Canada: the Empire of the North

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

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Meanwhile Nor'west traders from Montreal and Quebec, English traders
from Hudson Bay, have gone up the Saskatchewan far as the Athabasca and
the Rockies. What lies beyond? Whither runs this great river from
Athabasca Lake? Whence comes the great river from the mountains? Will
the river that flows north or the river that comes from the west,
either of them lead to the Pacific Coast, where Cook's crews found
wealth of sea otter? The lure of the Unknown is the lure of the siren.
First you possess it, then it possesses you! Cooped up in his fort on
Lake Athabasca, Alexander MacKenzie, the Nor'wester, begins wondering
about those rivers, but you can't ask business men to bank on the
Unknown, to write blank checks for profits on what {325} you may not
find. And the Nor'westers were all stern business men. For every
penny's outlay they exacted from their wintering partners and clerks
not ten but a hundredfold. And Alexander MacKenzie received no
encouragement from his company to explore these unknown rivers. The
project got possession of his mind. Sometimes he would pace the little
log barracks of Fort Chippewyan from sunset to day dawn, trying to work
out a way to explore those rivers; or, sitting before the huge hearth
place, he would dream and dream till, as he wrote his cousin Roderick,
"I did not know what I was doing or where I was." Finally he induced
his cousin to take charge of the fort for a summer. Then, assuming all
risk and outlay, he set out on his own responsibility June 3, 1789, to
follow the Great River down to the Arctic Ocean. "English Chief," who
often went down to Hudson Bay for the rival company, went as
MacKenzie's guide, and there were also in the canoes two or three white
men, some Indians as paddlers, and squaws to cook and make moccasins.

[Illustration: FORT CHIPPEWYAN, ATHABASCA LAKE (From a recent
photograph)]

{326} The canoes passed Peace River pouring down from the mountains;
then six dangerous rapids, where many a Nor'west voyageur had perished,
one of MacKenzie's canoes going smash over the falls with a squaw, who
swam ashore; then rampart shores came, broader and higher than the St.
Lawrence or the Hudson, the boats skimming ahead with blankets hoisted
for sails through foggy days and nights of driving rain. Cramped and
rain-soaked, bailing water from the canoes with huge sponges, the
Indians began to whine that the way was "hard, white man, hard." Then
the river lost itself in a huge lagoon, Slave Lake, named after
defeated Indians who had taken refuge here; and the question was, which
way to go through the fog across the marshy lake! Poking through
rushes high as a man, MacKenzie found a current, and, hoisting a sail
on his fishing pole, raced out to the river again on a hissing tide.
Here lived the Dog Rib Indians, and they frightened MacKenzie's men
cold with grewsome tales of horrors ahead, of terrible waterfalls, of a
land of famine and hostile tribes. The effect was instant. MacKenzie
could not obtain a guide till "English Chief" hoisted a Slave Lake
Indian into the canoe on a paddle handle. Though MacKenzie himself
nightly slept with the vermin-infested guide to prevent desertion, the
fellow escaped one night during the confusion of a thunder-storm.
Again a chance hunter was forcibly put into the canoe as guide; and the
explorer pushed on for another month. North of Bear Lake, Indian
warriors were seen flourishing weapons along shore, and MacKenzie's men
began to remark that the land was barren of game. If they became
winter bound, they would perish. MacKenzie promised his men if he did
not find the sea within seven days, he would turn back. Suddenly the
men lost track of day, for they had come to the region of long light.
The river had widened to swamp lands. Between the 13th and 14th of
July the men asleep on the sand were awakened by a flood of water
lapping in on their baggage. What did it mean? For a minute they did
not realize. Then they knew. It was the tide. They had found the
sea. Hilarious as boys, they jumped from bed to man their canoes and
chase whales.

{327} September 12, all sails up before a driving wind, the canoes
raced across Athabasca Lake to the fort landing, Roderick, his nephew,
shouting a welcome. MacKenzie had laid one of the two ghosts that
haunted his peace. Now he must lay the other. Where did Peace River
come from? His achievement on MacKenzie River had been greeted by the
other Nor'west partners with a snub. Nevertheless MacKenzie asked for
leave of absence that he might go to London and study the taking of
astronomic observations in order to explore that other river flowing
from the mountains; and in London, though poor and obscure, he heard
all about Cook's voyages and Meare's brush with the Spaniards at
Nootka, and plans for Captain Vancouver to make a final exploration of
the Pacific Coast. Hurrying back to the Nor'wester's fort on Peace
River, he was beset by the blue devils of despondency. What if Peace
River did _not_ lead to the Pacific Ocean at all? What if he were
behind some other discoverer? What if the venture proved a fool's trip
leading to a blind nowhere? He was only a junior partner and could ill
afford either money or time for failure.

[Illustration: ALEXANDER MACKENZIE]

Nevertheless, when the furs have been dispatched for Montreal,
MacKenzie launches out on May 9 of 1793 with a thirty-foot birch canoe,
six voyageurs, and Alexander Mackay as lieutenant, for the hinterland
beyond the Rockies. This time the going was _against_ stream,--hard
paddling, but safer than with a {328} swift current in a river with
dangerous rapids. Ten days later the river has become a canyon of
tumbling cascades, the mountains sheer wall on each side, with snowy
peaks jagging up through the clouds. To portage baggage up such cliffs
was impossible. Yet it was equally impossible to go on up the canyon,
and MacKenzie's men became so terrified they refused to land. Jumping
to foothold on the wall, a towrope in one hand, an ax in the other,
MacKenzie cut steps in the cliff, then signaled above the roar of the
rapids for the men to follow. They stripped themselves to swim if they
missed footing, and obeyed, trembling in every limb. The towrope was
warped round trees and the loaded canoe tracked up the cascade. At the
end of that portage the men flatly refused to go on. MacKenzie ignored
the mutiny and ordered the best of provisions spread for a feast.
While the crew rested, he climbed the face of a rocky cliff to
reconnoiter. As far as eye could see were cataracts walled by mighty
precipices. The canoe could not be tracked up such waters. Mackay,
who had gone prospecting a portage, reported that it would be nine
miles over the mountain. MacKenzie did not tell his men what was ahead
of them, but he led the way up the steep mountain, cutting trees to
form an outer railing, and up this trail the canoe was hauled, towline
round trees, the men swearing and sweating and blowing like whales.
Three miles was the record that day, the voyageurs throwing themselves
down to sleep at five in the afternoon, wrapped in their blanket coats
lying close to the glacier edges. Three days it took to cross this
mountain, and the end of the third day found them at the foot of
another mountain. Here the river forked. MacKenzie followed the south
branch, or what is now known as the Parsnip. Often at night the men
would be startled by rocketing echoes like musketry firing, and they
would spring to their feet to keep guard with backs to trees till
morning; but presently they learned the cause of the pistol-shot
reports. They were now on the Uplands among the eternal snows. The
sharp splittings, the far boomings, the dull breaking thuds were frost
cornices of overhanging snow crashing down in avalanches that swept the
mountain slopes clear of forests.

{329}

[Illustration: CAUSE OF A PORTAGE]

A short portage from the Parsnip over a low ridge to a lake, and the
canoe is launched on a stream flowing on the far side of the Divide,
Bad River, a branch of the Fraser, though MacKenzie mistakes it for an
upper tributary of the great river discovered by Gray, the Columbia.
Then, before they realize it, comes the danger of going _with_ the
current on a river with rapids. The stream sweeps to a torrent, mad
and unbridled. The canoe is as a chip in a maelstrom, the precipices
racing past in a blur, the Indians hanging frantically to the gunnels,
bawling aloud in fear, the terrified voyageurs reaching, . . .
grasping, . . . snatching at trees overhanging from the banks. The
next instant a rock has banged through bottom, tearing away the stern.
The canoe reels in a swirl. Bang goes a rock through the bow. The
birch bark flattens like a shingle. Another swirl, and, to the
amazement of all, instead of the death that had seemed impending,
smashed canoe, baggage, and voyageurs are dumped on the shallows of a
sandy reach. One can guess the gasp of relief that went up. Nobody
uttered a word for some {330} time. One voyageur, who had grasped at a
branch and been hoisted bodily from the canoe, now came limping to the
disconsolate group, and had stumbled with lighted pipe in teeth across
the powder that had been spread out to dry, when a terrific yell of
warning brought him to his senses, and relieved the tension. MacKenzie
spread out a treat for the men and sent them to gather bark for a fresh
canoe. Other adventures on Bad River need not be given. This one was
typical. The record was but two miles a day; and now there was no
turning back. The difficulties behind were as great as any that could
be before. June 15 Bad River led them westward into the Fraser, but
somewhere in the canyon between modern Quesnel and Alexandria the way
became impassable. Besides, the river was leading too far south.
MacKenzie struck up Blackwater River to the west. _Caching_ canoe and
provisions on July 4, he marched overland. The Pacific was reached on
July 22, 1793, near Bella Coola. By September, after perils too
numerous to be told, MacKenzie was back at his fur post on Peace River.
As his discoveries on this trip blazed the way to new hunting ground
for his company, they brought both honor and wealth to MacKenzie. He
was knighted by the English King for his explorations, and he retired
to an estate in Scotland, where he died about 1820.

Meanwhile, Napoleon has sold Louisiana to the United States. The
American explorers, Lewis and Clark, have crossed from the Missouri to
the Columbia; and now John Jacob Astor, the great fur merchant of New
York, in 1811 sends his fur traders overland to build a fort at the
mouth of Columbia River. The Northwest Company in frantic haste
dispatches explorers to follow up MacKenzie's work and take possession
of the Pacific fur trade before Astor's men can reach the field. It
becomes a race for the Pacific.

[Illustration: SIMON FRASER]

Simon Fraser is sent in 1806 to build posts west of the Rockies in New
Caledonia, and to follow that unknown river which MacKenzie mistook for
the Columbia, on down to the sea. Two years he passed building the
posts, that exist to this {331} day as Fraser planned them: Fort
MacLeod at the head of Parsnip River, on a little lake set like an
emerald among the mountains; Fort St. James on Stuart Lake, a reach of
sheeny green waters like the Trossachs, dotted with islands and
ensconced in mountains; Fraser Fort on another lake southward; Fort St.
George on the main Fraser River. Then, in May of 1808, with four
canoes Fraser descends the river named after him, accompanied by Stuart
and Quesnel and nineteen voyageurs. This was the river where the
rapids had turned MacKenzie back, canyon after canyon tumultuous with
the black whirlpools and roaring like a tempest. Before essaying the
worst runs of the cascades Fraser ordered a canoe lightened at the prow
and manned by the five best voyageurs. It shot down the current like a
stone from a catapult. "She flew from one danger to another," relates
Fraser, who was watching the canoe from the bank, "till the current
drove her on a rock. The men disembarked, and we had to plunge our
daggers into the bank to keep from sliding into the river as we went
down to their aid, our lives hanging on a thread." Like MacKenzie,
Fraser was compelled to abandon canoes. Each with a pack of eighty
pounds, the voyageurs set out on foot down that steep gorge where the
traveler to-day can see the trail along the side of the precipice like
basket work between Lilloet and Thompson River. In Fraser's day was no
{332} trail, only here and there bridges of trembling twig ladders
across chasms; and over these swinging footholds the marchers had to
carry their packs, the river rolling below, deep and ominous and
treacherous. At Spuzzum the river turned from the south straight west.
Fraser knew it was not the Columbia. His men named it after himself.
Forty days was Fraser going from St. George to tide water. Early in
August he was back at his fur posts of New Caledonia.

[Illustration: ASTORIA IN 1813]

Yet another explorer did the Nor'westers send to take possession of the
region beyond the mountains. David Thompson had been surveying the
bounds between the United States and what is now Manitoba, when he was
ordered to explore the Rockies in the region of the modern Banff. Up
on Canoe River, Thompson and his men build canoes to descend the
Columbia. Following the Big Bend, they go down the rolling milky tide
past Upper and Lower Arrow Lakes, a region of mountains sheer on each
side as walls, with wisps of mist marking the cloud line. Then a
circular sweep westward through what is now Washington, pausing at
Snake River to erect formal claim of possession for England, then a
riffle on the current, a {333} smell of the sea, and at 1 P.M. on July
15, 1811, Thompson glides within view of a little raw new fort,
Astoria. In the race to the Pacific the Americans have gained the
ground at the mouth of the Columbia just two months before Thompson
came. In Astor's fort Thompson finds old friends of the Northwest
Company hired over by Astor.

[Illustration: MAP OF THE WEST COAST, SHOWING THE OGDEN AND ROSS
EXPLORATIONS]

After war has broken out in open flame it is easy to ascribe the cause
to this, that, or the other act, which put the match to the
combustibles; but the real reason usually lies far behind the one act
of explosion, in an accumulation of ill feeling that provided the
combustibles.

So it was in the fratricidal war of 1812 between Canada and the United
States. The war was criminal folly, as useless as it was unnecessary.
What caused it? What accumulated the ill feeling lying ready like
combustibles for the match? Let us see.

The United Empire Loyalists have, by 1812, increased to some 100,000 of
Canada's population, cherishing bitter memories of ruin and
confiscation and persecution because Congress failed to carry out the
pledge guaranteeing protection to the losing side in the Revolution.
Then, because Congress failed to carry out _her_ guarantee, England
delayed turning over the western fur posts to the United States for
almost ten years; and whether true or false, the suspicion became an
open charge that the hostility of the Indians to American frontiersmen
was fomented by the British fur trader.

Here, then, was cause for rankling anger on both sides, and the
bitterness was unwittingly increased by England's policy. It was hard
for the mother country to realize that the raw new nation of the United
States, child of her very flesh and blood, kindred in thought and
speech, was a power to be reckoned with, on even ground, looking on the
level, eye to eye; and not just a bumptious, underling nation, like a
boy at the hobbledehoy age, to be hectored and chaffed and bullied and
badgered and licked into shape, as a sort of protectorate appended to
English interests.

I once asked an Englishman why the English press was so virulently
hostile to one of the most brilliant of her rising men.

"Oh," he answered, "you must be English to understand that. We never
think it hurts a boy to be well ragged when he 's at school."

Something of that spirit was in England's attitude to the new nation of
the United States. England was hard pressed in life-and-death struggle
with Napoleon. To recruit both army and navy, conscription was rigidly
and ruthlessly enforced. Yet more! England claimed the right to
impress British-born subjects in foreign ports, to seize deserters in
either foreign ports or on foreign ships, and, most obnoxious of all,
to search neutral vessels on the ocean highway for deserters from the
British flag. It was an era of great brutality in military discipline.
Desertions were frequent. Also thousands of immigrants were flocking
to the new nation of the United States and taking out naturalization
papers. England ignored these naturalization papers when taken out by
deserters.

Let us see how the thing worked out. A passenger vessel is coming up
New York harbor. An English frigate with cannon pointed swings across
the course, signals the American vessel on American waters to slow up,
sends a young lieutenant with some marines across to the American
vessel, searches her from stem to stern, or compels the American
captain to read the roster of the crew, forcibly seizes half a dozen of
the American crew as British deserters, and departs, leaving the
Americans gasping with wonder whether they are a free nation or a tail
to the kite of English designs. It need not be explained that the
offense was often aggravated by the swaggering insolence of the young
officers. They considered the fury of the unprepared American crew a
prime joke. In vain the government at Washington complained to the
government at Westminster. England pigeonholed the complaint and went
serenely on her way, searching American vessels from Canada to Brazil.

Or an English vessel has come to Hampton Roads to wood and water. An
English officer thinks he recognizes among the {335} American crews men
who have deserted from English vessels. Three men defy arrest and show
their naturalization papers. High words follow, broken heads and
broken canes, and the English crew are glad to escape the mob by rowing
out to their own vessel.

Is it surprising that the ill feeling on both sides accumulated till
there lacked only the match to cause an explosion? The explosion came
in 1807. H. M. S. _Leopard_, cruising off Norfolk in June, encounters
the United States ship _Chesapeake_. At 3 P.M. the English ship edges
down on the American, loaded to the water line with lumber, and signals
a messenger will be sent across. The young English lieutenant going
aboard the _Chesapeake_ shows written orders from Admiral Berkeley of
Halifax, commanding a search of the _Chesapeake_ for six deserters. He
is very courteous and pleasant about the disagreeable business: the
orders are explicit; he must obey his admiral. The American commander
is equally courteous. He regrets that he must refuse to obey an
English admiral's orders, but his own government has given _most_
explicit orders that American vessels must _not_ be searched. The
young Englishman returns with serious face. The ships were within
pistol shot of each other, the men on the English decks all at their
guns, the Americans off guard, lounging on the lumber piles. Quick as
flash a cannon shot rips across the _Chesapeake's_ bows, followed by a
broadside, and another, and yet another, that riddle the American decks
to kindling wood before the astonished officers can collect their
senses. Six seamen are dead and twenty-three wounded when the
_Chesapeake_ strikes her colors to surrender; but the _Leopard_ does
not want a captive. She sends her lieutenant back, who musters the
four hundred American seamen, picks out four men as British deserters,
learns that another deserter has been killed and a sixth has jumped
overboard rather than be retaken, takes his prisoners back to the
_Leopard_, which proceeds to Halifax, where they are tried by
court-martial and shot.

It isn't exactly surprising that the episode literally set the United
States on fire with rage, and that the American President {336} at once
ordered all American ports closed to British war vessels. The quarrel
dragged on between the two governments for five years. England saw at
once that she had gone too far and violated international law. She
repudiated Admiral Berkeley's order, offered to apologize and pension
the heirs of the victims; but _as she would not repudiate either the
right of impressment or the right of search_, the American government
refused to receive the apology.

[Illustration: GENERAL SIR JAMES HENRY CRAIG, GOVERNOR GENERAL OF
CANADA, 1807-1811]

Other causes fanned the flame of war. The United States was now almost
the only nation neutral in Napoleon's wars. To cripple English
commerce, Napoleon forbids neutral nations trading at English ports.
By way of retaliation England forbids neutral nations trading with
French ports; and the United States strikes back by closing American
ports to both nations. It means blue ruin to American trade, but the
United States cannot permit herself to be ground between the upper and
nether millstones of two hostile European powers. Then, sharp as a
gamester playing his trump card, Napoleon revokes his embargo in 1810,
which leaves England the offender against the United States. Then
Governor Craig of Canada commits an error that must have delighted the
heart of Napoleon, who always profited by his enemy's blunders. Well
meaning, but {337} fatally ill and easily alarmed, Craig sends one John
Henry from Montreal in 1809 as spy to the United States for the double
purpose of sounding public opinion on the subject of war, and of
putting any Federalists in favor of withdrawing from the Union in touch
with British authorities. Craig goes home to England to die. Henry
fails to collect reward for his ignoble services, turns traitor, and
sells the entire correspondence to the war party in the United States
for $10,000. That spy business adds fuel to fire. Then there are
other quarrels. A deserter from the American army is found teaching
school near Cornwall in Canada. He is driven out of the little
backwoods schoolhouse, pricked across the field with bayonets, out of
the children's view, and shot on Canadian soil by American soldiers, an
outrage almost the same in spirit as the British crew's outrage on the
_Chesapeake_. Also, in spite of apologies, the war ships clash again.
The English sloop _Little Belt_ is cruising off Cape Henry in May of
1811, looking for a French privateer, when a sail appears over the sea.
The _Little Belt_ pursues till she sights the commodore's blue flag of
the United States frigate _President_, then she turns about; but by
this time the _President_ has turned the tables on the little sloop,
and is pursuing to find out what the former's conduct meant. Darkness
settles over the two ships beating about the wind.

"What sloop is that?" shouts an officer through a speaking trumpet from
the American's decks.

"What ship is _that_?" bawls back a voice through the darkness from the
little Englander.

Then, before any one can tell who fired first (in fact, each accuses
the other of firing first), the cannon are pouring hot shot into each
other's hulls till thirty men have fallen on the decks of the _Little
Belt_. Apologies follow, of course, and explanations; but that does
not remedy the ill. In fact, when nations and people want to quarrel,
they can always find a cause. War is declared in June of 1812 by
Congress. It is war against England; but that means war against
Canada, though there are not forty-five hundred soldiers from Halifax
to Lake Huron. As for {338} the American forces, they muster an army
of some one hundred and fifty thousand; but their generals complain
they are "an untrained mob"; and events justified the complaints.

There is nothing for Canada to do but stand up to the war of England's
making and fight for hearth and home. Canada on the defensive, there
is nothing for the States to do but invade; and the American generals
don't relish the task with their "untrained mob."

[Illustration: WILLIAM HULL]

Upper Canada or Ontario has not four hundred soldiers from Kingston to
Detroit River; but Major General Isaac Brock calls for volunteers. The
clang of arms, of drill, of target practice, resounds in every hamlet
through Canada. At Kingston, at Toronto, at Fort George (Niagara), at
Erie where Niagara River comes from the lake, at Amherstburg, southeast
of Detroit, are stationed garrisons to repel invasion, with hastily
erected cannon and mortar commanding approach from the American side.
And invasion comes soon enough. The declaration of war became known in
Canada about the 20th of June. By July 3 General Hull of Michigan is
at Detroit with two thousand five hundred men preparing to sweep
western Ontario. July 3 an English schooner captures Hull's provision
boat coming up Detroit River, but Hull crosses with his army on July 12
to Sandwich, opposite Detroit, and issues proclamation calling on the
people to throw off the yoke of English rule. How such an invitation
fell on United Empire Loyalist ears may be guessed. Meanwhile comes
word that the Northwest {339} Company's voyageurs, with four hundred
Indians, have captured Michilimackinac without a blow. The fall of
Michilimackinac, the failure of the Canadians to rally to his flag, the
loss of his provision boat, dampen Hull's ardor so that on August 8 he
moves back with his troops to Detroit. Eight days later comes Brock
from Niagara with five hundred Loyalists and one thousand Indians under
the great chief Tecumseh to join Procter's garrison of six hundred at
Amherstburg. The Canadians have come by open boat up Lake Erie from
Niagara through furious rains; but they are fighting for their homes,
and with eager enthusiasm follow Brock on up Detroit River to Sandwich,
opposite the American fort. Indians come by night and lie in ambush
south of Detroit to protect the Canadians while they cross the river.
Then the cannon on the Canadian side begin a humming of bombs overhead.
While the bombs play over the stream at Sandwich, Brock rushes thirteen
hundred men across the river south of Detroit, and before midday of
August 16 is marching his men through the woods to assault the fort,
when he is met by an officer carrying out the white flag of surrender.
While Brock was crossing the river, something had happened inside the
fort at Detroit. It was one of those curious cases of blind panic when
only the iron grip of a strong man can hold demoralized forces in hand.
The American officers had sat down to breakfast in the mess room at day
dawn, when a bomb plunged through the roof killing four on the spot and
spattering the walls with the blood of the mangled bodies. Disgraceful
stories are told of Hull's conduct. Ashy with fright and trembling, he
dashed from the room, and, before the other officers knew what he was
about, had offered to surrender his army, twenty-five hundred arms,
thirty-three cannon, an armed brig, and the whole state of Michigan.
The case is probably more an example of nervous hysterics than treason,
though the other American officers broke their swords with rage and
chagrin, declaring they had been sold for a price. It was but the
first of the many times the lesson was taught in this war, that however
well intentioned a volunteer's courage may be, it takes a seasoned man
to make war. {340} Ten minutes later, a boy had climbed the flagstaff
and hung out the English flag over Detroit. Of the captured American
army Brock permitted the volunteer privates to go home on parole. The
regulars, including Hull, were carried back prisoners on the boats to
Niagara, to be forwarded to Montreal. At Montreal, Hull was given back
to the Americans in exchange for thirty British prisoners. He was
sentenced by court-martial to be shot for treason and cowardice, but
the sentence was commuted.

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