laborers, made up of High- 128 The Coming of the Colonists landers, Orkneymen, Irish farmers and some Glasgow men. MacDonell was a Catholic. So were many of the Highlanders; and Father Bourke, the Irish priest, comes as chaplain. The first sign of the Nor'Westers' unseen hand was the circulation of a malicious pamphlet called "The Highlander" among the gathered colonists, describing the country as a Polar region infested with hostile Indians. To counteract the spreading panic, MacDonell ordered all the servants paid in advance. Then, while baggage was being put aboard, the men were allured on sjiore to spend their wages on a night's spree. MacDonell called on the captain of a man-of-war acting as convoy to seize the servants bodily, but five had escaped. Next came the customs officer, a relative of Sir Alexander MacKenzie's, called Reid, a dissipated old man, creating bedlam and endless delay exam- ining the colonists' baggage. MacDonell saw clearly that if he was* to have any colonists left he must put to sea that very night; but out rows another sham officer of the law, a Captain MacKenzie, to bawl out the Emigration Act from his boat alongside "to know if every man was going of his own free will." Exasperated beyond patience, some of the colonists answered by heaving a nine-pound cannon ball into the captain's rowboat. It knocked a hole 129 The Conquest of the Great Northwest through the bottom, and compelled MacKenzie to swim ashore. Back came another rowboat with challenge to a duel for this insult; but the baggage was all on board. By the grace of Heaven, a wind sprang up. At n P. M. on the 25th of July, the three Hudson's Bay ships spread their sails to the wind and left in such haste they forgot their convoy, forgot two passengers on land whom Robertson rowed out like mad and put on board, forgot to fire farewell salutes to the harbor master; in fact, sailed with such speed that one colonist, who had lost his courage and wanted to desert, had to spring over- board and swim ashore. Such was the departure of the first colonists for the Great Northwest. The passage was the longest ever experienced by the Company's ships. Sixty-one days it took for these Pilgrims of the Plains to cross the ocean. Storm succeeded storm. The old fur freighters wallowed in the waves like water-logged tubs, strain- ing to the pounding seas as if the timbers would part, sails flapping to the wind tattered and rotten as the ensigns of pirates. MacDonell was furious that the colonists should have been risked on such old hulks, and recommended the dismissal of all three captains Hanwell, Ramsey and Turner; but these mariners of the North probably knew their business when they lowered sails and lay rolling to the sea. In vain 130 The Coming of the Colonists MacDonell tried to break the monotony of the long voyage, by auctioning the baggage of the deserters, by games and martial drill. One Walker stood for- ward and told him to his face that "they had not come to fight as soldiers for the Hudson's Bay Com- pany: they had come as free settlers"; besides, he spread the report that the country did not belong to the Hudson's Bay anyway; the country had been found by the French and belonged to the Nor'- Westers. MacDonell probably guessed the rest the fellow had been primed. On September the 6th, the ships entered the straits. There was not much ice, but it was high, "like icebergs," MacDonell reported. On Septem- ber 24th, after a calm passage across the bay, the colonists anchored off York and landed on the point between Hayes and Nelson Rivers. Snow was fall- ing. The thermometer registered eight degrees below zero. No preparations had been made to house the people at the fort. It was impossible to proceed inland, and in the ships' cargoes were pro- visions for less than three months. Having spent two months on the sea, the colonists were still a year away from their Promised Land. Nelson and Hayes Rivers it will be remembered flow into Hudson Bay with a long, low point of wooded marsh between. York was on Hayes River The Conquest of the Great Northwest to the south. It was thought better hunting would be found away from the fort on Nelson River to the north. Hither MacDonell sent his colonists on October yth, crossing the frozen marsh himself two days later, when he was overtaken by a blinding blizzard and wandered for three hours. On the north side of the river, just opposite that island, where Ben Gillam and Radisson had played their game of bravado, were camped the colonists in tents of leather and sheeting. The high cliff of the river bank sheltered them from the bitter north wind. Housed under thin canvas with biting frost and a howling storm that tore at the tent flaps like a thing of prey, the puny fire in mid-tent sending out poor warmth against such cold this was a poor home- coming for people dreaming of a Promised Land; but the ships had left for England. There was no turning back. The door that had opened to new opportunity had closed against retreat. Cold or storm, hungry or houseless, type of Pioneers the world over, the colonists must face the future and go on. By the end of October, MacDonell had his people housed in log cabins under shelter of the river cliff. Moss and clay thatched the roofs. Rough hewn timbers floored the cabins and berths like a ship's were placed in tiers around the four walls. Bedding 132 The Coming of the Colonists consisted of buffalo skins and a gray blanket. Indian hunters sold MacDonell meat enough to supply the colonists for the winter; and in spring the people witnessed that wonderful traverse of the caribou- three thousand in a herd moving eastward for the summer. Meat diet and the depression of home- sickness brought the scourge of all winter camps scurvy; but MacDonell plied the homely remedy of spruce beer and lost not a man from the disease. Winter was passed deer hunting to lay up stock of provisions for the inland journey. All would have gone well had it not been for the traitors in camp, with minds poisoned by Northwest Company spies. On Christmas day, MacDonell gave his men a feast and on New Year's day the chief factor of York, Mr. Cook, sent across the usual treat. Irish rowdies celebrated the night by trying to break the heads of the Glasgow clerks. Then the discontent instilled by Nor'West agents began to work. If this country did not belong to the Hudson's Bay, why should these men obey MacDonell? On February 1 2th, one put the matter to the test by flatly refusing to work. MacDonell ordered the fellow confined in a hut. Fourteen of the Glasgow clerks broke into the hut, released the rebel, set fire to the cabin and spent the night in a riotous dance round the blaze. When MacDonell haled the offenders before Mr. 133 Hillier, a justice of the peace, they contemptuously walked out of the extemporized court. The Gov- ernor called on Mr. Auld of Churchill for advice, and learned from him that by a recent parliamentary act known as 43rd Geo. Ill, all legal disputes of the Indian country could be tried only in Canada. "// that is so," writes the distracted MacDonell, seeing at a glance all the train of ills that were to come when Hudson's Bay matters were to be tried in Ca- nadian courts made up of Northwest partners, "then adieu to all redress for us, my lord." But Auld and Cook, the two factors, knew a trick to bring mutineers to time. They cut off all sup- plies. The men might as well have been marooned on a desert island. By the time boats were ready to be launched in June, the rebels were on their knees with contrition. Wisely, MacDonell did not take such unruly spirits along as colonists. He left them at the forts as clerks. Spring came at last, tardy and cold with bluster- ing winds that jammed the ice at the river mouths and flooded the flats with seas of floating floes. Day after day, week after week, all the month of May, until the 2ist of June, the ice float swept past end- lessly on the swollen flood. MacDonell ordered the cabins evacuated and baggage taken to Hayes River round the submerged marsh. At York, four large 134 The Coming of the Colonists boats twenty-eight feet long and flat-bottomed were in readiness to convey the people. While the colonists camped, there came sweeping down the Hayes on June the 29th, in light birch canoes, the spring fur brigade of Saskatchewan, led by. Bird and Howse. All rivers were reported free of ice. Mac- Donell marshaled his colonists to return with the brigade. Father Burke, who was to drum up more colonists at home, the chief factors Auld and Cook, and the Company men watched the launching of the boats the first week of July. Baggage stored, all hands aboard, all craft afloat the head steersman gives the signal by dipping his pole. The priest waves a God-speed. The colonists signal back their farewell farewell to the despair of the long winter, farewell to the lonely bay, farewell to the desolate little fort on the verge of this forsaken world! Come what may, they are forward bound, to the New Life in their Promised Land. If we could all of us see the places along the trail to a Promised Land, few would set out on the quest. The trail that the colonists followed was the path inland that Kelsey had traversed with the Indians a century before, and Hendry gone up in 1754, and Cocking in 1772, up Hayes River to Lake Winnipeg. While the fur brigade made the portages easily with 135 The Conquest of the Great Northwest their light canoes, the colonists were hampered by their heavy boats, which had to be rolled along logs where they could not be tracked up rapids. In- stead of three weeks to go from York to Lake Winnipeg, it took two months. The end of August, 1812, saw their boats heading up Red River for the Forks, now known as Winnipeg. Instead of rocks and endless cataracts and swamp woods, there opened to view the rolling prairie, russet and mellow in the August sunlight with the leather tepee of wandering Cree dotting the river banks, and where the Assini- boine flowed in from the west the palisades of the Nor' Westers' fort. MacDonell did not ascend as high as the rival fort. He landed his colonists at that bend in Red River, two miles north of the Assiniboine, where he built his cabins, afterward named Douglas in honor of Selkirk. Painted In- dians rode across the prairie to gaze at the spectacle of these "land workers" come not to hunt but to till the soil. No hostility was evinced by the Nor'- Westers, for word of the Northwest Company's policy had not yet come from London to the annual meet- ing of winterers at Fort William. The Highlanders ' were delighted to find Scotchmen at Fort Gibraltar who spoke Gaelic like themselves, and the Nor'- Westers willingly sold provisions to help the settlers. In accordance with Selkirk's instructions, Mac- 136 The Coming of the Colonists Donell laid out farm plots of ten acres near the fort, and farm plots of one hundred acres farther down the river at what is now known in memory of the settlers' Scottish home as Kildonan. The farm lots were small so that the colonists could be together in case of danger. The houses of this community were known as the Colony Buildings in distinction from the fort. It was too late to do any farming, so the people spent the winter of 1813 buffalo hunting westward of Pembina. Meanwhile, Selkirk and Robertson had not been idle. The summer that Miles MacDonell had led his colonists to Red River, twenty more families had arrived on the bay. They had been brought by Sel- kirk's Irish agent, Owen Keveny. The same plot- ting and counter-plotting of an enemy with unseen motives marked their passage out as had harassed MacDonell. Barely w r ere the ships at sea when mutineers set the passengers all agog planning to murder officers, seize the ships and cruise the world as pirates; but the colonists betrayed the. treachery to the captain. Armed men were placed at the hatches, and the swivel guns wheeled to sweep the decks from stem to stern. The conspirator that first thrust his head above decks received a swashing blow that cut his arm clean from his shoulder, and the plot dissolved in sheer fright. Keveny now 137 The Conquest of the Great Northwest ruled with iron hand. Offenders were compelled to run the gauntlet between men lined up on each side armed with stout sticks; and the trickery if trickery it were by Nor' West spies to demoralize the colonists ceased for that passage. Father Burke, waiting to return by these ships, welcomed the colonists ashore at York, and before he sailed for Ireland performed the first formal mar- riage ceremony in the Northwest. The Catholic priest married two Scotch Presbyterians an inci- dent typical to all time of that strange New World power, which forever breaks down Old World bar- riers. The colonists were so few this year, that the majority could be housed in the fort. Some eight or ten risked winter travel and set out for Red River, which they reached in October; but the trip inland so late was perilous. Three men had camped to fish with the Company servants on Lake Winnipeg. Fishing failed. Winter closed the lake to travel. The men went forward on foot along the east shore south- ward for Red River. Daily as they tramped, their strength dwindled and the cold increased. A chance rabbit, a prairie chicken, moss boiled in water kept them from starvation, but finally two could journey no farther and lay down on the wind-swept ice to die. The third hurried desperately forward, hoping against hope, doggedly resolved if he must 138 The Coming of the Colonists perish to die hard. Suddenly, a tinkling of dog bells broke the winter stillness and the pack trains of Northwest hunters came galloping over the ice. In a twinkling, the overjoyed colonist had signaled them and told his story, and in less time than it takes to relate, the Nor'Westers were off to the rescue. The three starving men were carried to the North- west fort at Winnipeg River where they were cared for till they regained strength. Then they were given food enough to supply them for the rest of the way to the settlement. Plainly if the Nor'Westers' op- position to Lord Selkirk's colony had been confined to trickery at the ports of sailing, there would be no tragedy to relate; but the next year witnessed an aggressive change of policy on both sides, which had fatal consequences. Notes to Chapter XXVI. The data for this chapter are mainly drawn from H. B. C. papers, minute books and memo- rials. There are also some very important letters in the Canadian Archives, namely on 1897 Report State Papers of Lower Canada letters of Simon MacGillivray ; also in 1886 Report, letters of Miles MacDpnell to Lord Selkirk on the colony. I had made in the Public Records Office of London exact trans- cript of all confidential state papers bearing on this era. These also refer to the hostility of MacKenzie and MacGillivray. Donald Gunn who was one of the colonists of 1813, is, of course, the highest authority on the emigration of that year. Three volumes throw sidelights on the events of this and the suc- ceeding chapter, though it must be observed all are partisan statements; namely, " \\irrtit i:;- of Occurrences on the Indian Countrv, London, 1817," which is nothing more or less than a brief for the \ or 'Westers; "Statement Rtspcctitu Karl of S,l- kirk's >' ttl.ni, -tits,-' London, 1817, which is the H. B. C. side of 139 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the story; and "Amos' Report of Trials," London, 1820; also extremely partisan. The scope of this work does not admit of ampler treatment, but in view of the coming centenary of colonization in the West, it should be interesting to know that the heirs of Lord Selkirk have some three thousand letters bearing on this famous colony and its disputes. I should not need to explain here that the novel, "Lords of the North," was not written as history, but as fiction, to portray the most picturesque period in Canadian life, and the story was told as from a Nor 'Wester, not because the aitthor sided with the Nor' Westers in their fight, but because the Nor' Westers sending their brigades from Montreal to the Pacific afforded the story- teller as a Nor' Wester a broader and more dramatic field than the narrator could have had telling it as a Hudson's Bay parti- san. Let me explain why. The only expedition sent from Montreal west by the H. B. C. at that time was a dismal fiasco in a region where the story of the stolen wife did not lead. On the other hand, the N. W. C. canoes that left Montreal in 1815 led directly to the region traversed by the unfortunate captive. Therefore, I told the story as a Nor' Wester and was surprised to receive furious letters of defense from H. B. C. descendants. Apart from this disguise and one or two intentional disguises in names and locale, I may add that every smallest detail is taken from facts on the life at that time. These disguises I used because I did not feel at liberty to flaunt as fiction names of people whose grandchildren are prominent among us to-day; certainly not to flaunt the full details of the captive woman's sufferings when her son has been one of the most distinguished men in Canada. Robertson's letters unpublished contain the most graphic description of the West as a coming empire that I have ever read. There is no mistaking where Selkirk got his inspiration why he decided to send settlers to Manitoba instead of Ontario. More of Robertson will follow in a subsequent chapter. T4O CHAPTER XXVII 1813-1820 THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS CONTINUED MAC- DONELL ATTEMPTS TO CARRY OUT THE RIGHTS OF FEUDALISM ON RED RIVER NOR'WESTERS RESENT THE COLONY DESTROYED AND DIS- PERSED SELKIRK TO THE RESCUE LAJLMON- IERE'S LONG VOYAGE CLARKE LN ATHABASCA. YEARLY the Hudson's Bay boats now brought their little quota of settlers for Red River. On June 28, 1813, more than ninety em- barked in The Prince of Wales at Stromness. Ser- vants and laborers took passage on The Eddy stone. On the third ship a small brig went missionaries to Labrador, Moravian Brethren. More diverse elements could not have made up a colony. There were young girls coming out alone to a lawless land to make homes for aged parents the next year. Sit- ting disconsolate on all their earthly belongings done up in canvas bags, were an old patriarch and his wife evicted from Scottish home, coming to battle in the wilderness without children's aid. Irish Catholics, staid Scotch Presbyterians, dandified 141 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Glasgow clerks, rough, gruff, bluff, red-cheeked Orkneymen, younger sons of noble families taking service in the wilds as soldiers of fortune, soft speak- ing, shy, demure Moravian sisters and brethren made up the motley throng crowding the decks of the vessels at Stromness. As the capstan chains were clanking their sing- song of "anchor up," there was the sudden confu- sion of a conscription officer rushing to arrest a young emigrant. He had been the lover of a Highland daughter and had deserted following her to Red River. Then sails were spread to a swelling breeze. While the young girl was still gazing disconsolately over the railing toward the vanishing form of her lover, the shores began to recede, the waters to widen. The farewell figures on the wharf huzzahed. Men and women on deck waved their bonnets all but the old couple sitting alone on the canvas sacks. Tears blurred their vision when they saw the hills of their native land fade and sink forever on the horizon of the sea. Two days later, there was a cry of "Sail Ho!" and the little fleet pursued an American privateer towing a British captive. The privateer cuts the tow rope and shows heels to the sea. Darkness falls, and when morning comes neither captive nor captor is in sight. The passage is swift across a remarkably 142 The Coming of the Colonists easy sea good winds, no gales, no plots, no muti- nies; and the ships are in the straits of Hudson's Bay by the end of July; but typhus fever has broken out on The Prince of Wales. Daily the bodies of the dead are lowered over decks to a watery grave. At the straits the boat with the Moravian mission- aries strikes south for Labrador. August i2th, the other ships run up the narrow rock-girt harbor of Churchill, past the stone-walled ruins of the fort destroyed by La Perouse to the new modern fur post. It is not deemed wise to keep the ill and the well together. The former are given quarters under sheeting tents in the ruins of the old stone fort. The rest go on by land and boat south to York. The forests that used to surround Churchill have been burnt back for twenty miles, and when the fever patients recover, they retreat to the woods for the winter; all but the old couple who winter in the stone fort whose ruins are typical of their own lives. Fine weather favors the settlers' journey south, though this wilderness travel 'with ridge stones that cut their feet and swamps to mid-waist, gives them a foretaste of the trail leading to their Promised Land. Fifty miles distant from York, they run short of food and must boil nettle leaves; but hunger spurs speed. Next night they are on the shores of The Conquest of the Great Northwest Nelson River round a huge bonfire kindled to signal York Fort for boats to ferry the Nelson. April, 1814, the colonists are again united. Those who wintered at Churchill sled down to York. On the way over the snow, Angus McKay's wife gives birth to a child. There are not provisions enough for the other colonists to wait with McKay, but they put up his sheeting tent for him, and bank it warmly with buffalo robes, and give him of their scant stores, and leave the lonely Highlander with musket and a roaring fire, on guard against wolves. What were the thoughts of the woman within the tent only the pioneer heart may guess. June ist, all the colonists were welcomed to Red River by Miles MacDonell, who gave to each two Indian ponies, one hundred acres, ammunition and firearms. Of implements to till the soil, there is not one. There was no other course but to join the buffalo hunters of Pembina and lay up a supply of meat for the year. Then began a life of wandering and suffering. Those families that could, remained at the Colony Build- ings while the men hunted. Those who had neither the money nor the credit to buy provisions, followed hunters afield. The snow was late in falling, but the winter had set in bitterly cold. There was neither canoeing nor sleighing. Over the wind-swept plains trudged the colonists, ill-clad against such cold, 144 The Coming of the Colonists camping at nights in the hospitable tepee of wander- ing Indians or befriended with a chance meal by passing hunters. At Pembina log cabins with sod. roofs were knocked up for wintering quarters, and the place was called Fort Daer after one of Selkirk's names. No matter what happened afterward, let it be placed to the everlasting credit of the buffalo hunters; their kindness this winter of 1814-15 saved the settlers from perishing of starvation. Settlers do not make good buffalo runners. The Plain Rangers shared their hunt with the newcomers, loaned them horses, housed men and women, helped to build cabins and provided furs for clothing. They had arrived in June. The preceding Janu- ary of 1814, Miles MacDonell had committed the cardinal error of the colony. He was, of course, only carrying out Selkirk's ideas. What the motive was matters little. The best of motives paves the way to the blackest tragedies. Old World feudalism threw down its challenge to New World democracy. Selkirk had ordered that intruders on his vast domain must be treated as poachers, "resisted with physical force if you have the means." Conscientiously, Selkirk believed that he had the same right to exclude \ hunters from the fenceless prairies as to order ' poachers from his Scottish estates. On January 8, 1814, Miles MacDonell, in the 145 The Conquest of the Great Northwest name of Lord Selkirk, forbade anyone, "the North- west Company or any persons whatsoever," taking , 'provisions, dried meat, food of any sort by land or 1 water from Assiniboia, except what might be needed 1 for traveling, and this only by license. This meant the stoppage of all hunting in a region as large as the British Isles. It meant more. All the Northwest , brigades depended on the buffalo meat of Red River t for their food. It meant the crippling of the North- west Company. MacDonell averred that he issued the proclamation to prevent starvation. This was nonsense. If he feared starvation, his Hudson's Bay hunters could have killed enough buffalo in three months to sup- port five thousand colonists as the Northwesters supported five thousand men let alone a sparse settlement of three hundred souls. The Nor'Westers declared that McDonell had issued the order because he knew the War of 1812 had i cut off their Montreal supplies and they were de- pendent solely on Red River. Proofs seemed to / justify the charge, for Peter Fidler, the Hudson's Bay man, writing in his diary on June 21, 1814, be- wails "if the Captain (MacDonell) had only perse- vered, he could have starved them (the Nor'Westers) out." The Nor'Westers ignored the order with the in- 146 The Coming of tfie Colonists difference of supreme contempt. Not so the Half- breeds and Indians! What meant this taking of their lands by a great Over-lord beyond the seas? Since time immemorial had the Indians wandered free as wind over the plains. Who was this "chief of the land workers," "governor of the gardeners," that he should interdict their hunts? "You are to enforce these orders wherever you have the physical means," Selkirk instructed Mac- Donell. It will be remembered that the buffalo hunter between Pembina and the Missouri came back to Red River by two trails, (i) west to Pembina, (2) north to Souris. A party of armed Hudson's Bay \ men led by John Warren came on the Northwest hunters west of Pembina in American territory i and at bayonet point seized the pemmican stores of those Plain Rangers who had helped the wander- ing colonists. Then John Spencer with more men ascended the Assiniboine armed with a sheriff's ^ warrant and demanded admittance to the North- west fort of Souris. Pritchard, the Nor'Wester in- side, bolted the gates fast and asked what in thunder such impertinence meant. Spencer passed his war- rant in through the wicket. Pritchard called back a very candid and disrespectful opinion of such a warrant, adding if they wanted in, they would have to break in; he would not open. The warrant 147 authorizing Spencer "to break open posts, locks and doors," his men at once hacked down palisades and drew the staples of the iron bolts. Six hundred I bags of pemmican were seized and only enough re- turned to convey the Nor' Westers beyond the limits I of Selkirk's domain. When news of this was carried down to the annual meeting of Nor 'Westers at Fort William, in July, 1814, the effect can be more readily guessed than told. Rumors true and untrue filled the air; how Northwest canoes had been held up on the Assini- boine; how cannon had been pointed across Red River to stop the incoming Northwest express; how the colonists refused to embroil themselves in a fur traders' war; how Peter Fidler threatened to flog men who refused to fight. Such news to the haughty Nor' Westers was a fuse to dynamite. "It is the first time the Nor'Westers have ever permitted them- selves to be insulted," declares William McGillivray. The fiery partners planned their campaign. At any cost "a decisive blow must be struck." Cuthbert Grant, the Plain Ranger, is to keep his hand on all the buffalo hunters. James Grant of Fond du Lac and Red Lake, Minnesota, is to see to it that the Pillager Indians are staunch to Nor'Westers. Dun- can Cameron, who had worked so dauntlessly in Albany region and who had title to the captaincy of 148 The Coming of the Colonists a Canadian regiment, was to don his red regimentals, sword and all, and hold the Forks at Red River to win the colonists across to the Nor'Westers. And on the Assiniboine it is to be a MacDonell against a MacDonell; he of the murderous work in the Albany region with revenge in his heart for the death of his brother at Hudson's Bay hands Alex Mac- Donell is to command the river and keep the trail westward open. "Something serious will take place" writes Alex ) MacDonell on August 5, 1814. "Nothing but the \ complete downfall oj the colony will satisfy some by \ fair or foul means So fare is at them with all my \ heart and energy" "I wish," wrote Cameron to s Grant of Minnesota, "that some of your Pilleurs (Pillagers) who are full of mischief and plunder would pay a hostile visit to these sons of gunpowder and I riot (the Hudson's Bay). They might make good < booty if they went cunningly to work; not that I wish ( butchery; God forbid." Dangerous enough was the mood of the North- westers returning to their field without adding fuel to flame; but no sooner were they back than Miles MacDonell served them with notices in Lord Sel- kirk's name, to remove their posts from Assiniboia within six months, otherwise the order ran, "if aflcr \ this notice, your buildings are continued, I shall be i 149 The Conquest of the Great Northwest under the necessity of razing them to the founda- tions." As might have been expected, events came thick and fast. Cameron spoke Gaelic. In six months he had won the confidence of the settlers. Dances were given at the Nor'Westers' fort by Cameron all the winter of 1814-15, the bagpipes skirling reels and jigs dear to the hearts of the colonists, who little dreamed that the motive was to dance them out of the colony. The late daylight of the frosty winter mornings would see the pipers Green and Hector MacDonell plying their bagpipes, marching proudly at the head of a line of settlers along the banks of Red River coming home from a wild night of it. If the colonists objected to fighting, Cameron kindly ad vised, let them bring the brass cannon and muskets from the Colony Buildings across to Fort Gibraltar. Miles MacDonell had no right to compel them to fight, and the colony cannon were actually hauled across in sleighs one night to the Northwest fort. Then weird tales flew from ear to ear of danger from Indian attack. Half-breeds were heard passing the colony cabins at midnight singing their war songs. Mysterious fusillades of musketry broke from the darkness on other nights. Some of the people were so terrified toward summer that they passed the nights sleeping in boats on the river. Others ap- 150 The Coming of the Colonists pealed to Cameron for protection. The crafty Nor'- Wester offered to convey all, who wished to leave, free of cost and with full supply of provisions, to Eastern Canada. One hundred and forty people went bodily across to the Nor'Westers. Is it any wonder? They had not known one moment of security since coming to this Promised Land. They had looked for peace and found themselves pawns in a desperate game between rival traders. Then Cameron played his trump card. Before the annual brigade set out for Fort William in June of 1815, he sent across a legal warrant to arrest Miles Mac- Donell for plundering the Nor'Westers' pemmican. MacDonell was desperate. His people were desert- ing. The warrant, though legal in Canadian courts, had been issued by a justice of the peace, who was a Nor' West partner Archibald Norman McLeod. or two weeks the Plains Rangers had been hang- ing on the outskirts of the colony firing desultory shots in an innocent diversion that brought visions of massacre to the terrified people. A chance ball whizzed past the ear of someone in Fort Douglas. MacDonell fired a cannon to clear the marauders from the surrounding brushwood. The effect was instantaneous. A shower of bullets peppered Fort Douglas. One of the fort cannon exploded. In the confusion, whether from the enemy's shots or their own, four or five were wounded, Mr. Warren fatally. The people begged MacDonell to save the colony by giving himself up. On June 2ist, the governor sur- rendered and was taken along with Cameron's bri- gade and the deserting colonists to Montreal for trial. Needless to tell, he was never tried. Mean- time, Cameron had no sooner gone, than the rem- nant of the colony was surrounded by Cuthbert Grant's Rangers. The people were warned to save themselves by flight. Nightly, cabins and hay ricks blazed to the sky. In terror of their lives, abandon- ing everything the people launched out on Red River and fled in blind fright for Lake Winnipeg. The Colony Buildings were burned to the ground. The houses were plundered; the people dispersed. By June 25th, of Selkirk's colony there was not a vestige but the ruined fields and trampled crops. Inside Fort Douglas were only three Hudson's Bay The summer brigade from York usually reached Lake Winnipeg in August. The harried settlers camped along the east shore waiting for help from the North. To their amazement, help came from an opposite direction. One morning in August they were astonished to see a hundred canoes sweep up as if from Canada, flying the Hudson's Bay flag. 152 The Coming of the Colonists Signals brought the voyageurs ashore two hundred Frenchmen led by Selkirk's agent, Colin Robertson, bound from Quebec up the Saskatchewan to Atha- basca. Robertson had all along advocated fighting fire with fire; employing French wood-runners in- stead of timorous Orkney men, and forcing the proud Nor'Westers to sue for union by invading the richest field of furs Athabasca, far beyond the limits of Red River. And here was Robertson carrying out his aggressive policy, with "fighting John Clarke" of Astor's old company as second in command. The news he brought restored the faint courage of the people. Lord Selkirk was coming to Red River next year. A new governor had been appointed at 1,000 a year Robert Semple, a famous traveler, son of a Philadelphia merchant. Semple had em- barked for Hudson's Bay a few months after Rob- ertson had sailed to raise recruits in Quebec. With Semple were coming one hundred and sixty more colonists, a Doctor Wilkinson as secretary, and a Lieutenant Holte of the Swedish Marines to com- mand an armed brig that was to patrol Lake Winni- peg and prevent the Nor'Westers entering Assini- boia. Robertson sent Clarke with the French voyageurs on to Athabasca. Clarke departed boasting he would send every "Nor'Wester out a prisoner to the bay." 153 The Conquest of the Great Northwest ' Robertson led the colonists back to the settlement. When Duncan Cameron came triumphantly from the Nor' Westers' annual meeting, he was surprised to find the colony arisen from the ashes of its ruin stronger than ever. The first thing Robertson did was to recapture the arms of the settlement. On October i5th, as Cameron was riding home after dark he felt the bridle of his horse suddenly seized, and peered forward to find himself gazing along the steel barrel of a pistol. A moment later, Hudson's Bay men had jerked him from his horse. He was beaten and dragged a prisoner before Robertson, who coolly told him he was to be held as hostage till all the can- non of the colonists were restored. Twelve Nor'- Westers at once restored cannon and muskets to Fort Douglas, and Cameron was allowed to go on parole, breathing fire and vengeance till Governor Semple came. Semple with one hundred and sixty colonists and some one hundred Hudson's Bay men arrived at Kildonan on November 3rd. Robertson was deeply disappointed in the new governor. A man of iron hand and relentless action was needed. Semple was gentle, scholarly, courteous, temporizing a man of peace, not war. He would show them, he fore- warned Nor'Westers, whether Selkirk could enforce his rights. Forewarned is forearmed. The Nor'- The Coming of the Colonists Westers rallied their Plain Rangers to the Assini- boine and Red River. "Beware," "look out for yourselves," the friendly Indians daily warned. "Listen, white men! The Nor' Westers are arming the Bois Brules!" To these admonitions Semple's answer was formal notice that if the Nor'Westers harmed the colonists "the consequences would be terrible to themselves; a shock that would be heard from Montreal to Athabasca." Robertson raged in- wardly. Well he knew from long service with the Nor'Westers that such pen and ink drivel was not the kind of warfare to appall those fighters. Across the river in what is now St. Boniface, there lived in a little sod-thatched hut, J. Ba'tiste Laji- moniere and his wife, Marie Gaboury. Robertson sent for Ba'tiste. Would the voyageur act as scout? "But Marie," interjects Ba'tiste. "Oh, that's all right," Robertson assures him. "Marie and the children will be given a house inside Fort Douglas." " Bon! Ba'tiste will go. Where is it? And what is it?" "It is to carry secret letters to Lord Selkirk in Montreal. Selkirk will have heard that the colony was scattered. He must be told that the people have been gathered back. Above all, he must be told of these terrible threats about the Plain Rangers arming for next year. "But pause, Ba'- tiste! It is now November. It is twenty-eight hun- 155 The Conquest of the Great Northwest dred miles to Montreal by the trail you must follow, for you must not go by the Nor'Westers trail. They will lie in wait to assassinate you all the way from Red River to St. Lawrence. You must go south through Minnesota to the Sault; then south along the American shore of Lake Huron to Detroit, and from Detroit to Montreal." Ba'tiste thinks twice. Of all his wild hunts, this is the wildest, for he is to be the hunted, not the hunter. But leaving Marie and the children in the fort, he sets out. At Pembina, two of his old hunter friends Belland and Parisien accompany him in a cart, but at Red Lake there is such a heavy fall of snow, the horse is only a hindrance. Taking only blankets, provisions on their backs, guns and hatchets, Ba'tiste and his friends pushed forward on foot with an Indian called Monkman. They keep their course by following the shores of Lake Superior doubly careful now, for they are nearing Fort William. Provisions run out. One of the friends slips through the woods to |puy food at the fort, but he cannot get it without explaining where he is going. As they hide near the fort, a dog comes out. Good! Ba'tiste makes short work of that dog; and they hurry forward with a supply of fresh meat, shortening the way by cutting across the ice of the lake. But this is dangerous traveling. Once the ice began to 156 The Coming of the Colonists heave under their feet and a broad crevice of water opened to the fore. "Back!" called Lajimoniere; but when they turned they found that the ice had broken afloat from the shore. " Jump, or we are lost," yelled the scout clearing the breach in a desperate leap. Belland followed and alighted safely, but Parisien and Monkman lost their nerve and plunged in ice-cold water. Laji- moniere rescued them both, and they pressed on. For six days they marched, with no food but rock moss tripe de roche boiled in water. At length they could travel no farther. The Indian's famine- pinched face struck fear to their hearts that he might slay them at night for food, and giving him money, they bade him find his way to an Indian camp. To their delight, he soon returned with a supply of frozen fish. This lasted them to the Sault. From Sault Ste. Marie, Lajimoniere proceeded alone by way of Detroit to Montreal. Arriving the day be- fore Christmas, he presented himself at the door of the house where Selkirk was guest. The servant asked his message. "Letters for Lord Selkirk." " Give them to me. I will deliver them." "No Sir! I have come six hundred leagues to deliver these letters into Selkirk's hands and into 157 The Conquest of the Great Northwest no other hands do they go. Go tell Lord Selkirk a voyageur from the West is here." Bad news were these threats against the colonists to my Lord Selkirk. He told Lajimoniere to rest in Montreal till letters were ready. Then he appealed to the governor of Quebec, Sir Gordon Drummond, for a military detachment to protect Red River, but Sir Gordon Drummond asked advice of his Council, and the McGillivrays of the Northwest Company were of his Council; and there followed months of red tape in which Selkirk could gain no satisfaction. Finally in March, 1816, he received commission as a justice of the peace in the Indian country and per- mission to take for his personal protection a military escort to be provisioned and paid at his own cost. Canada was full of regiments disbanded from the Napoleon wars and 1812. Selkirk engaged two hundred of the De Meuron and De Watteville regi- ments to accompany him to Red River. Then he dispatched Lajimoniere with word that he was com- ing to the colonists' aid. But the Nor'Westers were on the watch for La- jimoniere this time. One hundred strong, they had arranged their own brigade should go west from Fort William this year. It was to be a race between Selkirk and the Nor'Westers. Lajimoniere must be intercepted. "Lajimoniere is again to pass through 158 The Corning of the Colonists your Department, on his way to Red River" wrote Norman McLeod to the partners in Minnesota. " He must absolutely be prevented. He and the men along with him, and an Indian guide he has, must all be sent to Fort William. It is a matter of astonish- 1 merit how he could tiave made his way last jail through your Department.'' Rewards of $100, two kegs of rum and two carrots of tobacco, were offered to Minnesota Indians if they would catch Lajimoniere. They waylaid his canoe at Fond du Lac, beat him senseless, stole his dispatches, and carried him to Fort William where he was thrown in the butter vat prison and told that his wife had already been murdered on Red River. Out on Red River, Colin Robertson was doing his best to stem the tide of disaster. During the winter of 1815-16, Semple was continuing the fatuous policy of seizing all the supplies of Northwest pem- mican, and had gone on a tour to the different fur posts in Selkirk's territory. For reasons that are now known, no word had come from Selkirk. Toward March arrived an Indian from the upper Assini- boine, whom a Hudson's Bay doctor had cured of disease, and who now in gratitude revealed to Rob- ertson that a storm was gathering on both sides likely to break on the heads of the colonists. Alex Mc- 159 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Donell of the Assiniboine was rallying the Bois Brules to meet the spring brigade from Montreal, and the spring brigade was to consist of nearly every partner in the Northwest Company, with eighty fighting men. "Look out for yourselves," warned the Indian. "They are after the heads of the colony. They are saying if they catch Robertson they will skin him alive and feed him to the dogs for attack- ing Cameron last fall." Old Chief Peguis comes again and again with offers to defend the colonists by having his tribe heave "the war hatchet," but Robertson has no notion of playing war with Indians. "Beware, white woman, beware!" the old chief tells Marie Gaboury. "If the Bois Brules fight, come you and your children to my tepee." Robertson did not wait for the storm to break. Taking half a dozen men with him on March 13, 1816, he marched across to Fort Gibraltar to seize Cameron as hostage. It was night. The light of a candle guided them straight to the room where the Northwest partner sat pen in hand over a letter. Bursting into the room, Robertson who was of a large and powerful frame, caught Cameron by the collar. Two others placed pistols at the Nor'- ' Wester's head. There lay the most damning evi- \dence beneath Cameron's hand the letter asking 160 The Coming of the Colonists Grant of Minnesota to rally the Pillager Indians against Fort Douglas. Cameron was taken prisoner and when Semple returned, he was sent down in May to Hudson's Bay to be forwarded to England for trial. Ice jam in the straits delayed him a whole year at Moose; and when he was taken to England, Cameron, the Nor'Wester, was no more brought to trial by the Hudson's Bay Company than Mac- Donell, the Hudson's Bay man, was brought to trial by the Nor'Westers. I confess at this stage of the game, I can see very little difference in the faults on both sides. Both sides were playing a desperate, ruthless, utterly lawless game. Both had advanced too far for retreat. Even Selkirk was involved in the meshes with his two hundred soldiers tricked out as a bodyguard. Semple and Robertson now quarreled outright. Robertson was for striking the blow before it was too late ; Semple for temporizing, waiting for word from Selkirk. Robertson was for calling all the settlers inside the palisades. Semple could not believe there was danger. "Then I wash my hands of consequences and leave this fort," vowed Robertson. "Then wash your hands and leave," retorted Semple, and Robertson followed Cameron down to Moose, to be ice-bound for nearly a year. Semple 161 The Conquest of the Great Northwest continued his mad policy of enforcing English poach- ing laws on Red River. Gibraltar was dismantled and the timber rafted down to Fort Douglas. Up in the North, Robertson's Athabasca brigade, under fighting John Clarke, had come to dire dis- aster. Clarke felt so cock-sure that his big brigade could humble the Nor'Westers into suing for union with the Hudson's Bay that he had galloped his canoes up the Saskatchewan, never pausing to gather store of pemmican meat. A third of the men were stationed at Athabasca Lake, a third sent down the Mac.Kenzie to Slave Lake, a third, Clarke, himself, led up the Peace to the mountains. On the way, the inevitable happened. Clarke ran out of pro- visions and set himself to obtain them by storming the Nor'Wester, Mclntosh, at Fort Vermilion. Mc- Intosh let loose his famous Northwest bullies, who beat Clarke off and chased him down the Peace to Athabasca. Archibald MacGillivray and Black were the partners at Chippewyan, and many a trick they played to outwit Clarke during the long winters of 1815-16. Far or near, not an Indian could Clarke find to barter furs or provisions. The natives had been frightened and bribed to keep away. Once, the coureur brought word that a northern tribe was coming down with furs. The Nor'Westers gave a grand ball to their rivals of the Hudson's Bay, but 162 The Coming of the Colonists at midnight when revels were at their height, a Northwest dog train without any bells to sound alarm, sped silently over the snow. The Indian hunters were met and the furs obtained before the Hudson's Bay had left the dance. Another night, a party of Hudson's Bay men had gone out to meet Indians approaching with provisions. Suddenly, Nor'Westers appeared at the night campfire with whiskey. The Hudson's Bay men were deluded into taking whiskey enough to disable them. Then they were strapped in their own sleighs and the dogs headed home. Clarke was almost at the end of his tether when the Nor'Westers invited him to a dinner. When he rose to go home, MacGillivray and Black slapped him on the shoulder and calmly told him he was their prisoner. As for his men, eighteen died outright of starvation. Others were forced at bayonet point or flogged into joining the Nor'Westers. Many scat- tered to the wilderness and never returned. Of the two hundred Hudson's Bay voyageurs who had gone so gloriously to capture Athabasca, only a pitiable remnant found their way down to the Saskatchewan and Lake Winnipeg. Clarke obtains not one pack of furs. The Nor'Westers send out four hundred. Notes to Chapter XXVII. The data for this chapter have been drawn from the same sources as the preceding chapter. The Conquest of the Great Northwest In addition, I took the cardinal facts from two other sources hitherto untold; (i) from Colin Robertson's confidential letters to Selkirk; (2) from Coltman's report to the Canadian Govern- ment and Sherbooke's confidential report to the British Gov- ernment all in manuscript. In addition there are the printed Government Reports (including Coltman's) and Trials and Archives, but I find in these public reports much has been sup- pressed, which the confidential records reveal. I am again in- debted to Abbe" Dugas for the legend of Lajimoniere's trip East. Events thicken so fast at this stage-^the H. B. C. and N. W. C. fight, space does not permit record of all the bloody affrays, such for instance as the killing of Slater, the H. B. C. man, at Abbittibbi, the death of Johnstone at Isle a la Crosse, or the violence there when Peter Skene Ogden drove the Indians from the H. B. C. The name of the armed schooner, which was to patrol Lake Winnipeg to drive the Nor 'Westers off, Coltman gives as Cathul- lin, and a personal letter of Lieut. Holte (H. B. C.) declares that he was to be commander. MacDonell's proclamations seem to have been feudalism run mad. In July of 1814, he actually forbade natives to bark trees for canoes and wigwams, or to cut large wood for camp fires. Then followed his notices ordering the N. W. C. to move their forts. Howse, the explorer, was at this time in charge of Isle a la Crosse. The H. B. C. colonists, who sided with Cameron and carried across to the N. W. C. the four brass cannon, four swivels, one howitzer were George Bannerman, Angus Gunn, Hugh Ban- nerman, Donald McKinnon, Donald McDonald, George Camp- bell. Robert Gunn, John Cooper, Angus McKay, Andrew Mc- Beth and John Mathespn opposed giving the arms to Cameron and were loyal to Selkirk. Peter Fidler's Journal (manuscript) gives details of 1815 at Fort Douglas. When the colony was dispersed in June, 1815, it consisted of thirteen men and their families forty persons. The N. W. C. took no part in the flight of the colonists to Lake Winnipeg. It was the Half-breeds who ordered them to leave Red River. The Colony Buildings burnt were four houses grouped as the fort, five farm houses, barns, stables, a mill and eighteen set- tlers' cabins. This was not done by order of the N. W. C. but by the Plains Rangers. 164 The Coming of the Colonists It appeared in N. W. C. records that as high as 100 was paid some of the colonists to desert Red River. Selkirk's letter to Robertson, which the N. W. C. captured from Lajimoniere, ran thus: "There can be no doubt that the N. W. C. must be compelled to quit . . . my lands . . . especially at the Forks . . . but as it will be necessary to use force, I am anxious this should be done under legal warrant." I cannot see much difference between Selkirk bringing up De Meurons to drive the N. W. C. off, and Cameron calling on the Indians to drive the H. B. C. off. May 1 8th, Cameron was sent to the bay. June nth, Robertson quarreled with Semple and followed. June xoth, Semple had ordered the dismantling of Gibraltar, which was completed after Robertson left. Letters from Mclntosh of Peace River give details of Clarke's disaster in Athabasca, describing his men "as starving like church rats and so reduced they were not able to stand on their feet, and were a picture of the resurrection." Some authorities, like McDonald of Garth, give the number of Voyageurs sent to Athabasca by Robertson as four hundred. I follow Robertson's MS. account. It is not surprising that one of the first settlers to desert Red River for Ontario was that Angus McKay, whose child was born on the sled journey to York. CHAPTER XXVIII 1816-1820 THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS CONTINUED GOV- ERNOR SEMPLE AND TWENTY COLONISTS ARE BUTCHERED AT SEVEN OAKS SELKIRK TO THE RESCUE CAPTURES FORT WILLIAM AND SWEEPS THE NOR'WESTERS FROM THE FIELD THE SUF- FERING OF THE SETTLERS AT LAST SELKIRK SEES THE PROMISED LAND AT RED RIVER. HERE, then, is the position, June 17, 1816. My Lord Selkirk is racing westward from Montreal to the rescue of his Red River colonists with two hundred men made up of disbanded De Meuron and De Watteville soldiers and French canoemen. William McGillivray has gathered all the Eastern partners of the Northwest Company together Mc- Loughlin, the doctor; Simon Eraser, the explorer; McLeod, the justice of the Peace; Haldane, Mc- Lellan, McGillis, Keith and the rest and with a hundred armed men and two cannon, is dashing for Red River to outrace Selkirk, rescue Duncan Cam- eron, restore Fort Gibraltar, and prevent the forcible eviction of the Northwest Company from Assiniboia. 1 66 The Coming of the Colonists Selkirk goes by way of Lake Ontario and the modern Simcoe. The Nor'Westers follow the old trail up the Ottawa. In the West, blacker gathers the storm. Deprived of their pemmican by Semple's raids, the Nor'- Westers rally their Plain Rangers under Cuthbert Grant to Alexander McDonell of Qu' Appelle, de- termined to sweep down the Assiniboine and meet the up-coming express from Montreal at all hazards. This will prevent Semple capturing those provisions, too. Incidentally, the Plain Rangers intended to rescue Cameron from the Hudson's Bay men. They do not know he has been sent to the bay. Incident- ally, too, they intend "to catch Robertson and skin him and feed him to the dogs" They do not know that he, too, has gone off in a huff to the bay. Gibral- tar is to be restored. They do not know that it has been dismantled. Then, when the Nor'West part- ners come from the East, the Hudson's Bay people are to be given a taste of their own medicine. No attack is planned. The Plain Rangers are to keep away from Fort Douglas; but the English company is to be starved out, and if there is resistance then, in the language of Alex McDonell, mad with the lust of revenge for the death of Eneas "the ground is to be drenched icilh the blood oj the colonists." In Fort Douglas sits Robert Semple, Governor of 167 the Colony, his cannon pointed across Red River to stop all trespassers on Selkirk's domain. One other chessman there is in the desperate game. Miles MacDonell, the captured governor of Red River, has been released at Montreal and is speed- ing westward in a light canoe with good cheer to the colonists word of Selkirk's coming. Red River is the storm center. Toward it con- verge three different currents of violence: the Plain Rangers from the West; Selkirk's soldiers, and the Nor'Westers' men from the East. What is it all about? Just this shall or shall not the feudal sys- tem prevail in the Great Northwest? Little cared the contestants about the feudal system. They were fighting for profits in terms of coin. They were pawns on the chess board of Destiny. Comes once more warning to the blinded Semple, secure in his beliefs as if entrenched in the castle of a feudal baron. A chance hunter paddles down the Assiniboine to Red River. "My governor! My governor!" the rough fellow pleads. "Are you not afraid? The Half-breeds are gathering! They are advancing! They will kill you!" "Tush, my good man," laughs Semple, "I'll show them papers proving that we own the country." 11 Own the country? What does that mean?" 1 68 The Coming of the Colonufa The freeman shakes his head. No man owns these boundless plains. Comes again Moustache Batino, whom Doctor White had healed of a wound. "A hundred and fifty Bois Brules (Burnt Wood Runners) are at the Portage of the Prairie! They will be here by to-morrow night." "Well, what of it? Let 'em come," smiles Semple. The Indian ruminates Is this Englishman mad? "Mad! Nonsense," says Semple to his secretary, Wilkinson. "They will never be such fools as to break the law when they know we have right on our side." But old Chief Peguis of the Sauteurs knows noth- ing af all about that word "law." June i8th, at night when the late sunset is dyeing the Western prairies blood red, Peguis knocks at the fort gates. "Governor of the gard'ners and land workers," he declares, "listen to me listen to me, white man! Let me bring my warriors to protect you ! The Half- breeds will be here to-morrow night. Have your colonists sleep inside the fort." Semple grows impatient. "Chief," he declares, "mark my words! There is not going to be any fighting." All the same Peguis goes to Marie Gaboury, 169 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Lajimoniere's wife. " White woman," he com- mands, "come you across the river to my tepee! Blood is to be shed." And Marie Gaboury, who has learned to love the Indians as she formerly feared them, follows Chief Peguisdown the river bank with her brood of children, like so many chickens. Such is her fright as she ensconces the children in the chief's canoe, that she faints and falls backward, upsetting the boatload, which Peguis rescues like so many drowned ducklings, but Lajimoniere's family hides in the Pagan tent while the storm breaks. On the evening of June ipth, the boy on watch in the gate tower calls out, "the Half-breeds are com- ing." Semple goes up to the watchtower with a spyglass. So do Heden, the blacksmith; and Wil- kinson, the secretary; and White, the doctor; and Holte, the young lieutenant of the Swedish Mar- ines; and John Pritchard, who has left the Nor'- Westers and joined the colony; and Bourke, the storekeeper. "Those certainly are Half-breeds," says Pritchard, pointing to a line of seventy or a hundred horsemen coming from the west across the swamps of Frog Plain beyond Fort Douglas toward the colony. "Let twenty men instantly follow me," commands 170 The Coming of the Colonists Semple. "We'll go out and see what those people want." Bayonets, pistols, swords are picked up in con- fusion, and out sallies a little band of twenty-seven men on foot. The Half-breeds are not approaching Fort Doug- las. They are advancing toward the colony. Half a mile out, Semple meets the colonists rushing for the fort in a wild panic. Alex McBeth, a colonist who had been a soldier, calls out, "Keep your back to the river, Governor! They are painted! Don't let them surround you." "There is no occasion for alarm! I am only going to speak to them," answers Semple, marching on, knee-deep through the hay fields. All the same, he sends a boy back with word for Bourke, the store- keeper, and McLean, the farmer, to hitch horses and drag out the cannon. As the Half-breeds approach Semple sees for himself they are daubed in war paint and galloping forward in a semi-circle. Young Holte of the Marines becomes so flustered that he lets his gun off by mistake, which gives the Governor a start. "Mind yourself," Semple orders. "I want no firing at all." "My God, Governor! We are all lost men," mut- ters Ilrdrn.the blacksmith; and Kilkenny, a fighting The Conquest of the Great Northwest Irishman, begs, "Give me leave, Governor! Let me shoot; or we shall all be shot. There's Grant, the leader. Let me pick off Grant!" "No firing, I tell you," orders Semple angrily, and the two parties come in violent collision on a little knoll of wooded ground called Seven Oaks. With Grant are our old friends of the Saskatche- wan Falcon, the rhyming poet; and Boucher, son of the scout shot on the South Saskatchewan; and Louis Primo, old reprobate who had deserted Cock- ing fifty years ago; and two of Marguerite Trot- tier's brothers from Pembina; and a blackguard family of Deschamps from the Missouri ; and seventy other Plain Rangers from the West. Followed by a bloodthirsty crew hard to hold, Cuthbert Grant was appalled to see Semple march out courting disaster. "Go tell those people to ground their arms and surrender," he ordered Boucher. "What do you want?" demanded Semple as Boucher galloped up. "Our fort," yelled Boucher forgetting his mes- sage. "Then go to your fort!" vehemently ordered Semple. "Rascal! You have destroyed our fort," roared the angry Half-breed. 172 The Coming of the Colonists "Dare you address me so?" retorted Semple, seizing the scout's gun. " Men take him prisoner!" "Have a care you do me no ill," shouted Boucher slipping off the other side of his horse, prancing back. "Take him prisoner I say! Is this a time to be afraid?" shouts Semple. " My God ! We are all dead men," groans Suther- land, the Scotch colonist, for the dread war whoop had rent the air. There was a blaze of musketry, and there reeled back with his arms thrown up- young Holte, the officer who had boasted that with the Lake Winnipeg schooner "he would give the Northwest scoundrels a drubbing." Another crash, and Semple is down with a broken thigh. Cuthbert Grant dismounts and rushes to stop the massacre. "I am not mortally wounded! Take me to the fort," gasps Semple. Grant turns to call aid. The Deschamps stab the Governor to death on the spot. The firing lasts less than fifteen minutes, but twenty of the Hudson's Bay men have fallen, including all the officers, four colonists, fifteen servants. Captain Rodgers is advancing to surrender when he is hacked down. Of the twenty-seven who followed out, Pritchard, the former Nor' Wester, is saved by sur- render; and five men escape by swimming across the river. As for the cannon, Bourke is trundling 173 The Conquest of the Great Northwest it back as fast as the horses can gallop. McLean, the settler, has been slain. One, only, of the Plain Rangers, Batoche, has been killed; only one wounded -Trottier of Pembina; and Cuthbert Grant at last succeeds in stopping the infuriated rabble's advance and drawing off to camp west of Seven Oaks. No need to describe the blackness of the work that night on the prairie. The Half-breeds wreaked their pent-up vengeance on the bodies of the slain. Let it be said to the credit of the Nor'Westers, they had no part in this ghoulish work. The worst mis- creants were the Deschamps of the Missouri, whose blood-stained hands no decent Indian would ever touch after that night. In camp, Pierre Falcon, the rhymster, was chanting the glories of the victory, and Pritchard was pleading with Grant for the lives of the women and children. For years afterward- yes, even to this day terrible stories were told of the threats against the families of the colonists; but let it be stated there was never at any time the shadow of a vestige of a wrong contemplated against the women and children. What Indians might do, old Chief Peguis had shown. What the Deschamps, who were half-white men, might do the mutilated bodies of the dead at Seven Oaks revealed. Pritchard was sent across to the fort with word that the colonists must save themselves by surrender. 174 The Coming of the Colonists Otherwise, Grant could not answer for their safety among his wild Plain Rangers. The panic of the two hundred people inside was pitiable. For a second time they were to be driven houseless to the wilderness, and yet the bolder spirits were for man- ning the fort and resisting siege. If only they could have known that Selkirk was coming ; but Laji- moniere lay captive in the butter-vat prison at Fort William, and Miles MacDonell had not yet come. Without help, how could two hundred people sub- sist inside the palisades? A white sheet was tied on the end of a pole, and the colonists marched out on June 22nd, at eight in the morning, Grant standing guard to protect them as they embarked in eight boats for Lake Winnipeg. Before abandoning Fort Douglas, Angus Matheson and old Chief Peguis gather a few of the dead and bury them in a dry coulee near the site of the old Cree graveyard at the south end of modern Winnipeg's Main Street. Other bodies are buried as they lie at Seven Oaks; but the graves are so shallow they are ripped open by the wolves. Grant rides along the river bank to protect the colonists from marauders till they have passed the Rapids of St. Andrew's and are well beyond modern Selkirk. Beyond Selkirk, at the famous camping place of Xcttley Creek, whom should the colonists meet but '75 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the Nor'West partners galloping their canoes at race- horse pace to reach the field of action before Sel- kirk. "What news?" calls Norman McLeod; but the news is plain enough in the eight boat loads of de- jected colonists. The Nor 'Westers utter a war whoop, beat the gun' els of their canoes, shout their victory. " Thank Providence" writes one partner, Robert Henry, "that the battle was over before we got there, as it was our intention to storm the fort. Our party consisted of one hundred men, seventy firearms, two field pieces. What our success might have been, I will not pretend to say; but many of us must have fallen in the con- test" The Nor'Westers have always maintained that they had not planned to attack Fort Douglas and that the onus of blame for the fearful guilt of Seven Oaks Massacre rested on Semple for coming out to oppose the Half-breeds, who were going to meet the Montreal express. Such excuse might do for Eastern law courts, whose aim was to suppress more than they revealed ; but the facts do not sustain such an excuse. The events are now a century past. Let us face them without subterfuge. The time had come, the time was bound to come, when the rights of a Feudal Charter would conflict violently with the strong though lawless arm of Young Democracy. 176 The Coming of the Colonists Therein lies the significance of what apologists and partisans have called the Skirmish of Seven Oaks. Norman McLeod, the Justice of the Peace, hails the harried colonists ashore at Nettley Creek. They notice among the Northwest partners several soldiers dressed in regimentals mark that, those who con- demn Selkirk for hiring De Meuron soldiers! Two can play at the game of putting soldiers in red coats to bluff the Indians into believing the government is behind the trader. The settlers notice also, care- fully hidden under oilcloth, two or three brass cannon in the Nor'Westers' boats. Mark that, those who condemn Selkirk for bringing cannon along with his bodyguard ! As justice of the peace, Norman McLeod seizes the dead Semple's baggage for incriminating papers. As justice of the peace though it was queer kind of peace he arrests those men who escaped from Seven Oaks, and claps them in irons that prevent Bourke, the storekeeper, from dressing his wounds. The colonists are then allowed to proceed to their wintering ground amid the desolate woods of Lake Winnipeg at Jack River. The triumphant Nor'Westers do not wait long at Red River. McLeod goes on to rule like a despot in Athabasca. The others hurry back to their annual meeting at Fort William, for they know that Selkirk 177 The Conquest of the Great Northwest is coming West. Bourke and the prisoners are carried along to be thrown into the butter- vat prison. Dark are the plots the prisoners overhear as they journey up Winnipeg River and Rainy Lake down to Lake Superior. Alex McDonell of the Assiniboine, burning for revenge as usual, urges the partners to make "his Lordship pay dearly for his conduct coming west; for I will say no more on paper but there are fine quiet places along Winnipeg River, if he comes this way!" And one night in camp on Rainy Lake, Bourke, the prisoner, lying in the dark, hears the Nor'West partners discussing affairs. Sel- kirk's name comes up. Says Alex McDonell, " The Half-breeds could easily capture him while he is asleep." Bourke does not hear the other's answer; but McDonell rejoins, " They could have the Indians shoot him." Were they planning to assassinate Sel- kirk coming West? Who knows? Alex McDonell was ever more violent than the rest. As for Selkirk, when word of this conversation came to him, he took care neither to come nor go by Winnipeg River. In passing back from Red River across Winnipeg Lake, the Nor'Westers pause to destroy that armed Hudson's Bay schooner, which was "to sweep North- west, canoes" from the lake. Down at Fort William, the Hudson's Bay prisoners are flung into the prison 178 The Coming of the Colonists along with the captured scout, Lajimoniere. "Things have gone too far; but we can throw the blame on the Indians," says William McGillivray. "But there was not an Indian took part in the massacre," retorts Dr. John McLoughlin, always fair to the native races, for he has married the Indian widow of that Alex McKay of MacKenzie's voyages and Astor's massacred crew. In the despatches which were stolen from Laji- moniere, Selkirk had written to Colin Robertson that he was coming to Red River by way of Minne- sota to avoid clashes with the Nor'Westers at Fort William. By July he had passed from Lake Simcoe across Georgian Bay to the Sault. Barely had he portaged the Sault to Lake Superior when he meets Miles MacDonell, his special messenger, galloping back from Red River in a narrow canoe with word of the massacre. What to do now? Selkirk could go on to Red River by way of Minnesota; but his colonists are no longer there. At the Sault are two magistrates of the Indian country Mr. Askin and Mr. Ermatinger. Lord Selkirk swears out information before them and appeals to them to come with him and arrest the Northwest partners at Fort William. They refuse point-blank. They will have nothing to do with this 179 The Conquest of the Great Northwest quarrel between the two great fur companies this quarrel that really hinges on feudalism versus de- mocracy; English law as against Canadian. To obtain justice in Eastern Canada is impossible. That, Selkirk has learned from a winter of futile bickering for military protection to prevent this very disaster. Selkirk writes fully to the new governor of Canada Sir John Sherbrooke that having failed to obtain protection from the Canadian courts he has determined to go on, strong in his own right as conferred by the charter and as a justice of the peace to arrest the Northwest partners at Fort William. "/ am reduced to the alternative of acting alone, or of allowing an audacious crime to pass un- punished. I cannot doubt it is my duty to act, though the law may be openly resisted by a set of men accus- tomed to consider force the only criterion of right." The Nor'Westers had forcibly invaded and de- stroyed his colony. Now he was forcibly to invade and destroy their fort. Was his decision wise? Was it the first misstep into the legal tangle that broke his courage and sent him baffled to his grave? Let who can answer! Be it remembered that the Ca- nadian authorities had refused him protection; that the Canadian magistrates had refused him redress. His De Meuron soldiers had not worn their military suits. He bids them don their regalia now and 1 80 The Coming of the Colonists move forward with all the accouterments of war a feudal lord leading his retinue! "Between ten and eleven this morning, the Earl of Selkirk accompanied by his bodyguard, came up the river in jour canoes" writes Jasper Vandersluys, a clerk of Fort William, on August 12, 1816. "Be- tween one and two, he (Selkirk) was followed by eleven or twelve boats, each having from twelve to fifteen soldiers all armed, who encamped on the opposite shore" The afternoon passed with Selkirk's men planting cannon along the river bank, heaping can- non balls in readiness and cleaning all muskets. Nor'West voyageurs and their wives rush inside the palisades. The women are sheltered in a central building upstairs above a trapdoor. The men are sent scurrying to hide one hundred loaded muskets in a hay loft. In the watchtower above the gates stand the Nor'West partners William McGillivray, the three MacKenzies Alex, son of Roderick; Ken- neth, and old drunken, befuddled Daniel Simon Fraser, the explorer; several of the McDonell clan, and Dr. John McLoughlin, shaking his head sadly at these preparations for violence. "There has been too much blood shed already," he remarks. Next afternoon comes a Hudson's Bay messenger from Selkirk asking for McGillivray. McLoughlin and Kenneth MacKenzie accompany McGillivray 181 The Conquest of the Great Northwest across the river. One hour passes; two hours! The women, watching from the loft windows above the trapdoor, began to hope that a truce had been ar- ranged. At seven in the evening the partners had come from the watchtower to shut the gates when two boat loads of some sixty soldiers glide up to the wharf. Fraser and Alex McDonell and old drunken Daniel MacKenzie rush to slam the gates shut. One leaf is banged when a bugle sounds! Captain D'Orsonnens of the soldiers, shouts "To arms, to arms," plants his foot in the gateway and with flourishing sword rushes his men into the court- yard "with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets, shouting, cursing, swearing death and destruction to all persons." One Nor'Wester rushes to ring an alarm bell. The others have dashed for their apart- ments to destroy papers. In a twinkling, Selkirk's men have captured every cannon in Fort William and are knocking at the doors of the central building. Not a gun has been fired; not a blow struck; not a drop of blood shed; but the trampling feet terrify the women in the attic. They crowd above the trap- door to hold it down, when, presto! the only tragedy of the semi-farce takes place! The crowding is too much for the trapdoor. Down it crashes spilling the women into the room below, just as the aston- ished De Meurons dash into the apartment to seal all 182 The Coming of the Colonists desks and papers. It is a question whether the soldiers or the women received the greater shock; but the greatest surprise of all is across the river where the three Northwest partners are received by Selkirk between lines of armed soldiers and are promptly arrested, bail refused, for complicity in the massacre of Seven Oaks. Selkirk allows them to go back to the fort on parole for the night and orders the liberation of those Hudson's Bay prisoners in the butter-vat prison Lajimoniere and the sur- vivors of Seven Oaks, who tell my lord a tale that sharpens his vengeance. The night passes in alarm. Soldiers on guard at the room of each partner detect the Nor'Westers burning papers that might be used as evidence; and the loaded muskets are found in the hay loft; and furs are discovered stamped R. R. H. B. C. which have been rifled from some Hud- son's Bay post. Day dawns in a drizzling rain. Across the river comes my Lord Selkirk, himself, with the pomp of a war lord, bugles blowing, soldiers in the boats with muskets on shoulders, a guard to the fore clearing the way. The common voyageurs are forthwith ordered to decamp to the far side of the river. Lord Selkirk takes up quarters in the main house, the partners being marched at bayonet point to other quarters. For four days the farce lasts. Lord Sel- 183 The Conquest of the Great Northivest kirk as justice of the peace examines and commits for trial all the partners present. The partners present scorn his assumption of authority and formally de- mand that the voyageurs be sent West with supplies for the year. Selkirk's answer is to seize the voy- ageurs' canoes and set his soldiers to using the pali- sades of Fort William for firewood. Then, under pretense of searching for evidence on the massacre at Seven Oaks, he seizes all Northwest documents. Under pretense of searching for stolen furs, he ex- amines all stores. On August i8th, everything is in readiness to conduct the prisoners to Eastern Canada, all except old Daniel MacKenzie. Drunken old MacKenzie is remanded to the prison for special examination. MacKenzie had long since been incapacitated for active service, and he treas- ured a grudge against the other partners for forcing him to resign. Why is MacKenzie being held back by Selkirk? Before the other partners are carried off, their suspicions are aroused. Perhaps they see Miles MacDonell and the De Meurons plying the old man in his prison with whiskey. At all events, they command the clerks left in charge to ignore orders from Daniel MacKenzie. They protest he has no authority to act for the Northwest Company. It may be they remember how they had jockeyed John Jacob Astor out of his fort on the Pacific by a 184 The Coming of the Colonists forced sale; and now guess the game that is being played with Daniel MacKenzie against them. The partners' baggage is searched. The De Meurons turn even the pockets of the haughty partners inside out. Then the prisoners are embarked in four large canoes under escort of De Meuron soldiers. The canoes are hurriedly loaded and badly crowded. Xcur the Sault,on August 26th, one swamps and sinks, drowning seven of the people, including the partner, Kenneth MacKenzie. Allan McDonell and Doctor McLoughlin escape by swimming ashore. At what is now Toronto, the prisoners are at once given bail, and they dispatch a constable to arrest Selkirk at Fort William; but Selkirk claps the constable in gaol for the month of November and then igno- miniously drums him from the fort. With Selkirk, law is to be observed only when it is English. Cana- dian courts do not count. Fuddled with drink, crying pitiably for more, Daniel MacKenzie passed three weeks a prisoner in the butter vat, three more a prisoner in his own room. Six weeks of dissipation, or else his treasured spite against the other partners, now work so on MacKenzie's nerves that he sends for Miles Mc- Donell on September igth, and offers to sell out the Nor'Westers' possessions, worth 100,000, at Fort 185 The Conquest of the Great Northwest William, to Lord Selkirk for 50 down, 2,000 in a year, and the balance as soon as the whole price could be arbitrated by arbitrators appointed by the Lords Chief Justice of England. "7 have been thinking" runs his rambling letter in the hand- writing of Miles McDonell, "that as a partner of the North-West Company and the only one here at present that I can act jor them myself, that all the company's stores and property here are at my dis- posal; that my sale of them is legal by which I can secure to myself all the money which the concern owes me and keep the overplus in my hands until a legal demand be made upon me to pay to those entitled. . . . 7 can not only dispose of the goods but the soil on which they are built if I can find a purchaser" Naturally, MacKenzie finds a purchaser in my Lord Selkirk of the Hudson's Bay and almost at once receives his liberty. Just as McDougall had sold out the Americans on the Columbia, so MacKenzie now sells out the Nor'Westers at Fort William. Then the old man writes rambling confessions and accusations which he boasts to Selkirk contain evidence "that will hang McGillivray" for the massacre of Seven Oaks. Selkirk decides to send him to Eastern Canada as a witness against the partners, but before he is sent he writes circular letters to the wintering partners of the Northwest 1 86 The Coming of the Colonists Company advising them to follow his example and save themselves from ruin by turning over their forts to Lord Selkirk. In October he is sent East, but by the time he reaches the Sault, his brain has cleared. He meets John McLoughlin and other Northwest partners returning to the Up Country and confesses what he has done. Instead of turning witness against them, he proceeds East to sue Selkirk for illegal im- prisonment. If Selkirk's first mistake was trying to enforce feudalism on Red River and his second the raiding of Fort William, his third error must be set down as using an old drunkard for his tool. For the first error, he had the excuse that English law was on his side. For the second, he claimed that "Fort William had become a den of marauders and robbers and he was justified in holding it till the Nor* Westers restored Red River" but for the trickery with old MacKenzie there existed no more excuse than for the lawlessness of the Nor'Westers. To say that Miles McDonell wrote the letters with MacKenzie's signature and that he engineered the trick no more clears Selkirk than to say that paid servants committed the most of the crimes for the Northwest partners. It is the one blot against the most heroic figure in the colo- nixing of the West. And the trick fooled no one. Not a voyageur, not a trader, flinched in his loyalty 187 The Conquest of the Great Northwest to the Northwest Company. Not a man would proceed west with the canoes for the Hudson's Bay officers. The Lords of the North had fallen and their glory had departed; but not a man of the service faltered in his loyalty. It was a loyalty strong as the serf for the feudal baron. From Fort William, Selkirk's soldiers radiated to the Northwest posts of Rainy Lake and Minnesota. Peter Qrant wag brought prisoner from Fond du Lac for obstructing the Selkirk scout, Lajimoniere. At the Pic, at Michipicoten, at Rainy Lake, the De Meuron soldiers appear and the Northwest forts sur- render without striking a blow. Then Captain D'Orsonnens sets out in December with twenty-six men for Red River. He is guided by J. Ba'tiste Lajimoniere and the white man who had lived among the Ojibbways Tanner. They lead him along the iced river bed to Rainy Lake, then strike straight westward through the snow-padded forests of Min- nesota for the swamp lands that drain to Red River near the Boundary. All travel by snowshoes, bivouacking under the stars. Then a dash down Red River by night march on the ice and the Selkirk forces are within striking distance of Fort Douglas by the first week of January, 1817. Wind and 1 88 The Coining of the Colonists weather favor them. A howling blizzard enshrouds earth and air. They go westward to the Assini- boine in the wooded region now known as St. James and Silver Heights. Here in the woods, hidden by the snowstorm, they construct scaling ladders. On the night of January loth, the storm is still raging. D'Orsonnens rushes his men across to Fort Douglas. Up with the scaling ladders and over the walls are the De Meurons before the Nor'Westers know they are attacked! As fell Fort William, so falls Fort Douglas without a blow or the loss of a life. J. Ba'tiste learns with joy that his wife, Marie Ga- boury, has not been murdered at all but is living safe under old Chief Peguis' protection across Red River, and the French woman's amazement may be guessed when there appeared at the hut where Peguis had left her, the wraith of the husband whom she had 1 >rl irvr< 1 dead for two years. Tanner, the other scout, stays in D'Orsonnens' service till Selkirk comes. The dispossessed Nor'Westers scatter to Lake Winnipeg. After them marches D'Orsonnens to Winnipeg River, where Alex McDonell is trying to bribe the Indians to sink Selkirk's boats when he comes in the spring. The De Meurons capture the post at Winnipeg River, and send coureurs to recall the scattered colonists. Alex McDonell escapes to the interior. 189 The Conquest of the Great Northwest All the while, from June igth to January iQth, the colonists had been wandering like the children of Israel in a wilderness of woes. When they had been driven to Lake Winnipeg by the massacre, they had begged Mr. Bird of the Saskatchewan to forward them to Hudson Bay, whence they could take ship for England, but Bird pointed out there was no boat coming to the bay in 1816 large enough to carry two hundred people. To go to the bay for the winter would be to risk death from starvation. Better win- ter on the good hunting and fishing grounds of Lake Winnipeg. It was well the majority took his advice, for the Company ships this year were locked in the bay by the ice. Cameron, the Northwest prisoner, and Colin Robertson, his inveterate enemy, were both icebound at Moose. The few settlers who pushed forward to the bay like the widow McLean, wife of the murdered settler, passed a winter of semi- starvation at the forts. Bird set the colonists fishing for the winter, and they erected huts at Jack River. Here, then, came De Meuron soldiers in the spring of 1817, to lead the wandering colonists back to Red River; and to Red River came Selkirk by way of Minnesota in the sum- mer. For the first time the nobleman now saw the Promised Land to which he had blazed a trail of suffering and sacrifice and blood and devotion 190 The Coming of the Colon ixfx for Earth's Dispossessed of all the world! D'Orson- nens had given out a few packs of seed, grain and potatoes to each settler. Rude little thatch-roofed cabins had been knocked together with furniture ex- temporized of trees and stumps. Round each cabin there swayed in the yellow July light to the rippling prairie wind, tiny checker- board patches of wheat and barley and oats, first fruits of infinite sacrifice, of infinite suffering, of infinite despair type for all time, sacrificial and sacred, of the Pioneer! For the first time Selkirk now saw the rolling prairie land, the rolling prairie world, the seas of unpeopled, fence- less, limitless fields, free as air, broad as ocean ! To these prairie lands had he blazed the Trail. Was it worth while the suffering on that Trail, the ig- nominy he was yet to suffer for that Trail? Did Selkirk foresee where that Trail was to lead; how the multitudinous feet of Life's Lost, Earth's Dispos- sessed, would trample along that Trail to New Life, N\-\v Hope, New Freedom? Faith in God, confi- dence in high destiny, had been to the children of Israel through their wilderness, a cloud of shade by day, a pillar of fire by night. Had Selkirk the com- fort of the same vision, confidence of the same high di-stiny for his people? I cannot answer that. From the despairing tone of his letters, I fear not. All we know is that like all other great leaders he made 191 The Conquest of the Great Northwest mistakes, and the consequences of those mistakes hounded him to his death. In August, he gathered the people round him on the spot where St. John's Cathedral now stands. He shook hands with each and learned from each his tale of suffering. To each he gave one hundred acres of land free of all charges, as compensation for their hardships. Then he gave them two more lots. "This lot on which we stand, shall be for your church," he said. "That lot south of the creek shall be for your school; and in memory of your native parish, this place shall be called Kildonan." To render the title of the colonists' land doubly secure, Selkirk had assembled the Swampy Crees and Saul- teaux on July i8th and made treaty with them for Red River on condition of a quit-rent of one hundred pounds of tobacco. To Lajimoniere, the scout, Sel- kirk assigned land in the modern St. Boniface, that brought to Marie Gaboury's children, and her children's children, untold wealth in the town lots of a later day. Tanner, the stolen white boy, Selkirk tried to recompense by advertising for his relatives in American papers. A brother in Ohio answered the advertisement and came to Red River to meet the long lost boy. The restoration was fraught with just such disaster as usually attends the sudden transplanting of any wild thing. Tanner, the white 192 The Coming of the Colonists boy, had become Tanner the grown Indian. He left his Indian wife and married a Christian girl of Detroit. The union was agony to them both. Tan- ner was a man at war in his own nature neither white man nor Indian. In a quarrel at the Sault some years later, he was accused of shooting a man and fled from arrest to the swamps. When spring came, his skeleton was found. He had either sui- cided in despair, or wounded himself by accident and perished of starvation in the swamp. Many years afterwards the confession of a renegade sol- dier in Texas cleared Tanner's reputation of all guilt. The soldier himself had committed the murder, and poor Tanner had fled from the terrors of laws he did not understand like a hunted Ishmaelite to the wilderness. To-day, some of his descendants are among the foremost settlers of Minnesota. In May, 1817, Royal Proclamation had com- manded both companies to desist from disorders and restore each other's property. William Bachelor Coltman and Major Fletcher came as Royal Com- missioners to restore order and take evidence. Fort William passed back to the Nor'Westers and a new (Gibraltar arose on the banks of the Assiniboine. Urgent interests called Selkirk East. Trials were pending in Upper and Lower Canada against both 193 The Conquest of the Great Northwest companies for the disorders. With Tanner as guide to the Mississippi, Selkirk evaded the plots of the Nor'Westers by going south to St. Louis, east to New York, and north to Canada. Volumes have been written and heads cracked and reputations broken on the justice or injustice of the famous trials between the Nor'Westers and Hud- son's Bay. Robertson, the Hudson's Bay man, was to be tried for seizing Gibraltar. The Nor'Westers were charged with being accomplices to the massacre of Seven Oaks. Selkirk was sued for the imprison- ment of Daniel MacKenzie and the resistance offered to the Canadian sheriff at Fort William. In every case except the two civil actions against Selkirk, the verdict was "not guilty." Whether the judges were bribed by the Nor'W T esters as the Hudson's Bay charged, or the juries were "unduly influenced" by Selkirk's passionate address and pamphlets, as the Nor'Westers declared I do not purpose discussing here. Selkirk was sentenced to pay 1,500 for im- prisoning Daniel MacKenzie and 500 for resisting the sheriff. As for the verdicts, I do not see how a Canadian court could have given a verdict favorable to the Hudson's Bay, without repudiating rights of Canadian possession; or a verdict favorable to the Nor'Westers, without repudiating the laws of the British Empire. The truth is the old royal charter 194 The Coming of the Colonists had created a condition of dual authority that was responsible for all the train of disasters. It was unofficially conveyed to the leaders of both com- panies by the British Government that if they could see their way to union, it would remove the necessity of the British Government determining which com- pany possessed the alleged rights. As for Selkirk's fines, they were paid jointly by the Hudson's Bay Company and himself. William Williams, a swashbuckler military man, is appointed at 1,000 a year to succeed Semple and force the trade so that the Nor'Westers will be compelled to sue for union and accept what terms are offered. More men are to be sent up from Montreal to capture Athabasca. The Rev. John West is appointed clergyman of Red River in 1819, at 100 a year. Annuities of 50 each are granted for life to Semple's two sisters. Pensions are granted the widows of settlers killed at Seven Oaks to the widows Mc- Lean, Donovan, Coan and two others. Oman Nor- quay, forbear of Premier Norquay of modern Mani- toba, is permitted to quit the Company service and join the colony. So are the Gunn brothers and the Banncrmans, and the Mathesons, and the Isbisters, and the Inksters, and the Hardisties, and the Spencers, and the Fletts, and the Birds. Selkirk has gone to France for his health, harried and weary '95 The Conquest of the Great Northwest of the thankless strife. On November 8, 1820, he dies. The same year, passes away his great op- ponent in trade and aim Sir Alexander MacKenzie, in Scotland. The year that these two famous leaders and rivals died, there was born in Scotland the next great leader of the next great era in the West, the nation building era that was to succeed the pioneer- ing Donald Smith, to become famous as Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal. Notes to Chapter XXVIII. The data for this chapter are gathered from so many sources, it is almost impossible to give except in a bibliographical list. Every book or pamphlet written on this era I possess in my library and consulted, and I may add ignored, for the reason that all are so absurdly partisan, either a rabid defense of the H. B. C., making no mention of the faults of the English, or a rabid attack on the H. B. C. giving not a jot of the most damning evidence against theN. W. C. While consulting all secondary authorities on this chapter, I have relied solely on the confidential reports to the British Government which I obtained from the Records Office by special permission of the Colonial Secretary. These include Sherbrooke's report to Bathurst, Coltman's confidential sum- mary to Sherbrooke, the letters which the N. W. C. showered upon the Home Government, the memorials with letters ap- pended which the H. B. C. filed. From these sources I got the letters from which all direct quotations are made, such, for instance, as the plan to assassinate Selkirk, which tells against the Nor' Westers; or the trickery with Daniel MacKenzie, which tells against Selkirk. Nor have I quoted the worst of these letters; for instance, the details where Alex McDonell plans the death of Selkirk. Alex McDonell must not be taken too seriously as representing the Nor'Westers' sentiment, for from the time his brother Eneas was killed by a H. B. C. man, Alex McDonell was no longer sane on the subject. He was a High- lander gone mad with revenge. Nor have I quoted the evidence of an H. B. C. man about the N. W. C. partners walking over the field of Seven Oaks cracking jokes about the mangled bodies of the slain. The witnesses who gave such evidence were 196 The Coming of the Colonists ignorant men with inflamed minds, and in addition I am sorry to add liars! In the first place, the bodies had been buried before the partners arrived. In the second, though the wolves tore the bodies up, Dr. McLoughlin and Simon Fraser were not the kind of men to exult ghoulishly over the scalped corpses of dead white men. It shows the absurd lengths to which fanaticism had run when such testimony was credited, and is of a piece with that other vulgar slander that the N. W. C. intended to turn the Half-breeds loose among the women and children. It may be objected that "trickery" is too strong a term re- garding the treatment of old Daniel MacKenzie, especially in view of the fact he himself was avowedly unreliable. The evidence must speak for itself. MacKenzie had been induced to write letters to the wintering partners advising them to turn things over to Selkirk. When his name was signed, MacDonell undertook to change the letter. Here is one with MacDonell's changes in brackets: To RODERICK MACKENZIE Fort William on Lake Superior. Sept. 1816. DEAR RODERICK (Sir): By a canoe that returned (to the interior) from near the Mountain Portage, you must have heard the events that has taken place here. Mr. McGillivray and all the partners includ- ing myself, were made prisoners. All the gentlemen are sent down prisoners to take their trial at York as aiding, abetting and instigating the murder, the dreadful massacre. The N. W. C, is ruined beyond a hope. (The packs here will not go down nor will goods be permitted to enter the interior, the Red River being declared in a state of rebellion.) The massacre that has taken place on Red River is the (principal) cause of all this. Lord Selkirk may (perhaps) soften matters in your favor provided you will (make your submission to him in time and) Tionestly own all that you know about the instigators of this horrid affair. I have his Lordship's command to tell you so (I have heard as much, though not direct from his Lordship) and I would advise you as your own and the friend of your deceased father to (come forward immediately with some proposal to save your- self) submit to his Lordship's pleasure. You should also explain to these deluded half breeds (young men whom you may see and the unfortunate half breeds who were guilty of sucn ex- tremities) that it was the ambition of others that rendered us all miserable. That is the real truth. (I am happy to learn that you endeavored to save Gov. Semple's life. Tnis is much in your favor. . . . The only advice I have to give is to submit, etc. 197 The Conquest of the Great Northwest I have some thirty pages of transcripts on the Athabasca Campaign this year of 1816. Space does not permit the full story of the first campaign. The second campaign, Colin Rob- ertson tells in the next chapter. I have also omitted the story of Keveney's murder. It is not an integral part of the struggle. Keveney had been Selkirk's recruiting agent in Ireland, and was hurrying from Albany to join Selkirk at Red River in Septem- ber, 1816. He proved a very brute to his men, lying in state while they toiled at the oar, then at night sticking a bayonet in any poor guard who chanced to fall asleep on duty. His men deserted him. Keveney was captured by the N. W. C. on Winnipeg River and treated as a gentleman among the officers. This treatment he abused by trying to escape. The N. W. C. then handcuffed him, but what were they to do with him? They did not want him in Red River as a spy, and Selkirk held Fort William. They ordered an Indian and a paid soldier (de Reinhard) to take him out in a boat and kill him on the way up Winnipeg River. The Indian shot him. Reinhard finished the murder by running a sword through his body. This sort of high-handed ruffianism should be remembered when considering Selkirk's course at Fort William. Reinhard was carried prisoner to Montreal for this, but there was no conviction. The exact number of soldiers employed by Selkirk is given as one hundred and forty. The other sixty men were voyageurs. I have purposely omitted the name of another McDonell in this chapter namely the man who succeeded Governor Semple as commander of Fort Douglas for two days before the surren- der. There are so many McDonells in this chapter and all re- lated that I have avoided mentioning any but the main actors. All of these who survived the fights finally retired to live in Glengarry on the Ottawa and in Cornwall. One may guess with so many members of the fiery clan on opposing sides, how old age arguments must have waxed hot. The McDonells of Toronto are kin of this clan. Governor Semple's successor was known as " grasshopper McDonell." Many writers state no colonists were killed at Seven Oaks. Nevertheless, five widows were pensioned, one poor widow on condition she could prove her claim, as another woman claimed the pension of the deceased settler. Semple had been employed only a year when he met death. Yet the company pensioned his two sisters for life, though the H. B. C. was on the verge of bankruptcy. Semple's father left Philadelphia for London when the Revolutionary War broke out. 198 The Coming of the Colonists The N. W. C. say that Selkirk meant from the first to attack Fort William. This is nonsense. The letters sent by Laji- moniere warned Robertson to prepare for him in Minnesota. The letter was stopped by the N. W. C. and found by Selkirk in a secret press at Fort William. Did the Nor' Westers intend to attack Fort Douglas? They say not, but between attacking a fort and starving it out is not wide difference. In most of the evidence it is shown that Boucher ordered Semple in French, Semple answering in English. I have given it all in English. A full account of Seven Oaks will be found in the novel, "Lords of the North," with free rendering of Pierre's song. The fate of the Deschamps will be found in "The Story of the Trapper." Coltman's official report is marvelously impartial, consider- ing he had formerly been an agent for the H. B. C. Major Fletcher did not count. Tradition and private letters of Sher- brooke relate that the major was scarcely sober during the journey of investigation. Full account of Tanner's life will be found in the Minnesota Hist. Society's Collections. Tanner was the son of a clergyman on the Ohio. He was stolen by wandering Shawnees when barely eight years old, and sold to a woman chieftain of the Ottawas at the Sault. Here at an early age he married a native girl. When his brother found him at Red River, Tanner was averse to going back to civilization: He hated the white man clothes, which his brother induced him to wear, and ap- peared at Mackinac a grotesque figure with coat sleeves and trouser legs foreshortened. The Wisconsin Society's Historical Collection contains an account of him at this period. At Macki- nac, his squaw wife, of whom he was very fond, refused to goon with him to the white man's land, and she remained at Macki- nac. Poor Tanner's stay in civilization was short. He came back to the Sault with a white wife. The man, of whose death he was accused, was the brother of Henry Schoolcraft at the Sault. The quarrel was over attentions to a voung daughter of Tanner's. As stated ip the main story, a blackguard soldier, not Tanner, was the real murderer. ructions from Governor Semple to Colin Robertson. FORT DOUGLAS, 12 April, 1816. ROBERTSON, Esq., r: I heard with pleasure of yr. having taken possession of >rt occupied by the N. W. C. at the Forks of Red River. 199 It was a measure on wh. I was fully determined and wh. was not only justified but imperiously demanded by the conduct and avowed hostilities of our implacable opponents. With regard to intercepting the despatches of the N. W. C. it was a step arising out of the former and wh. has happily fur- nished its own justification to the fullest extent. A more com- plete disclosure of plans of deliberate villainy has never yet met my eye and I can only regret that such schemes of pillage, burning and murder should have been planned and be so nearly on the point of execution by men belonging to the same coun- try as ourselves. I am, Sir, Yours sincerely, (Signed) ROBERT SEMPLE. Governor Semple to Duncan Cameron FORT DOUGLAS, 31 March, 1816. Sir: I regret that an indisposition subsequent to my arrival here has prevented my addressing you till now. I think it my duty to tell you as soon as possible the charges alleged against you and wh. I assure you will demand yr. most serious consideration., ist. You are accused of seducing His Majesty's subjects settled on Red River and the servants of the Earl of Selkirk to desert and defraud their master and one to whom the former were largely indebted. 2d. Of collecting, harbouring and encouraging Half-breeds and vagabonds with the avowed purpose of destroying an Infant British Colony. 3d. Through the means of these men thus collected of firing upon, wounding and causing the death of His Majesty's sub- jects defending their property in their own houses. 4th. Through the means of these men headed by yr. clerks or the clerks of the N. W. C. such as Cuthbert Grant, Charles Hesse, Bostonais Pangman, William Shaw and others of burning a fort, a mill, sundry houses, carts, ploughs and instruments of agriculture belonging to the said infant colony. 5th. Of wantonly destroying English cattle brought here at an immense expense and of carrying off horses, dogs and other property to a large amount. The horses were collected in your own fort and distributed by yourself and your partner Mr. A. McDonnell, to those men who had most distinguished themselves in the above act of robbery and mischief. 6th. Of encouraging Indian tribes to make war upon Brit- ish subjects attempting to colonize, representing to them ac- 2OO The Coming of the Colonists cording to their ideas that cattlemen would spoil their lands and make them miserable, and expressing your hope they would never allow it. 7th. Without unnecessarily multiplying charges it appears now by your own letters that you were making every prepara- tion to renew the same atrocities this year, if possible on a more extensive scale, collecting the Half-Breeds from points still more distant than before and endeavoring to influence both their rage and avarice by every means in yr. power. You even breathe the pious wish that the Pilleurs may be excited against us here saying "they may make a very good booty if they only go cunningly to work." Such are the principal charges you will be called upon to answer. It would be easy but at present unnecessary to swell the catalogue with minor but serious accusations and however much a long residence here may induce you to consider them of small importance, depend upon it they will be viewed in a very different light by a British jury and a British public. The whole mass of intercepted papers now in my hands appears to disclose such wicked principles and transactions that I think it my duty to forward them to be laid before His Maj.'s ministers by the director of the Honourable, the H. B. C. I am preparing a letter to the agents and proprietors of the N. W. C. advising them of this my resolution and the motives wh. have determined me to it, a copy of wh. shall be handed to you meantime. I remain. Sir, ROBERT SEMPLE. D. CAMERON, Esq. 201 CHAPTER XXIX 1816-1821 BOTH COMPANIES MAKE A DASH TO CAPTURE ATHA- BASCA WHENCE CAME THE MOST VALUABLE FURS ROBERTSON OVERLAND TO MONTREAL, TRIED AND ACQUITTED, LEADS A BRIGADE TO ATHABASCA HE IS TRICKED BY THE NOR'- WESTERS, BUT TRICKS THEM IN TURN THE UNION OF THE COMPANIES SIR GEORGE SIMP- SON, GOVERNOR. IT WAS mid-winter before word that Fort Doug- las had fallen into the hands of the Nor'Westers and Fort William into the hands of Lord Sel- kirk, came to Colin Robertson icebound at Moose. Robertson was ever the stormy petrel of every fight one of those doughty heroes of iron strength who thought no more of tramping seven hundred miles on snowshoes for Christmas dinner with some com- rade of the wilds than town men think of a voyage across their own dining-room. Though he knew very well that the Half-breeds had threatened "to flay him alive," that the Indians had been bribed to scalp him, and that warrants were out in Montreal 202 Both Companies Make a Dash for his arrest in connection with the seizure of Gibral- tar from the Nor' Wester, Cameron Robertson did not hesitate for a moment. He set out on snowshoes for Montreal. Now that Selkirk was on the field, Robertson knew it would be a fight to the death. The company that captured Athabasca, whence came the wealth of furs, would be able to force the other to terms of union. To be sure, Sherbrooke, Governor General of Canada, had issued a Royal Proclamation com- manding peace; but Williams, the new Hudson's Bay governor, declared "the royal proclamation was all d - nonsense!" He "would drive every Nor'- Wester out of the country or perish in the attempt." On the Nor'Westers' side was equal defiance of the Proclamation. The most of the Northwest Eastern partners were either under bail or yet in confinement. Of their Western partners, Norman McLeod, the justice of the peace, was the ruling spirit; and his views of the Canadian Proclamation may be guessed from orders to his bullies in Athabasca: "Go it, my lads! Go it! You can do what you like here! There is no law in the Indian Territory!" Down to Montreal, then, came Colin Robertson, full of fight as an Irishman of Tipperary. "The effusions of the Nor'Westers might have staggered my resolution to come to Montreal," he writes in his 203 The Conquest of the Great Northwest letters of 1817 to officers of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany. " ' Robertson go to Montreal ! No! He may find his way to the States if we don't catch him!' Such was the language held forth at Sault Ste. Marie, Lake Superior, which had no other effect on me than calling forth a little caution. ... I was at the Sault when a fur trader made his appearance in a light canoe on his way from Red River to Montreal. With him, I embarked and arrived at the Lake of the Two Mountains on the nth of August, 1817. . . . As soon as the fur trader pushed off, I re- quested a Frenchman to furnish me with a small Indian canoe and two faithful Iroquois ... I embarked at midnight . . . and crossed the lake about an hour after sunrise. . . . M. de Lotbiniere . . . furnished me with a calash at eleven that night. ... I entered Montreal at five in the morning and drove to Dr. Monroe's, the least suspicious place, his profession. making early calls frequent. I was at once recognized by the doctor, who informed me that a partner of the North- West Company had apartments in the upper part of the house. I immediately muffled myself in my cloak and so entered. ... As soon as I had breakfast, I made my appearance in the streets of Montreal, where I was stared at by friends of the Nor'Westers as if I were a ghost . . . and my 204 Both 'Companies Make a Dash appearance gathered such a crowd, I was obliged to disappear inside a boarding house. . . . "The residences of the Nor'Westers in London and Montreal are splendid establishments, the re- sorts of the first in society, the benefit from this os- tentatious display of wealth being the friendship of k-.ua 1 authorities. . . . Even the prisons of Mon- treal are become places of public entertainment from the circumstance of yet holding some partners of the North-West Company. . . . Every other night, a ball or supper is given; and the Highland bagpipes utter the sound of martial music as if to deafen public censure. The most glaring instance of the Nor'Westers' contempt for law is their attempt to attract public notice by illuminating all the prison windows every night. Strangers will naturally ask: 'for what crimes are these gentlemen committed? For debt?' No ... for murder arson . . . robbery. . . . Our old friend, Mr. Astor, is here. . . . He is frequently in the society of the Nor'Westers . . . and feels very sore toward them about Astoria." Rol)ertson's letters then tell of his trial for the seizure of Gibraltar and his acquittal. He frankly hints that his lawyers had to bribe the Montreal judge to secure "a fair" hearing. So passed the yrar. In 1818 came Selkirk back from Red River 205 The Conquest of the Great Northwest to Montreal, who agreed with Robertson that the only way to force the Nor 'Westers to their knees was to send a second expedition to capture Athabasca, whence came the wealth of furs that enabled the rival Company to bribe the courts. In April, 1819, Rob- ertson set out with a flotilla of nineteen canoes from Ste. Anne's, each canoe with five French voyageurs, and went up the Ottawa across Lake Superior to Thunder Bay. "This place gave me a bad turn the other day," he writes. "The wind blew fresh but the swell was by no means high. - My Indians seemed reluctant to attempt the traverse. I imprudently or- dered them a glass of rum, when the whoop was im- mediately giyen ! In a moment, our canoe was in the swell. We came where a heavy sea was running. Here, we began to ship water. The guide ordered the bowman removed back to the second thwart. This lightened the head. An oilcloth was then thrown over the head of a canoe to avoid the break- ing of the sea. The silence that prevailed, when one of those heavy swells was rolling upon us, was truly appalling. Paddles were lifted and all watched the approach with perfect composure. Our steersman kept balancing the slender bark by placing her in the best position to the waves. . . . The moment the roller passed, every paddle was in the water, every nerve stretched to gain the land! Although 206 Both Companies Make a Dash two men were employed bailing out water, fifty yards more would have swamped us. ... From Lake Superior, the brigade passed up to the Lake of the Woods and Lake Winnipeg, where Rob- ertson was joined by the same John Clarke who had suffered defeat in Athabasca on the first expe- dition. Here the forces were increased to one hun- dred and thirty men by the refugees of the first bri- gade, who had escaped from the North. Robert- son's letter from this point gives some particulars of the first brigade's expulsion from Athabasca: "The Nor'Westers did not confine themselves to the seizure of persons and property. They adminis- tered an oath to our servants, threatening with star- vation and imprisonment if they did not comply, that for the space of three years these Hudson's Bay servants would not attempt to oppose the North- West Company. One of the guides, a witty rogue, who knew theology from the circumstance of his cousin being a priest, fell on a way of absolving his French countrymen from 'this oath ... to re- pair to the woods and cross themselves and ask pardon of their Maker for a false oath to a heretic; but some poor Scotchmen could not cheat their con- science so easily, and I have had to let them leave me on that account. . . . The Nor'Westers had kept as a deadly secret from 207 The Conquest of the Great Northwest the Indians all knowledge of the fact they had been beaten by Lord Selkirk. Robertson's next letter tells how the secret leaked out in Athabasca. Amidst the uproarious carousals of the Nor'Westers at Chip- pewyan, the Hudson's Bay captives were brought to the mess room to be the butt of drunken jokes. On one occasion, Norman McLeod bawled out a song in celebration of the massacre of settlers at Red River, of which each verse ended in this couplet: "The H. B. C. came up a hill, and up a hill they came, The H. B. C. came up the hill, but down they went again!" Roars of laughter were making the rafters ring when it suddenly struck one of the Hudson's Bay prisoners that the brutal jeer might be paid back in kind. " Y' hae niver asked me for a song," says the canny Hudson's Bay McFarlane to his Nor'West tormentor. "If agreeable, I hae a varse o' me ain compaesin'." "Silence, gentlemen," roars McLeod to the drunken roomful of partners and clerks and Indians. "Silence! Mr. McFarlane, your song." Remembering that the power of the Northwest Company with the Indians depended on the fright- ened savages being kept ignorant of Lord Selkirk's victories, the Hudson's Bay man's thin voice piped up these words to the same tune: 208 Both Companies Make a Dash "But Selkirk brave went up a hill, and to Fort William came, When in he popped and out from thence could not be driven a-g-a-i-n!" Before the last words had died in the appalling silence that fell on the rowdies, or the Indians could quite grasp what the song meant, McLeod had jumped from his chair yelling: "I'll give you a hundred guineas if you'll tell the name of the man who brought news of that here." But McFarlane had no wish to see some faithful coureur's back ripped open with the lash. "Tut- tut," says he, "a hundred guineas for twa lines of me ain compaesin' Extravagant, ftlr. McLeod, Sir!" October saw Robertson at last on the field of action in Athabasca. "Well may the Nor'Westers boast of success in the North," he writes. "Not an Indian dare speak to the Hudson's Bay. At Isle a la Crosse, a clerk and a few of our men were in a hut surrounded by the sentinels of our opponents. Apart from no intercourse with the Indians, they were thankful to be able to procure mere subsistence for themselves. All their fish nets and canoes had been destroyed by the Nor'Westers in prowling excursions. The only canoe on which their escape depended was hidden in a bedroom. No Indian dared to approach. The 209 The Conquest of the Great Northwest windows were covered by damaged table cloths. Wild fowl shot flying over the house had to be plucked with the door shut. . . . Not an Indian could be found. . . . As we voyaged up to Athabasca, we began firing and kept our men sing- ing a voyageur's song to let the Indians know we were passing." Finally, an Indian was seen hiding behind brush of the river bank, and was bribed to go and bring his tribe. The truth was told to the Chippewyans about the Nor'Westers' defeat on Red River and Lake Superior. Peace pipes were whiffed, and a treaty made. The consternation of the Nor'Westers when they saw Robertson, anjl Clarke whom they had abused in captivity three years before, now draw up on Ath- abasca Lake before Fort Chippewyan with a force of one hundred and thirty armed men, at once gave place to plots for the ruin of the intruders. Black, who had been the chief tormentor of Clarke, dashed down to the waterside shouting: "Mr. Robertson! Mr. Robertson! To avoid trouble, let me speak to our Indians before you land ! You are an honorable man give us justice!" "Honorable," roared the indignant Clarke, shak- ing the canoe in his wrath. "Justice be blanked! Did you give us justice when you hounded us out of Athabasca," and he followed the serenade up with 210 Both Companies Make a Dash a volley that brought the whole Northwest Company to the shore. Before trouble could brew, Robertson marshaled his men to the old Hudson's Bay quarters, and within a few days more than forty Indian tents had deserted from the Nor'Westers. Clarke was sent up Peace River for the winter. Robertson retained a force of one hundred men well equipped with arms and provisions to hold the fort at Lake Athabasca. "We had completed the fitting out of the Indians," he writes, "established our fisheries and closed the fall business when the loaded canoes of the North- west hunters began to arrive. Black, the Nor'- Wester, is now in his glory, leading his bullies. Every evening they come over to our fort in a body, calling on our men to come out and fight pitched battles. One of their hair-pulling bullies got his challenge ac- cepted and an unmerciful thrashing to boot from a little Frenchman of ours Boucher. Mr. Simon Mc- Gillivray, the chief partner of the Nor 'Westers, who is with Mr. McLeod, was rather forward on this occa- sion. Having a strong force, he approached too near. I ordered our men to arms and his party made a pre- cipitate retreat. Our men are in high spirits. The Indians have regained confidence in us and boldly leave the Nor'Westers every day for the Hudson's Bay." Now that their winter hunters had come in, and 211 The Conquest of the Great Northwest they were stronger, the Nor'Westers were not to be so easily routed from Athabasca. Robertson's next let- ters are dated from the Nor'Westers' fort. He had been captured within ten days of his arrival. "You . . . will perceive from the date of this letter, the great reverse. ... If I were the only sufferer it might be borne, but when I reflect on the conse- quences to the Hudson's Bay Company and to Lord Selkirk, it almost drives me mad. . . . On the morning of the nth of October, about an hour before day, my servant entered my bedroom and informed me a canoe had just arrived with the body of a fisher- man accidentally shot the night before. Sleep was out of the question. I rose and ordered an early breakfast, but just as we were sitting down one of the men entered with word that a Northwest bully had come and was daring little Boucher to fight. As was my custom, I put a pistol in my pocket and going toward the fellow saw Mr. Simon McGillivray, the Northwest partner. . . . Just then eight or ten Nor'Westers made a rush from con- cealment behind. ... It was all a trick. . . . I was surrounded. ... In the struggle my pistol got entangled and went off. ... At the sound, they rushed on me and dragged me to the beach. ... I freed myself and laid about with my empty pistol. . . . When thrown in the 212 Both Companies Make a Dash canoe, I tried to upset and escape by swimming, but Black put a pistol to my head till we arrived at the Nor'Westers' fort. . . . Landing, I dashed for their Indian Hall and at once . . . called on the Indians, representing that the cowardly attack was an effort to reduce them to slavery; but Black rushed up to stop me. Seizing a fork on the hall table I kept the vagabond at bay. I loaded him with every abuse and evil name I could think of, then to the Indians : ' Do not abandon the Hudson's Bay on this account! There are brave men at our fort to protect you! That fellow was not brave enough to seize me; he stole me, and he would now rob you of your hunt if it were not for the young men I have left in my fort. Tell Clarke not to be discouraged. We will be revenged for this, but not like wolves prowling in the bushes. We will capture them as we captured them at Fort William, with the sun shin- ing on our faces.' At this moment, the Indian chief came up and squeezing my hand, whispered, 'Never mind, white man! All right! We are your friends.' . . . This closed the turbulent scene. . . . Figure my feelings . . . tumbled by an act of illegal violence from the summit of hope . . . confidence of friends withdrawn ... all my prospects for life blasted . . . mere personal danger is secondary now I am in despair." 213 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Simon McGillivray, Black, Mclntosh, McLeod, in a word, the most influential partners in the North- west Company were at Fort Chippewyan when Rob- ertson was captured; but the post was in charge of that John George McTavish, who had helped to trick Astor out of his fur post on the Columbia. It was probably the ruinous lawsuits against the Nor'- Westers that now restrained their savage followers from carrying out their threat "to scalp Robertson and feed him to the dogs," but the Hudson's Bay leader was clapped into a small room with log walls, under guard day and night. He was compelled to state his simplest wants in a formal daily letter. Pen and paper, the clothes on his back, a jack-knife in his pocket that was Robertson's entire parapher- nalia during his captivity; but for all that, he out- witted the enemy. One of his written requests was that a Nor'Wester go across to the Hudson's Bay fort under flag of truce for a supply of liquor. The Nor'Westers were delighted at the chance to spy on the Hudson's Bay fort, and doubly delighted at the prospect of their captive fuddling himself hors de combat with drink. It was an easy trick to give a rival his quietus with whiskey. Taking long strips of writing paper, the Hudson's Bay man invented a cipher code in numbers from one to six hundred, some well known trading phrase 214 Both Companies Make a Dash placed opposite each number. This he rolled like a spool, so tight it was waterproof, sealed each end with wax, knocked the bung out of the whiskey barrel, bored a tiny hole beside the bung with his jackknife, hooked a piece of twine through one end to the sealed message, the other to the inner end of the plug, thrust the paper inside the liquor and plugged up the hole. Then dusting all over with mud from the floor of the cabin, he complained the whiskey was musty diluted with rum. He requested that it be sent back with orders for his men to cleanse the barrel. Before sending it back, the Nor'Westers actually sealed the barrel "contents unknown." But what was Rob- ertson's disgust when the men of the fort instead of cleansing this barrel, sent back a fresh one! Again he put his wits to work. Sending for a volume of Shakespeare's plays, he wrote in fine pencil opposite Falstaff's name: "Examine the first ki-#." The messenger, who went for the weekly supply, carried the Shakespeare back to the Hudson's Bay fort. A week passed. No sign came from his men. Exasperated to the point of risk, Robertson tried a last expedient. The next week, the messenger carried an open letter to Robertson's men. It was inspected by his captors but allowed to pass. It read: "To amuse myself, I am trying to throw into verse some of Falstaff's good sayings. There is one 215 The Conquest of the Great Northwest expression where he blows out, 'I am not a wit but the cause of wit in others.' This sounds harsh. Please send exact words as in the play." No doubt the Northwest partners thought poor Robertson far gone with liquor when he took to versifying. Back came word with the week's supplies, stating that the volume of Shakespeare had been carried off to the fishery by one of the traders; but "would Mr. Rob- ertson please let his men know if he wished the fol- lowing traders to have the following supplies" a string of figures conveying the joyful news that the cypher had been found; the Hudson's Bay fort was on guard against surprise; the men were in good spirits; the Indians loyal; all things prosperous. For eight months a prisoner in a small room, Rob- ertson directed the men of his own fort by means of the whiskey kegs, sending word of all secrets he could learn in the enemy's camp, checkmating every move of the Nor'Westers among the Indians. In vain, he urged his followers to sally out and rescue him. The Hudson's Bay traders were not willing to risk an- other such massacre as on Red River. Immunity bred carelessness. In the month of May a Nor'- Wester, spying through crevices of the logs, caught Robertson sealing up the bung in the whiskey keg. Swords and pistol in hand, the angry partners burst into the room with torrents of abuse that Robertson 216 Both Companies Make a Dash was quite able to return. He was too dangerous a man to keep prisoner. The Nor'Westers decided to ship him out of the country on pain of assassination if he dared to return. No doubt Robertson smiled. His own coureurs had long since been sent speeding over prairie and swamp for Red River to warn the Hudson's Bay governor, Williams, to catch the North- west fur brigade when the canoes would be running the rapids of the Saskatchewan in June. Of the forty Nor'Westers conducting the June brigade to Montreal, half a dozen were directors. "I was embarked with Simon McGillivray," Rob- ertson writes. "At Isle a la Crosse . . . seeing the strong rapids before us, I threw off my cloak as was my custom when running rapids. . . . What was my horror when I perceived our canoe swept out of its track into a shute over the rocks. . . . Our steersman shouted, 'My God, we are all lost.' . . . The canoe upset. . . . I at- tempted to swim ashore but the strong eddies drew me under the falls where I found Mr. Simon Mc- Gillivray and two or three others clinging to the gun'els of the canoe. . . . The canoe swept on down the current and Mr. Shaw, one of the partners, caught us below." What was almost an escape through an accident evidently suggested to Robert- son's mind that it was not absolutely necessary he 217 The Conquest of the Great Northwest should be deported out of the country against his will. At Cumberland House, where the brigade camped for a night, there was a Hudson's Bay as well as a Northwest post. Robertson asked leave to say good-by to his old friends, but no sooner was he inside the gates of the Hudson's Bay post than bolts were shot and every man of the ten inside the palisades, armed ready to fire if the Nor'Westers approached. "I have escaped," he writes, "but not agreeable to my feelings. . . . However my friends may applaud the act, my conscience tells me I have not done right in breaking my parole. . . . However, it is all over now. ... At half past ten in the morning, the Northwest canoes pushed off from the beach without me." Where the Saskatchewan empties into Lake Win- nipeg are rough ledges of rock known as Grand Rapids. Here, it was usual to lighten loads, passen- gers landing to walk across the portage, the voyageurs running the canoes down full swirl to a camp below the rapids. Robertson knew that Williams, the Hudson's Bay governor from Red River, would be waiting for the Northwest brigade at this point. Barely had his captors' canoes paddled away from Cumberland House, when Robertson launched out on their trail far enough behind to escape notice, bound for the exciting rendezvous of Grand Rapids. 218 Both Companies Make a Dash "In paddling along," he writes, "we were suddenly interrupted with a shout 'Canoe ahead!' . . . A shot was fired. . . . We arranged our pistols. The canoe was plainly approaching us. What shall be done? If these are enemies, the water is the safest place for defense. It was a moment of anxiety. As the canoe came nearer, a stranger stood up, waved his hat and shouted, 'Glorious news! Five North- West partners captured at Grand Rapids Shaw, Mclntosh, Campbell, McTavish and Fro- bisher taken! I am sent to meet Mr. Robertson!' We at once shaped our course to the canoe when our voyageurs struck up a song the men of both canoes yelling a cheer at each chorus." At eleven on the morning of July 3oth, Robertson crossed the portage of Grand Rapids. He found himself in the midst of a stirring scene. Strung across the river at the foot of the rapids were barges mounted with swivels. On the bank lay the entire year's output of Athabasca furs, the poor French voyageurs huddling together, the loudest bully cowed; and apart from the camp in the windowless lodge of an old French hunter, were the captured Northwest partners surrounded by the guard of a hundred De Meuron soldiers under Governor Williams. This was a turning of the tables with a vengeance. As Williams blurted out in a gasconade striding forward to welcome 219 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Robertson, "two could play at the capturing busi- ness." And a sorry thing "the capturing business" proved. Robertson does not give any details. He is evidently both ashamed of the episode and sorry; but the ac- count is found in the journals of the Nor'Westers. Anxious to rescue Robertson, the Hudson's Bay governor had his barges strung across the river and his soldiers in ambush along the trail of the portage, when the unsuspecting Athabasca brigade, laden with furs to the water line, glided down the Saskatch- ewan. The canoes arrived in three detachments on the 1 8th, and 2oth, and 3oth of June. Rapids be- hind and pointed swivels before, the voyageurs were easy victims, surrendering to the soldiers at once. It was another matter with the partners. Both Hud- son's Bay and Nor'Westers knew these lawless raids would be condemned by the courts; but each side also knew if it could capture and hold the other out of the Athabasca for a single year, the excluded rival would be ruined. Frobisher and Campbell, accompanie'd by two serv- ants, were the first partners to set out across the portage. Half way over, a movement in the grass caught their attention, and before they could speak they were surrounded by fifteen Hudson's Bay soldiers with pointed bayonets. Frobisher was a 220 Both Companies Make a Dash man of enormous strength and violent temper. No Nor'Wester had exercised more wanton cruelty over Hudson's Bay captives than he. As he saw him- self suddenly looking into the barrel of a Hudson's Bay gun, he had involuntarily knocked aside the muzzle and doubled his fist for a blow, when sharp bayonet prods in the small of his back sent him along the path at a run. The other partners as they came were captured in the same summary way. Cooped up in the hunter's lodge at the foot of the rapids, they demanded of Governor Williams his warrant for such proceedings. "Warrant?" roared the Hudson's Bay governor. "What warrant had you when you held Robertson captive all last winter in Athabasca? What warrant had you for flogging Clarke out of the country two years ago? Talk to me of your Royal Proclama- tions of peace! I don't care a curse for your royal proclamations. I rely on the charter of the Hud- son's Bay Company. Your governor of Canada is a d - rascal ! He is bribed by your Northwest gold ! Warrants indeed! Warrants are d - nonsense in this country! Out of this country you go. I'll drive out every Nor'Wester or die in the attempt." In the midst of the tornado, some excitement arose from Mclntosh, a Northwest partner, who was ill and had run the rapids with his canoemen, jumping 221 The Conquest of the Great Northwest overboard and trying to swim ashore. Two Hud- son's Bay canoemen pursued, caught him by the scruff of the neck and towed him ashore. Satisfied that he had captured all the partners in this brigade, Williams at once released the clerks and voyageurs with their cargoes of furs to proceed to Montreal. As the canoemen walked out of the hunter's cabin past the sentry, Frobisher beside himself with rage at the governor's rating attempted to follow. He was clubbed to the ground. He hurled the full force of his herculean strength at his assailant. This time, the gun-stock struck him on the head. It is said from that moment he became so violently insane that he had to be kept under guard of two personal servants, Turcotte and Lepine. During the week that Wil- liams waited at Grand Rapids for the coming of Rob- ertson, the Northwest captives were kept on an island in midstream, forbidden even to leave their tent. One night, the partner Mclntosh, succeeded in rolling himself out under the tent flap to the rear. Crawling to that side of the island farthest from the sentries, he bound two or three floating logs together in a raft and with a dead branch as a sweep, succeeded in escaping across the river. When he was missed in the morning, William, the Hudson's Bay governor, ordered his Indian scouts out "to take Mclntosh dead or alive," but Indian friends faithfully concealed the 222 ' Both Companies Make a Dash Nor'Wester. He was recaptured by force the next winter. When Colin Robertson came down the Saskatche- wan in his canoe on the 3oth of June, instead of being a prisoner as he had expected, he was one of a party of one hundred and thirty Hudson's Bay men to con- duct the captured Northwest partners across Lake Winnipeg to Norway House. Here, Robertson re- mained. Governor Williams took the prisoners on to York Factory on Hudson's Bay. The question was what to do with the prisoners? At any cost, they must be kept out of Athabasca. That would effect the ruin of the Northwest Company in a year, but the Hudson's Bay Company would not thank Williams for landing them in any more lawsuits by illegal acts, and they could not be taken to Montreal. Shaw and Campbell and McTavish the same Mc- Tavish who had sent Astor's men packing from the Columbia were treated as prisoners of honor in the main house of York Fort at Hudson's Bay and allowed to exercise on the lead roof of the building. On the 3oth of August came Franklin, the explorer, with letters of introduction to both Northwest and Hudson's Bay traders. It was suggested by Frank- lin that the Northwest partners be sent home to England by the boat that had brought him out. Shaw and McTavish sailed as steerage passengers. 223 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Campbell chose to go down to the end of James Bay and overland to Canada, where the story of his ad- ventures ran like wildfire; but the Hudson's Bay governor went back to the interior without leaving any instructions as to Frobisher. Either the Com- pany would not forgive his cruel treatment of Hud- son's Bay servants, or it was unsafe to release him in his violent condition. He was confined in a dilapidated outhouse where rain formed pools of water on the mud floor, with no protection against the cold but the clothes on his back and a three- point blanket. With him were the servants, Tur- cotte and Lepine. His violent ravings and maniacal struggles gradually gave place to a great depression. A servant of the fort took pity on the three prisoners and began smuggling extra rations at night through the iron-barred window. From this time, Benjamin Frobisher planned a desperate escape, saving at the cost of physical strength food from their daily allowance for the in- land voyage. His men expostulated. A voyage in- land so late meant certain death. It was a pitch dark night on the 3oth of September. Frobisher and his men broke gaol, coaxed the friendly Hud- son's Bay man to give them three extra pairs of moc- casins and mits, picked up an old fish net, with a piece of deerskin to act as tent, and clambered over 224 Both Companies Make a Dash the palisades. Winter had set in early. The rain- swollen river was cold as ice, but in the three emaci- ated fugitives plunged, and swam to the far shore where there chanced to rock an old canoe. With the help of the tide, they made ten miles that night. Frobisher began to recover courage, singing wildly and paddling buoyant as a school boy, irresponsible as a maniac. Hudson's Bay fur brigades were still passing down the river. The three Nor'Westers passed these at night with muffled paddles, keeping to the far side of the stream. At intervals were abandoned hunter's cabins. Here, the three would take refuge for a night, leaving their net set in the river for fish. The pemmican saved from the allow- ance at the fort and the fish caught at night were the only food. By the igth of October, they had passed the Hudson's Bay post, now called Oxford House, half way between Hudson Bay and the Sas- katchewan. The nights now became bitterly cold, and there were no more old lodges only a wind- break made of the canoe and the deerskin. Frob- isher had become apparently quite sane, but provi- sions were running low, and he was visibly feebler each day. The river here widened to a labryinth of winding lakes, and the men kept losing themselves, missing in the blinding rains the poles stuck up here and 225 The Conquest of the Great Northwest there to mark the way. They were wasting time, and it was a race against death. When they arose on October 23rd, six inches of snow lay on the ground, and shore ice was so thick they could not break it with their paddles. The canoe had to be left behind and the march continued by land. At the end of that week, there were only two pounds of pemmican left, and the men begged Frobisher to give himself up at the Hudson's Bay post of Norway House near Lake Winnipeg, but Frobisher bade them push on. There would be Indians at Lake Winnipeg. By a curious perversity of weather, a thaw now came, and they found themselves at Lake Winnipeg before open water without a canoe. Whether they waited here with an Indian camp until the ice would bear them, or followed the north shore of the lake on foot, cannot be told from Frobisher' s disjointed journal. Their moccasins were worn to shreds, their feet bleeding, their only food the bit of deer- skin and tatters of buffalo hide stuck up on the bushes as trail marks by the Indians. Staggering through snow and water to their waists, tripped and tangled by windfall, losing themselves in the autumn storms, the three men were now barely conscious. About the third week of November, Frobisher could walk no farther, and the brave Half-breeds, who could have saved their own lives by deserting him 226 Both Companies Make a Dash long ago, carried him by turns on their backs. Such conduct needs no comment. On the 2oth of No- vember, they were only two days from the first North- west post on the Saskatchewan. With a last flicker- ing gleam of reason, Frobisher realized the only hope was for the men to leave him and get help. "For God's sake," he penciled on a slip of paper, "lose not a moment to relieve me," and he ordered Turcotte and Lepine to carry this to the Northwest post on the Saskatchewan. They kindled fire for him and left him broiling a piece of the old deerskin for food ; but the men were so feeble they made poor progress. It was four days before they reached the fort, having actually eaten their leather clothing and crawled the last day's travel. The two Half-breeds arrived de- lirious. It was three days more before messengers reached Frobisher's camp. His lifeless body was found lying across the ashes of the fire. So perished one of the founders of the Great Northwest Com- pany the victim of his own policy of lawless vio- lence. But a life more or less was not to stand in the way of the fur trade. The very next winter, Colin Rob- ertson was back with the Hudson's Bay fur brigade on the Saskatchewan and Athabasca, pushing the traders over the mountains to the Pacific Coast. "Opponents have given us no trouble," he writes, 227 The Conquest of the Great Northwest "but starvation nearly forced us to abandon the country. From November to February, I lived on dried berries and water with flour." Letters record how at one post famine compelled the Hudson's Bay men to surrender to the Nor' Westers; how at another, Black, "the Northwest bully," was cud- gelled from his post by Hudson's Bay partisans. So the merry play went on with these dare-devil game- sters of the wilderness till in the spring of 1820, bring- ing the fur brigade down the Saskatchewan, Rob- ertson found the tables reversed. The gamesters were again playing with loaded dice. "The Nor'- Westers have assembled to catch us at Grand Rapids," he writes. "What defense can be ex- pected from our sixty men worn down by hunger? This is returning the blow with a vengeance. . . . I told Mr. Miles, my assistant, all was not right at Grand Rapids. The governor was not there to pro- tect our passing. . . . We hid the Company's papers in a pemmican sack between beef and fat. If no scouts came back, either our spies were seized, or the Grand Rapids were clear and the passage free. . . . Passing a sleepless night, we embarked at daybreak, descended the current slowly, passed to the north bank . . . then asked my guide to run the rapids without the men disembarking. This he positively refused to do, saying he would not ven- 228 Both Companies Make a Dash ture the rapids unless the men got out and each carried a pack to lighten the canoe. . . . So we began to cross the portage and had nearly reached the end when a large party of Half-breeds and Indians started from concealment, armed. . . . A North- west agent snatched my gun . . . my men hesi- tated whether to come to the rescue, but I signalled them to be off and escape in the canoes." The Nor 'Wester who had captured Robertson, was the same J. D. Campbell captured at this very place and sent down to Hudson's Bay with Robert- son's aid two years before. Fortunately, this North- west partner was deadly tired of the policy of gas- conading violence. He told Robertson frankly he must either sign an oath never to return to Athabasca, or go a prisoner to Montreal. " I gave the fellow one look of perfect contempt," writes Robertson. On his way down to Montreal, he succeeded in borrow- ing a few dollars from a friendly passer-by. At Wright's Farm, near the present city of Ottawa, the brigade was ordered to rest for some days. Robert- son knew it was only to enable constables to come up from Montreal to arrest him. When the order was given to embark, he seized a biscuit (his enemies say a crow-bar) and hurling it in the face of the North- west partner, leveled his pistol .and dared the whole company to take him. The Northwesters did not 229 The Conquest of the Great Northwest accept the challenge. They no doubt knew as Rob- ertson says, "that most of the constables in Montreal were out after me." After a few days' rest at the way- side inn, the doughty Hudson's Bay fighter rode like mad for American territory, pausing only to change horses at Montreal. "The night was dark. The rain fell in torrents. A faithful friend rode before day and night all the way. ... At three in the morning ... we reached Plattsburg." On the way to Montreal, Robertson had heard that the Nor 'Westers were about to propose a union with the Hudson's Bay, and he judged that he could serve his Company best by hurrying to London and pressing on the General Court the fact that the country was already in the hands of the Hudson's Bay traders without any union. What was his amazement on taking ship at New York to find as fellow passengers two Northwest partners, Bethune and McLoughlin, now on the way to London to urge the union. "Hunting bees' wings in their cham- pagne glasses," as Robertson describes their post- prandial talks, the two Nor'Westers actually asked Robertson to introduce them to the Hudson's Bay Company, but the feud lasted to the end of the voy- age. "Wine went round freely and subscriptions were opened for the ship's hands," writes Robertson. "Our friend, the Nor'Wester, Dr. McLoughlin, had 230 Both Companies Make a Dash put down his name. I took the pen to put mine down, but seeing Bethune, the other Nor'Wester, waiting, said to Abbe Carriere: "'Come Abbe, put down- your name. I don't want to sign between two Nor'Westers.' "'Never mind, Robertson,' says the Abbe, 'Christ was crucified between two thieves.' " McLoughlin flew in a dreadful passion, but being a good Catholic, had to stomach it." As the world knows, the embassy of the Nor'- Westers was successful. The two companies were united, and the aforetime bitter rivals returned to serve the Hudson's Bay for many a year as faithful friends and loyal partners. Over the united companies there was appointed as governor in America, George Simpson, who had been sent as clerk to Athabasca, quietly .to observe the true state of affairs. Notes on Chapter XXIX, The contents of this chapter are taken from Robertson's letters to the directors of the Hudson's Bay Company some two hundred foolscap) pages (manuscript). Frobisher's death is given in the Masson Collection of N. W. C. Journals. The terms of union of the two companies as given in the H. B. C. Minutes of March 20, 1821, were in brief as follows: Present at the General Court: Joseph Berens, Gov. ; John Pelly, Deputy; Thos. Langlois, Benj. Harrison, Andrew Col- ville, Thomas Pitt, .Nicholas Garry, Wm. Smith, Simon Mc- Gillivray, Edward Ellice, Jno. Liebenwood, Wm. Thwaytes, Robt. Whitehead, M. P. Lucas, Alex. Lean. The Governor laid before the court draft of agreement pro- posed between the Adventurers of England on the one part and 2 3 I The Conquest of the Great Northwest Wm. McGillivray, Simon McGillivray, Edward Ellice on the second part, in behalf of the N. W. C., by which deed it was agreed to unite the whole fur trade carried on into one concern from the first day of June next, the said H. B. C. and N. W. C. to find an equal share of capital and to divide the profits and losses for the term of 21 years. . . . 150,000 of the sd. joint stock apportioned among holders of H. B. C. stock in pro- portion to their respective interests, and 100,000 apportioned to the N. W. C. Nicholas Garry was appointed to go out with Simpson and reorganize the united companies. With them as representing the N. W. C. went Simon McGillivray. Most of the actors mentioned in the episodes of this chapter retired to become great nabobs in Montreal. The McGillivrays bought an estate in Scotland. Robertson served the H. B. C. for many years. John Clarke became a magnate of the Mon- treal aristocracy and was to be seen driving John Jacob Astor every time the American came to Montreal. Those men, who did not retire to Montreal, went to Red River or the Oregon. Among those going to the Columbia were: McLoughlin, Ogden, McKay, Ermatinger. Just as this volume went to press, the widow of John Clarke, who is still living at a very advanced age in Montreal, and her daughter, Miss Adele Clarke, issued a small brochure of recollections of the old days in Montreal a rare little treatise with a flavor of old wine. The gross sales of the H. B. C. from the time Athabasca was successfully invaded, ran up from 2,000 a year to 68,261. The cost of Robertson's first Expedition to Athabasca is given in the minutes as 20,000 sheer loss. George Simpson went out at a salary of 600, with 400 for traveling expenses. He was the first governor to enter Red River by way of Montreal. It was in the winter of 182021 that Robertson and the Nor' Westers went to London. The company voted 1,000 to Robertson 21 Feb., 1821, as reward for his success, and granted him 21 shillings a day for expenses and 50 passage money back to Montreal. 232 PART IV 1821-1871 The Passing of the Company McLoughlin's Transmontane Empire of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, California The Famous Mountain Brigades How the Company Lost Oregon Why the Chartered Monopoly Was Relinquished. e CHAPTER XXX 1821-1830 RECONSTRUCTION CONTINUED NICHOLAS GARRY, THE DEPUTY GOVERNOR, COMES OUT TO REOR- GANIZE THE UNITED COMPANIES MORE COLO- NISTS FROM SWITZERLAND THE ROCKY MOUN- TAIN BRIGADES ROSS OF OKANOGAN. IT FELL to Nicholas Garry to come out and reorganize the united traders, because he chanced to be the only unmarried man on the Governing Committee. The task was not easy. Bitter hatreds must be harmonized. Indians must be conciliated. Fire-eaters must be transferred to new districts, where old animosities would be un- known. Williams, the swashbuckler governor, must be replaced by George Simpson, the tactful man of business. Necessarily, a great many officers must be displaced altogether from both the old Companies. It was not desirable that Garry should come out with active partisans of either Company. Bethune and Simon McGillivray and Doctor McLoughlin the Nor' Westers and Colin Robertson, the Hud- son's Bay man, all arrived at Montreal by different routes and took passage to Fort William by different 235 canoes. So eager were the partisans, Garry was met in New York by such well-known Nor'Westers as Judge Ogden, and such well-known Hudson's Bay agents as Auddjo, the Company's lawyer. Leaving Montreal, Garry proceeded up the Ottawa in a canoe followed by Robertson and Simon McGillivray all bound for Fort William, where the partners would sign the deed of union and Garry re-arrange the positions of the officers. At Long Sault the canoes passed the house of Red River's first gov- ernor Miles MacDonell now mentally a wreck from the terrible struggle. Frobisher dead of star- vation, Selkirk of a broken heart, Sir Alexander MacKenzie of ills contracted through exposure in the wilds, Miles MacDonell out of his mind men of both sides had paid a deadly toll for mistakes and wrongs. Ottawa City when Garry passed West, in 1821, consisted solely of Wright's farm at Hull. At the Sault was David Thompson, surveying boun- daries for the government. Then Garry's canoe landed him safely at Fort William, where the deed of union was signed that extinguished the lawless glory of that famous place. Then with partners assembled, old enemies glaring at each other across the table, the tactful George Simpson doing his best to help to suppress the ill-concealed hatred of former rivals, both sides proceeded to distribute the officers. 236 Reconstruction Continued "The comfortable districts were set aside for friends of the N. W. C.," declared the discontented Robertson, failing to see that his very loyalty to the old Company stood in the way of his promotion. "It never occurred to the new concern that such men as John Clarke and Colin Robertson were in exis- tence. One cannot but admire the staunchness of these old Northwest partners. They are parting from life-long friends. The N. W. C. have gained a complete victory for the best places. John George McTavish becomes superintendent of York. Mc- Loughlin goes to the Columbia. I am to have Nor- way House. Mr. John Clarke, full of health and vigor, was represented as compelled to go to Mon- treal for his health for a time. Mr. Simpson, the new governor, who did such good work in Athabasca as clerk, felt a good deal hurt at the way Mr. Garry made the appointments. Simon McGillivray lost his temper again and again. Mr. Simpson is one of the most pleasant little men I have ever met. He is full of spirit, can see no difficulties and is ambition itself. He requires bridle more than spur." Appointments having been made, Garry proceeds west, pausing at Rainy Lake, at Winnipeg River and at Red River to meet the Indians in treaty and hear Simon McGillivray assure them they must now all obey the Hudson's Bay Company. At all trading 237 The Conquest of the Great Northwest places the fur posts are combined in one palisaded fort. At Red River, so bitter is the feeling, Garry decides both Hudson's Bay and Northwest forts must be abandoned and a new one built slightly back from the forks of the river. This is named after himself Fort Garry. Ten years have passed since Selkirk sent his first colonists to Red River, and Garry finds that the settlement numbers two hundred and twenty- one Scotch people on the west side of Red River; sixty-five De Meuron soldiers, who remained as farmers, on the east side of Red River, and one hun- dred and thirty-three retired Canadian fur traders. Of the four hundred and nineteen people, only one hundred and fifty-four are women. The De Meurons are dissatisfied. They will not marry Indian wives, and no others are to be had, so the De Meurons grow tired of their homeless, wifeless cabins and become somewhat noted in Kildonan for tavern brawls and midnight raids on the hen roosts. Also, cattle mys- teriously disappear, of which the De Meurons offer the hides for sale. Garry then hastens from Lake Winnipeg to York on Hudson Bay to meet the incoming ships and re- turn on one of them to England. He is just in time at York to meet one hundred and seventy Swiss settlers brought out by Walter von Husser, a Swiss nobleman. Garry foresees exactly what afterward happens. 238 Reconstruction ( 'onfinued Here are wives for the De Meuron soldiers, but he fears these comely Swiss girls will fare badly with "the lawless banditti De Meurons." Garry's fears were not realized. The West has a wonderful way of raising the status of women through sheer scarcity of femininity. The De Meurons were so glad to see the Swiss that the emigrants were welcomed to the soldiers' lodges for the winter. But in another way the Swiss settlers did not fare well. They were nearly all artisans, unused to farming clockmak- ers and cabinet workers and carvers, who found small service for their labors on Red River. The consequence was the majority abandoned Red River and moved down to Minnesota, squatting near the newly built military post Fort Snelling, near what is now St. Paul. Thus Selkirk all un- witting had builded better than he dreamed lay- ing the foundation colonies of two western empires; for these Swiss were the first settlers in Minnesota, as distinguished from mere fur traders. St. Paul, it may be added, was in those days known as " Pig's Eye," from the uncanny countenance of a disreputable whiskey dealer there. Let us follow some of the newly organized brigades to their hunting fields. John McLoughlin has been sent to Oregon. Born on October' 19, 1784, at 239 Riviere de Loup, on the St. Lawrence, six feet three in stature, the doctor is comparatively a young man to rule the vast empire beyond the mountains, but exposure has given him an appearance of premature age, of premature gentleness. His long hair, white as snow, wins him the name among the Indians of "White Eagle," and his manners have the benign pomp of a man sure of himself. Douglas of Stuart Lake, who has been with Fraser, accompanies him as second. A Doctor Barclay goes as physician. Tom McKay, McLoughlin's stepson, son of the Mc- Kay of the MacKenzie voyages, is leader of the brigades. Scattered at the different forts, at Colville and Walla Walla and Okanogan, are many of Astor's old men, many of David Thompson's old brigades. When the war of 1812 closed, by treaty of 1818 Fort George is restored to the Americans; but there are no Americans on the field. The Nor' Westers con- tinue at the fort till Governor Simpson and Dr. John McLoughlin come in 1824-5, and to avoid the baleful effects of skippers' rum from passing ships, move headquarters up the Columbia on 'the north side opposite Willamette River, some ninety or one hun- dred miles from the sea. The new fort is called Vancouver. While treaty has restored Fort George to the Americans, it has not restored Oregon. Ore- gon is in dispute. For the present, England and 240 Reconstruction Continued the United States agree "to joint occupancy," the treaty in no way to affect the final question of owner- ship. If Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Switzerland were united under one flag, if that flag had the motto Pro Pelle Cutem "Skin for Skin" and the mystic letters H. B. C. Hudson's Bay Company it would give some idea of the size of the fur traders' kingdom ruled by McLoughlin. At a bend in the Columbia on the north side, far enough from the coast to be away from the rivalry of Pacific schooners, near enough to be in touch with tidewater, stood the capital of the kingdom, Fort Vancouver. Spruce slabs half a foot thick, twenty feet high, sharp at both ends and in double rows, composed the walls. Great gates with brass hinges extending half way across the top and bottom beams, opened leaf-wise toward the river. On the northwest corner stood a bastion whose lower stories served as powder maga- zine and upper windows as look-out. Cannon bristled through the double palisades of the fort, and to one side of the main gate was the customary wicket through which goods could be exchanged for furs from the Indians. The big, two-story, timbered house in the center of the court was the residence of the Chief Factor. On both sides were stores 241 The Conquest of the Great Northwest and warehouses and fur presses and the bachelors' quarters and the little log cabins, where lived the married trappers. Trim lawns decorated with little rockeries of cannon balls divided the different build- ings, and in front of the Chief Factor's residence on the top of a large flagpole there blew to the breeze the flag with the letters H. B. C. sign that a brigade was coming in, or a brigade setting out; or a ship had been sighted; or it was Sunday and the flying flag was signal to the Indians there would be no trade, a flag custom on Sundays that has lasted to this day. At the mouth of the Columbia, all that remained of Astor's Fort Astoria and Lewis and Clarke's Fort Clatsop was a moldering pile of rain-rotted logs with a little square-timbered hut where one lone Scotchman kept watch for incoming ships and pos- sible wrecks. Eastward, where the Columbia takes its first bend was Walla Walla, under trader Pam- brum; northward, where it takes a second bend, Okanogan under Ross; west, where it turns up into the Arrow Lakes of British Columbia, Fort Colville under Firman MacDonell; and half way between these two posts southward, Spokane House, founded by that John Clarke, who was with Robertson in Athabasca. These were the strongholds from which the Company ruled its transmontane kingdom, five 242 Reconstruction Continued little fur posts, all except Spokane, close to the main river trail, the capitals and sub-capitals of an empire big as half Europe. By right, the treaty of joint occupation had refer- ence only to Washington and Oregon; but who was to prevent McLeod leading his brigade down the coast to California as far as Sacramento, or Ogden his brigade up the Snake as far as the Nevada deserts, or Ross his mountaineers through Washington and Idaho over the Bitter Root and Rocky Mountains to the buffalo plains of the Missouri in Montana? It was a no-man's-land, where trappers might wander whither their beaver quest led, with no other law but what each man's right arm was strong enough to enforce. Fish diet palled at Fort Vancouver. Buffalo meat was needed for the brigades. Up at Fort Okanogan was Alexander Ross, studying the language of the mountain Indians, leading a lonely existence "with no other company," as he relates, "but my dog Weasel and the Bible." A mid-winter express brought Ross orders to proceed over the mountains by way of Clarke's Fork or Flathead River to the headwaters of the Missouri and Yellow- stone and Big Horn. His hunting field was the very stamping ground of the most dangerous warriors among the Indians the Blackfeet and Piegans and Crows. Yet if this express had ordered Ross to 243 The Conquest of the Great Northwest march down to Hell's Gate and jump over the preci- pice into that canon, he would have obeyed. A better man for the field could not have been chosen. Ross had come to the Pacific on John Jacob Astor's first ship. He had been almost at once sent North to establish Fort Okanogan, where by studying the Indian languages during the long isolated winters, he soon became a proficient trader. He was both religious and scholarly, but either the intense loneli- ness of the life, or the danger of being among the Indians without a companion, drove him into mar- riage with a daughter of the Okanogans. This wife became one of the grand old ladies of the Red River Settlement, when Ross retired to Manitoba. Beaver must be sought as usual at the headwaters of the Missouri and the Yellowstone and the Big Horn ; and to reach those headwaters for the spring hunt, Ross must do his buffalo hunting in mid- winter. The mountain passes must be traversed through bottomless depths of snow, for the climate was so mild no crust formed, and above the tree line in the cloud region was a fall fall of snow almost continuous for the winter months till the precipices overhung with dangerous snow cornices of ponderous weight, and the cut-rocks were heaped into huge snow mushrooms. But Ross was no novice at snow work in the mountains. One of his first winters at 244 Reconstruction Continued Okanogan, he had become so desperately lonely that he decided to pay a three days' visit to his next door neighbor at Spokane House, one hundred and fifty miles away. The country was rocky and the trail steep. Coming home the horses had fagged so com- pletely climbing the last mountain that Ross and his Indian servants dismounted to beat the way up through the snow for the animals to follow. It was not easy work. Snow cornice broke under the weight, and down men and horses slithered in minia- ture avalanche. The soft crust of drift over rocks broke, plunging the path-makers in snow to their armpits, and all the while the way was zigzagging up till Ross and his Indians were blowing with heat like whales. First, pack straps came off, then gun cases, then coats and waistcoats to be hung on the saddle pommels. A sharp turn in the trail brought them suddenly on one of those high, bare Alpine meadows where Arctic storms sweep when flowers may be blooming in the valley. Before they could find their horses darkness and snow so completely hid everything Ross could only shout against the wind for the men to shift for themselves and let the horses run. Then he realized that he was without either coat or buffalo blanket. Luckily, a bewildered pack horse jammed against him in the whirl. Ross gripped the saddle straps, cut the pack ropes, threw 245 The Conquest of the Great Northwest off the load, and leaped astride the saddle trees with no other blanket than the patch of wool that served as saddle cloth. Certain that he was near Okano- gan, he rode like mad through the howling darkness, but the floundering broncho fagged in the drifts, and Ross became so numb he could not keep his seat. Dismounting, he tried to keep himself warm by walking, but was soon so exhausted he could only cling to the warm body of the horse. Tying the saddle cloth round his neck, he tried to dig a hole of shelter in the snow, but there, his feet became so cold, he had to take off his boots to keep from freez- ing, and passed the night in a frantic effort against the frost-sleep. In the morning he was too stiff to mount his horse. He had no strength to beat the wind, and had almost determined to kill his horse and crawl inside the body, when the storm began to lessen. To his relief, Okanogan House was only a short distance away. When trappers went out to rescue the Indians of the party, they found one horse dead, torn to pieces by the wolves. Ross knew mountain travel. It was February n, 1824, when Ross struck east from Cceur d'Alene Lake the Lake of the Pointed Heart, so called from the sharp trading, like " an awl" of the Indians to cross the mountains of Idaho and Montana for the buffalo plains. Between 246 Reconstruction Continued Okanogan and Spokane House, he had succeeded La mustering twelve Hudson's Bay trappers, Iroquois most of them, with a few Canadians like Pierre and 1 Goddin and Sylvaille. Of the freeman who roved the mountains, forty-three joined Ross' brigade. In all, there were forty-five men, two hundred and six traps, sixty-two guns, including a large brass cannon, and two hundred and thirty horses. In a few days they were on Horse Prairie, where roved herds of wild, Spanish ponies, claimed by the Flat- heads and valued at four beaver skins each. Passing travelers might seize these horses, but woe betide them if full value were not left in beaver skins. Without warning, the Flatheads would pursue and exact a scalp for each horse stolen. From the out- set Ross had trouble with his men. They had first served under Astor, then under the Nor'Westers, and now were unsettled by the recent change of allegiance to Hudson's Bay. Besides, General Ashley's moun- taineers, Pierre Chouteau's trappers, had begun coming across the plains from St. Louis. For each beaver the American trader paid $5.00, where the Hudson's Bay paid only $1.00 and $2.00. Ross' trappers were dissatisfied. For the first month the mid-winter month when all game is quiet no beaver were seen. Snow storms met the marchers as they neared the mountains, and on the i3th of 247 February Ross awakened to find that the Iroquois hunters under old Pierre had deserted. Mounting post haste, Ross pursued, overtook the seceders, and demanded the cause of their complaint. They com- plained that the price allowed for their furs was so small in proportion to the exorbitant advance on goods, that they were never able to pay debts, much less make money, and declared they would not risk their lives any more. Ross, himself, acknowledges that goods worth six pence were traded for beaver worth $5.00 in China. "The Iroquois declared Mr. Ogden last fall had promised they should be paid half in currency. I told them that promise would be performed. They grumbled and talked, and talked and grumbled, and at last consented to pro- ceed. Thinks I to myself is this the beginning?" Four days later, the first beaver was caught, but only the toes were left in the trap. Wolves had howled all night round the camp. To avoid future mutiny, Ross appointed three leaders, old Pierre at the head of the Iroquois; Montour of the Half- breeds and himself for the Company's trappers, the three to meet each night and exchange the views of the camp. On February 23rd, the brigade struck into that defile of the mountains between the Rockies east and the Bitter Root west, along the trail from what is now from Butte and Missoula to De Smet 248 Reconstruction Continued and Kootenay. They had left Clarke's Fork and were on Hell Gate River, "so named," explains Ross, "from being frequented by war parties of rov- ing Blackfeet." While the brigade camped came a tinkle of dog bells over the snow, and eight Piegans appeared driving loaded dog sleds with provisions to trade in the Flathead country. Before Ross could stop them, his rascally Iroquois were out of the leather lodges with a whoop and flare of firearms and had stripped the poor Piegans naked, leaving not so much as a piece of fat on their sleighs. There was nothing for Ross to do but "pay treble the value of the trash" and invite the victims into his own lodge. As the Piegans were going off next day, he gave them a salute of honor from the brass gun, " just to show them" he explains, (( that it makes a noise" Barely was this trouble past, when two Iro- quois again deserted. After them on horseback rode Ross with old Pierre as lieutenant. "Partly by per- suasion, and partly by force," he relates, "we put them on horseback and brought them into camp before dark." It was necessary to reach the buffalo plains and get the store of pemmican before the spring hunt. Already it was March, and Ross found himself in a narrow mountain canon three hundred miles from any post, the trail forward blocked by snow twelve 249 The Conquest of the Great Northwest feet deep for twenty miles. No time for mutineers to plot. Daydawn to dark for a week, Ross sent his men forward to cut a way through the snow, the horses disappearing through the soft drifts alto- gether in their plunges, and the end of a week saw only three miles clear with a howling blizzard that filled up the trench as fast as the trappers could work. Ross kept his men too busy to think of turning back and sent forward a fresh relay of horses to stamp the way open. The end of another week saw eight miles clear, but storm kept the men idle in camp for a day, and that day worked the mischief with dis- cipline. " John Grey, a turbulent Iroquois, came to my lodge as spokesman to inform me he and ten others had resolved to turn back. I asked him why? He said this delay would lose the spring hunt. Any- way, the Iroquois had not engaged to dig snow and make roads. I told him I was surprised to hear a good, quiet, honest fellow like he was utter such cowardly words. (God forgive me for the lie!) I said by going back they would loose the whole year's hunt. A change in the weather any day now might allow us to begin hunting. It was dangerous for us to separate. John answered he was no slave to work in this way. I told him he was a freeman of good character and to be careful to keep his character good. (God forgive me. In my heart, I thought 250 Reconstruction Continued otherwise. I saw him in his true colors, a turbulent blackguard, a d - rascal, a low trouble maker.) He said: 'Fair words are all very well; but back I am going to go.' I thought a moment. Then I said: 'You are no stronger than other men. Stopped, you will be. I will stop you!' He said he would like to see the man who could stop him. I said: 'I can.' Old Pierre interrupted by coming in and John went off cursing the Company, the brigade, the country, the day he came to it. If his party deserts, this trip will fail. So another day ends." The next day, not a soul would go to work. With the storm howling round the tepee as if it would tear the buffalo flaps away, the solitary white man sitting by the fire inside the lodge, knew the mutiny was spreading. Up and down the canon roared the blizzard, booming down from the mountains for almost a week, the bitter North wind drifting, piling, packing in a wall of snow from end to end of the eight- mile trench that had been cleared. Watching the smoke curl up from the central fire to the tepee top, Ross though alone, could afford to smile. With that wall of snow behind, it would be just as hard to go back as to go forward. The storm was cutting off the mutineers' retreat. That night as the fires were smoldering and the hobbled bronchos huddling about the lodge walls for shelter from the wind, a 251 The Conquest of the Great Northwest furious barking of dogs aroused camp and the shout of "enemies, enemies, Blackfeet," brought the trap- pers dashing out muskets in hand. The fire inside a tepee is too good a target for attack. Outside, even in storm is safer, but the snow muffled forms emerging from the wooly darkness proved to be no enemies at all, but six friendly Nez Perces, who had come from the buffalo hunt across the mountains on snowshoes. Five days the journey had taken. They reported buffalo in plenty but the snow deeper farther down the canon. Taking advantage of the diversion created, Ross sent for John, the mutineer, and offered to reduce his debt to the Company "if the intriguing scamp would hunt the hills for game to keep the camp in meat." John disposed of, Ross called for thirty volunteers to go back over the moun- tain on snowshoes with the Nez Perces to the buffalo hunt. With thirty men across the mountains, there was no danger of the rest turning back. Storm was followed by thaw, that increased the pasturage for the horses, and sent the Indian women picking cranberries in the marshes, and set the snow-slides rumbling down the mountains like thunder. Birds were singing in the canon, geese winging north over- head, but still the snow lay packed like a wedge in the pass, barring way for horses or cannon. "I feel anxious, very anxious at our long delay here," writes 252 Reconstruction Continued Ross at the end of a month. "The people grumble much. That sly, deep dog of an Iroquois, Laurent, deserted camp to-day before 1 knew. A more head- strong, ill-designing set of rascals than form this camp, God never permited together in the fur trade." In a few weeks the buffalo hunters were back with store of meat, which the squaws began to pound into pemmican ; but the sun glare had been so strong on the unsheltered slopes of the uplands that six of the hunters were led home snow-blind. This discour- aged the freemen, fickle as children; and rebellion began to brew again. In vain, Ross called a council, and went from lodge to lodge, and urged, and or- dered, and pleaded, and bribed. Not a man but Old Pierre, the Iroquois, would go to work to clear the road. The nights were spent in gambling, the days in grumbling; and old Cadiac, a Half-breed, had made himself an Indian drum or tom-tom of buffalo skin stretched on bare hoops. John Grey, the rebel, had uncased his fiddle and was filing away all night to the Red River jig and native dances of Indian pow- wow. Ross proposed the camp should give a con- cert. A concert meant that a dram of liquor would go the rounds. Two or three lodges were thrown into one. Vanished into thin air the mutinous mood of the rebels. Hither came Cadiac with the tom-tom- 253 torn of the Indian drum! Hither John Grey, the Iroquois, scraping his fiddle strings with the glee of a Troubadour! Hither Half-breeds with concertinas, and shaggy hunters with Jews' harps, and French Canadians with a fife! The night was danced away with such wild Western jigs as Hell Gate had never seen before and did not see again till the mountains resounded to the music halls of the tin-horn gamblers in the construction days of the railway. When morning came over the hills, Ross sprung his sur- prise. Whether the surprise was mixed with what cheered the French half-breeds' inner man he does not tell. With a whoop and hurrah, he proposed they all go down the pass and dig that snow out to the strains of John Grey's fiddle! The sun was coming over the mountains. The hunters were happy as grown-up children. What did the old snow matter anyway? Off they went! John Grey, the arch- rebel, literally fiddling them through the mountains! But alas, four days later, when the novelty or spree had worn off, on the morning of April i4th, every man of the camp except seven, refused to go to work. However, it was the last mile of the blockade, and those seven cleared the way. "Thursday, April i5th. This day we passed the defile of the mountains after a most laborious journey both for man and beast. Long before daylight we were on the road, in order 254 Reconstruction Continued to profit by the hardness of the crust before the thaw. From the bottom to the top of the mountains is about one and a half miles. On the one side is the source of the Flathead River, on the other of the Missouri. The latter creek runs south-southeast through the mountains till it joins a branch of the Missouri beyond Grand. Prairie. For twelve miles, the road had been made through five feet of snow, but the wind had filled it up again. The last eight miles we had to force our way through snow gullies, swim- ming the horses through in plunges. At four p. M. we encamped on the other side of the defile without accident. Distance to-day eighteen miles, though only a mile and a half as the crow flics. This delay has cost loss of one month. We encamp to make lodge poles for the rest of the journey." From the journals sent in by Ross to Hudson's Bay House, it is hard to follow the exact itinerary of his movements for the next two months. Nor do the books, which he wrote of his life in the West, throw much light on the locale of his travels. Wher- ever there were beaver and buffalo, the brigade marched. One week, the men were spread out in different parties on the Three Forks of the Missouri. Another week, they were on the headwaters of the Yellowstone in the National Park of Wyoming. They did not go eastward beyond sight of the moun- 255 tains, but 'swung back and forward between Mon- tana and Wyoming. "Saturday April iyth pro- ceeded to the main fork of the Missouri and set watch. It was on this flat prairie, four hundred Piegans last year attacked Firman McDonald's bri- gade and killed a freeman named Thomas Anderson. As we are on dangerous ground, I have drawn up the following rules: (i) All hands raise camp to- gether by call; (2) The camp to march close together. (3) No person to run ahead; (4) No person to set traps till all hands are camped; (5) No person to sleep out of camp. All agreed to these rules, but they were broken before night. Thursday, 22nd of April thirty-five beaver taken last night, six feet left in the traps, twenty-five traps missing (dragged off by the beaver or stolen by the Indians). The free- men let their horses run. They will not take care of them." And then poor Ross varies the formali- ties of his daily report by breaking out in these lines against his unruly followers: "Loss and misfortune must be the lot When care and attention are wholly forgot." "That scamp of a Saulteaux Indian threatens to leave because I found fault with him for breaking the rules. If he dares, I will strip him naked, horses, blankets and clothes, to fare forth on the plain. Saturday 24th We crossed beyond the Boiling 256 Reconstruction ( 'ontinued Fountains. The snow is knee-deep. Half the people are snow-blind from sun glare." Ross now swung west over the Bitter Root Moun- tains to Salmon River, following as far as I can tell, the path of the modern Oregon Short Line Railway from Salt Lake to the Northern Pacific. So has it always been in America. Not the bridge builder but the fur trader has been the pathfinder for the railway. On leaving the middle fork of the Missouri, he refers to one of those wilderness tragedies of which word comes down to latter day life like a ghost echo of some primordial warfare. " Passed a deserted Pie- gan camp of thirty-six lodges rendered immemorial as the place where ten Piegan murderers of our people were burnt to death. The road through the mountains from the Missouri to Salmon River is a Blackfoot Pass of a most dangerous sort for lurking enemie's; and yet the freemen insist on going out in twos and twos. Three people slept out of camp by their traps. I had to threaten not to give a single ball to them if they did not obey rules; fifty-five beaver to-day." Ross now scattered his trappers from the valley of the Three Tetons north along the tributaries of the Snake in Idaho. One Sunday night Ross always compelled his trappers to dress for Sunday and hold prayers two French Canadian freemen 257 The Conquest of the Great Northwest ran into camp with moccasins torn to shreds and a breathless story. Contrary to rules, they had wan- dered in quest of game forty miles away, sleeping wherever night found them, with no food but what they carried in a blanket on their backs. "On their way to our camp, they saw a smoke, and taking it for our people had advanced within pistol shot when behold, it proved to be a camp of Piegans. Wheel- ing, they had hardly time to take shelter among a few willows, when they were surrounded by armed warriors on horseback. Placing their own horses between themselves and the enemy, our two men squatted on the grass to conceal themselves. The Piegans advanced within five paces, capering and yelling, cock sure of their prey. The women had gathered to act a willing part, armed with lances. The two crept through mud and water out of sight and when night came escaped, abandoning horses, saddles, traps and all. They had traveled on foot after dark the entire distance, hiding by day." By June, Ross had a thousand beaver; but the Piegans had followed up the trail of the two escap- ing men. "Saturday, igth Had a fight. This morning when all hands were at their traps scattered by twos, and only ten men left in the camp, forty Blackfeet all mounted, descended on us at full speed. The trappers were so scattered, they could render 258 Reconstruction Continued each other no assistance and took to their heels among the brushwood, throwing beaver one way, traps another. Jacques and John Grey were pursued on the open plain. Seeing their horses could not save them, our two heroes wheeled and rode pell mell into the enemy. The Piegans asked them to exchange guns. They refused. . The chief seized Jacques' rifle, but Jacques jerked it free, saying in Piegan: 'If you wish to kill us, kill us at once; but our guns you shall never get while we are alive.' The Piegans smiled, shook hands, asked where the camp was, and ordered the men to lead the way to it. With pulses beating, Jacques and John advanced with the unwelcome guests to the camp, a distance of eight miles. A little before arriving, Jacques broke away at full speed from his captors whooping and yelling 'Blackfeet ! Blackfeet ! ' In an instant, camp was in an uproar. Of the ten men in camp, eight rushed to save the horses. Myself and the other in- stantly pointed the big gun, lighted the match and sent the women away. The party hove in sight. Seeing John with them, restrained me from firing. I signaled them to pause. Our horses were then secured. I received the Indians coldly. All our- people had time to reach camp and take up a posi- tion of defense. I invited the Indians to smoke. After dark, they entertained us to music and dancing, 259 which we would gladly have dispensed with. All slept armed. In the morning I gave the Piegans presents and told them to be off and play no tricks as we would follow them and punish them. The big gun did it. Sixty-five beaver to-day." Moving down Snake River in October, Ross met a party of Americans from the Big Horn from Major Henry's brigade of St. Louis. They had nine hun- dred beaver but would not sell to Ross. Ross reached Spokane House with about $18,000 of fur in November. Here he helped to fit out Peter Skene Ogden for that first trip of his to the Snake Country, of which there is no record except what Ross gives here. He says Ogden set out with one hundred and seventy-six men under him, and definitely counted on collecting 14,500 beaver. No doubt the St. Louis trappers that Ross left on the Snake were the men, who "relieved" Peter Skene of his furs, and it is in- teresting to note that at the price St. Louis traders paid for furs, $5.50 a beaver, those 14,500 Hudson's Bay beaver would make the exact amount with which General Ashley retired from the Indian Country. Notes to Chapter XXX. The contents of this chapter are 'drawn (i) as to reorganization from Colin Robertson's manu- script journal and Nicholas Garry's Journal; (2) as to the Co- lumbia, from Ross' manuscript journals sent to H. B. C. House, London. Ross was the author of three well-known books on western life, but this journey is taken entire from his official report to H. B. C. a daily record of some six hundred foolscap folios. 260 CHAPTER XXXI 1824-1838 JOURNALS OF PETER SKENE OGDEN, EXPLORER AND FUR TRADER, OVER THE REGIONS NOW KNOWN AS WASHINGTON, OREGON, CALIFORNIA, IDAHO, MONTANA, NEVADA AND UTAH HE RELIEVES ASHLEY'S MEN OF 10,000 BEAVER HE FINDS NEVADA HE DISCOVERS MT. SHASTA HE TRICKS THE AMERICANS AT SALT LAKE. GAY were the fur brigades that swept out from old Fort Vancouver for the South. With long white hair streaming to the wind, Doctor McLoughlin usually stood on the green slope outside the picketed walls, giving a per- sonal hand-shake, a personal God-bless-you to every packer, every horseman of the motley throng setting out on the yearly campaign for beaver. There were Iroquois from the St. Lawrence. There were Ojib- ways from Lake Superior. There were Cree and Assiniboine and Sioux of the prairie, these for the most part to act as packers and hunters and trappers in the horse brigades destined inland for the moun- tains. Then, there were freemen, a distinct body of trappers owning allegiance to no man, but joining the 261 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Company's brigades for safety's sake and selling the beaver they trapped to the trader who paid the highest price. Of coast Indians, there were very few. The salmon runs of the river gave the coast tribes too easy an existence. They were useless for the hardships of inland service. A few Cayuses and Flatheads, and Walla Wallas might join the brigades for the adventure, but they did not belong to the Company's regular retainers. Three classes, the Company divided each of the hunting brigades into gentlemen, white men, hunters. The gentlemen usually went out in twos a commander and his lieutenant, dressed in cocked hat and buttons and ruffles and satin waistcoats, with a pistol somewhere and very often a sword stuck in the high boot-leg. These were given the best places in the canoes, or mounted the finest horses of the mountain brigades. The second class were either servants to beat the furs and cook meals, or young clerks sent out to be put in training for some future chieftaincy. But by far the most pic- turesque part of the brigades were the motley hunters Indians, Half-breeds, white men in buckskin suits with hawks' bills down the leggings, scarlet or blue handkerchief binding back the lank hair, bright sash about the waist and moccasins beaded like works of art. Then somewhere in each brigade was 262 Journals of Peter Skene Oyden a musician, a singer to lead in the voyageurs' songs, perhaps a piper from the Highlands of Scotland to set the bagpipes droning "The Campbells Are Com- ing," between the rock walls of the Columbia. And, most amazing thing of all, in these transmontane brigades the men were accompanied by wives and families. A last hand shake with Doctor McLoughlin; tears mingled with fears over partings that were many of them destined to be forever, and out they swept the Oregon brigades, with laughter and French voy- ageurs' song and Highland bagpipes. A dip of the steersman's lifted paddle, and the Northern brigades of sixty men each were off for Athabasca and the Saskatchewan and the St. Lawrence. A bugle call, or the beat of an Indian tom-tom, and the long lines of pack horses, two and three hundred in each bri- gade, decked with ribbons as for a country fair, wound into the mountain defiles like desert caravans of wandering Arabs. Oregon meant more in those days than a wedge stuck in between Washington and California. It was everything west of the Rockies that Spain did not claim. Then Chief factor McLoughlin, whom popular imagination re- garded as not having a soul above a beaver skin, used to retire to his fort and offer up prayer for those in peril by land and sea. 263 The Conquest of the Great Northwest The man chosen to lead the southern brigades to the mountains and whose wanderings led to the exploration of Oregon, northern California, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada and Utah was a short rotund, fun-loving, young barrister of Montreal, Peter Skene Ogden. His ancestors had founded Ogdens- burg of New York State and at an earlier day in the history of Scotland had won the surname "Skene," through saving the life of King Malcolm by stabbing a wolf with a dagger "a skene." During the American Revolution, his father left New York for Montreal, and had risen to be chief justice of the courts there, so that the young barrister could claim as relatives the foremost families of New York State and the Province of Quebec; but an evil star pre- sided at the birth of Peter Skene. He was finishing his law course when his boyhood voice changed, and instead of the round orotund of manhood came a little, high, falsetto squeak that combined with Peter's little, fat figure and round head proved so irresistibly comical, it blasted his hopes as a pleader at the bar. John Jacob Astor was in Montreal wrangling out his quarrel over Mississippi territory with the Northwest Company. Judge Ogden was a friend of Astor's. Peter applied to go out to Astoria on the Pacific. Astor took him as supercargo on The Lark; but in 1813, The Lark 264 Journals of Peter Skene Ogden was wrecked in a squall two hundred miles off the Sandwich Islands, and young Ogden was of those who, lashed to the spars of the drifting wreck, fell to the mercies of the Hawaiians, and finally reached Astoria only to find it captured by the Northwest Company. That was his introduction to the fur trade of Oregon, and it was typical. McLoughlin had no sooner moved headquarters from Astoria inland to Fort Vancouver, than Peter Skene was sent to the Flatheads of the West. Here, one of his serv- ants got into a scuffle with the Indians over a horse, and Ogden was carried to the Flathead chief to be shot. "What?" he demanded of the astonished chief. "Do you think a white man is to be bullied over a horse? Do you think a \vhite man fears to be shot? Shoot," and he bared his breast to the pistol point. But the Flathead chief did not shoot. "He brave man," said the chief, and he forthwith invited Ogden to remain in the tent as a friend, and proposed an- other way out of the quarrel that would be of mutual benefit to the Company and to the Flatheads. The Company wanted furs; the Flatheads, arms. Let Ogden marry the chief's daughter Julia Mary. It was not such a union as his relatives of New York would approve, or his father, the chief justice of Montreal. She was not like the young ladies he 265 The Conquest of the Great Northwest had known in the seminaries of the East, but her accomplishments were of more use to Peter Ogden. When Peter Skene walked out of the Flatheads' tent, he had paid fifty ponies for a wife and was fol- lowed by the chief's daughter. To what period of his life they belong, I do not know. His own jour- nals tell nothing of them, but legends are still current in the West about this Flathead princess of the wilds ; how when a spring torrent would have swept away a raft-load of furs, Julia leaped into the flood tide, roped the raft to her own waist, and towed the furs ashore; how when the American traders, who re- lieved Ogden of his furs, in 1825, stampeded the Hudson's Bay horses and Julia's horse galloped off with her first-born dangling from the saddle straps in a moss bag, she dashed into the American lines. With a bound, she was in the saddle. She had caught up the halter rope to round baby and horses back to the Hudson's Bay camp, when a drunken Yankee trader yelled, "Shoot that d - squaw!" But the squaw was already hidden in a whirl of dust stampeding back to the British tents. This, then, was the man (and this the wife, who accompanied him) chosen to lead the mountain brigades through the unexplored mountain fastnesses between the prairie and the Pacific. Lewis and Clarke had crossed to the Columbia, and the Spaniards to the 266 Journals of Peter Skene Ogden Colorado, but between the Colorado and the Co- lumbia was an absolutely unknown region. With Ogden as first lieutenant went Tom McKay. McKay was the best shot in the brigade, a fearless fighter, a tireless pathfinder, and one old record says "combined the affable manners of a French seigneur with the wild-eyed alertness of a moun- taineer." With hatred of the Indian bred in him from the time of his father's murder, he could no more see a savage hostile without cracking off his rifle than a war horse could smell powder and not prance. Among the trappers were rough, brave fellows freemen, French Canadians whose names became famous in Oregon history: La Framboise, Astor's old interpreter, who became a pathfinder in California; Gervais, who alternately served Ameri- can and British fur traders, helped to find Mt. Shasta, finally sold his trapping outfit and retired to the French colony of the Willamette; Goddin.and Pay- ette and Pierre, the Iroquois, and Portneuf, who have left their names to famous places of Idaho. The brigade numbered a score of white men, some fifty or sixty nondescript trappers, as many women, some children and an average of three horses for each rider in the party. These horses came from the Cayuse Indians of the Walla Walla plain. This was the rendezvous after leaving Fort Vancouver. Here 267 was always good pasturage for the horses, and the fur post had store of pemmican traded from the buffalo hunters of the Cayuse and Flathead nations. Pouring into the south side of the Columbia be- tween Walla Walla and Fort Vancouver, were the Walla Walla, Umatilla, John Day's, the River of the Falls. In the mountains southward, were the beaver swamps. As the entire region was unknown, Ogden determined to lead his brigade West close to the Columbia, then strike up the fartherest west river double back eastward on his own tracks at the head- waters, and so come down to the Columbia again by the Snake. The circle would include all the south of Oregon and Idaho. He writes: " Monday, November 2ist, 1825 Having sent off all hands yesterday from Walla Walla, I took my departure and overtook my party awaiting my arrival. We are following the banks of the Columbia southwest. Our road is hilly, and we have great trouble with our horses, for they are all wild. We are followed by a large camp of Indians bent on stealing our horses. Although we rise at day dawn, we are never ready to start before ten o'clock, the horses are so difficult to catch. Wednesday, 3oth We have reached John Day's River. A great many Indians have collected about us. Each night the beaver traps are set out, and in the morning some have been stolen by the 268 Journals of Peter Skene Ogden Indians. Many horses missing, having been stolen. This does not prevent raising camp, as by remaining we should lose more horses than we could get back. Saturday, December 3rd We bade farewell to the Columbia River and struck south up the River of the Falls. It is scarcely credible, though we are such a short distance from the Columbia, what a difference there is in the country. This soil is rich. The oaks are large and abundant. The grass is green, though at a distance on both sides all the hills are powdered with snow. Sunday, December 4th It is now very cold, for we have begun ascending the mountains and camp wherever we can find a brook. The man I sent back for the lost horses, found them on the north side of the Columbia. He was obliged to give the Indians thirty balls of powder to get them back, no doubt a trick, and the thief, himself, restored them, a common practice with all the Indians. We are coming to the end of the Columbia hills. Mt. Hood, a grand and noble sight, bears west; Mt. Helen's north ; and to the south are lofty mountains the shape of sugar loaves. On all of these are pines, that add to the grandeur. After descending the divide we reached a plain and struck east, gathering some curious petrifactions of fir trees. Our horses are greatly fatigued, for the road is of cut rocks. Deer are abundant. We saw upward of one hun- 269 The Conquest of the Great Northwest dred to-day, but too swift to be overtaken on this dangerous ground. Many of the bare hills are of blood-red color. In this quarter are three boiling fountains of sulphur. I must find an Indian, who will guide us. If not, we must attempt to cross east without. Our horses are saddle deep in mire." From the time Ogden crossed the sky line of the Blue Mountains for the headwaters of the Snake, his difficulties began. Hunters to the fore for the game that was to feed the camp, the cavalcade began zigzagging up the steep mountain sides. Here, windfall of pines and giant firs, interlocked twice the height of a man, scattered the wild Cayuse ponies in the forest. There, the cut rocks, steep as a wall and sharp as knives, crowded the pack horses to the edge of bottomless precipices where one mis- step meant instant death for rider and horse. And the mountain torrents tearing over the rocks swept horses away at fording places, so that once Ogden was compelled to follow the torrent down its canon to calmer waters and there build a canoe. In this way his hunters crossed over by threes and fours, but how to get the fractious horses across? It was too swift for men to swim, and the bronchos refused to plunge in. Getting two or three of the wise old bell- mares, that are in every string of packers, at the end of a long rope, the canoemen shot across the whirl of 270 Journals of Peter Skene Ogden mid-stream and got footing on the opposite shore. Then by dint of pulling and yelling the frantic horses were half frightened, half -tumbled into the river, and came out right side up a hundred yards farther down. At other places, the cut-rocks a local term that ex- plains itself were so steep and sharp, Ogden ordered all hands dismounted and half the packs carried up on the men's backs. It was high up the mountain, and the snow that falls almost continuously in winter above tree line made the rocks slippery as ice. For a few days, owing to the altitude and cold, no beaver had been taken, no game seen. The men were toil- ing on empty stomachs and short tempers. Night fell with all hands still sweating up the slippery rocks. A slave Indian lost his self control and struck Jo. Despard, one of the freemen, on the back. Throw- ing down his load, Despard beat the rascal soundly, but when the battle was over and all the bad temper expended, the slave Indian was dead. Poor Despard was mad with grief, for no death was ever passed un- punished by the Hudson's Bay. Sewing the mur- dered man in rolls of buffalo skin, they buried him with service of prayers on the lonely heights of the Blue Mountains. "It is not in my power," writes Ogden, "to send Despard to Vancouver. Until we return to the headwaters, I will let the affair remain quiet. The poor fellow is wretched over the murder." 271 During the march eastward across the valleys, between the Cascade range and the Rockies, one hundred and sixty traps for beaver were set out each night. In the mornings, when camp was broken, from thirty to sixty beaver were considered a good night's work. Snake Indians were met and a guide engaged, but the Snakes were notorious horse thieves, and a guard was kept sound the horses each night. Ogden makes a curious discovery about the beaver in this region. " Owing to the mildness of the climate," he writes, " beaver here do not lay up a stock of pro- visions as in cold countries." As the cold of mid- winter came, the beaver seemed simply to disappear to other haunts. In vain, the men chiselled and trenched the ice of the rivers above and below the beaver dams. The beaver houses were found empty. Tom McKay was scouring the cut-rocks for game with his band of hunters; but it is the sea- son when game leaves the cut-rocks, and night after night the tired hunters came in hungry and empty handed. The few beavers trapped were frequently stolen at night, for there are no ten commandments to hungry men, and in spite of cold and wet the trappers began sleeping in the swamps near their traps to keep guard. "If we do not soon find game," writes Ogden on December 22nd, "we shall surely starve. My Indian guide threatens to leave us. If 272 Journals of Peter Skene Ogden we could only find the headwaters of the Snake with- out him, he might go to the devil. We do not see the trace of an animal. I feel very uneasy about food. Sunday, December 25th This being Christmas, all hands remained in camp and I held prayers. The cold increases. Prospects, gloomy; not twenty pounds of food in camp. If we escape starvation, God preserve us, it will depend on Tom McKay's hunters. On collecting our horses, we found one- third limping. Many of them could not stand and lay helpless on the plain. If this cold does not soon pass, my situation with so many men will be terrible. December 3ist One of the freemen, three days with- out food, killed one of our horses. This example will soon be followed by others. Only one beaver to-day. Gave the men half rations for to-morrow, which will be devoured to-night, as three-quarters in camp have been two days without food. Sunday, New Year's, 1826 Remained in camp. Gave all hands a dram. We had more fasting than feasting. This is the first New Year's day since I came to the fur country that my men were without food. Only four beaver to- day. Sent my men to the mountains for deer. Our horses can scarcely crawl for want of grass; but march they must, or we starve. In the evening, Tom McKay and men arrived without seeing the track of an animal, so this blasts my hope. What 273 The Conquest of the Great Northwest will become of us? So many are starving in camp that they start before daylight to steal beaver out of their neighbors' traps. Had the laconic pleasure of seeing a raven watching us to-day! The wolves follow our camp. Two horses killed for the kettle. January nth Reached the source of Day's River. Our horses are too lame to move. A horrible road we have had for ten days of rock and stone. We have taken in all two hundred and sixty-five beaver and nine otter here. Our course is due east over barren hills, a lofty range of mountains on both sides covered with Norway pines. Thank God if we can cross these mountains I trust to reach Snake River. There are six feet of snow on the mountain pass here. We must try another. For ten days we have had only one meal every two days. January 2Qth A horse this day killed his hoof was found entirely worn away, only the raw stump left." February 2nd, they left the streams flowing west and began following down a canon of burnt windfall along the banks of a river that ran northeast. The divide had been crossed, and the worn bronchos were the first to realize that the trails of the mountains were passed. Suddenly pricking forward, they gal- loped full pace into the valley of Burnt River, a tributary of the Snake. "A- more gloomy looking country," writes Ogden, "I never saw. We have 274 Journals of Peter Skcne Ogden been on short allowance too long and all resemble so many skeletons. We are skin and bone. More beggarly looking fellows the world could not produce. All the gay trappings at the beginning of the march have disappeared. Still I have no complaint of my men. Day after day, they labor in quest of food and beaver without shoe or moccasin to their feet The frozen ground is hardly comfortable for people so scantily clothed. Ten days east is the buffalo country of the plains, but in our present weak state, we could not reach it in a month." Ogden was no\V in the beaver country of the Snakes and to avoid star- vation divided his brigade into small bands under McKay and Gervais and Sylvaille. These, he scat- tered along the tributaries of the Snake River north and south, in what are now known as Oregon and Idaho, some to the "Rivier Malheur (Unfortunate River) so-called because this is the place where our goods were discovered and stolen by the Americans last year"; others to Sandwich Island River, and Reed's River, and Payette's and the Malade, u;ivrn this name because beaver here lived on some root which made the flesh poisonous to the trapper. Few Snakes were met, because this was the season when the Snakes went buffalo hunting, but "in our travels this day (26 February) we saw a Snake In- 275 The Conquest of the Great Northwest dian's hut near the road. Curiosity induced me to enter. I had often heard these wretches subsisted on ants, locusts and small fish not larger than min- nies (minnows); and I wanted to find out if it were not an exaggeration, but to my surprise I found it was true. One of the dishes was filled with ants collected in the morning before the thaw commences. The locusts are gathered in summer in store for the winter. The Indians prefer the ants. On this food the poor wretches drag out existence for four months of the year and are happy. During February, we took one hundred and seventy-four beaver. Had the weather been mild, we should have had three thou- sand. An incredible number of deer here, but only skin and bone, nevertheless most exceptable (?) to us starving." He mentions that it was on Sickly or Malade River that the Blackfeet killed one of his men the preceding year. "If the Americans have not been here since, we shall find beaver." On the i3th of March, McKay came in with a dozen elk, and the half-starved hunters sat up till dawn feasting. But alas, on March 2oth, near Raft River, came a camp of Indians with word "that a party of Americans are not three days' march away. If this be true, our hunts are damned. We may prepare to go home empty handed. With my discontented men, I dread meeting the Americans. After the sufferings the 276 Journals of Peter Skene Ogden men have endured with me, they will desert." Snake camps now began to pass westward at the rate of four hundred people a day, carrying their supply of buffalo meat and also what struck sorrow to Og- den's heart an American flag. A thousand Snake warriors were on the way to the Spanish settlements of the South to trade buffalo meat and steal horses. Near the American Falls, the Brigade fell in with marauding Blackfeet, friendly, no doubt, because of Ogden's wife, who was related to the Northern tribes. "The Blackfeet informed me, they left the Saskatchewan in December and were in quest of the Snakes, but finding them so strong did not attempt it. They consisted of eighty men with the usual reserve of twenty or thirty Piegans hidden in the hills. March 3ist To-day, twenty-seven beaver, which makes our first thousand with two to begin the second thousand. I hope to reach Fort Van- couver with three thousand." "Sunday, April gth, Portneuf River, headwaters of the Snake About 10 A. M., we were surprised by the arrival of a party of Americans, and twenty-eight of our deserters of last year. If we were surprised, they were more so. They expected their threats of last year would prevent us returning to this quarter, but they find themselves mistaken. They encamped a short distance away. With the glass, we could 277 The Conquest of the Great Northwest observe the Blackfeet on the hills spying on our movements. " Monday, April zoth The strangers have paid me a visit. I had a busy day settling old scores with them and more to my satisfaction and the Company's than last year's disaster. We received from them eight thousand one hundred and seventy-two beaver in payment of their debts due the company and two notes of hand from Mr. Monton. We secured all the beaver they had. Our deserters are tired of their new masters and will soon return to us. How the Americans make profit when they pay $3.00 per pound for beaver, I cannot imagine. Within ten months the Indians have stolen one hundred and eighty traps from these Americans." In those few words, does Peter Skene Ogden record an episode that has puzzled the West for fifty years. How did these Americans come to sell all the beaver they had to him, at less than they had paid, for the Hudson's Bay Company never paid $3.00 a beaver? Were they short of powder as w r ell as traps? And what old score was Ogden paying off? What had happened to him the year before? Was that the year when the Americans stampeded his horses? The record of Ogden's 1824-25 trip has been either lost or destroyed, and the Americans' version of the story was very vague. General Ashley's hunters 278 Journals of Peter Skene Ogden had gone up from St. Louis and were in the moun- tains destitute. Suddenly, they met Ogden's bri- gade on the banks of the Snake north of Salt Lake. When the rival hunters parted, Ogden was destitute and the Americans had Hudson's Bay furs variously valued at from $75,000 to $350,000 a variation ac- counted for by the fact that the St. Louis traders valued beaver five times higher than the Hudson's Bay. The legend is that Ogden's men were de- moralized by laudanum and whiskey. He acknowl- edges that twenty-eight of his men deserted. If the deserters took their furs with them, the transaction is explained. The Hudson's Bay would be out of pocket not only the furs but the hunting outfit to the men. Ashley's record of the matter was that he got "a fortune in furs for a song." Whatever the explanation, Ogden now scored off the grudge. He took the entire hunt from his rivals and exacted two promissory notes for former debts. With almost 10,000 beaver, Ogden now led his bri- gade down the Snake northwest for Fort Vancouver on the Columbia. "The Blackfeet," he writes, "have set fire to the plains to destroy us, and collect war parties to surround us. May 6th It began to snow and continued all night. Our trappers come in almost frozen. Naked as many are and without shoes, it is surprising not a murmur or com- 279 The Conquest of the Great Northwest plaint do I hear. Such men are worthy to follow a Franklin to the Pole. Two-thirds are without blanket or any shelter and have been so for the last six months. This day, thirty-four beaver from the traps. Sunday, June i8th All along the plains of Snake River are women digging the bitter root. Their stones are sharp as flint. Our tracks could be followed by the blood from our horses' feet." From the headwaters of Day's River, the brigade wound across westward to the beautiful valley of the Willa- mette. "A finer stream is not to be found," relates Ogden of. the valley that was to become famous. "All things grown in abundance here. One could enjoy every comfort here with little labor. The dis- tance from the ocean is ninety miles. No doubt in years a colony will be formed on the stream and I am of opinion it will flourish with little care. Thus ends my second trip to the Snake Country." The accuracy of Ogden's prophecy is fulfilled in prosper- ous cities on the banks of the Willamette to-day. So far, the Oregon brigades had not gone south over the height of land that divides the Columbia from the Sacramento, but as they had followed up to the headwaters of the Willamette and the River of the Falls and John Day's River, they found their sources in those high, beautiful Alpine meadows 280 Journals of Peter Skene Ogden just fringed by trees, walled in by the snowy peaks and presenting the peculiar phenomenon of swamps above the clouds. Here were beaver runs and houses in a network. Seventy beaver a day each worth two dollars to the trapper the hundred traps set out each night yielded in these uplands. But many of the mountain torrents, that took their rise in these swamps, flowed south and west. Would these streams, too, yield as rich harvest of beaver? "The country must be explored," writes Ogden, "though we may waste our pains doing it"; and he steered his brigade of 1826-27 to tnat region, which was to become so famous for its gold and silver mines, California and Nevada. Striking straight south from the Dalles of the Columbia, Ogden had twenty-five trappers behind in line. Tom McKay, the hunter, marched to the fore with twenty-five more. Gervais and Sylvaille and Payette each boasted a following of five or six, some seventy men all told, not including the women and Indian hangers-on. From the first night out, horse thieves hung on the heels of the marchers. Half way up the River of the Falls, one night in October, when a high, dry wind was blowing a gale, and the brigade had camped in a meadow of brittle rushes seven feet high, the horse thieves drew off in hiding till the hunters' ponies had been turned loose. 281 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Then they set fire to the grass and swooped down with a yell to stampede the camp. But Tom Mc- Kay was too keen a hunter to be caught napping. Mounted on his favorite cayuse, he was off through the swale like an arrow and rounded the entire bri- gade into a swamp of willows, where fire could not come. Another time, Payette and that Pierre, whose death a few years later gave his name to the famous trappers' rendezvous of Pierre's Hole, had gone over a hillock to set their traps in a fresh valley, when they came on seven of their own horses being quietly driven off by two Snake Indians. With a shout, the two indignant trappers fell on the Indians with fists and clubs. Indian spies, watching from ambush, dashed to the rescue, with the result that four of the horses were shot, three rushed off to the hills, and the two trappers left weltering in blood more dead than alive. Ogden thus expresses his feelings: "It is disgraceful. The Indians have a contempt for all traders. For the murders committed not one ex- ample has been made. They give us no credit for humanity but attribute our not revenging murders to cowardice. If opportunity offers for murder or theft, they never allow it to pass. I am of opinion if on first discovery of a strange tribe, a dozen Indians were shot, it would be the means of saving many lives. Had this plan been adopted with the Snakes, 282 Journals of Peter Skene Ogden they would not have been so daring and murdered forty of our men in a few years. Scripture gives us a right to retaliate for murder. If we have means to prevent murder, why not use them? Why allow ourselves to be butchered and our property stolen by such vile wretches not fit to be numbered among the living and the sooner dead, the better? ... It is incredible the number of Snake Indians here. We cannot go ten yards without finding their huts of grass. No Indian nation in all North America is so numerous as the Upper and Lqjtver Snakes, the latter as wild as deer. They lead a most wretched life. An old woman camped among us the other night. She says from the severe weather last winter, her people were reduced for want of food to subsist on the bodies of their children. She, herself, did not kill any one, but fed on two of her children who died of starvation an encouraging example for us at present, reduced to one meal a day." By November, the brigades were on the height of land between the Sacramento and the Columbia, in the regions of alkali plains and desert mountains in northern California and Nevada. Ogden at once sent back word of his whereabouts to Chief Factor McLoughlin of Fort Vancouver, little dreaming that the trail southward, which he was now finding, would be marked by the bleaching bones of treasure 283 The Conquest of the Great Northwest hunters in the rush to the gold mines. Trappers under McKay and Gervais and Sylvaille were spread out on the headwaters of the Willamette, and the Klamath and the Sacramento; but the dusty alkali plains were too dry for beaver. In three months, only five hundred were taken, while man and beast were reduced to extremity of endurance from lack of food and water. By the i6th, they were on the very apex of the divide, a parched, alkali plain, where the men got water by scooping snow from the crevices of the rocks and tried to slake their horses' thirst by drib- lets of snow-water in skin-bags. Two thirst-mad- dened horses dropped dead on the march, the fam- ished trappers devouring the raw flesh like ravenous wolves. Two little lakes, or alkali sinks were found "a Godsend to us" writes Ogden, and the horses plunged in to saddle girths drinking of the stagnant, brackish stench. From where they paused to camp though there was neither wood nor sage bush for fire they could see the Umpqua in the far north, the Klamath straight northwest, a river which they did not know was the Sacramento, south ; and tower- ing in the west above the endless alkali and lava beds of the plains stretching east, the cones of a giant mountain high as Hood or Baker, opalescent and snow-capped. Ogden named both the moun- tain and the river here Shasta, after the name of the 284 Journals of Peter Skene Ogden Indian tribes whom he met. He was on the border- lands of California, on the trail which thousands of goldseekers were to follow from Oregon in '49. Speaking of the Klamath Indians, he says: "They live in tents built on the water of their lakes, ap- proachable only by canoes. The tents are of logs like blqck houses, the foundation stone or gravel made solid by piles sunk six feet deep. The Indians re- gretted we had found our way through the mountains. They said, 'the Cayuses tried to attack us, but could not find the trail. Now they will follow yours.' " McKay had brought in only seven hundred beaver from his various raids on the waters west of Shasta. In these alkali swamps were no beaver. Ogden had explored the height of land. He now determined to cross the alkali desert eastward while there was still a chance of winter snow and rain quenching thirst; and he only awaited the return of his messengers from McLoughlin. "Friday, December 2nd Late last night, I was overjoyed by the arrival of my ex- pressmen from the fort. One of the trappers hunt- ing lost horses discovered them; otherwise, they would never have reached camp. They could no longer walk and were crawling. For fourteen days they had been without food, for nine days without quenching thirst. Their horses were stolen by the Snakes. On entering my lodge, the poor man fell 285 from weakness and could not rise. I immediately sent back for the other man. About midnight he was brought in, thank God, safe!" Christmas was spent on the edge of the desert : " Did not raise camp. We are reduced to one meal a day. Discontent pre- vails. We have yet three months of winter travel. God grant them well over and that our horses escape the kettle. I am the most unfortunate man on earth, but God's will be done." Possibly, Ogden's low spirits may be traced to drinking that alkali water on the divide. For two months the whole camp suffered. The brigade was still among the Shastas and Klamaths in February, and Ogden records a curious incident of one Indian : ''Among our visitors is a man with only one arm. I asked him how he lost the other. He informed me the other arm was badly wounded in battle, very painful and would not heal; so he cut it off himself three inches below the socket with his flint knife and axe made of flint. It is three years since. He healed it with roots and is free from pain." Rains now began to fall in such torrents the leather tents fell to pieces from rain rot and for twenty days not a blanket in camp was dry. Ogden set out to cruise across the desert, thankful that sickness quieted the cravings for food. Shasta River was left on the rear on March i3th, "our unruly guide being forcibly tied 286 Journals of Peter Skene Ogden on horseback by ropes and all hands obliged to sleep in pouring rains without blankets. Not one com- plaint in camp. This life makes a young man old. Wading in swamps ice-cold all day, the trappers earn their ten shillings for beaver. A convict at Botany Bay has a gentleman's existence compared to my poor fellows. March 26th Our guide discovered a grizzly bear. One of the trappers aimed but only wounded it. Our guide asked permission to persue it. Stripping himself naked, armed only with an axe, he rushed after the bear, but he paid dearly for the rashness, for his eyes were literally torn out, and the bear escaped to the sage-bush." The guide had to be left with his tribe and the white men to shift for themselves crossing the desert. Knowing vaguely that Snake River was northeast, Ogden struck across the northwest corner of the Nevada desert, Desert of Death it was called among the trappers. Each night a call was made for volun- teers, and two men set out by moonlight to go ahead and hunt water for the next camp. The water was often only a lava sink, into which horses and men would dash, coming out, as Ogden describes it, "look- ing blistered and as if they had been pickled." Some- times, the trail seekers came back at day-dawn with word there was no water ahead. Then Ogden sat still beside his mud lakes, or stagnant pools whose 287 The Conquest of the Great Northwest stench sickened man and beast, and sent out fresh men by twos in another direction till water was found. Again and again he repeats the words: "It is critical, but the country must be explored if we can find water to advance. . . . We can't go on without water, but the country must not remain un- known any longer. There are Snake huts ahead. There must be muddy lakes somewhere. June 2nd I sent two men to proceed southeast and try that direction. They will march all night to escape the heat. If we do not succeed in that direction, our starvation is certain. Sunday, June 3rd 8 A. M., the two men arrived and report nothing but barren plains no water. No hope in that direction. I at once ordered the men off again northeast. They left at 9 A. M. All in camp very sick owing to stag- nant water. If I escape this year, I will not be doomed to come again. June 4th, at dawn of day, men came back. They found water, where we camped last fall (on the Snake). At 9 A. M. we started quick pace, sauve qui pent over dreary, deso- late, sandy country, horses panting from thirst. At 6 A. M., June 6th, we reached water to the joy of all." They were really on the upper forks of Sandwich and Malheur rivers. The end of July saw the horses of the brigade pasturing in the flowery meadows at Walla Walla and the happy trappers forgetful of all 288 Journals of Peter Skene Ogden past miseries, sweeping down the swift current of the Columbia for Fort Vancouver, where Doctor McLoughlin awaited with a blessing for each man. Ogden had vowed he would not be doomed to cruise in the wilderness another year. He reached Vancouver in July. On August 24th, he was again at the head of the Oregon brigade, leading off from Walla Walla for the Grande Ronde, a famous valley of the Snake where the buffalo runners gathered to trade with the mountaineers and coastal tribes. There was good pasturage summer and winter. A beautiful stream ran through the meadow and moun- tains sheltered it from all but the warm west winds. Indian women came here to gather the camas root and set out from the Grande Ronde in spring for the buffalo hunts of the plains. Here, trappers could meet half a dozen tribes in friendly trade and buy the cayuse ponies for the long trips across the moun- tains to the Missouri, or up the Snake to Great Salt Lake, or across the South Pass to the Platte. Ogden divided his brigade as usual into different parties under McKay and Payette and Sylvaille, scattering his trappers on both sides of the Snake south as far as the bounds of the present State of Utah. Toward the end of September, when in the region of Salmon Falls on the Snake, he was disgusted to encounter a rival party of forty American traders 289 The Conquest of the Great Northwest led by a man named Johnson. "My sanguine hopes of beaver are blasted," he despairingly writes. "I am camped with the Americans. Their trappers are everywhere. They will not part with a single beaver. Kept advancing south. The Americans informed me they meant to keep on my trail right down to the Columbia. We are surrounded by Blackfeet and Snakes bound to the buffalo hunt. I am uneasy. The Snake camp has upward of fifteen hundred warriors and three thousand horses. We are in full view of the Pilot Knobs or Three Tetons where rise the waters of the Columbia, the Missouri, and the Spanish River. The waters of Goddin's River dis- appear in this plain, taking a subterraneous route to Snake River. The chief of the Snakes carries an American flag. The headquarters of the Americans are south of Salt Lake (on Green River). Decem- ber 1 4th Another party of six under a leader named Tullock, a decent fellow, has joined us. He told me his Company wished to enter an agreement with the Hudson's Bay regarding the return and debts of deserters who go from us to them, or from them to us. He says the conduct of Gardner at our meeting four years ago" when Ogden was robbed "has not been approved. Our trappers have their goods on moderate terms, but the price we pay them for beaver is low compared to the Americans. The Americans 290 Journals of Peter Skene Ogden pay $5.00 for beaver large or small. We pay $2.00 for large and $1.00 for small. Here is a wide differ- ence to the free trapper. If he takes his furs to St. Louis, he will get $5.50. Most of the American trappers have the following plan: Goods are sold to them at 150 per cent, advance, but delivered to them here in the Snake country. Not requiring to trans- port their provisions, they need few horses. For three years, General Ashley has brought supplies to this country from St. Louis and in that time cleared $80,000 and retired, selling his goods at an advance of 150 per cent., payable in five years in beaver at $5.00 a beaver. Three young men, Smith, Jackson, Sublette, bought the goods and in the first year cleared $20,000. Finding themselves alone, they sold their goods to the Indians one-third dearer than Ashley did. What a contrast to myself. They will be in- dependent in a few years." It may be explained that Ogden's prediction of these American trappers was fulfilled. Those who were not killed in the Indian country retired rich magnates of St. Louis, to become governors and senators and men of honor in their state. But Ogden could not forget these men were of the same company who had robbed him four years be- fore, and when snow fell six feet deep in the mountain pass to Green River, Ogden laid his plans to pay 291 The Conquest of the Great Northwest back the grudge in his own suave way. "Tullock, the American, who failed to get through the snow to Salt Lake, tried to engage an Indian to carry letters to the American camp. This, I cannot prevent. / cannot bribe all the Indians, but I have succeeded in keeping them from making snowshoes for the Americans. The Americans are very low spirited. They cannot hire a messenger or purchase snowshoes, nor do they suspect that I prevent it. I have sup- plied them with meat, as they cannot kill buffalo without snowshoes. I dread if they go down to Salt Lake, they will return with liquor. A small quantity would be most advantageous to them but the reverse to me. If I had the same chance they have (a camp near) long since I would have had a good stock of liquor here; and every beaver in the camp would be mine. As all their traps have been stolen but ten, no good can result from their reaching their camp and returning here. We have this in our favor they have a mountain to cross and before the snow melts can bring but little from Green River here." Three times the Americans set out for their ren- dezvous south of Salt Lake, and three times were driven back by the weather. "It is laughable," chuckles the crafty Briton, who was secretly pulling the strings that prevented his rivals getting either 292 Journals of Peter Slcene Oyden goods or snowshocs. "It is laughable, so many at- tempts, and no success. They have only twenty- four horses left. The rest of the fifty they brought are dead from cold. I have small hope that our own horses can escape, but I can cover them with robes each night." On the i6th of March, the entire encampment of Americans and Hudson's Bay were paralyzed with amazement at a spectacle that was probably never seen before or since so far south in the mountains messengers coming through the snow-blocked moun- tain pass from the American camp on Green River by means of dog sleds. "It was a novel sight to see trappers arrive with dogs and sleds in this part of the world ; for usually, not two inches of snow are to be found here. They brought the old story, of course, that the Hudson's Bay Company was soon to quit the Columbia. At all events the treaty of joint occupation does not expire till November. By their arrival, a new stock of cards has come to camp, and the trappers are gambling day and night. Some have already lost upwards of eight hundred beaver. Old Goddin, who left me last year, goes to St. Louis, having sold his eight horses and ten traps for $1,500. His hunt is worth $600.00 more, which makes him an independent man. In our Hudson's Bay service, with the strictest economy, he could scarcely save 293 The Conquest of the Great Northwest that in ten years. Is it any wonder the trappers prefer the American service? The American trader, Mr. Campbell, said their treatment of me four years ago is greatly regretted. The Americans leave for the Kootenay Country of the North. We separate on the best of terms. They told me their traders from St. Louis failed to arrive last fall owing to severe weather and their camp south of Salt Lake had been attacked by Blackfeet, and Pierre, my old Iroquois, was cut to pieces." In other words, Ogden's narra- tive proves that the St. Louis traders, with a camp on the upper waters of Colorado River, had gone as far north as Kootenay by 1828. I fancy this will be news to the most of investigators, as well as the fact that the Hudson's Bay were as far south as Califor- nia before 1828. Two months later, in May, on his way down the Snake River to Vancouver, Ogden met a large band of Snake warriors returning from raiding the Blackfeet on the Saskatchewan. In the loot cap- tured from the Blackfeet, were the clothes and entire camp outfit of the forty Americans, who had wintered with Ogden, a convincing enough proof of foul play. The Snakes reported that the furs of the Americans had been left scattered on the plains, and the party, itself, massacred. "The sight of this booty caused gloom in camp. God preserve us from a like fate," writes Ogden. Two weeks later, LaValle, one of 294 Journals of Peter Slccne Ogclen his own trappers, was found dead beside his traps. Xear-by lay a canvas wrapper with the initials of the American Fur Company, proof that the ma- rauders had been the same band of Blackfeet who attacked the Americans, first on Green River and then on the Saskatchewan. Ogden's wanderings had now taken him along all the southeastern tributaries of the Columbia from Mt. Shasta across California, Nevada and Idaho to the headwaters of the Snake, but there was still one braver region' unpenetrated by him between Salt Lake desert and the Nevada desert. In crossing from Mt. Shasta to the Snake, he had but scampered <>ver the northern edge of this region, and hither he steered his course in 1828. As usual, the brigade went up the valley of the Walla Walla, pausing in the Grande Ronde to prepare tent poles, for the year's wandering was to be over the treeless desert. Powder River, Burnt River, Malhcur, where the Americans had robbed him were passed in succes- sion. Then Sandwich Island and Portneuf were trapped. They were now on the borders of the arid, sage-bush plains. Ashley's man, Jim Bridger, some- time between 1824 and 1828, had found the south side of Salt Lake; and as early as 1776, the Spaniards had legends of its waters. Ogden now swung four 295 The Conquest of the Great Northwest days' march southwest and explored the entire sur- roundings of Salt Lake. Then he struck westward across those wastes that were to be the grave of so many California and Nevada gold-seekers. High winds swept the dry dust in clouds through the air. The horses sank to their saddle girths through the fine sand, and hot winds were succeeded by a blan- keting fog, that obliterated all marks of direction, so that the brigade was blindly following the trail of some unknown Indian tribe. "Nov. ist, 7 A. M. Our track this day between high mountains on both sides over a plain covered with wormwood. The scouts saw two Indians, whom they captured and brought to camp. More stupid brutes I never saw. We could not make them understand our meaning. Gave one a looking glass and set them at liberty. In less than ten minutes, they were far from us. Had not advanced three miles next morning when we found three large lakes covered with wild fowl. The waters were salt. Next day the men in advance discovered the trail to a large river. Reached a bend in the river and camped. Indians numerous. They fly from us in all directions. We are the first whites they have seen. This is the land of the Utas. I have named the river the River of the Lakes, not a wide stream but certainly a long one." Ogden had discovered the river that was called 296 Journals of Peter Skene Ogden by his own name among trappers, but was later named Humboldt by Freemont. To his great joy, beaver were as abundant as the Indians. The traps set out each night yielded sixty beaver each morning. Ogden at once scattered his brigade in three direc- tions: west toward Salt Lake, where the river seemed to but did not take its rise; north toward the forks of the Snake four days' march away, and southwest where the river seemed to flow. "Nov. pth One of the hunters going downstream returned with word this river discharges into a lake, no water or grass beyond, only hills of sand. Advanced to the lake and camped. I was surprised to find the river takes a subterranean passage and appears again, a large stream lined with willows. So glad was I to see it, that at the risk of my life I dashed over swamps, hills, and rocks to it and the first thing I saw was a beaver house well stocked. Long before dawn of day, every trap and trapper was in motion. As dawn came, the camp was deserted. Success to them all! As far as I can see, this river flows due west. Trappers arrived at night with fifty beaver. Indians paid us a visit. On asking them what they did with their furs, they pointed to their shoes. Examination showed them to be made of beaver. It is warm here as in September and the Indians wear no clothing. They are without houses or arrows or any defence." 297 The Conquest of the Great Northwest In the midst of all this jubilation over the dis- covery of a large river and the success in trapping, one of the hunters, Jo Paul, the same Jo Paul who had acted as guide for the Nor'Westers in Athabasca, fell dangerously ill. He was in too great pain to be moved. Yet to remain for the sake of one man meant starvation for the whole camp. Ogden would not hasten the poor fellow's death by marching and the brigade waited till the horses were out of grass. Ogden sent spies forward to reconnoiter good camp- ing ground, sent the tenting kit on, and had the sick man moved on a stretcher. There was no blare of trumpets after the manner of civilized heroism, but on the morning of the nth of December, two hunters came forward to Ogden and quietly volunteered to remain in the desert with the sick man. The man, himself, had been begging Ogden to throw him in the river or shoot him, as it was quite apparent he could not recover. "I gave my consent for the two men to remain," relates Ogden, not even mentioning the names of the heroes. "There is no other alternative for us. It is impossible for the whole party to re- main and feed on horse flesh for four months. One hundred horses would not suffice, and what would become of us afterward?" Turning back up Unknown River, Ogden wintered on Salt Lake; "a gloomy, barren region, except for 298 Journals of Peter Skene Ogden wolves, no other animals seen," he relates of the backward march. "Here we are at the end of Great Salt Lake, having this season explored half the north side of it, and we can safely assert, as the Americans have of the south side, that it is a country destitute of everything." On the ist of January, came the trappers who had nursed their comrade to the time of his death. "Of all the men who first came to the Snake coun- try," writes Ogden, "there remains now only one alive. All the others have been killed except two, who died a natural death. It is incredible the number who have perished in this country." When spring came, Ogden again set out for Unknown or Humboldt River, following it westward where it disappears into alkali sinks. Two thousand * beaver in all were taken from the river. "Country level far as eye can see. I am at a loss to know where this river discharges. We start at dawn to escape the heat. The journey is over beds of sand. The horses sink leg deep. The country is level, though hills can be seen southwest. The Indians are not so numerous as last fall, but from the number of fires seen in the mountains, I know they are watching us and warn- ing their tribes. Nowhere have I found beaver so abundant. The total number of American trap- pers in this region is eighty. My trappers average 299 one hundred and twenty-five a man for the season and are greatly pleased. The number of pelicans seems to indicate a lake. If it is salt, there is an end to our beaver." It was not the desert but the Indians that finally drove Ogden back. He had advanced almost to the Shasta in California when a tribe of Indians from Pit River began mauling his trappers, though Ogden had taken the precaution of sending them out only in twos. It was the 28th of May. The brigade had turned northeast to strike for some branch of the Columbia, to pass from what is now known as Ne- vada to Oregon, when "a man who had gone to explore the lake (where the river disappears) dashed in breathless with word of 'Indians.' He had a narrow escape. Only the fleetness of his horse saved him. When rounding a point within sight of the lake, twenty men on horseback gave the war cry. He fled. An Indian would have overtaken him, but the trapper discharged his gun in the fel- low's face. He says the hills are covered with In- dians. I gave orders to secure our horses, and for ten men to advance and spy on what the Indians were doing, but not to risk a battle, as we were too weak. They reported more than two hundred war- riors marching on us. On they galloped. Having signaled a spot for them to halt five hundred yards 300 Journals of Peter Skene Ogden from our camp, I went out, met them, desired them to be seated." One wonders what would have hap- pened at this point if instead of the doughty little man with the squeaky voice and podgy body and spirit of a lion, there had been a coward at the head of the Oregon brigade. What if the leader-had lost his head and fled in panic, or fired? "This order," writes Ogden, "was obeyed. They sat down. From their dress and drums, I knew it was a war party. If they had not been discovered, they had intended to attack us. Weak as we were only twelve guns in camp they would have been successful. They gave me the following information through a Snake interpreter: this river discharges in a lake, that has no outlet. In eight days' march is a large river but no beaver" (the Sacramento, or Rogue River named after these Indians). "There is another river (Pit River). We saw rifles, am- munition and arms among them. This must be the plunder of the sixteen Americans under Jedediah Smith, who were murdered here in the fall" (Smith had reached Fort Vancouver naked, and Doctor Mc- Loujrhlin had sent Tom McKay out to punish these Indians). "They wanted to enter my camp. I re- fused. A more daring set of rascals I have never seen. The night was dark and stormy. The hostile fires burned all night. As I do not wish to infringe 301 The Conquest of the Great Northwest on the territory of Mr. McLeod's Umpqua brigade, I gave orders to raise camp and return. McLeod's territory is on the waters emptying in the Pacific. If Mr. McLeod had reached Bona Venture, he must have passed this stream. I told the Indians in three months, they would see us again, and we steered for Sylvaille's River. Passed Paul's grave where he must sleep till the last great trumpet sounds." In July, the brigade reached Fort Vancouver by way of John Day's River. In four years, the South Brigades had explored Oregon, Idaho, the north of California, Nevada and Utah as well as the corner of Wyoming a fairly good record for brave men, who made no pretenses and thought no greatness of daily deeds. The next few years, other men led the Oregon brigade South. Ogden was sent North to open up that Russian strip of coast leading to the interior of British Columbia. Henceforth, he led the canoe brigade to the famous Caribou and Cassiar regions, but he came back to pass his last days in Oregon, where he died on the banks of the Willa- mette about 1854. Looking back over the plain little man's plain life, told in plain words without a thought of heroism, I cannot say I am surprised that his numerous descendants and distinguished rela- tives of the East are as proud of him as other people are of the Mayflower and William the Conqueror. 302 Journals of Peter Skene Ogden Notes to Chapter XXXI. Ogden 's daily journals as sent in to H. B. C. House, London, fill some six or eight note- books foolscap size of three hundred pages each. The contents of this chapter are taken entirely from my copies of these daily journals. The Jo. Paul and his son, Jo. Paul, were two of the most famous guides and bullies in the West during the last century. Of them both the same story is told: of the father in these H. B. C. journals, of the son in the Oblate Missionary annals. In an article on Pere Lacombe, I told the story as of the son. What was my surprise to find the same story turn up in the H. B. C. journals, about Jo. Paul, Sr. Whether father or son, here is the legend of their prowess. In the days when the French bullies used to meet and fight the Orkneymen on the Saskatchewan, Jo. Paul chanced to enter an H. B. C. post. Knowing his fame for strength, the clerk thought to put up a trick on him. A sugar barrel was filled with lead. "There, Jo. Paul." said the clerk, "lift that barrel of sugar on the counter for me will you?" Jo. Paul gave it a tug. It did not budge. He gave it another tug. Not a move! Very heavy sugar. Jo. Paul scented a trick. Mustering all his strength, he seized the barrel and hurled it with a slam right on the counter. It splintered through counter and floor to the bottom of the cellar. "Voila, mon enfant," says To. Paul with a shrug. Whether the incident occurred with the Jo. Paul whose body lies lonely on the desert river, or the Jo. Paul who guided the Oblates up the Saskatchewan, I do not know. It is just a Jo. Paul legend of those early days. 303 CHAPTER XXXII 1825-1859 MCLOUGHLIN'S TRANSMONTANE EMPIRE CONTINUED DOUGLAS' ADVENTURES IN NEW CALEDONIA, HOW HE PUNISHES MURDER AND IS HIMSELF ALMOST MURDERED LITTLE YALE OF THE LOWER FRASER BLACK 5 S DEATH AT KAMLOOPS HOW TOD OUTWITS CONSPIRACY THE COM- PANY'S OPERATIONS IN CALIFORNIA AND SAND- WICH ISLANDS AND ALASKA WHY DID RAE KILL HIMSELF IN SAN FRANCISCO? THE SECRET DI- PLOMACY. McLOUGHLIN'S empire beyond the moun- tains included not only the states now known as Washington, Oregon, Califor- nia, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and parts of Montana, but it extended north of what is now the International Boundary through Okano- gan and Kamloops and Cariboo to the limits of the Yukon. This Northern Empire was known as New Caledonia. Soon after coming to Oregon, Mc- Loughlin realized that it was a fearful waste of energy and life to transport the furs and provisions of British Columbia all the way across America to 34 McLouyhlins Trans montane Empire and from York on Hudson Bay, or Lachine on the St. Lawrence. Both could be conveyed cheaper round the world by ship from London; so the ship Cadboro begins to ply on yearly voyage from London to the Columbia, with Hawaii as half-way house in the Pacific, where Alex Simpson, a relative of Gov- ernor Simpson, acts as Hudson's Bay Company agent to buy supplies from the natives and trade to them in turn hides and provisions from the Hudson's Bay Company farms of Oregon. Later, comes the little steamer Beaver, the first steam vessel of the Pacific, to run between Columbia and the Company posts up and down the coast. Henceforth, though Oregon is under Governor Simpson's direction, it becomes a kingdom by itself, with McLoughlin the sole autocrat. Furs from the mountain brigades of the South of the Sacramento and the Snake and Salt Lake from the mountain brigades of the East from Idaho and Montana and Wyoming from the mountain brigades of the North Okanogan and Kamloops and Fraser River and New Caledonia poured into Fort Vancouver to be exchanged forsupplies and transshipped to London. The Northern brigades were more picturesque even than those of Snake River and Montana. The regions traversed were wilder, the Indians more hostile, the scenery more varied. The Caledonia 305 The Conquest of the Great Northwest brigade set out from Fort Vancouver by boat. Sixty or seventy voyageurs manned the large canoes that stemmed the floodtide of the Columbia, the pilot's canoe flying an H. B. C. flag from its prow, the steers- man of each boat striking up the tune of a voyageurs' song, the crew joining in full-throated chorus, keep- ing time with the rap of their paddles, and perhaps some Highlander droning his bagpipes as the canoes wound up the rocky canons of the great river. Did Indians hang about the Dalles meditating mischief? "Sing!" commands the head steersman, and the weird chant echoing among the lonely hills, rouses the courage of the white men and stems the ardor of the Indians. Where the canoes thwart the boiling torrent of cross currents or nearing rapids to a man the voyageurs brace themselves, reach forward in their places, and plunge the flying paddles into a sweep of waters that takes all their strength. The singing ceases. Another singing is in their ears the roar of the waters with the noise of an angry sea till the traverse is thwarted, or the portage reached and the distance measured off by "the pipes" a man smokes as he trots overland pack on back. "Five pipes" are the long portages. At Okanogan, canoes are exchanged for horses- two or three hundred in the pack train led by the wise old bell-mares, whose tinkling in the peopleless 306 McLoughlin's Transmontane Empire wilderness echoes through the forests like the silver notes of a flute. Pack horses are like pack people with characters of as many colors as Joseph's coat. There are the rascals, who bolt at every fording place, only to be rounded back with a shoulder nip by the old bell-mares. There are the lazy fellows, who go to sleep in midstream till the splashing waves have soaked every article in the pack. There are the laggards, who slip aside and hide till the tinkling bell has faded in the distance. There are the quar- relers, who are forever shouldering their nearest neighbor off the trail, and the mischief makers, who try to rub packs off against every passing tree, and the clumsy footers, who lose a leg and go down head over heels where the sand slithers or the trail nar- rows, and the good old steady goers who could find their way unled from Okanogan, eight hundred miles north, to New Caledonia sleek, well-fed, fat fellows all of them, when they leave Okanogan, however fagged and lamed they may be when they wind up Fraser River. To the fore, near the pilot, rides the Chief Factor black beaver hat which must have caused the gen- tleman a deal of trouble riding under low hanging branches, dark blue or black suit, white shirt, ruffled collar to his ears, frock coat, and when it is cold a great coat with as many capes as a Spanish lady's 307 The Conquest of the Great Northwest mantilla, lined throughout with red or tartan silks. When camp is made, first duty is to erect the Chief Factor's tent apart from the common people. Though the old Company no longer swash-bucklered a con- tinent in gold braid with swords and pistols in belt, its rulers still kept up the pomp and pageantry of little kings. Near the Chief Factor often rode an incoming missionary. The traders and clerks strung out in a line behind, with the married men and their families to the rear. Bugle or shout roused all hands at five in the morning, but what with breakfast and loading the pack horses and rounding all in line, it was usually ten o'clock before the long caravan began to move forward. The swish of leather leg- gings against saddle girths, the grass padded tramp- ling of the horses, the straining of the pack ropes as the long line filed zigzag up a steep mountain side to a sky-line pass all produced a peculiarly drowsy humming sound like a multitude of bees. No stop was made for nooning. With hunters alert for a chance shot to supply the supper table, with other riders nodding half asleep, the brigade wound north and north, through the mossed forests, now among the rolling hills, with here and there a snowy peak looming opal above the far clouds; now in the val- leys where the river flowed with a hush and the sun- light came only in shafts; now on the sky-line of a 308 Mclaughlin'* Transmontane Empire pass where forests and hills and valleys rolled a sun- bathed, misty panorama below; now in shadowy canons where the only sign of life was the eagle circling overhead! Kamloops was the great half-way house for the north-bound brigades. Here, worn horses were exchanged for fresh mounts. Half the far-traveled traders dropped off to stay in this district. The rest for a week enjoyed the luxury of sleep in a bed, and limbs uncramped from saddle stiffness. The fort was palisadecl as usual and was the trading post for the Shushwaps and Lower Fraser River Indians. It had been the headquarters of David Thompson, the mountain explorer long ago, and had been named after him; but on a change of the site was called after the name of the Indian lake. The mountains, which have seemed to crush in on the wayfarers like walls, widen out at Kamloops to upland prairies and rolling meadows flanked by forested hills. To the wearied hunters of the north-bound brigades, it was like a garden in a desert, an oasis of life in a wilder- ness of mountain wilds. Saddles were hung on the wooden pegs stuck in the clay of the log walls and horses turned out to pasture in grass knee-deep. Round Kamloops cling a thousand legends of that border region in human progress between savagery 309 The Conquest of the Great Northwest and civilization. Indeed, the legends of Kamloops might be pages taken from the border tales of Eng- land and Scotland. With Hubert Howe Bancroft of San Francisco rests the credit of rescuing these legends from oblivion. At Kamloops were stationed many of the famous old worthies of the Northwest Company. First was David Thompson. Then came Alexander Ross of Okanogan, later of Red River. Soon after the union of the two great com- panies, there came to Kamloops as chief factor that Samuel Black, who had been such a redoubtable rival to Colin Robertson in Athabasca. So high did Black stand in the esteem of his old comrades in adventure, that when the union took place he had been presented with a ring on which were engraved the words "To the most worthy of the worthy North- Westers." With one of the brigades came David Douglas, the famous botanist, to Kamloops. The two Scotchmen, thrown together alone in the wilder- ness, became friends at once; but one night over their wine the discussion grew hot. Douglas, the visitor, bluntly blurted out that in his opinion " there was not an officer in the Hudson's Bay Company with a soul above a beaver skin." Like a flash, Chief Factor Black sprang to his feet, as keen to defend the Company as he had formerly been to revile it. He challenged the botanist on the spot to 310 McLoughKn 9 * Transmontane Empire a duel; but it was already dark, and the fight had to be postponed till morning. Scarcely had day- dawn come over the hills when Black tapped on the parchment window of his guest's chamber " Meester Dooglas! Meester Dooglas! A' ye ready?" But a night's sleep had cooled the botanist's ardor. He excused himself from the contest, and as daylight cleared the fumes of their wine away, the two Scotch- men, no doubt, laughed heartily over their foolish- ness. The Shushwaps were warlike and treacherous and changeable as wind. Living alone among them, it may be guessed that the white trader needed the proverbial wisdom of the serpent. Chief of the Shushwaps in 1841, was that Tranquille, after whom the river is named. Tranquille and Black had had words over a gun, which another Indian had left at the stores; but the chief had gone home with good humor restored. Almost at once he fell ill. "An enemy hath done this! It is the evil eye!" muttered his wife. "No," answered the chief, "my only sorrow is that before I die I cannot take by the hand my best friend, Mr. Black, and ask forgiveness for any hasty words." "Subtle is the evil medicine of the white men,'* answered his wife. "Peace, fool!" Then to the Indians in his tent: 3" The Conquest of the Great Northwest "Pay no heed to her words. Mr. Black's heart is good. Ask him to have me buried after the white man's fashion." After his death the chief's wishes were fulfilled, and Mr. Black sent across a board coffin for the body. But in the dead chief's lodge lived a nephew to whom the disconsolate widow made moan. "Ah, great chief, must thy spirit go to the happy hunting grounds alone, while he who sent thee thither bathes in the blessed sunlight? Ah, that there is none to avenge thee! Who shall now be bur chief? Our young men are cowards!" "Enraged beyond endurance," relates Bancroft, "the youth sprang to his feet and gave the old woman a smart slap on the cheek. " ' Very brave to strike an old woman,' she taunted ; 'but to avenge an uncle's death is a different matter. ' "Burning with sorrow, the boy arose, threw off his clothing, blackened his face, seized his gun and hurried to Kamloops. There he received every kindness. Though warned by the interpreter, who feared that the blackened face and scanty clothing on a cold February day indicated mischief, Mr. Black directed the boy to the fire in the Indian hall and sent him food and pipe and tobacco. The 312 McLoucjhlin's Transmontane Empire nephew smoked in moody silence. Toward evening, as Black was passing through the room, the young savage raised his gun and fired. The chief trader staggered into the next room and fell dead before his wife and children. The murderer escaped. The news spread. From Fort Vancouver, McLoughlin sent men to hunt to the death the murderer, ordering John Tod to take charge of Kamloops. All traffic at the fort must be stopped until the murderer should be delivered. Calling the Shushwaps, Mr. Tod informed them not a hair of their heads should be hurt; but the guilty person must be found. "Then arose Nicola, chief of the Okanogans. 'You ask for powder and ball,' he declared, 'and the whites refuse you with a scowl. Why do the white men let your children starve! Look there!' pointing to Black's grave 'Your friend lies dead! Are the Shushwaps such cowards to shoot their benefactor in the back? Alas, yes; you have killed your father! You must not rest till you have brought to justice his murderer.' Action quickly followed. The murderer lay hidden in the mountains of Cariboo. A few picked men started in pursuit. They found the boy. Placing heavy irons on him, they threw him across a horse and started for Kamloops. They were obliged to cross the river in a canoe. In midstream, with a sudden The Conquest of the Great Northwest jerk, the prisoner capsized the boat. But on the opposite bank was old Nicola with a band of war- riors. The boy knew his hour had come. As he floated down the stream, he raised his death song, which was hushed by the crack of rifles, and the life- less body sank beneath the crimson waters." This legend Bancroft obtained from Tod, who was on the spot at the time, and from McKinlay of Walla Walla, who had received the story first hand. Tod took up the reins of authority at Kamloops. Tod moves the fort to a better site, has seven build- ings erected inside the palisades, and two bastions placed at opposite angles to protect the walls. Then he sends his hunters afield and remains in the fort with no companion save his wife and three children. Four years passed tranquilly and Chief Lolo rose to be the ascendant leader of the Shushwaps. For the story of Tod's rule at Kamloops, the world is again indebted to Bancroft, who obtained the facts from Tod, himself. In the band of three hundred brigade horses roaming outside the palisades was a beautiful cayuse pony, which Lolo, the chief, coveted. "It was the custom," says Bancroft, "to send a party from Kamloops to fish on the Fraser. This year (1846) Lolo was to lead the party. The second night after the departure, just as the chief trader was re- tiring, a knock was heard at the door. Beside him- 3H McLoughlin's Transmontane Empire self, his family and a Half-breed boy, there was not a soul about the place. The fort gates were not even fastened. " ' Come in/ exclaimed Tod. "Slowly the door opens until the black eyes of Lolo were seen glistening. Though fearful that some misfortune had happened to the party, Tod was Indian enough never to manifest surprise. The Shushwap pushed open the door and slowly entered. "'Your family will be glad to see you/ Tod re- marked, wondering what had happened. " ' The sorrel horse/ began the chief. ' I want that horse, Mr. Tod.' "'The river has risen/ observed Tod. "'For twenty years I have followed the fortunes of the Hudson's Bay Company . . . and never before have I been denied a request/ "'Fill your pipe/ said Tod. "'Alas! My wives and little ones! Though I am old and not afraid to die, they are young and help- less. . . . "'What the devil is the matter?' now blurted out Tod. 'Who talks of dying? Where are the men? Why have you returned? Speak ! ' "Briefly, Lolo declared that the Shushwaps had formed a conspiracy to attack the Kamloops brigade. '"Where are the men and horses?' 315 "'I hid them as well as I could off the trail, telling them I was going to hunt a better camping ground. I said nothing about the conspiracy, knowing the attack would not be made till we reached the river. Time was when I would not have turned back for such a threat, but my services are no longer valued.' "'Well, go to your family, and let me think about it!' " Was it true, or a trick to get the horse? Tod was puzzled. While deep in thought as to what was best to do, Lolo's head thrust in again. "'Will you not let me have that horse, Mr. Tod?' "'No damn you! Go home! If you say horse to me again, I'll break every bone in your body.' "Trick or no trick, Tod must go to the waiting brigade. Calling the Half-breed boy, he ordered him to saddle two of the fleetest horses. He explained the situation to his wife. Then he wrote a general statement for headquarters, in case he should never return. While Lolo was still asleep, the chief trader and his boy were on the trail for Fraser River, gallop- ing as fast as their horses could carry them. He reached his men by noon. They were surprised to see him ; but he merely gave orders to move forward next morning. By sunrise, the party was on the trail. In advance, rode Tod alone. He had told his men to keep three hundred yards behind him, to 316 Mclaughlin's Transmontane Empire march when he marched, stop when he stopped. By 9 o'clock they approached a small open plain enclosed in thick brushwood. Tod motioned his men to halt while he rode forward apparently unconcerned but with a glance to every rock and shrub. His eye caught unmistakable signs ... a large band of armed and painted savages were moving about excitedly. Lolo was right, but what was Tod to do? He had not ten men, and here were three hundred arrayed against him, powerful Shushwaps, who could handle the rifle as well as any white man. . . . The men to the rear . . . had by this time seen the savages. . . . They knew now why the leader had so unexpectedly appeared. . . . Tod motioned one of his party ... a George Simp- son ... to come. "'George! Fall back with the horses! If things go wrong, make your way to the fort! Go!' "The brave fellow hesitated to leave his leader alone. "'Damn you! Go!' shouted Tod. . . . "The enemy stand watching intently the fur trader's every move. . . . Turning full-front on the glowering savages, Tod puts spurs to his horse. . . . As he rushes, they raise their guns . . . the horseman does not flinch, but quickly drawing sword and pistol, he holds them aloft in one hand .V7 The Conquest of the Great Northwest . . . then hurls them all aheap on the plain . . . and he charges into the very midst of the savages. Why did they not kill him? . . . Cur- iosity. . . . They wished to see what he would do next. . . . There sat the smiling Scotchman amid the thickest of them. "'What is all this?' demanded the chief trader. " ' We want to see Lolo. Why came you here? ' "'Then you have not heard the news. . . . The smallpox is upon us ! . . . "Well they knew what the smallpox was and that it raged on the Lower Columbia. "'That is why I come,' continued Tod. 'I come to save you. You are my friends. You bring me furs; but you must not come to Kamloops, else you will die ; see, I have brought the medicine to stop it ! " Ten minutes later, Tod is sitting on the stump of a fallen tree, vaccinating the Shushwaps, and Kam- loops' traditions say, indeed, Tod, himself, ac- knowledged to Bancroft, that when the Indians, who were leaders of the conspiracy, held up their arms to be vaccinated, he took good care to give them a gash that would disable their arms for some weeks. A Scotchman abhors a lie; at least, a straightforward lie that gives no quarter to conscience, but some-how Tod conveyed to those Shushwap warriors the as- tounding warning, that if they lowered or used their McLoughlin's Transmontane Empire vaccinated arms for some time, it would be absolutely and swiftly fatal. So Tod saved Kamloops, and volumes might be written of the legends lingering about the old fur post. Other chief traders suc- ceeded Tod at Kamloops. McLean, son of the colonist murdered at Seven Oaks, Red River, was at Kamloops in the early fifties when all the world was agog with excitement over the discovery of gold in the Rockies. An Indian was drinking on the banks of the Thompson when he saw what he thought was a shining pebble. The pebble was carried to McLean of Kamloops. It was a gold nugget. It was the beginning of the end of the fur traders' reign in the mountains. From Kamloops, the New Caledonia brigade struck northwesterly on a trail to the Fraser and along the banks of that torrential river up as far as Alexandria, where MacKenzie had headed his canoes back upstream on his trip to the Pacific. Alexan- dria was now a fur post. Here horses were left to pasture for the year, and the brigade ascended the Fraser in canoes to Fort George and Fort St. James on Stuart Lake, and Fort McLeod on McLeod Lake, and Fraser Fort, and those other northern posts variously known as Babine and Connolly, where the Company had erected permanent quarters. 3'9 The Conquest of the Great Northwest If Kamloops resembled some Spanish redoubt perched on some high sierra amid parched, rolling hills, the Stuart Lake region New Caledonia proper was like a replica of the Trossachs on some colossal scale. Lakes with the sheen of emerald lay hidden in the primeval forests reflecting as in a mirror woods, cloud-line, treeless peaks and the domed opal of the upper snows, where the white drifts Ire forever and the precipices are criss-crossed by the scar of the avalanche as by some fantastic architect. In area, the region is the size of modern Germany. It was here Simon Fraser, the discoverer, had planted the flag of the fur trader and established posts in the land that reminded him of Scottish Highlands. Fort St. James, being the center of the most popu- lous Indian tribe the Carriers has become the capi- tal of this mountain kingdom, and many old worthies of the Northwest days have played the king here. Ordinarily, the fort drowses in security like a droning bee on a summer day, but in times of Indian treaty, or on such occasions of pomp as Sir George Simpson, the governor, coming on a visit of inspection, Fort St. James puts on an air of military pomp, the sentinel going on duty at 9 p. M. and with monotonous tread calling out, "All's Well" every half hour till 5:30 A. M., when a rifle is fired to signal all hands up. Six A. M. work begins. Eight o'clock is breakfast. 320 McLoughlin's Transmontane Empire Nine, the traders turn to work again. At 12:00, a bell signals nooning; at 1:00, back to work; at 6:00 p. M., duty done for the day. Harmon, who came West with Henry's brigade of Pembina back in 1811, remains almost to the time of the Company's union, when he retires to Vermont. John Stuart, who voyaged with Fraser, comes after Harmon; but he retires to spend his last days in Scotland. He is succeeded by William Connolly, an Irishman of Babine Lake, a northern post. East ;ii McLeod Lake is Tod, who is to win fame at Kamloops. South is Paul Fraser, son of the ex- plorer, at the Fraser Lake post. Down at Fort George on the Fraser, is little James Murray Yale, who served as a boy under John Clarke in Atha- basca, when, on one of the terrific marches of the famine stricken Hudson's Bays, little Yale's short legs could keep the pace no longer and the boy fell exhausted on the snow to die. "Come on! Come on garcon" called a big voyageur, whose admiration had brrn won by Yale's pluck. "Go on," retorted Yale. "I've reached the Great Divide," and the big voyageur turned to see that the brave boy pre- ferred to die rather than impede the others. The rough fellow's heart smote within him. He burst in tears, tore- back mumbling out a cannonade of oaths, bent his big back, hoisted Yale on his shoulders like a papoose in a squaw's mossbag, and rejoined the marchers, muttering a patois of pidgin English and jargon French "Sa ere! Too much brave, he little man! Misere! Tonnere! Come on!" Here, then is Yale, grown man, though still small, now serving the united companies at Fort George and later to be shifted down the Fraser to Fort Langley at tidewater, and Yale Fort, higher up, and Hope at the mountain gorge. To keep track of these little kings ruling in the wilderness, shifted from post to post, would neces- sitate writing chapters to vie with Hebrew genealogies. The careers of only the most prominent may be fol- lowed, and of all the traders serving under Chief Factor Connolly of Stuart Lake, in 1822-23, the most important was James Douglas, a youth of some twenty years. Born in Demerara, on August u, 1803, of a beau- tiful Creole mother and father, who was the scion of the noble Black Douglas of Scottish story James Douglas had been carefully educated in Scotland and joined the -fur companies a soldier of fortune before he was twenty-one. Douglas inherited the beauty of his mother, the iron strength and iron will and never-bending reserve of his father's race. At first, he had been disgusted with the ruffianism of the two great companies, and had intended to retire from the country; but McLoughlin of Fort William had 322 McLoiighlin's Transmontane Empire taken a fancy to the Scotch youth and persuaded Douglas to come West after the union. McLoughlin advised as a friend that Douglas serve in as many posts as possible and climb from the bottom rung of the ladder so that every department of the trade would be mastered first-hand. Hence, Douglas was assigned as clerk under Connolly of Stuart Lake at a salary of ^60 a year. He, who was to become titled governor of British Columbia, had now to keep the books, trade with the Indians, fish through ice with bare hands, haul sleighloads of furs through snowdrifts waist deep in a word, do whatever his hand found to do, and do it with his might. Chief Factor Connolly had a beautiful daughter of native blood, as Douglas' mother had been of Creole blood. The girl was fifteen. Douglas was twenty-one. The inevitable happened. Nellie Con- nolly and Douglas fell in love and were married ac- cording to the rites of the Company which simply consisted of open avowal and entry on the books a pair of children dreaming love's dream in surround- ings that would have made fit setting for the honey- moon of monarchs. Later, when there came a Reverend Mr. Beaver to the Columbia in 1837-38, breathing fire and maledictions on unions which had not been celebrated by his own Episcopal Church, Douglas was re-married to Nellie Connolly. In fact, 323 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Douglas and McLoughlin who had both married their wives according to the law of the Company and there was no other law had an uncomfortable time of it as missionaries came to the Columbia. The Reverend Beaver openly preached against Mc- Loughlin living in a state of sin. McLoughlin, being good Catholic, kicked the reverend gentleman soundly for his impudence; but to still the wagging of tongues had himself married by the church to McKay's widow. Even that did not suffice. Catho- lics did not recognize ceremonies performed by Protestants. Protestants did not recognize unions cemented by Catholics. It is said that the saintly old Father of Oregon actually had himself married two or three times to satisfy his critics; and at this distance of time one may be permitted to wonder which ceremony was written down as holiest in the courts of heaven the civil contract of the Company by which a chivalrous gentleman took the widow of his friend under his protection, or the later unions lashed like a " diamond" hitch by well meaning en- thusiasts. Meanwhile, up at Stuart Lake, was Douglas learning what was untellable the daily discipline of strong, absolutely self-reliant living ; Douglas developing what McLoughlin meant should be developed when he sent the young man to such 3 2 4 McLoughlin's Transmonlane Etnjrire a hard post iron in muscle, iron in nerve, iron in will. The story is told that once at a later era in Douglas' life at Victoria, a clerk dashed breathless into his presence gasping out that a whole tribe of unruly Indians had got possession of the fort courtyard. "Will we fire, sir? Will we man the guns?" asked the distracted young gentleman. Douglas looked the young man over very coldly, then answered in measured, deliberate tones: "Give them some bread and treacle! Give them some bread and treacle!" Sure enough! The regale pacified the discontent, and the Indians marched off without so much as the firing of a gun. People asked where Douglas had learned the untellable art of governing unruly hordes. It was in New Caledonia, and the school was a hard one. Douglas' first lesson nearly cost him his life. This story has been told often and in many different versions. The first version is that of McLean of Kamloops. All legends are variations of this story, but the facts of the case are best set forth by the missionary to the Carrier Indians Father Morice, who questioned all the old traders and Indians on the spot. Here is the substance of the story as told to Morice: Jimmie Yale went home from Stuart Lake to Fort George on the Fraser one night in 1823 to find his 325 The Conquest of the Great Northwest two white workmen murdered by two Fraser Lake Indians, mutilated and thrown in outhouses for dogs to eat. The Hudson's Bay Company never let a murder pass unpunished. One of the murderers was secretly done to death by paid agents of the Com- pany, "who buried the remains," relates Morice, "in a way to suggest accident as the cause of death." Five years passed. Surely the Company had for- gotten about the crime. The other murderer ven- tured a visit to Stuart Lake. Chief Factor Connolly was away. James Douglas was the only white man at Fort St. James. As soon as he heard of the mur- derer's visit, he bade the Indians arm themselves with cudgels and follow him. The criminal had hidden in terror under a pile of skins in a sick woman's lodge. Douglas dragged him forth by the hair, demanding his name. The fellow mumbled out some assumed cognomen. "You lie," answered Douglas to the stammered answer, firing point-blank in the fellow's face; but in the struggle, the ball went wide. The Indians thereupon fell on the criminal and beat him to death. "The man he killed was eaten by dogs. By dogs let him be eaten," Douglas pronounced sentence, ordering the body to be cast unburied outside the palisades. This was enforcing the savage law of a tooth for a tooth with a vengeance. The chief of the 326 McLoughlin's Transmontane Empire Carriers determined to give young Douglas the lesson of his life. Punish murderers? Yes; but not as if Indians were dogs. A few weeks afterward, followed by a great con- course of warriors from Fraser Lake, old Chief Kwah marched boldly into the Indian Hall of Fort St. James. Douglas sprang to seize a musket hanging on the wall. Fort hands rushed to trundle cannon into the room, but the Indians snatched the big guns, though brave little Nancy Boucher, wife of the interpreter, managed to slam the doors shut against more intruders and Nellie Connolly came from her room half dazed with sleep just in time to grasp a dagger from the hands of the murdered Indian's father. Chief Kwah's nephew had a poniard at Douglas' heart and was asking impatiently: "Shall I strike? Shall I strike? Say the word and I stab him!" It was woman's wit saved the captive Douglas. Quick as flash glided Nellie Connolly to the old chic-f, knowing well the Indian custom of "potlatch," gift-giving, appeasing for bloodshed with costly presents. She offered old Kwah all he might ask to spare the life of her husband. Then dashing up- stairs, the two women began throwing down tobacco, handkerchiefs, clothing. The Indians scrambled for the gifts. Douglas wrenched free, and Old Chief 327 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Kwah bade his followers come away. He had done all he meant taught Douglas a lesson, though those so-called lessons have a ghastly sudden way with angry Indians of turning to tragedy, as the massacre at Red River testifies. An event that has gone down to history at Fort St. James, was the visit of Governor Simpson, in 1828. Simpson was young, but what he lacked in years, he made up in hard horse-sense and pomp to impress the Indians. Music boxes, bugles, drums, fifes all were used in Simpson's pow-wow of state \vith the Indians. September lyth, his scouts sighted Stuart Lake. The guide to the fore unfurled a British flag. Buglers and bagpipes struck up a lively march that set the echoes flying among the mountains and brought the Carrier Indians out agape. First, clad in all the regalia of beaver hat, ruffled choker, velvet cape lined with red silk, leather leggings and gorgeous trappings to his saddle rode Governor Simpson. Behind came his doctor and a chief factor riding abreast. Twenty men followed with camp kit, then one of the McGillivrays to the rear. In all, Simpson traveled with a retinue of sixty. A musket shot notified the fort of the ruler's approach. Fort St. James roared back a w r elcome with cannon and musketry, all hands standing solemnly in line, while Douglas advanced to meet his lord, Connolly being 328 McLoughlin's Transmontane Empire absent on the Fraser. What with a band playing and the cannon booming, such wild echoes were set dancing in the mountains as almost frightened the Carrier Indians out of their senses. Was the great white lord coming to be avenged on them for the attack on Douglas? But the great white lord, who was nothing more nor less than a clever little gentleman bent on business, kept his band marching up and down the inner gallery of the palisades, chests puffed out, pipers skirling, while he as lord ascend- ant of the mighty mountains shook hands with the Indians and treated them to tobacco. Simpson passed south to Vancouver. New Year's Day, 1829, the clerks of St. James determined to punish the Carriers for their raid. Bounteous was the regale of rum dealt out. When the Carriers lay drunk, out sallied the voyageurs and gave the Indians such a pummcling as stirred up bad blood for a year. Douglas' life was no longer safe in Caledonia. In 1830, he left Fraser River to join McLoughlin in Oregon. He had come to New Caledonia, raw, impulsive, violent in his forcefulness to succeed. He went down to Oregon, still young, but a drilled disciplinarian of life's hard knocks ved to a fault, deliberate to a di-gnr, cautious and tactful in a way that must have delighted Mc- I.oughlin's heart. When Connolly left New Cale- The Conquest of t\ie Great Northwest donia for Montreal, where he rose to eminence, there came as Chief Factor, Peter Skene Ogden, fresh from leading the southern brigades. McLoughlin needed Douglas in Oregon. The Company, that had begun two centuries before with one little fort on a frozen sea, had not only stretched its tentacles across the continent but was reaching out to Hawaii, to Mexico, to Alaska. And this gal- vanizing energy resulted directly from the energy of that little man, George Simpson. "If" is a word that opens the door of lost opportunities. // Sir George Simpson had been seconded in his aims by the Governing Board of the Hudson's Bay Company; and ij those gentlemen who lived fat on their fur dividends had mended their ignorance sufficiently to know what Sir George was driving at; and ij the Company had bought over the bonded debts of Mexico as Simpson advised and traded the debts for the grant of Cali- fornia to the English; and ij the Company had been less niggardly and paid down promptly the $30,000 asked for Russia's holdings in California if all these things, then, one wonders whether the southern bounds of British Columbia to-day would be the northern bounds of modern Mexico. But man's blunders a r e destiny's plays; and the opportunities missed by one nation the prizes seized by another. 330 McLoughlin's Transmontane Empire Far reaching and statesmanlike in grasp were the schemes McLoughlin had in hand. Baranoff, the famous old governor of Alaska, had died just a few years before the union of the two English companies, and from the time of his death the grip of the Russian Fur Company slackened on Alaska. Naval officers came out as governors. Naval officers knew nothing of the tricks of the fur trade. Returns to the St. Petersburg company began to decrease. Was Alaska worth holding? That was the question Russians were asking. As the Hudson's Bay Company pressed toward the Pacific from New Caledonia, their traders and trap- pers came in violent collision with Russians working inland from the coast. There ensued the usual orgies of rum and secret raid. It became apparent that it would be cheaper for the Hudson's Bay Company to ship some of its New Caledonia furs by sea south to the Columbia than to send the packs inland and south by the horse brigades'. The Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1825 had granted the Hudson's Bay Com- pany free navigation of streams across Russian terri- tory to the interior of northern British Columbia. Year by year, English forts had been creeping up the west coast toward Russian Alaska. Fort Lang- It \ had been built on the Fraser by McMillan and twenty-five men, in 1827. The party had come from The Conquest of the Great Northwest the Columbia overland to Puget Sound. There Captain Simpson on The Cadboro met them and carried all some thirty miles up Eraser River to a point on the south bank. The Indians were notori- ously hostile, but McMillan kept men on guard day and night, and had his builders sleep in midstream on board The Cadboro. By autumn, an oblong fort with the regular palisades, inner gallery for artillery and corner bastions, had been completed; and the men scattered afield to hunt. Expresses were regu- larly sent overland to Fort Vancouver and one of these led by a MacKenzie with four men, was mur- dered on an island in the straits in January, 1828. In October, comes Governor George Simpson in pompous estate with band and outriders and retinue of twenty men. McMillan went down to the Colum- bia with the governor and was succeeded by little James Yale of Caledonia, who promptly sought to render himself secure with the natives by marrying an Indian wife. Gradually, this post became the great fishing station of the Company for the salmon shipped to Hawaii. Near Nisqually River on Puget Sound sprang up, in 1833, a cluster of cabins known as Nisqually Fort, the half-way house between the Columbia and tne Fraser, between Fort Vancouver and Fort Langley. The same spring Captain Kipling's Dryad is sent 332 McLoughlin's Transmontane Empire North with Duncan Finlayson and forty men to build an outpost yet farther north Fort McLoughlin on Millbank Sound. Work proceeds all summer. Finlayson goes back to the Columbia, Manson tak- ing charge. In spite of every caution against the treachery of the notorious Bella Coola Indians, who long ago proved so hostile to Sir Alexander Mac- Kenzie, a trader by name of Richards disappears whether a deserter or captive, Manson cannot tell. A chief is seized as hostage till the white man is re- turned. Sunday, the flag signals no trade. Not a breath of wind stirs the water. Not a canoe is vis- ible, not an Indian to be seen. A drowsy sense of security comes over the fort sweltering in the summer heat. Toward night, the men ask permission to go outside the palisades for pails of fresh water. Ander- son does not approve; but Chief Trader Manson takes his pistol and sword, opens the sally port, and leads his men down to a fresh water stream. In- stantly, in the twilight, the dense forests come to life. There is the Bella Coola's war-whoop, the crash of ambushed sharpshooters, a spitting of bullets against pebbles and pails, a wild rush of traders and Indians to reach the gates first. "Bind your hostage! Quick fire the cannon!" bellowed Anderson sprinting for safety. The cannon shots drove back the savages and the 333 The Conquest of the Great Northwest whites got safely inside the palisades with only one water carrier lost. One may guess there was no sleep. Rain clouds rolled up rendering the night pitch dark with never a sound but the lapping of the waters, the tramp, tramp of the sentries, the shuffle of men hurriedly handing down all the muskets from the wall racks, the "All's Well" of the watch every half hour as he passed the entrance to the main house. About midnight out of the dark came a terrified shout. "Mr. Manson! Mr. Manson! Can you hear me?" It was the captured water carrier. "Hello! Where are you?" "Tied in their canoe, and the devils say they are going to kill me unless you let the chief go!" Manson and Anderson hoist the hostage to the gallery inside the palisades and bid him assure his people he is safe and will be exchanged at daybreak for the water carrier. Daydawn after sleepless night, prisoners are exchanged; and the rescued man re- ports that the other missing trader had long since been stoned to death by Indian boys. Fort Mc- Loughlin proves too dangerous a fort for the traders to hold. It is torn down, in 1839, an d moved across to the north end of Vancouver Island, where it is re-named Fort Rupert and flourishes to modern times. Nisqually, Langley, McLoughlin, Rupert nothing 334 McLoughlins Transmontane Empire daunted, the Company still pushes northerly and builds Port Simpson. Then, in 1834, it is decided to send Peter Skene Ogden up on The Dryad to cross the Russian frontier and build a company post on Stickine River. This is more easily said than done. It is one thing to have free access across foreign territory. It is quite another thing to use that privilege to build a fort on the frontier of a friendly power. Baron Wrangel is governor at Sitka this year. The Dryad has barely poked her prow up the turbulent current of the Stickine breasting toward the Russian redoubt of St. Dionysius a log fort later known as Wrangel when puff goes a cannon shot! Is it a salute, or command to stop? Out rows a boat with a Russian officer presenting a formal proclamation forbidding the English com- pany from ascending the Stickine. "This is clear violation of our treaty," thunders Ogden. The Russian officer shrugs his shoulders and mut- ters some politeness through his beard. The Eng- lishmen visit the Russian fort. Very polite are the Russians but very deficient in English speech when Ogden blusters about treaty rights. "The thing can be arbitrated. We'll go on up the river anyway," protests the Britisher with that bull- dog persistence of getting his teeth in and hanging on, 335 The Conquest of the Great Northwest which characterized his Company. Then the Rus- sians suddenly find their English. "If you do, we'll fire." Word is sent to Baron Wrangel of Sitka, but Baron Wrangel is opportunely absent. For ten days, they jangle, these rival traders. Then Peter Skene re- tires from the coast to be appointed Chief Factor of New Caledonia. But the matter is not permitted to end here. In 1838, McLoughlin visits England. The case is laid before the Board of the Hudson's Bay Company, and the Hudson's Bay Company lays the case before the great British Government, and for those ten days' delay and those violations of treaty rights and those damages to British dignity, a bill of ^20,000 is pre- sented to the Russian Government. It would be interesting to know how the items of that bill were made up. Deep is the craft of these gamesters of the wilderness. They probably never intended that the bill should be paid, but it acts as a lever for what they really do want; and they will generously waive all claims of compensation for damaged dignity if the Russians will lease to them a ten-mile shore strip' at the rate of 2,000 land otter skins a year. "Owning half a continent, what in thunder did they want with a ten-mile shore strip?" a British diplomat asked; but it takes more than a British 336 McLoughlin's Transmontane Empire diplomat to fathom the motives of a Hudson's Bay Company man. The short strip was a mere baga- telle. The English Company wanted to get into trade relations with the Russians. For this purpose any wedge would do any wedge but asking trade as a favor. The fine point was to put the other fellow at a disadvantage and make him sue for the privilege of granting the favor, which the Hudson's Bay Company wanted. Curious you may search the records of the Hud- son's Bay Company from the time of Radisson to Simpson; the method is always the same; motives not only secret but deliberately hidden by every subterfuge and trick that craft could devise; a secret aim worked out by diplomatic cunning, so that the other party to the aim shall sue for the privilege of doing exactly what the Hudson's Bay Company wants. Altogether, it is very funny; and altogether, marvelously clever; and with it all don't forget was the noblesse oblige of the grand old gentlemen of the grand old school, who play patron to every good cause and would not rob man, woman, child, bird or beast of as much as a crumb. Where does it come from that curious diplomacy of the Hudson's Bay Company? Is it an inheritance of feudalism, of the mediaeval court ways, when a prince made his subjects thankful to God for having their pockets 337 The Conquest of the Great Northwest picked by his dainty fingers? To Radisson, the Company owed its existence. Yet they made him glad to beg for a penny. The French won the bay fairly in open war. Yet the Company made France glad to give up all possessions by the simple trick of presenting claims of 200,000. And when negoti- ations opened with Canada for the surrender of the monopoly in the Northwest, by some legerdemain of diplomacy, Canadian statesmen were glad to pay millions in cash and millions in land for the relin- quishment of a charter which, from the Canadian point of view the Company ought never to have been allowed to possess. The very year that Rus- sian negotiations are in progress, Pelly, the English governor of the Company, and Simpson, the colonial governor, have both been knighted for their loyal care of British interests abroad. Let us follow the diplomacy of the ten-mile strip. While diplomats are busy in England, Fort Simpson has been rebuilt on a better site by the same men of The Dryad repulsed at Stickine. At the mouth of the Skeena, the H. B. C. flag now flies above Port Essington (1835). Also on tne Stickine inland from the Russian strip, Glenora and Mumford have been built. Back came McLoughlin and the newly knighted 338 McLoughllrfs Transmontane Empire Simpson from the Board Meeting in London. Mc- Loughlin came by way of Canada. A special brigade is organized at Montreal to take possession of the leased ten-mile strip. Spring, 1840, James Douglas in command, assisted by Glen Rae, McLoughlin's son-in-law, by John McLoughlin, Jr., and fifty others, the brigade leaves Fort Vancouver, ascends the Cowlitz River, portages overland to Puget Sound and at Nisqually boards the little steamer Beaver for the North. Pause is made at Langley on the Fraser just in time to see the embers of the burnt fort. Jimmie Yale is housed in tents with the sav- ages howling around him ready to attack. Douglas lands his men and rebuilds Langley. Next stop at Fort Simpson, then up to the Russian redoubt on the Stickine, where fifty Russian soldiers are in charge. McLoughlin, Jr., drops off here with eigh- teen men to take over the fort. "Eighteen men! Do these British traders know the nature of the savages?" ask the amazed Rus- sians. And the Beaver goes on to Sitka with Doug- las. Loud roars the welcome from the Russian guns in honor of Douglas. Green were the waters of the mountain girt harbor, gold and opal the shimmering mountains. Etholine is Russian Governor in charge now, a military officer with his bride; and gay is Sitka with bunting and Chinese lanterns and feast 339 The Conquest of the Great Northwest and dance while the Hudson's Bay men visit the fort. What did they talk about over their cups, these crafty gamesters of the wilderness, when Etholine's bride and Glen Rae's wife Eloise McLoughlin had with- drawn and left the f casters to wassail till midnight? Who knows! It was the policy of the Hudson's Bay Company from the beginning to tell absolutely nothing. Until they played their cards, these game- sters never showed their hands. All we know is when Douglas left Stickine, the Russian company had agreed to buy all the supplies they could procure from the Hudson's Bay Company farms on Puget Sound and the Willamette and the Columbia. That was cheaper than bringing supplies all the way across Siberia; and the supplies were paid for in Alaskan furs. You see the fine hand of the Company's di- plomacy? On the supplies was a profit varying from 1000 to 2000 per cent. On the furs taken in exchange was another profit unspecified but easily guessed when it is known that the Russians got their furs from the Aleutians by club law. What had the deal cost the English? Two thousand land otter a year for a ten-mile strip, the said otter bartered from the Indians at about two shillings each. But one bad blunder was made, which did not come out till long after. Russia had tried in vain to raise her own supplies on a farm at Bodega, California. On 340 McLoughlin's Transmontane Empire the farm were some 1500 sheep and 3000 cattle and horses. Etholine offered to sell the Hudson's Bay Company all Russia's holdings in California for $30,000. There the old diplomacy of always hag- gling till you caught the other party to the bargain at a disadvantage over-reached itself. Douglas hag- gled and missed the bargain; and the bargain was a chance to give his Company foothold in a country, owned by Mexico, which in turn owed debt of five million pounds to British financiers. It is a sort of subterranean diplomacy, after all, but one can guess to what end these hidden motives were aiming. While the Company builds yet more forts up the Pacific Coast Tako, and later Nanaimo John McLoughlin, Jr., reigns at Stickine. Glen Rae, who came with Douglas to help establish the post, has gone on down to California in connection with that secret Hudson's Bay diplomacy. McLoughlin was an example of reversion to ancestral type. In his veins flowed the blood of his mother's Indian race; and in him were all the passions and few of the vir- tues of either his mother's or father's race. Morose, SI-VITC, vindictive with his men, he had neither the strength of will nor good fellowship to hold the loyalty of his staff. Outside the fort were two thousand of the fiercest Indians on the Pacific Coast. McLough- lin rightly forbade the use of liquor with these sav- 34i The Conquest of the Great Northwest ages, but while he interdicted his men from all vices, he indulged in wildest orgies himself. In his cups, like many morose men, he became so genial that he actually plied his traders with the forbidden liquor. Excesses followed such outbursts as are better guessed than told. One night toward the end of April, 1842, McLoughlin was on one of his sprees and the fort was a roaring bedlam of drunken, yelling, fighting white men; while outside camped the Indian war- riors ready for a raid. A French Canadian was for breaking rules and rushing past the sentry out to the Indian camp. McLoughlin roared out an oath for- bidding him. The drunken Frenchman turned and shot his leader dead. Four days later came Sir George Simpson to find flags at half-mast and the murderer in irons. Henceforth, no more rum in Pacific Coast trade! Governor Simpson for the English, and Governor Etholine for the Russians, bound themselves to abolish the use of liquor in trade. The murderer was carried to Sitka for trial but escaped punishment, probably because Mc- Loughlin was so much in the wrong that the dead trader's conduct would not bear the light of investi- gation.- This caused the first friction between Gov- ernor Simpson and Chief Factor McLoughlin. The governor blamed the doctor for placing such a worth- less son in charge of any fort. 342 McLoughlin's Transmontane Empire What was William Glen Rae, Eloise McLoughlin's husband, doing in California? He had been McLoughlin's chief lieutenant before Douglas came down from New Caledonia. Swarthy, straight as a lance, somber and passionate in his loves and hates, Rae was a Scotchman of princely presence, like all the men whom McLoughlin chose for pro- motion. Loyal to his father-in-law to a degree, he was the very man for a delicate mission of possibly far-reaching importance. Away back in 1828, when Ogdeh was leading the Southern Brigades to Nevada and Utah and Mt. Shasta, four white men Jedediah Smith and Amer- ican trappers had escaped with their lives from the Umpqua River region and come to Fort Vancouver destitute, wounded, almost naked. They had been trapping in California and following up the valley of the Sacramento had crossed over to the Umpqua intending to proceed East by way of the Columbia when the party of twenty was attacked at the ford of Umpqua River. Fifteen of the trappers were shot down instantly by the Umpqua and Rogue River Indians. All the horses were stampeded. Goods, furs, everything was plundered, the results of two years' toil. Breathless and foredone, the refugees rapped at the gates of Fort Vancouver. They were Americans. Tiny \\vre rivals. "You 343 The Conquest of the Great Northwest must positively drive out all American trappers," Simpson had ordered McLoughlin. And these men belonged to the same St. Louis outfitters, who had profited by the robbing of Peter Skene Ogden. " Heh ! What? American trappers? Bless my soul," ex- claimed the Hudson's Bay McLoughlin. "How on earth did you come over the mountains all this way? What robbed? You don't tell me? Plundered; and by our Indians? Fifteen men murdered ! Come in! Come in! McKay, there, I say McKay," he shouted to his step-son scout, "I say McKay, hear this! These gentlemen have been robbed by the Rogue River Indians. Where's La Framboise? (the guide). Saddle the horses quick! Take the South Brigade! Go rescue these gentlemen's property!" And the hoofs of the South Brigade have not clanked far on the trail at a gallop before McLoughlin has the refugees in the mess-room plied with food, while he questions them of minutest detail. The Americans are completely in his power. He supplies them with clothing and an outfit to proceed East by way of the Columbia; but what does he do with the furs Tom McKay brings back with the South Brigade after a wordy tussle and the giving of many presents to the Rogue River Indians? Ogden had been robbed by Americans. Surely here is a chance to even the score! Can one imagine a grasping Wall 344 McLoughlin's Transmontane Empire Street Croesus missing such an opportunity to cripple a rival? And I have just related how deep, how crafty, how subtle and devious the Company policy could be at times. What did McLoughlin with these rivals in his power, who had injured him? He wrote Smith a draft for the entire lot of furs at the current London prices $20,000 some reports say; others put it $40,000. McKay and McLeod are at once sent down with the South Brigade to build a Hudson's Bay fort on the Umpqua. It is known as McKay's fort. La Framboise Astor's old interpreter and McKay now regularly range the Sacramento, though Sutter, the Swiss adventurer, who has a fort of his own on the Sacramento, tries to stir up the Spaniards against them and a subsequent arrangement with the Spanish authorities expressly stipulates that only thirty trap- pers shall be allowed in the brigades. Who is to count those thirty trappers in mountain wilds? La Framboise and McKay led as many as two hundred to the very doors of Monterey. It may have been a necessity of the climate. It may have been a dis- guise; but the H. B. C. brigades of California dressed so completely disguised as Spaniards that they almost deceived Sir George Simpson. It was in Simpson's fertile brain that the whole Cali- fornia scheme originated. December, 1841, Mc- 345 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Loughlin, Douglas and Simpson sail into the harbor of San Francisco. By land go McKay and La Framboise and Ermatinger with the brigades. Presto ! First news! Sutter, the Swiss, had already bought the Russian fort at Bodega for $30,000. Douglas grinds his teeth; but Sir George Simpson is not dis- couraged. Mexico owes England five million, he says; and these Spanish colonies are having fresh revolutions almost every year. They are wined and dined and feasted and feted by the pleasure-loving Spaniards at General Vallejo's, and later meet Gen- eral Alvarado at Monterey. What did they talk about? Again I answer we must judge by the cards which the gamesters played. It is permitted the Hudson's Bay may have a trading post at Yerba Buena, in other words, San Francisco. It is per- mitted they may buy Spanish hides and Spanish stock to be paid in trade from the stores of Fort Van- couver goods from England. Also, of course, it is understood these South Brigades have not come to trap at all, but just to drive the purchased stock North by way of the Sacramento to the Columbia. Simpson and Douglas and McLoughlin depart well satisfied. Next year, in May, came Rae by boat to carry out the plans, and Birnie, the Scotch warder of the Co- lumbia bars at old Astoria, as clerk, and Sinclair as 346 McLoughlin's Transmontane Empire trader, and McKay and Ermatinger by land as leaders of the inland brigades. Rae lands goods worth $10,000, and takes possession of a 1000 acre farm on the site of the modern San Francisco, and purchases a building worth $4,600 to house the goods. Eloise McLoughlin, Rae's wife, does not come at once; and the Spaniards are a pleasure-loving people. Wines are used more than water, and the handsome Scotchman is no unwelcome visitor to the lavish homes of the proud Mexicans. What with wine and beautiful Spanish women as different from the Half- breed wives of the North as wine from water, and plotting and counter-plotting of revolutionists did Rae lose his head? Who can tell? It would have needed a wise head to remain steady in an atmos- phere so charged with political intrigue intrigue which Rae had been appointed to watch. He cer- tainly drank hard, and he may have cherished errant love, too, for when Eloise McLoughlin, his girl bride, came down from the Columbia River, high words were often heard between the two. American influence was waxing strong in San Francisco; and in his cups, Rae was wont to boast "that it had cost ^75,000 to drive Yankee traders from the Columbia, and the Hudson's Bay Company would drive them from California if it cost a million." Came one of the sporadic revolutions. The revo- 3-17 The Conquest of the Great Northwest lutionists were partial to the English, hostile to the Americans. Rae furnished the rebels with arms. They were defeated. They had not paid for their arms. Rae found himself responsible for a loss of $15,000 some accounts say $30,000 to his Com- pany. That he was in love with a Spanish woman may have been a baseless rumor; but if there were a shadow of truth in it, it must have furnished additional reason for discrediting him with his father-in-law McLoughlin. January, the iQth, at eight A. M., Sinclair, the clerk, heard loud cries above the store. He dashed upstairs into Rae's apartments to find him standing in the presence of Eloise McLoughlin with a pistol in his hand ready to kill himself. Sinclair knocked the weapon from his hand. A shot rang out. Rae had had another pistol and fell to the floor with his brains blown out. On a table near were the bottle of an opiate, which he had taken to deaden pain, and his will, written that very morning. His wife fainted. Absolutely nothing more is known of the tragedy than the facts I have set down here. It is a theme rather for the novelist than the historian. Simpson ordered the San Francisco post closed. Dugald McTavish came down in March of '46 to close up affairs. The one- thousand-acre farm, which would have netted the Company more than all the furs of Oregon if they 348 Mclaughlin's Transmontane Empire had held on to it till San Francisco grew to be a city, was relinquished without any compensation of which I could find a record. The store was sold for $5,000. So ended the Hudson's Bay Company's ambitions for empire in California. The truth is in spite of Sir George Simpson's efforts, and owing to blunders on the part of the British Government, which will be given in the next chapter, the Company was play- ing such a losing game in Oregon, it was useless to hold on to California longer. Notes to Chapter XXXII. This entire chapter deals with such a vast field and with so many disputed points, it would literally require a large volume to give all the authorities or deal in detail with the disputes. I have not attempted to give a chronological account of McLoughlin's empire. So vast was it and so varied the episodes, a chronological account would have required a jumping from spot to spot from Alaska to California, resembling the celerity of a flea. Instead, I have grouped the leading episodes and leading characters and leading legends according to area, and told each district's story in a separate group. This gives at least enough coherence to keep the facts in memory. As to authorities, I have drawn my data primarily from the Archives of H. B. C. House; secondarily from such marvelous collections of data as Hubert Howe Bancroft's, and Father Morice and the hundreds of old navigators and traders whose journals of this era have been given to the world. In addition, I have consulted every authority who has ever written on the era. Naturally, among so many authorities, there are wide pancies. Where I have taken my information from Hu- bert Howe Bancroft, I have quoted him word for word, with full c-re.lit, but in two or three cases, it will be seen my story differs from his; for instance, the story of Douglas at Stuart Lake, in which his version makes Douglas out a hero, mine makes Douglas out a very human hero, learning the lessons that afterward ma3 pilot has chosen good watering place for camping ground, and the wagons circle into a corral for the night. By the end of August, the pioneers are in the mountains at Fort Hall, on the very borders of their Promised Land. Two-thirds of the journey lies be- hind them, but the worst third is to the fore, though they are now on the outskirts of what was then called Oregon. Doctor Whitman goes ahead with the trail breakers to cut a road for the wagons through the dense mountain forests. Space does not permit the details of this part of the journey. This, too, be- longs to the story of the pioneer. It was November before the colonists reached the Columbia. How splendid was the reward of the long toil, they now know ; but ominous clouds gathered over the colony. The Columbia was a swollen sea with the autumn rains. The Indians were rampant, stampeding the stock. " Shall we kill is it good we kill these Bostonais who come to take our lands?" the excited natives asked McLoughlin, the Hudson's Bay man, at Fort Vancouver. To Pacific Coast Indians, all Ameri- cans were Boston men, so named from the first ship seen on the coast. "Shall we kill these Boston men who make bad talk against the King George men?" "Kill? Who said the word?" thundered Me- 3 6 4 The Passing of the Company Loughlin, thinking, no doubt, to what lengths such a game on the part of the fur trader led in Red River; and it is said he knocked the Indian miscreant down. "The people have no boats. They are without food or clothing," messengers reported at the Com- pany fort. The weather had turned damp and cold. Autumn rains were slashing down slantwise. Again Mc- Loughlin had to choose between his Company and his conscience. Had he but restrained his hand done nothing disease and exposure would have done more than enough to the incoming colonists; but he did not hesitate one moment, not though the colonists were cursing him for a Hudson's Bay op- pressor and the Company threatening to dismiss him for his friendship with the Americans. In- stantly, he sent his traders upstream with rafts and boats and clothing and provisions for the belated people. " Pay me back when you can," was the only bond he laid on the needy people; and a good many paid him back by cursing him for "an aristocrat." Rain was drenching down as the boats came swirling opposite Vancouver Fort. On the wharf stood the Chief Factor, long hair, white as snow, blowing wet in the wind, with hand of welcome and cheer ex- tended for every comer. One woman had actually The Conquest of the Great Northwest given birth to a child as the rafts came down the Columbia. For days, the Company's fort was like a fair five hundred people at a time housed under Vancouver's roofs or camped in the courtyard till every colonist had erected, and taken his family to, his own cabins. Among so many heterogeneous elements as the colonists were some outlaws, and these within a few months were threatening to "burn Fort Vancou- ver about the old aristocrat's. ears." The colonists had organized a provisional government of their own which is a story by itself; and they begged McLoughlin to subscribe to it that they might pro- tect Fort Vancouver from the lawless spirits. "You must positively protect your rights here and at once or you will loose the country," McLoughlin had written to the Governing Board of London. No answer had come. The threats against Fort Vancouver became bolder. The Indian conspiracy, that shortly deluged the land in blood, was throwing off all concealment. McLoughlin built more bas- tions and strengthened his pickets. Still no answer came to his appeal for protection by the English Gov- ernment. Colonists, who loved McLoughlin as "the father of Oregon," begged him to subscribe to the provisional government. Ogden advised it. Ermatinger was ready to become an American cit- 366 The Passing of the Company izen. Douglas was absent in the North. Fearful of Indian war now threatening and dreading still more an international war over the possession of Oregon, McLoughlin, after long struggles between Company and conscience, after prayers for hours on his knees for God's guidance in his choice sub- scribed to the provisional government in August, 1844. Six months too late came the protection for which he had been asking all these years the British Pa- cific Squadron. Perhaps it was as well that the war vessels did come too late, for Captain Gordon, commander of the fleet and brother to Aberdeen, then Cabinet Minister of England, was a pompous, fire-eating, blustering fellow, utterly incapable of steering a peaceful course through such troublous times. With Gordon boasting how his marines could "drive the Yankees over the mountains," and outlaws among the colonists keen for the loot of a raid on Fort Vancouver friction might have fanned to war before England or the United States could intervene. The main fleet lay off Puget Sound. The ship Modiste, with five hundred marines, anchored in the Columbia off Vancouver and patrolled the river for eighteen months, men drilling and camping on the esplanade in front of the fur post. 367 The Conquest of the Great Northwest Came also in October, 1845, two special commis- sioners from the Hudson's Bay Company to report on Oregon. The report was sent back without McLoughlin's inspection. They had reported against him for favoring the American settlers. Knowing well this was the beginning of the end, McLoughlin sent for Douglas to come down and take charge. The mail of the following spring dismissed Mc- Loughlin from the service. That is not the way it was put. It was suggested he should retire. McLoughlin gave up the reins in 1846 and withdrew from Vancouver Fort to live among the settlers he had befriended at Oregon City on the Willamette. He died there in 1857. It is unnecessary to express an opinion on his character. The record of his rule in Oregon is the truest verdict on his character. His was one of the rare spirits in this world that not only followed right, but followed right when there was no reward; that not only did right, but did right when it meant positive loss to himself and the stabs of malignity from ungrateful people whom he had benefited. The most of people can act saintly when a Heaven of prizes is dangling just in front of the Trail, but fewer people can follow the narrow way when it leads to loss and pain and ignominy. McLoughlin could, and that Christ-like quality in his character places him second to none among the 368 The Passing of the Company heroes of American history. As Selkirk's name is indissolubly connected with the hero-days of Red River, so McLoughlin's is enshrined in the heroic past of Oregon. In Hudson's Bay House, London, I looked in vain for portraits or marble busts of these men. Portraits there are of bewigged and beruffled princes and dukes who ruled over estates that would barely make a back-door patch to Red River or Oregon; but not a sign to commemorate the fame of the two men who founded empires in America, greater in area than Great Britain and France and Germany and Spain combined. It would be interesting from a colonial point of view to know just what qualifications the British Government thought Commander Gordon of the Pacific Squadron and his officers, Lieut. William Peel, son of Sir Robert Peel, and Lieutenant Parke of the Royal Marines, possessed to judge whether Oregon was worth keeping or not. It would be interesting from a purely Canadian point of view. American historians, who ought to be profoundly grateful to Gordon for his blunders, pronounce him the most consummate bungler ever sent on an Inter- national mission. Reference has been made in an introductory chapter as to how these naval officers dealt with the matter and the grave injustice they 3 r >9 The Conquest of the Great Northwest did the Hudson's Bay Company. Parke and Peel came down to the Columbia and passed some weeks on hunting expeditions up the Walla Walla and the Willamette. They surveyed Fort Vancouver and laughed. All the international pother about that wooden clutter! They observed the colonists and laughed! Why, five hundred marines from any one of their fifteen war ships lying in Puget Sound could send these barefooted, buckskin-clad, tobacco-spit- ting settlers skipping back over the mountains to the United States like deer before the hunt in English parks! To the two naval officers, these people were but low-living peasants. It did not enter into the narrow vision of their insular minds that out of just such material as these rough pioneers do new nations grow. The two gentlemen regarded the whole ex- pedition as a holiday lark. They had a good time! Up on Puget Sound Gordon was serving the British Government still more worthily. He had landed at the Hudson's Bay Company's new post of Victoria of which more anon. He was given the best that the fur post could offer table of wild fowl and the Company's best wines, but Half-breed servants do not wait on a table like an English butler; and berth bunks are not English feather beds; and an ocean full of water is not an English bath. Alas and alas, poor gentleman ! Such sacrifices is he called to make 370 The Passing of the Company for his country's service! Then my gentleman de- mands what sport. "Deer," says Finlayson, "or hear hunting; or fishing." "Do you use flies or bait?" asks Gordon with a due sense of condescension for having deigned to en- quire about this barbarous land's sport at all. Fin- layson must have had some trouble not to choke with laughter when my gentleman insists on fishing with flies in streams where salmon could be scooped in tubfuls. Later, he deigns to go hunting and in- sists that deer be run down in the open as they hunt in enclosed Scottish game preserves, not still-hunted, which is a barbarous way; with the consequence that Gordon does not get a shot. In vain Finlayson and Douglas, who comes North, try to please this mannikin in gold braid. In response to their admi- ration of the mighty mountains, he makes answer that goes down to history for civility "that he would not give the bleakest knoll on the bleakest hill of Scotland for all these mountains in a heap." Oregon's provisional government forced the boun- dary dispute to an issue. It must be settled. The Hudson's Bay Company press their case, pleading that if the American colonists are to retain all south of the Columbia, then the Company, having settlers between the Columbia and Puget Sound, should retain all between Columbia River and Puget Sound. The Conquest of the Great Northwest The case hangs fire. Gordon is called in. In language which I have given in a former chapter, he declares the country is not worth keeping. Naturally, Aberdeen listens to his own brother's opinion and Peel to his son's. By treaty of June, 1846, England relinquishes claims to all territory south of 49. Gradually fur trader is crowded out by settler. In 1860, Fort Vancouver is dismantled and taken over as a military station by the United States. Erma- tinger, for having joined the Oregon government, is packed off to a post in Athabasca. Ogden saves himself from punishment by following McLoughlin's example and resigning to become a settler on the Willamette. For the Puget Sound farms, the Com- pany receives compensation of $450,000 and $200,000 from the American Government ; the former amount payable to the Hudson's Bay Company proper, the latter to the Puget Sound Company, though the shareholders were nominally the same persons. So ended the glories of the fur trade in Oregon. It still had a few years to run in British Columbia. Long ago McLoughlin had plainly seen the begin- ning of the end in Oregon and sent Douglas to spy out the site of a permanent fort north of 49. It is really one of the most interesting studies in American history to observe if it can be done with- 372 The Passing of the Company out prejudice or prepossession how when this great Company, changing in its personnel but ever carry- ing down in its apostolic succession the same tradi- tions of statecraft, of obedience, of secrecy, of diplo- macy how when this great Company had to take a kick, it took it gracefully and always made it a point of being kicked />, not down. This is illustrated by the Company's policy now. Cruising north in June of '42, Douglas notices two magnificent bays north of 49, on the south end of Vancouver Island opposite what is now British Columbia. The easterly bay named by the Indians, Camosun, meaning rush of waters, offers splendid sea space combined with a shore of plains interspread with good building timber. Also, there are fresh- water streams. The other bay, three miles west, called Esquimalt the place of gathering of roots- is a better, more land-locked harbor but more diffi- cult of anchorage for small boats. Simpson and McLoughlin decide to build a new fort at Camosun the modern Victoria. Those, who know the re- gion, need no description of its beauty. To those who do not, descriptions can convey but a faint picture. Islands ever green, in a climate ever mild, dot the far-rolling blue of a summer sea; and where the clouds skirt the water's horizon, there breaks through mid-heaven, aerial and unreal, the fiery and 373 The Conquest of the Great Northwest opal dome of Mt. Baker, or the rifted shimmering, ragged peaks of the Olympic Range in Washington. So far are the mountains, so soft the air, that not a shadow, not a line, of the middle heights appear, only the snowy peaks, dazzling and opalescent, with the primrose tinge of the sheet lightning at play like the color waves of Northern Lights. Westward is the sea; eastward, the rolling hills, the forested islands, unexpected vistas of sea among the forests, of precipices rising sheer as wall from the water. Hither comes Douglas to lay the foundations of a new empire. To Hubert Howe Bancroft the world is indebted for details of the founding of Victoria. Bancroft obtained the facts first-hand from the manuscripts of Douglas, himself. Fifteen men led by Douglas left the Columbia in March, '43. Proceeding up the Cowlitz, they obtained provisions from the Puget Sound Company at Nisqually and embarking on The Beaver, March the i3th, at ten A. M., steamed northward for Vancouver Island. At four o'clock, the next afternoon, they anchored just outside Camo- sun Bay. "On the morning of the i5th of March, Douglas set out from the steamer in a small boat to examine the shore. . . . With the expedition was a Jesuit missionary, Bolduc. . . . Repair- ing to the great house of the Indian village, the priest harangued the people . . . and baptized them 374 The Passing of the Com pan >j till arrested by sheer exhaustion. The i6th, having determined on a site, Douglas put his men at work squaring timbers and digging a well. He explained to the natives that he had come to build among them, whereat they were greatly pleased and pressed their assistance on the fort builders, who employed them at the rate of a blanket for every forty pickets they would bring. . . . Sunday, the igth, Bolduc decided to celebrate mass. Douglas supplied him with men to aid in the holy work. A rustic chapel was improvised; a boat's awning serving as canopy, branches of fir trees enclosing the sides. No cathe- dral bell was heard that Sabbath morning . . and yet the Songhies, Clallams, and Cowichins were there, friends and bloody enemies. . . . Bolduc, desirous of carrying the gospel to Whidby Island, was paddled thence on the 24th. . . . While his men proceeded with the building, Doug- las went north on The Beaver to dismantle Fort Tako and Fort McLoughlin and bring the men from these abandoned posts to assist at Camosun. "The force now numbered fifty men . . . armed to the teeth . . . constantly on guard." By Sep- tember, stockades, bastions and dwelling houses were complete. Douglas departed in October, leav- ing Charles Ross in charge, but Ross dit-d in the spring of '44 and Roderick Finlayson became chief 375 The Conquest of the Great Northwest trader at Camosun, first named Albert Fort after the Prince Consort, then Victoria, its present name, after the Queen of England. Finlayson had been in charge of a little post at Bytown the modern Ottawa, but coming to Oregon had been dispatched north to Stiddne. The steamer had not been long gone when the Cowichin Indians fell to the pastime of slaughtering the fort cattle. Finlayson demanded pay or the sur- render of the Indian " rustlers." The Indian chief laughed the demand to scorn. " The fort gates will be closed against you," warned Finlayson. "And I will batter them down," retorted the chief. "The spirit of butchery," relates Bancroft, "was aroused. Within the fort, watch was kept day and night. After a lapse of two days, the threatened attack was made. Midst savage yells, a shower of musket balls came pattering down upon the fort, riddling the stockades and rattling on the roofs. In- stantly, Finlayson shouted his order that not a shot was to be returned. . . . The savages continued their fire . . . then rested from the waste of ammunition. . . . Then the commander (Fin- layson) appeared . . . and beckoned (the chief) . . . 'What would you do?' exclaimed Finlayson. 'What evil would you bring upon yourselves! Know 376 The Passing of the Company you that with one motion of my finger I could blow you all into the bay? And I will do it! See your houses yonder!' "Instantly, a nine-pounder belched forth with astounding noise, tearing to splinters the cedar lodge. "Finlayson had ordered his interpreter to run to the lodges and warn the inmates to instant flight. Hence no damage was done save shivering to splinters some pine slabs." The results were what one might expect. The Indians sued for peace, and paid full meed in furs for the slaughtered cattle. It may be added here as a sample of the Hudson's Bay Company's economy in detail that Fort Vic- toria was built without the driving of a single nail. Wooden pegs were used. After the relinquishment of Oregon, the old Okanogan - Kamloops trail could be no longer used. Anderson of Fort Alexandria in New Caledonia succeeded in 1845-46 in finding and cutting a new trail down the Fraser to Langley and Victoria. This was the trail that later developed into the famous Cariboo Road of the miners and of which ruins may still be seen clinging to the preci- pices above the Fraser like basket work, the strands of the basket bridges being huge cedar logs mor- tised in places for a depth of hundreds of feet. Except where the embankment has crumbled be- 377 The Conquest of the Great Northwest neath the timber work, Anderson's old fur trail is still used to enter Cariboo. From 1846, one Joseph McKay becomes chief clerk under Chief Factor Douglas of Victoria. Indians brought first word of the famous coal beds of North Vancouver Island. Hence the building of Fort Rupert on Beaver Harbor in '43. And now occurs the fine play of the Company's rare diplomacy. Rumors of gold in California are arousing the fever that is to result in the pell-mell stampede of the famous '49. At any time, similar discoveries may bring a stampede to the North. No one knew better than the Company those Indian legends of hidden minerals in the Rockies, and when colonists came there would be an end to the fur trade. Did the Company, then as is often charged con- ceal knowledge of precious minerals in its territory? Not at all. It simply let the legends slumber. Its business was not mining. It was fur trading, and the two were utterly hostile. Came Sir John Pelly, Governor of the Company in England, and Sir George Simpson, Governor of the Company in America, to the Cabinet Minister of Great Britain with a cock-and-bull story of the dangers of an American, not invasion, but deluge such as had swept away British sovereignty in Ore- gon. What, they ask, is to hinder American colo- 378 The Passing of the Company nists rolling in a tide north of the boundary and so establishing rights of possession there as they had in Oregon. Any schoolboy could have guessed the trend of such argument, and let us not blame the Hudson's Bay Company for cupidity. It was a purely commercial organization, not a patriotic or charitable association; and it pursued its aims just as commercial organizations have pursued their aims since time began namely, by grabbing all they could get. To talk cupidity is nonsense. Cupidity, ac- cording to the legal rules of the game, is the business of a money-getting organization. Not the cupidity of the Hudson's Bay Company was to blame for the extraordinary episodes in its history. Place the blame where it belongs at the door of an ignorance as profound as it was indifferent on the part of the British statesmen who dealt with colonial affairs. My Lord Grey listens to the warning of this impending disaster. What would the Hudson's Bay Company suggest to counteract such danger? Modestly, generously, with a largesse of self-sacrifice that is appalling to contemplate, the two Hudson's Hay governors offer to accept accept, mind you, not ask the enormous burden of looking afti-r "ns. Horse racing is the passion and the pas- time. Schools and embryo colleges and churches have been established by the missionaries of the different denominations, whose pioneer labors are a book in themselves. It is a happy primitive life, with neither wealth nor poverty, of almost Arcadian simplicity, and cloudless but for that shadow illicit trade, monopoly. Could the life but have lasted, I 399 The Conquest of the Great Northwest doubt if American history could show its parallel for quiet, care-free, happy-go-lucky, thoughtless-of-the- morrow contentment. The French of Acadia, per- haps, somewhat resembled Red River colony, but we have grown to view Acadia through Longfellow's eyes. Beneath the calm surface there was interna- tional intrigue. Military life gave a dash of color to Red River that Longfellow's Acadians never possessed; but beneath the calm of Red River, too, was intrigue. Resentment against search for furs grew to anger. The explosion came over a poor French Plain Ranger, William Sayer, and three friends, arrested for accept- ing furs from Indians in May, 1849. Judge Thorn, the Company's recorder, was to preside in court. Thorn was noted for hatred for the French in his old journalistic days in Montreal. The arrest suddenly became a social question the French Plain Rangers of the old Nor'Westers against the English Company, with the Scotch settlers looking on only too glad of a test case against the Company. Louis Riel, an old miller of the Seine near St. Boniface, father of the Riel to become notorious later, harangued the Plain Rangers and French settlers like a French revo- lutionist discoursing freedom. The day of the trial, May i yth, Plain Rangers were seen riding from all directions to the Fort Garry Court House. At 10 400 The Paxxiny of tJte Company A. M. they had stacked four hundred guns against the outer wall and entered the court in a body. Not till i p. M. did the court dare to call for the prisoner, William Sayer. As he walked to the bar of justice, the Plain Rangers took up their guns and followed him in. Boldly, Sayer pleaded guilty to the charge of trading furs. It was to be a test case, but test cases are the one thing on earth the Hudson's Bay Company avoided. The excuse was instantly un- earthed or invented that a man connected with the Hudson's Bay Company had given Sayer permission; perhaps, verbal license to trade. So the case was compromised a verdict of guilty, but the prisoner honorably discharged by the court. The Plain Rangers took no heed of legal quibbles. To them, the trial meant that henceforth trade was free. With howls of jubilation, they dashed from the court carrying Sayer and shouting, " Vive la liberte com- merce is free trade is free"; and spent the night discharging volleys of triumph and celebrating vic- tory. Isbister, the young lawyer, forwards to the Sec- retary of State for the Colonies petition after petition against the Company's monopoly. The settlers, who now number five thousand, demanded liberty of commerce and British laws. The petitions are ignored. Isbister vows they are shelved through the 401 intrigue of the Hudson's Bay Company in London. Then five hundred settlers petition the Legislature of Canada. The Toronto Board of Trade takes the matter up in 1857, and Canadian surveyors are sent west to open roads to Red River. "It is plain," aver the various petitions and memorials of 1857-59, "that Red River settlement is being driven to one of two destinies. Either she must be permitted to join the other Canadian colonies, or she will be absorbed by a provisional American government such as captured Oregon." Sir George Simpson, prince of tacticians, dies. Both the British Government and the Hudson's Bay Company are at sea. There is no denying what happened to Oregon when the Com- pany held on too long. They drove Oregon into Congress. May not the same thing happen in Red River in which case the Company's compensation will be nil. Then there is untold history here a story that must be carried on where I leave off and which will probably never be fully told till the leading actors in it have passed away. There are ugly rumors of a big fund among the Minne- sota traders, as much as a million dollars, to be used for secret service money to swing Red River Settlement into the American Union. Was it a Fenian fund? Who held the fund? Who set the scheme going? 402 The Passing of the Company The Hudson's Bay Company knows nothing. It only fears. The British Government knows nothing; except that in such a way did it lose Oregon; and the United States is now buying Alaska from Russia. With its policy of matchless foresight, the Hudson's Bay Company realizes it is wiser to retire early with the laurels and rewards than to retreat too late stripped. The question of renewing the license on Vancouver Island is on the carpet. The Hudson's Bay Company welcomes a Parliamentary Enquiry into every branch of its operations. "We would be glad to get rid of the enormous burden of governing these territories, if it can be done equitably as to our possessory rights" the Company informs the as- tonished Parliamentary Committee. How stand those possessory rights under the terms of union in 1821? It will be remembered the charter rights were not then tested. They were merged with the Northwest Company rights, and without any test a license of exclusive trade granted for twenty-one years. That license was renewed in 1838 for another twenty-one years. This term is just ex- piring when the Company declares it would be glad to be rid of its bunk-n, and welcomes a Parliamen- tary Enquiry. At that inquiry, friends and foes alike tr.-tify. < )11 officers like Ellice give evidence. So do Sir George Simpson, and Blanchard of Van- 403 The Conquest of the Great Northwest couver Island, and Isbister as representative of the Red River colonists, and Chief Justice Draper as representative of Canada. It is brought out the Company rules under three distinct licenses: (1) Over Rupert's Land or the territory of the bay proper by right of its first charter. (2) Over Vancouver Island by special grant of 1849. (3) Over all the Indian Territory between the bay and Vancouver Island by the license of 1821 since renewed. The Parliamentary committee recommend on July 31, 1857, that Vancouver Island be given up; that just as soon as Canada is ready to take over the government of the Indian Territory this, too, shall be ceded ; but that for the present in order to avoid the demoralization of Indians by rival traders, 'Rupert's Land be left in the exclusive control of the Hudson's Bay Company. This is the condition of affairs when unrest arises in Red River. The committee also bring out the fact that the capital has been increased since the union of 1821 to 500,000. Of the .one hundred shares into which this is divided, forty have been set aside for the win- tering partners or chief factors and chief traders. These forty shares are again subdivided into eighty- five parts. Two eighty-fifths of the profits equal to 404 The Passing o] the Com pan// $3,000 a year and a retiring fund of $20,000 are the share of a chief factor; one eighty-fifth, the share of a chief trader. This is what is known as "the deed poll." Meanwhile, out in Red River, gold seekers bound for Cariboo, prospectors for the bad lands of Mon- tana, settlers for the farms of Minnesota roll past in a tide. Trade increases in jumps. A steamer runs on Red River connecting by stage for St. Paul. Among the hosts of new comers to Red River is one Doctor Schultz, who helps to establish the newspaper, Nor' Wester, which paper has the amazing temerity, in 1867, to advocate that in the Council of Assiniboia there should be some representative of the people independent of the Hudson's Bay Company. A vacancy occurs in the council. The NofW ester advocates that Dr. John Schultz would be an excel- lent representative to fill that vacancy. A great many of the settlers think so, too; for among other new- comers to the colony is one Thomas Spence, of Portage la Prairie, who is for setting up a provisional government of Manitoba. A government inde- pendent of British connection means only one thing annexation. The settlers want to see Schultz on the Council of Assiniboia to counteract domination by the Hudson's Bay and to steer away from annex- es ation. Not so the Hudson's Bay Company. Schultz's paper has attacked them from the first, and the little store of which he is part proprietor, has been defiant opposition under their very noses. But this council business is too much. They will squelch Schultz, and do it legally, too. In all new countries, the majority of pioneers are at some stage of the game in debt. Against Schultz's firm stood a debt of a few hundred dollars. Schultz swore he had dis- charged the debt by paying the money to his partner. Owing to his partner's absence in England, his evi- dence could neither be proved nor disproved. The Company did not wait. Judgment was entered against Schultz and the sheriff sent to seize his goods. Moral resistance failing, Schultz resisted somewhat vigorously with the poker. This was misdemeanor with a vengeance probably the very thing his ene- mies hoped, for he was quickly overpowered, tied round the arms with ropes, and whisked off in a cariole to prison. But his opponents had not counted on his wife the future Lady Schultz, life partner of the man who was governor of Manitoba for eight years. That very night the wife of the future Sir John led fifteen men across to the prison, ordered the guides knocked aside, the doors battered open, and her husband liberated. His arrest was not again attempted, and at a later trial for the debt, 406 The Passing of the Company Schultz was vindicated. His party emerged from the fracas ten times stronger. Here, then, were three parties all at daggers drawn the Hudson's Bay Company standing stiffly for the old order of things and marking time till the negotiations in England gave some cue for a new policy; the colonists asking for a representative gov- ernment, which meant union with Canada, waiting till negotiations for Confederation gave them some cue; the independents, furtive, almost nameless, working in the dark, hand in hand with that million dollar fund, watching for their opportunity. And there was a fourth party more inflammable than these the descendants of the old Nor'Westers the Plain Rangers, French Metis all of them, led by Louis Kiel, son of the old miller, wondering rest- lessly what their part was to be in the reorganization. Were their lands to be taken away by these sur- veyors coming from Canada? Were they to be whistled by the independents under the Stars and Stripes? They and their fathers had found this land and explored it and ranged its prairies from time immemorial. Who had better right than the French Half-breeds to this country. Compared to them, the Scotch settlers were as newcomers. Of them, the other three parties were taking small thought. The Metis rallied to Louis Kiel's 407 The Conquest of the Great Northwest standard to protect their rights, whichever of the other three parties came uppermost in the struggle. Poor children of the wilds, of a free wilderness life forever past ! Their leader was unworthy, and their stand a vain breakwater against the inward rolling tide of events resistless as destiny! The Company had told the Parliamentary Com- mittee of '57 that it would willingly remit the burden of governing its enormous territory if adequate re- turns were made for its possessory rights. Without going into the question of these rights, a syndicate of capitalists, called the International Financial As- sociation, jumped at the chance to buy out the old Hudson's Bay. Chief negotiator was Edward Wat- kins, who was planning telegraph and railroad schemes for British America. "About what would the price be?" he had casually asked Ellice, now an old man the same Ellice who had negotiated the union of Hudson's Bay and Nor'Westers in '21. "Oh, perhaps a million-and-a-half," ruminated Ellice; but Berens, whose family had held Hudson's Bay stock for generations, was of a different mind. "What?" he roared in a manner the quintessence of insult, "sequester our lands? Let settlers go in on our hunting ground?" But the cooler heads proved the wiser heads. It was "take what you can get 408 The Passing of the Company now, or risk losing all later! Whether you will or not, charter or no charter, settlers are coming and cant be stopped. Canadian politicians are talking of your charter as an outrage, as spoliation! Their surveyors are already on the ground! Judge for yourselves whether it is worth while to risk the repe- tition of Oregon; or attempt resisting settlement." Members of the International Financial Asso- ciation met Berens, Colville representative of the Selkirk interests and two other Hudson's Bay directors in the dark old office of the Board Room, I'Ynchurch Street, on the ist of February, in 1862. Watkins descrilxs the room as dingy with faded green cover on the long table and worn dust-grimed chairs. Berens continued to storm like a fishwife; but it was probably part of the game. On June i, 1863, the International Association bought out the Hudson's I'.ay Company for 1, 500,000. The Com- pany that had begun in Radisson's day, two hundred yrars before, with a capital of $50,000 (10,000) now sold to the syndicate for $7,500,000, and the stock was resold to new shareholders in a new Hudson's Bay Company at a still larger capital. The ques- tion was what to do about the forty shares belong- ing to the chief factors and traders. When word of the sale came to them in Canada, they naturally felt as the minority shareholder always feels that they 409 The Conquest of the Great Northwest had been sold out without any compensation, and the indignation in the service was universal. But this injustice was avoided by another unexpected move in the game. While financiers were dickering for Hudson's Bay stock, Canadian politicians brought about confede- ration of all the Canadian colonies in 1867, and a clause had been introduced in the British North America Act that it should "be lawful to admit Rupert's Land and the Northwest Territories into the Union." The Hon. William McDougall had introduced resolutions in the Canadian House pray- ing that Rupert's Land be united in the Confedera- tion. With this end in view, Sir George Cartier and Mr. McDougall proceeded to England to negotiate with the Company. In October, 1869, the new Hud- son's Bay Company relinquished all charter and ex- clusive rights to the Dominion. The Dominion in turn paid over to the Company 300,000 ; granted it one-twentieth of the arable land in its territory, and ceded to it rights to the land on which its forts were built. From the 300,000, paid by Canada, 157,055 were set aside to buy out the rights of the wintering partners. How valuable one-twentieth of the arable land was to prove, the Company, itself, did not realize till recent days, and what wealth it gained from the cession of land where its forts stood, may be 410 The Passing of the Company guessed from the fact that at Fort Garry (Winnipeg) this land comprised five hundred acres of what are now city lots at metropolitan values. Where its forts stood, it had surely won its laurels, for the ground was literally baptized with the blood of its early traders; just as the tax-free sites of rich reli- gious orders in Quebec were long ago won by the blood of Catholic martyrs of whom newcomers knew nothing. Whether the rest of the bargain the pay- ment of 300,000 for charter rights, which Canadians repudiated, and the cession of one-twentieth of the country's arable land were as good a bargain for Canada as for the Hudson's Bay Company, I must leave to be discussed by the writer who takes up the story where I leave off. Certainly both sides have made tremendous gains from the bargain. A year later, Red River Settlement came into Confederation under the name which Spence had given the country of his Provisional Government Manitoba, "the country of the people of the lakes." So passed the Company as an empire builder. In Oregon, its passing was marked by the terrible con- flagration of Indian massacres. In British Colum- bia, the old order gave place to the new in a wild gold stampede. In Manitoba, the monopoly had not been surrendered before Riel put a match to the 411 The Conquest of the Great Northwest inflammable passions of his wild Plain Rangers, that set the country in a flame. As for the Company, it had played its part, and its day was done. On that part, I have no verdict. Its history is its verdict, and it is only fair to judge it by the codes of feudalism rather than democracy. Judging by the codes of feudalism, there are few baronial or royal houses of two hundred years' reign with as little to blush for or hide away among family skeletons as the " Gentlemen Adventurers Trading to Hudson's Bay." Trickery? To be sure; but then, it was an old order fighting a new, an old fencer trying to parry the fancy thrusts of an enemy with a new style of sword play. The old order was Feudalism. The new was Democracy. The Company's ships still ply the waters of the North. Its canoe brigades still bring in the furs to the far fur posts. Its mid-winter dog trains still set the bells tinkling over the lonely wastes of Northern snows and it still sells as much fur at its great annual sales as in its palmiest days. But the Hudson's Bay Company is no longer a gay Adventurer setting sail over the seas of the Unknown. It is no longer a Soldier of Fortune, with laugh for life or death carv- ing a path through the wilderness. It is now but a commercial organization with methods similar to other money-getting companies. Free traders over- 412 The Passing of the Company run its hunting grounds. Rivals as powerful as itself are now on the field fighting the battle of competition according to modern methods of business rivalry. Three-quarters of its old hunting fields are already carved up in the checkerboard squares of new provinces and fenced farm patches. The glories of the days of its empire as Adventurer, as Soldier of Fortune, as Pathfinder, as Fighter, as Gamester of the Wilderness have gone forever to that mellow Golden Age of the Heroic Past. Notes to Chapter XXXIV. The authorities for this chapter are H. B. C. Archives; the Parl. Report of 1857; Canadian Han- sard, and local data gathered on the spot when I lived in Winni- peg. Dr. George Bryce is the only writer who has ever at- tempted to tell the true inward story of the first Riel Rebellion. I do not refer to his hints of "priestly plots." These had best been given in full or left unsaid, but I do refer to his reference to the danger of Red River going as Oregon had gone over to a Provisional Government, which would have meant war; and I cannot sufficiently regret that this story is not given in full. In another generation, there will be no one living who can tell that story; and yet one can understand why it may have to remain untold as long as the leading actors are alive. I do not touch on the Riel Rebellion in this chapter, as it belongs to the history of the colony rather than the company; and if I gave it, I should also have to give the Whitman Massa- f Oregon and the Gold Stampede of B. C., which I do not consider inside the scope of the history of the company as empire builder. Much of thrilling interest in the lives of the colonists I have been compelled to omit for the same reason ; for instance, the Sioux massacres in Minnesota, the adventures of the buffalo hunters, such heroism as that of Hesse, the flood in Red River, the splendid work of the different missionaries as they came, the comical half garrison life of the old pensioners, including the terrible suicide of an officer at Fort Douglas over a love affair. Whoever tells the story where I have left off will have these pegs to hang his chapters on; and I envy him the pleasure of his work, whether the story be swung along as a record of the pioneer, or of Lord Strathcona the Frontenac of the West or of the great Western missionaries. Two or three discrepancies bother me in this chapter, which the wise may worry over, and the innocent leave alone. In Parl. Inquiry, 1857, Ellice gives the united capital of H. B. C. and N. W. C. in 1821, as 400,000. As I made transcripts of the minutes in H. B. C. House, London, I made it 250,000. In any case, it was increased to five before the Int. Fin. Asso- ciation took hold. Another point, the new company paid 1,500,000 for the stock. The stock sold to the public totalled a larger capital much larger. I do not give this total, though I have it, because at a subsequent period the company retired part of its capital by returning it to the shareholders, if you like to put it that way ; or paying a dividend which practically amounted to a retire- ment. That comes so late in the Company's history, I feel it has no place here. Therefore, to name the former large capital would probably only mislead the reader. It was in the days of Alex MacDonell, the grasshopper gov- ernor, that the traders used to turn a whiskey bottle upside down filled with sand, neck to neck on another whiskey bottle, making an hour-glass, and drink till all the sand ran from the upper bottle, when if the thirst was not quenched, both bottles were reversed to begin the revels over again. If tradition is to be trusted, the same hour bottle was much to blame for the failures of the experimental farms. The widow of John Clarke, who came a bride to the West in 1822, and lived in the palmy Arcadian days of Red River, is still living in Montreal, aged 105, and has just at this date (1907) had her daughter issue a little booklet of the most charmingly quaint reminiscences I have enjoyed in many a day. Ross and Hargrave and Gunn are the great authorities for the days between 1820 and 1870, with other special papers to be found in the Manitoba Hist. Soc. Series. In several places I use dollar terms. Down to 1870 all H. B. C. calculations were in , s., d. One there is who owes the world her reminiscences of this fascinating era; and that is Lady Schultz, but the people who have lived adventure are not keen for the limelight of telling it, and I fear this story will not be given to the world. 414 The Passing of the Company It may be interesting to admirers of that campaigner of the Conservative Party, Sir John MacDonald, to know that the terms " spoliation and outrage" as applied to the H. B. C. charters originated in a speech of Sir John's. The adventures of the Swiss, who moved from Red River down to Fort Snelling, at St. Paul, will be found very fully given in the Minnesota Hist. Society's Collections and in the Macalester College Collections of St. Paul. Mrs. Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve's Memoirs of Fort Snelling tell the tragic tale of the Tully murder in 1823, when the little boy, John, of Red River, was brought into Fort Snelling half scalped, and Andrew was adopted into her own family. THE END 415 7530 9 UNIVERS'^ UNIVERSITY of CALlb AT LOS ANGELES LIBRARY UC SOUngNHEGOMl JJKMHY FACILITY |||| | HI || In I II II III II I III III I , A 000 887 385