Canada: the Empire of the North

A >> Agnes C. Laut >> Canada: the Empire of the North

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A few weeks previously the men of the English company had gone on up
the west coast of Hudson Bay, prospecting for the site of a new
settlement. Before Albanel had come at all, there was friction among
the English. Radisson and Groseillers were Catholics and French, and
they were supervisors of the entire trade. Bayly, the English
governor, was subject to them. So was Captain Gillam, with whom they
had quarreled long ago, when he refused to take his boat into Hudson
Straits on the voyage from Port Royal. Radisson and Groseillers were
for establishing more posts up the west coast of Hudson Bay, farther
from the competition of Duluth's forest rovers on Lake Superior. They
had examined the great River Nelson and urged Bayly, the English
governor, to build a fort there. Bayly sulked and blustered by turns.
In this mood they had come back to Prince Rupert to find the French
flag flying above their fort and the English Jesuit, Albanel, snugly
ensconced, with passports from Governor Frontenac and personal letters
for Radisson and Groseillers.

{145} England and France were at peace. Bayly had to respect Albanel's
passports, but he wished this English envoy of French rivals far
enough; and when Captain Gillam came from England the old quarrel
flamed out in open hostility. Radisson and Groseillers were accused of
being in league with the French traders. A thousand rumors of what
next happened have gained currency. One writer says that the English
and French came to blows; another, that Radisson and Groseillers
deserted, going back overland with Albanel. In the Archives of
Hudson's Bay House I found a letter stating that the English captain
kidnapped the Jesuit Albanel and carried him a captive to England. It
may as well be frankly stated these rumors are all sheer fiction.
Albanel went back overland as he came. Radisson and Groseillers did
not go with him, though there may have been blows. Instead, they went
to England on Gillam's ship to present their case to the company.

[Illustration: PRINCE RUPERT (After the painting by Sir P. Lely)]

The Hudson's Bay Company was uneasy. Radisson and Groseillers were
aliens. True, Radisson had married Mary Kirke, the daughter of a
shareholder, and was bound to the English; but if Radisson and
Groseillers had forsworn one land, might they not forswear another, and
go back to the French, as Frontenac's letters no doubt urged? The
company offered Radisson a salary of 100 pounds a year to stay as clerk
in England. They did not want him out on the bay again; but {146}
France had offered Radisson a commission in the French navy. Without
more ado the two Frenchmen left London for Paris, and Paris for America.

The year 1676 finds Radisson back in Quebec engaged in the beaver trade
with all those friends of his youth whose names have become famous,--La
Salle of Fort Frontenac, and Charles Le Moyne the interpreter of
Montreal, and Jolliet of the Mississippi, and La Forest who befriended
La Salle, Le Chesnaye who opposed him, and Duluth whose forest rangers
roved from Lake Superior to Hudson Bay. It can be guessed what these
men talked about over the table of the Sovereign Council at Quebec,
whither they had been called to discuss the price of beaver and the use
of brandy.

The fur traders were at that time in two distinct rings,--the ring of
La Salle and La Forest, supported by Frontenac; the Montreal ring,
headed by Le Chesnaye, who fought against the opening of the west
because Lake Ontario trade would divert his trade from the Ottawa.
Radisson's report of that west coast of Hudson Bay, in area large as
all New France, interested both factions of the fur trade intensely.
He was offered two ships for Hudson Bay by the men of both rings.
Because England and France were at peace, Frontenac dared not recognize
the expedition officially; but he winked at it,--as he winked at many
irregularities in the fur trade,--granted the Company of the North
license to trade on Hudson Bay, and gave Radisson's party passports "to
fish off Gaspe." In the venture Radisson, Groseillers, and the son
Chouart Groseillers, invested their all, possibly amounting to $2500
each. The rest of the money for the expedition came from the Godfreys,
titled seigneurs of Three Rivers; Dame Sorel, widow of an officer in
the Carignan Regiment; Le Chesnaye, La Salle's lieutenant, and others.

The boats were rickety little tubs unfit for rough northern seas, and
the crews sulky, underfed men, who threatened mutiny at every watering
place and only refrained from cutting Radisson's {147} throat because
he kept them busy. July 11, 1682, the explorers sheered away from the
fishing fleet of the St. Lawrence and began coasting up the lonely iron
shore of Labrador. Ice was met sweeping south in mountainous bergs.
Over Isle Demons in the Straits of Belle Isle hung storm wrack and
brown fog as in the days when Marguerite Roberval pined there. Then
the ships were cutting the tides of Labrador; here through fog; there
skimming a coast that was sheer masonry to the very sky; again,
scudding from storm to refuge of some hole in the wall.

[Illustration: MAP OF HUDSON BAY]

{148} Before September the ships rode triumphantly into
Five-Fathom-Hole off Nelson River, Hudson Bay. Here two great rivers,
wide as the St. Lawrence, rolled to the sea, separated by a long tongue
of sandy dunes. The north river was the Nelson; the south, the Hayes.
Approach to both was dangerous, shallow, sandy, and bowlder strewn; but
Radisson's vessels were light draught, and he ran them in on the tide
to Hayes River on the south, where his men took possession for France
and erected log huts as a fort.

Groseillers remained at the fort to command the twenty-seven men.
Young Chouart ranged the swamps and woods for Indians, and Radisson had
paddled down the Hayes from meeting some Assiniboine hunters, when, to
his amazement, there rolled across the wooded swamps the most
astonishing report that could be heard in desolate solitudes. It was
the rolling reverberation, the dull echo of a far-away cannon firing
signal after signal.

Like a flash Radisson guessed the game. After all, the Hudson's Bay
Company had taken his advice and were sending ships to trade on the
west coast. The most of men, supported by only twenty-seven mutineers,
would have scuttled ships and escaped overland, but the explorers of
New France, Champlain and Jolliet and La Salle, were not made of the
stuff that runs from trouble.

Picking out three men, Radisson crossed the marsh northward to
reconnoiter on Nelson River. Through the brush he espied a white tent
on what is now known as Gillam's Island, a fortress half built, and a
ship at anchor. All night he and his spies watched, but none of the
builders came near enough to be seized, and next day at noon Radisson
put a bold face on and paddled within cannon shot of the island.

Here was a pretty to-do, indeed! The Frenchman must have laughed till
he shook with glee! It was not the Hudson's Bay Company ship at all,
but a poacher, a pirate, an interloper, forbidden by the laws of the
English Company's monopoly; and who was the poacher but Ben Gillam, of
Boston, son of Captain Gillam of the Hudson's Bay Company, with whom,
no doubt, he was in collusion to defraud the English traders! Calling
for {149} Englishmen to come down to the shore as hostages for fair
treatment, Radisson went boldly aboard the young man's ship, saw
everything, counted the men, noted the fact that Gillam's crew were
mutinous, and half frightened the life out of the young Boston captain
by telling him of the magnificent fort the French had on the south
river, of the frigates and cannon and the powder magazines. As a
friend he advised young Gillam not to permit his men to approach the
French; otherwise they might be attacked by the Quebec soldiers. Then
the crafty Radisson paddled off, smiling to himself; but not so fast,
not so easy! As he drifted down Nelson River, what should he run into
full tilt but the Hudson's Bay Company ship itself, bristling with
cannon, manned by his old enemy, Captain Gillam!

If the two English parties came together, Radisson was lost. He must
beat them singly before they met; and again putting on a bold face, he
marched out, met his former associates, and as a friend advised them
not to ascend the river farther. Fortunately for Radisson, both Gillam
and Bridgar, the Hudson's Bay governor, were drinking heavily and glad
to take his advice. The winter passed, with Radisson perpetrating such
tricks on his rivals as a player might with the dummy men on a
chessboard; but the chessboard, with the English rivals for pawns, was
suddenly upset by the unexpected. Young Gillam discovered that
Radisson had no fort at all,--only log cabins with a handful of
ragamuffin bushrovers; and Captain Gillam senior got word of young
Gillam's presence. Radisson had to act, act quickly, and on the nail.

Leaving half a dozen men as hostages in young Gillam's fort, Radisson
invited the youth to visit the French fort for which the young Boston
fellow had expressed such skeptical scorn. To make a long story short,
young Gillam was no sooner out of his own fort than the French hostages
took peaceable possession of it, and Gillam was no sooner in Radisson's
fort than the French clapped him a prisoner in their guardroom.
Ignorant that the French had captured young Gillam's fort, the Hudson's
Bay Company men had marched upstream at dead of night to his {150}
rescue. The English knocked for admittance. The French guards threw
open the gates. In marched the English traders. The French clapped
the gates to. The English were now themselves prisoners. Such a
double victory would have been impossible to the French if the Hudson's
Bay Company men had not fuddled themselves with drink and allowed their
fine ship, the _Prince Rupert_, to be wrecked in the ice drive.

In spring the ice jam wrecked Radisson's vessels, too, so he was
compelled to send the most of his prisoners in a sloop down Hudson Bay
to Prince Rupert, while he carried the rest with him on young Gillam's
ship down to Quebec with an enormous cargo of furs.

By all the laws of navigation Ben Gillam was nothing more or less than
pirate. The monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company forbade him trading
on Hudson Bay. The license of the Company of the North at Quebec also
excluded him. In later years, indeed, young Gillam turned pirate
outright, was captured in connection with Captain Kidd at Boston, and
is supposed to have been executed with the famous pirate. But when
Radisson left Nelson in charge of young Chouart and came down to Quebec
with young Gillam's ship as prize, a change had taken place at Quebec.
Governor Frontenac had been recalled. In his place was La Barre, whose
favor could be bought by any man who would pay the bribe, and who had
already ruined La Salle by permitting creditors to seize Fort
Frontenac. England and France were at peace. Therefore La Barre gave
Gillam's vessel back to him. The revenue collectors were permitted to
seize all the furs which La Chesnaye had not already shipped to France.
Though La Barre was reprimanded by the King for both acts, not a sou
did Radisson and Groseillers and Chouart ever receive for their
investment; and Radisson was ordered to report at once to the King in
France.

The next part of Radisson's career has always been the great blot upon
his memory, a blot that seemed incomprehensible except on the ground
that his English wife had induced him to {151} return to the Hudson's
Bay Company; but in the memorials left by Radisson himself, in Hudson's
Bay House, London, I found the true explanation of his conduct.

France and England were, as yet, at peace; but it was a pact of
treacherous kind,--secret treaty by which the King of England drew pay
from the King of France. The King of France dared not offend England
by giving public approval to Radisson's capture of the Hudson's Bay
Company's territory; therefore he ordered Radisson to go back to
Hudson's Bay Company service and restore what he had captured. But the
King of France had no notion of relinquishing claim to the vast
territory of Hudson Bay; therefore he commanded Radisson to go
unofficially. Groseillers, the brother, seems to have dropped from all
engagements from this time, and to have returned to Three Rivers. A
copy of the French minister's instructions is to be found in the
Radisson records of the Hudson's Bay Company to-day. Not a sou of
compensation was Radisson to receive for the money that he and his
friends had invested in the venture of 1682-1683. Not a penny of
reparation was he to obtain for the furs at Nelson, which he was to
turn over to the Hudson's Bay Company.

In France, preparation went forward as if for a second voyage to
Nelson; but Radisson secretly left Paris for London, where he was
welcomed by the courtiers of England in May, 1684, and given presents
by King Charles and the Duke of York, who were shareholders in the
Hudson's Bay Company. May 17 he sailed with the Hudson's Bay Company
vessels for Port Nelson, and there took over from young Chouart the
French forts with 20,000 pounds worth of furs for the English company.

Young Chouart Groseillers and his five comrades were furious. They had
borne the brunt of attack from both English and Indian enemies during
Radisson's absence, and they were to receive not a penny for the furs
collected. And their fury knew no bounds when they were forcibly
carried back to England. The English had invited them on board one of
the vessels for last instructions. Quickly the anchor was slipped,
sails run {152} out, and the kidnapped Frenchmen carried from the bay.
In a second, young Chouart's hand was on his sword, and he would have
fought on the spot, but Radisson begged him to conceal his anger;
"for," urged Radisson, "some of these English ruffians would like
nothing better than to stab you in a scuffle."

In London, Radisson was lionized, publicly thanked by the company,
presented to the court, and given a present of silver plate. As for
the young French captives, they were treated royally, voted salaries of
100 pounds a year, and all their expenses of lodgings paid; but when
they spoke of returning to France, unexpected obstructions were
created. Their money was held back; they were dogged by spies.
Finally they took the oath of allegiance to England, and accepted
engagements to go back as servants of the Hudson's Bay Company to
Nelson at salaries ranging from 100 pounds to 40 pounds, good pay as
money was estimated in those days, equal to at least five times as much
money of the present day. It was even urged on young Chouart that he
should take an English wife, as Radisson had; but the young Frenchmen
smiled quietly to themselves. Secret offers of a title had been
conveyed to Chouart by the French ambassador; and to his mother in
Three Rivers he wrote:

I could not go to Paris; I was not at liberty; but I shall be at the
rendezvous or perish trying. I cannot say more in a letter. I would
have left this kingdom, but they hold back my pay, and orders have been
given to arrest me if I try to leave. Assure Mr. Duluth of my humble
services. I shall see him as soon as I can. Pray tell my good friend,
Jan Pere.

Pere, it will be remembered, was a bushranger of Duluth's band, who had
been with Jolliet on Lake Superior.

As for Radisson, the English kept faith with him as long as the Stuarts
and his personal friends ruled the English court. He spent the summers
on Hudson Bay as superintendent of trade, the winters in England
supervising cargoes and sales. His home was on Seething Lane near the
great Tower, where one of his friends was commander. Near him dwelt
the merchant princes of London like the Kirkes and the Robinsons and
the Youngs. His next-door neighbor was the man of fashion, {153}
Samuel Pepys, in whose hands Radisson's Journals of his voyages finally
fell. His income at this time was 100 pounds in dividends, 100 pounds
in salary, equal to about five times that amount in modern money.

Then came a change in Radisson's fortunes. The Stuarts were dethroned
and their friends dispersed. The shareholders of the fur company bore
names of men who knew naught of Radisson's services. War destroyed the
fur company's dividends. Radisson's income fell off to 50 pounds a
year. His family had increased; so had his debts; and he had long
since been compelled to move from fashionable quarters. A petition
filed in a lawsuit avers that he was in great mental anxiety lest his
children should come to want; but he won his lawsuits against the
company for arrears of salary. Peace brought about a resumption of
dividends, and the old pathfinder seems to have passed his last years
in comparative comfort. Some time between March and July, 1710,
Radisson set out on the Last Long Voyage of all men, dying near London.
His burial place is unknown. As far as Canada is concerned, Radisson
stands foremost as pathfinder of the Great Northwest.

But to return to "good friend, Jan Pere," whom the Frenchmen, forced
into English service, were to meet somewhere on Hudson Bay. It is like
a story from borderland forays.

Seven large ships set sail from England for Hudson Bay in 1685,
carrying Radisson and young Chouart and the five unwilling Frenchmen.
The company's forts on the bay now numbered four: Nelson, highest up on
the west; Albany, southward on an island at the mouth of Albany River;
Moose, just where James Bay turns westward; and Rupert at the southeast
corner. But French ships under La Martiniere of the Sovereign Council
had also set sail from Quebec in 1685, commissioned by the indignant
fur traders to take Radisson dead or alive; for Quebec did not know the
secret orders of the French court, which had occasioned Radisson's last
defection.

July saw the seven Hudson's Bay ships worming their way laboriously
through the ice floes of the straits. Small sails only {154} were
used. With grappling hooks thrown out on the ice pans and crews
toiling to their armpits in ice slush, the boats pulled themselves
forward, resting on the lee side of some ice floe during ebb tide, all
hands out to fight the roaring ice pans when the tide began to come in.
At length on the night of July 27, with crews exhausted and the timbers
badly rammed, the ships steered to rest in a harbor off Digge's Island,
sheltered from the ice drive. The nights of that northern sea are
light almost as day; but clouds had shrouded the sky and a white mist
was rising from the water when there glided like ghosts from gloom two
strange vessels. Before the exhausted crews of the English ships were
well awake, the waters were churned to foam by a roar of cannonading.
The strange ships had bumped keels with the little _Merchant
Perpetuana_ of the Hudson's Bay. Radisson, on whose head lay a price,
was first to realize that they were attacked by French raiders; and his
ship was out with sails and off like a bird, followed by the other
English vessels, all except the little _Perpetuana_, now in death
grapple between her foes. Captain Hume, Mates Smithsend and
Grimmington fought like demons to keep the French from boarding her;
but they were knocked down, fettered and clapped below hatches while
the victors plundered the cargo. Fourteen men were put to the sword.
August witnessed ship, cargo, and captives brought into Quebec amid
noisy acclaim and roar of cannon. The French had not captured Radisson
nor ransomed Chouart, but there was booty to the raiders. New France
had proved her right to trade on Hudson Bay spite of peace between
France and England, or secret commands to Radisson. Thrown in a
dungeon below Chateau St. Louis, Quebec, the English captives hear wild
rumors of another raid on the bay, overland in winter; and Smithsend,
by secret messenger, sends warning to England, and for his pains is
sold with his fellow-captives into slavery in Martinique, whence he
escapes to England before the summer of 1686.

But what is Jan Pere of Duluth's bushrovers doing? All unconscious of
the raid on the ships, the governors of the four {155} English forts
awaited the coming of the annual supplies. At Albany was a sort of
harbor beacon as well as lookout, built high on scaffolding above a
hill. One morning, in August of 1685, the sentry on the lookout was
amazed to see three men, white men, in a canoe, steering swiftly down
the rain-swollen river from the Up-Country. Such a thing was
impossible. "White men from the interior! Whence did they come?"
Governor Sargeant came striding to the fort gate, ordering his cannon
manned. Behold nothing more dangerous than three French forest rangers
dressed in buckskins, but with manners a trifle too smooth for such
rough garb, as one doffs his cap to Governor Sargeant and introduces
himself as Jan Pere, a woodsman out hunting.

[Illustration: CONTEMPORARY FRENCH MAP OF HUDSON BAY AND VICINITY]

England and France were at peace; so Governor Sargeant invited the
three mysterious gentlemen inside to a breakfast of sparkling wines and
good game, hoping no doubt that the wines would unlock the gay fellows'
tongues to tell what game _they_ were playing. As the wine passed
freely, there were stories of {156} the hunt and the voyage and the
annual ships. When might the ships be coming? "Humph," mutters
Sargeant through his beard; and he does n't urge these knights of the
wild woods to tarry longer. Their canoe glides gayly down coast to the
salt marshes, where the shooting is good; but by chance that night,
_purely by chance_, the French leave their canoe so that the tide will
carry it away. Then they come back crestfallen to the English fort.

Meanwhile a ship has arrived with the story of the raid on the
_Perpetuana_. Sargeant is so enraged that he sends two of the French
spies across to Charlton Island, where they can hunt or die; Monsieur
Jan Pere he casts into the cellar of Albany with irons on his wrists
and balls on his feet. When the ships sail for England, Pere is sent
back as prisoner without having had one word with Chouart Groseillers.
As for the two Frenchmen placed on Charlton Island, did Sargeant think
they were bush-rovers and would stay on an island? By October they
have laid up store of moose meat, built themselves a canoe, paddled
across to the mainland, and are speeding like wildfire overland to
Michilimackinac with word that Jan Pere is held prisoner at Albany. As
Jan Pere drops out of history here, it may be said that he was kept
prisoner in England as guarantee for the safety of the English crew
held prisoners at Quebec. When he escaped to France he was given money
and a minor title for his services.

The news that Pere lay in a dungeon on Hudson Bay supplied the very
excuse that the Quebec fur traders needed for an overland raid in time
of peace. These were the wild rumors of which the captive English crew
sent warning to England; but the northern straits would not be open to
the company ships before June of 1686, and already a hundred wild
French bushrovers were rallying to ascend the Ottawa to raid the
English on Hudson Bay.

And now a change comes in Canadian annals. For half a century its
story is a record of lawless raids, bloody foray, dare-devil courage
combined with the most fiendish cruelty and sublime heroism. Only a
few of these raids can be narrated here. {157} June 18, 1686, when the
long twilight of the northern night merged with dawn, there came out
from the thicket of underbrush round Moose Factory, Hudson Bay, one
hundred bush-rovers, led by Chevalier de Troyes of Niagara, accompanied
by Le Chesnaye of the fur trade, Quebec, and the Jesuit, Sylvie. Of
the raiders, sixty-six were Indians under Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville
and his brothers, Maricourt and Ste. Helene, aged about twenty-four,
sons of Charles Le Moyne, the Montreal interpreter. Moose Factory at
this time boasted fourteen cannon, log-slab palisades, commodious
warehouses, and four stone bastions,--one with three thousand pounds of
powder, another used as barracks for twelve soldiers, another housing
beaver pelts, and a fourth serving as kitchen. Iberville and his
brothers, scouting round on different sides of the fort, soon learned
that not a sentinel was on duty. The great gate opposite the river,
studded with brass nails, was securely bolted, but not a cannon {158}
had been loaded. The bushrangers then cast aside all clothing that
would hamper, and, pistol in hand, advanced silent and stealthy as
wild-cats. Not a twig crunched beneath the moccasin tread. The water
lay like glass, and the fort slept silent as death. Hastily each
raider had knelt for the blessing of the priest. Pistols had been
recharged. Iberville bade his wild Indians not to forget that the
Sovereign Council of Quebec offered ten crowns reward for every enemy
slain, twenty for every enemy captured. In fact, there could be no
turning back. Two thousand miles of juniper swamps and forests lay
between the bush-rovers and home. They must conquer or perish. De
Troyes led his white soldiers round to make a pretense of attack from
the water front. Iberville posted his sixty-six Indians along the
walls with muskets rammed through the loopholes. Then, with an
unearthly yell, the Le Moyne brothers were over the tops of the
pickets, swords in hand, before the English soldiers had awakened. The
English gunner reeled from his cannon at the main gate with head split
to the collar bone. The gates were thrown wide, trees rammed the doors
open, and Iberville had dashed halfway up the stairs of the main house
before the inmates, rushing out in their nightshirts, realized what had
happened. Two men only were killed, one on each side. The French were
masters of Moose Fort in less than five minutes, with sixteen captives
and rich supply of ammunition.

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