Canada: the Empire of the North

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34

Near Lake Winnipeg the fleeing colonists meet the Northwest partners with
their one hundred and seventy men. No need to announce what the
spectacle of the terrified colonists means. A wild whoop rends the air.
"Thank Providence it was all over before we came," writes one devout
Nor'wester; "for we intended to storm the fort." Both crews pause. The
Nor'westers interrogate the settlers. Semple's private papers are
seized. Also, two Hudson's Bay men who took part in the Seven Oaks fight
are arrested, to be carried on down to Northwest headquarters on Lake
Superior. Then the settlers go on to Lake Winnipeg.

At the various camping places on the way down to Fort William, those two
Hudson's Bay prisoners overhear strange threats. It is night on the Lake
of the Woods. Voices of Northwest partners sound through the dark. They
are talking of Selkirk coming to the rescue of his people with an armed
force. Says the wild voice of a Nor'wester whose brother had been killed
by a Hudson's Bay man some years before, "There are fine quiet places
along Winnipeg River if he comes this way." . . . Then scraps of
conversation. . . . Then, "The half-breeds could capture him when he is
asleep." . . . Then words too low to be heard. . . . Then, "They could
have the Indians shoot him." . . . Then in voice of authority
restraining the wild folly of a bloodthirst for vengeance, "Things have
gone too far, but we can throw the blame on the Indians."

The wild words of a man gone mad for revenge must not be taken as the
policy of a great commercial company.

{396} Meantime, where was Selkirk? He had arrived in Montreal. Secret
coureur, whose adventures I have told elsewhere, had carried him word of
the dangers impending over his colony. He at once appealed to the
Governor General for a military force to protect the settlers, but it
must be recalled how Upper and Lower Canada were to be governed under the
Act of 1791. There were to be the governor, the legislative council
appointed by the crown, and the representative assembly. The legislative
council was entirely dominated by the Northwest Company. Of the
different Quebec courts, there was scarcely a judge who was not
interested directly or indirectly in the Northwest Company. Lord Selkirk
could obtain no aid which would conflict with that company's policy.
Then Selkirk petitioned the Governor that, in view of the threats against
himself, he might be granted the commission of a justice of the peace and
permission to take a personal bodyguard at his own cost to the west.
These requests the Governor granted.

Thereupon, Selkirk gathers up some two hundred of the De Meuron and De
Watteville regiments, mercenaries disbanded after the War of 1812, and
sets out for the west. Not aware that Robertson has left Red River, he
sends him word to keep the colonists together and to expect help by way
of the states from the Sault in order to avoid touching at the
Nor'westers' post at Fort William. The coureur with this message is
waylaid by the Nor'westers, but Selkirk himself, preceded by his former
governor, Miles MacDonell, has gone only as far as the Sault when word
comes back of the Seven Oaks massacre. What to do now? He can obtain no
justice in Eastern Canada. Two justices of the peace at the Sault refuse
to be involved in the quarrel by accompanying him. Selkirk goes on
without them, accompanied by the two hundred hired soldiers; but instead
of proceeding to Red River by Minnesota, as he had first planned, he
strikes straight for Fort William, the headquarters of the Nor'westers.

He arrives at the fort August 12, only a few days after the Northwest
partners had come down from the scene of the {397} massacre at Red River.
Cannon are planted opposite Fort William. Things have "gone too far."
The Nor'westers capitulate without a stroke. Then as justice of the
peace, my Lord Selkirk arrests all the partners but one and sends them
east to stand trial for the massacre of Seven Oaks. The one partner not
sent east was a fuddled old drunkard long since retired from active work.
This man now executes a deed of sale to my Lord Selkirk for Fort William
and its furs. The man was so intoxicated that he could not write, so the
afore-time governor, Miles MacDonell, writes out the bargain, which one
could wish so great a philanthropist as Selkirk had not touched with
tongs. Before midwinter of 1817 has passed, the De Meuron soldiers have
crossed Minnesota and gone down Red River to Fort Douglas. One stormy
night they scale the wall and bundle the Northwest usurpers out, bag and
baggage.

[Illustration: MONUMENT TO COMMEMORATE THE MASSACRE OF SEVEN OAKS]

July of 1817 comes Selkirk himself to the Promised Land. There is no
record that I have been able to find of his thoughts on first nearing the
ground for which so much blood had been shed, and for which he himself
was yet to suffer much; but {398} one can venture to say that his most
daring hope did not grasp the empire that was to grow from the seed he
had planted. He meets the Indians in treaty for their lands. He greets
his colonists in the open one sunny August day, speaking personally to
each and deeding over to them land free of all charge. "This land I give
for your church," he said, standing on the ground which the cathedral now
occupies. "That plot shall be for your school," pointing across the
gully; "and in memory of your native land, let the parish be called
Kildonan."

Of the trials and counter trials between the two companies, there is not
space to tell here. Selkirk was forced to pay heavy damages for his
course at Fort William, but the courts of Eastern Canada record not a
single conviction against the Nor'westers for the massacre of Seven Oaks.
Selkirk retired shattered in health to Europe, where he died in 1820.
The same year passed away Alexander MacKenzie, his old-time rival.

The truth is, each company had gone too far and was on the verge of ruin.
From Athabasca came the furs that prevented bankruptcy, and whichever
company could drive the other from Athabasca could practically force its
rival to ruin or union. When Colin Robertson had rallied the dispersed
colonists from Lake Winnipeg, he had left John Clarke to conduct the two
hundred Canadian voyageurs to Athabasca for the Hudson's Bay Company.
Clarke had been a Nor'wester before he joined Astor, and was a born
fighter, idolized by the Indians. So confident was he of success now
that he galloped his canoes up the Saskatchewan without pause to gather
provisions. Once on the ground on Athabasca Lake, he divided his party
into two or three bands and sent them foraging to the Nor'westers' forts
and hunting grounds up Peace River, down Slave Lake, at Athabasca itself.
Weakened by division and without food to keep together, his men fell easy
prey to the wily Nor'westers. Of those on Slave Lake eighteen died from
starvation. Those on Peace River were captured and literally whipped out
of the country, signing oaths never to return. Those at {399} Athabasca
being leading officers were held prisoners. Meanwhile the Hudson's Bay
Company is defeated at Seven Oaks and victorious at Fort William. The
Nor'westers at Athabasca were keen to keep the frightened Indians of the
north ignorant that Selkirk had triumphed at Fort William, but the news
traveled over the two thousand miles of prairie in that strange hunter
fashion known as "moccasin telegram," and the story is told how the
captured Hudson's Bay officers let the secret out for the benefit of the
Indians now afraid to carry their hunt to a Hudson's Bay man.

Revels and all-night carousals marked the winter with the triumphant
Nor'westers of Athabasca Lake. Often, when wild drinking songs were
ringing in the Nor'westers' dining hall, the Hudson's Bay men would be
brought in to furnish a butt for their merciless victors. One night,
when the hall was full of Indians, one of the Northwest bullies began to
brawl out a song in celebration of the Seven Oaks affair.

"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."

Tired of their rude horseplay, one of the Hudson's Bay officers spoke up:
"Y' hae niver asked me for a song. I hae a varse o' me ain compaesin."

Then to the utter amaze of the drunken listeners and astonishment of the
Indians, the game old officer trolled off this stave:

"But Selkirk brave went _up_ a hill, and to Fort William came!
When in he popped and out from thence could not be driven again."

The thunderstruck Nor'wester leaped to his feet with a yell: "A hundred
guineas for the name of the men who brought that news here."

"A hundred guineas for twa lines of me ain compaesin! Extravagant, sir,"
returns the canny Scot.

From accounts held by the Hudson's Bay Company's Montreal lawyers it is
seen that Clarke's expedition cost the Company 20,000 pounds.

{400} Before the massacre of Seven Oaks Colin Robertson had gone down to
Hudson Bay in high dudgeon with Semple, intending to take ship for
England; but that fall the ice drive prevented one ship from leaving the
bay, and Robertson was stranded at Moose Factory for the winter, whither
coureurs brought him word of the Seven Oaks tragedy and Selkirk's victory
at Fort William. Taking an Indian for guide, Robertson set out on
snowshoes for Montreal, following the old Ottawa trail traversed by
Radisson and Iberville long ago. Montreal he found in a state of turmoil
almost verging on riot over the imprisonment of the Northwest partners,
whom Selkirk had sent east. Nightly the goals [Transcriber's note:
gaols?] were illuminated as for festivals. Nightly sound of wandering
musicians came from the cell windows, where loyal friends were serenading
the imprisoned partners. They were released, of course, and acquitted
from the charge of responsibility for the massacre of Seven Oaks.

Presently Robertson finds himself behind the bars for his part in
destroying Fort Gibraltar and arresting Duncan Cameron. He too is
acquitted, and he tells us frankly that a private arrangement had been
made beforehand with the presiding judge. Probably if the Nor'westers
had been as frank, the same influence would explain their acquittal.

Robertson found himself free just about the time Lord Selkirk came back
from Red River by way of the Mississippi in order to avoid those careful
plans for his welfare on the part of the Nor'westers at "the quiet places
along Winnipeg River." The Governor of Canada had notified members of
both companies unofficially that the English government advised the
rivals to find some basis of union, which practically meant that if the
investigations under way were pushed to extremes, both sides might find
themselves in awkward plight; but the fight had gone beyond the period of
pure commercialism. It was now a matter of deadly personal hate between
man and man, which, I am sorry to say, has been carried down by the
descendants of the old fighters almost to the present day. Each side
hoped to drive the other to bankruptcy; and the last throes of the {401}
deadly struggle were to be in Athabasca, the richest fur field. While
Selkirk is fighting his cause in the courts, he gives Robertson carte
blanche to gather two hundred more French voyageurs and proceed to the
Athabasca.

[Illustration: TRACKING ON ATHABASCA RIVER]

Midsummer of 1819 finds the stalwart Robertson crossing Lake Winnipeg to
ascend the Saskatchewan. At the mouth of the Saskatchewan a miserable
remnant of terrified men from the last Athabasca expedition is added to
Robertson's party; and John Clarke, breathing death and destruction
against the Nor'westers, goes along as lieutenant to Robertson.
Everywhere are signs of the lawless conditions of the fur trade. Not an
Indian dare speak to a Hudson's Bay man on pain of horsewhipping.
Instead of canoes gliding up and down the Saskatchewan like birds of
passage, reign a silence and solitude as of the dead. Though Robertson
bids his voyageurs sing and fire off muskets as signals for trade, not a
soul comes down to the river banks till the fleet of advancing traders is
well away from the Saskatchewan and halfway across the height of land
towards the Athabasca.

{402} The amazement of the Nor'westers at Fort Chippewyan in Athabasca
when Robertson pulled ashore at the conglomeration of huts known as Fort
Wedderburn, may be guessed. Two or three of the partners ran down to the
shore and called out that they would like to parley; but John Clarke,
filled with memory of former outrages and rocking the canoe in his fury
so that it almost upset, met the overtures with a volley of stentorian
abuse that sent the Nor'westers scampering and set Robertson laughing
till the tears ran down his cheeks.

The change of spirit on the part of the Nor'westers was easily explained.
The most of their men were absent on the hunting field. In a few weeks
Robertson had his huts in order and had dispatched his trappers down to
Slave Lake and westward up Peace River. Then, in October, came more
Nor'west partners from Montreal. The Nor'westers were stronger now and
not so peacefully inclined. Nightly the French bullies, well plied with
whisky, would come across to the Hudson's Bay fort, bawling out challenge
to fight; but Robertson held his men in hand and kept his powder dry.

Early on the morning of October the 11th, Robertson's valet roused him
from bed with word that a man had been accidentally shot. Slipping a
pistol in his pocket and all unsuspicious of trickery, Robertson dashed
out. It happened that the most of his men were at a slight distance from
his fort. Before they could rally to his rescue he was knocked down,
disarmed, surrounded by the Nor'westers, thrown into a boat, and carried
back to their fort a captive. In vain he stormed almost apoplectic with
rage, and tried to send back Indian messengers to his men. The
Nor'westers laughed at him good-naturedly and relegated him to quarters
in one room of a log hut, where sole furnishings were a berth bed and a
fireplace without a floor. Robertson's only possessions in captivity
were the clothes on his back, a jackknife, a small pencil, and a
notebook; but he probably consoled himself that his men were now on
guard, and, outnumbering the Nor'westers two to one, could hold the
ground for the Hudson's Bay that winter. As {403} time passed the
captive Robertson began to wrack his brains how to communicate with his
men. It was a drinking age; and the fur traders had the reputation of
capacity to drink any other class of men off their legs. Robertson
feigned an unholy thirst. Rapping for his guard, he requested that
messengers might be sent across to the Hudson's Bay fort for a keg of
liquor. It can be guessed how readily the Nor'westers complied; but
Robertson took good care, when the guard was absent and the door locked,
to pour out most of the whisky on the earth floor. Then taking slips of
paper from his notebook, he cut them in strips the width of a spool. On
these he wrote cipher and mysterious instructions, which only his men
could understand, giving full information of the Nor'westers' movements,
bidding his people hold their own, and ordering them to send messages
down to the new Hudson's Bay governor at Red River,--William
Williams,--to place his De Meuron soldiers in ambush along the Grand
Rapids of the Saskatchewan to catch the Northwest partners on their way
to Montreal the next spring. These slips of paper he rolled up tight as
a spool and hammered into the bunghole of the barrel. Then he plastered
clay over all to hide the paper, and bade the guard carry this keg of
whisky back to the H.B.C. fort; it was musty, Robertson complained; let
the men rinse out the keg and put in a fresh supply!

All that winter Robertson, the Hudson's Bay man, captive in the
Nor'westers' fort, sent weekly commands to his men by means of the whisky
kegs; but in the spring his trick was discovered, and the angry
Nor'westers decided he was too clever a man to be kept on the field.
They would ship him out of the country when their furs were sent east.

On the way east he succeeded in escaping at Cumberland House. Waiting
only a few hours, he launched out in his canoe and followed on the trail
of the Northwest partners, on down to see what would happen at Grand
Rapids, where the Saskatchewan flows into Lake Winnipeg. A jubilant
shout from a canoe turning a bend in the river presently announced the
news: "All the Northwest partners captured!" When Robertson {404} came
to Grand Rapids he found Governor Williams and the De Meurons in
possession. Cannon pointed across the river below the rapids. The
Northwest partners were prisoners in a hut. The voyageurs were allowed
to go on down to Montreal with the furs. This last act in the great
struggle ended tragically enough. What was to be done with the captured
partners? They could not be sent to Eastern Canada. Pending
investigations for the union of the companies, Governor Williams sent
them to York Factory, Hudson Bay, whence some took ship to England,
others set out overland on snowshoes for Canada; but in the scuffle at
Grand Rapids, Frobisher, one of the oldest partners, with a reputation of
great cruelty in his treatment of Hudson's Bay men, had been violently
clubbed on the head with a gun. From that moment he became a raving
maniac, and the Hudson's Bay people did not know what to do with such a
captive. He must not be permitted to go home to England. His condition
was too terrible evidence against them; so they kept him prisoner in the
outhouses of York Factory, with two faithful Nor'wester half-breeds as
personal attendants.

One dark cold night towards the first of October Frobisher succeeded in
escaping through the broken bars of his cell window. A leap took him
over the pickets. By chance an old canoe lay on Hayes River. With this
he began to ascend stream for the interior, paddling wildly, laughing
wildly, raving and singing. The two half-breeds knew that a voyage to
the interior at this season without snowshoes, food, or heavy clothing,
meant certain death; but they followed their master faithfully as black
slaves. Wherever night found them they turned the canoe upside down and
slept under it. Fish lines supplied food, and the deserted hut of some
hunter occasionally gave them shelter for the night. Winter set in
early. The ice edging of the river cut the birch canoe. Abandoning it,
they went forward on foot. From York Fort, Hudson Bay, the nearest
Northwest post was seven hundred miles. By the end of October they had
not gone half the distance. Then came one of those changes so frequent
in northern climes,--a sunburst of warm {405} weather following the first
early winter, turning all the frozen fields to swimming marshes, and the
travelers had no canoe. By this time Frobisher was too weak to walk. As
his body failed his mind rallied, and he begged the two half-breeds to go
on without him, as delay meant the death of all three; but the faithful
fellows carried him by turns on their backs. They themselves were now so
emaciated they were making but a few miles a day. Their moccasins had
been worn to tatters, and all three looked more like skeletons than
living men. Then, the third week of November, Frobisher could go no
farther, and the servants' strength failed. Building a fire in a
sheltered place for their master, the two faithful fellows left Frobisher
somewhere west of Lake Winnipeg. Two days later they crept into a
Northwest post too weak to speak, and handed the Northwesters a note
scrawled by Frobisher, asking them to send a rescue party. Frobisher was
found lying across the ashes of the fire. Life was extinct.

[Illustration: PLANS OF YORK AND PRINCE OF WALES FORTS]

In 1820 the union of the companies put an end to the ruinous and criminal
struggle. George Simpson, afterwards knighted, {406} who has been sent
to look over matters in Athabasca, is appointed governor, and Nicholas
Garry, one of the London directors, comes out to appoint the officers of
the united companies to their new districts. The scene is one for artist
brush,--the last meeting of the partners at Fort William, Hudson's Bay
men and Nor'westers, such deadly enemies they would not speak, sitting in
the great dining hall, glowering at each other across tables: George
Simpson at one end of the tables, pompously dressed in ruffles and satin
coat and silk breeches, vainly endeavoring to keep up suave conversation;
Nicholas Garry at the other end of the table, also very pompous and
smooth, but with a look on his face as if he were sitting above a powder
mine, the Highland pipers dressed in tartans, standing at each end of the
hall, filling the room with the drone and the skurl of the bagpipes.

[Illustration: SIR GEORGE SIMPSON, GOVERNOR OF HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY, 1820]

By the union of the companies both sides avoided proving their rights in
the law courts. Most important of all, the Hudson's Bay Company escaped
proving its charter valid; for the charter applied only to Hudson Bay and
adjacent lands "not occupied by other Christian powers"; but on the union
taking place, the British government granted to the new Hudson's Bay
Company license of exclusive monopoly to _all_ the Indian territory,
meaning (1) Hudson Bay Country, (2) the interior, (3) New Caledonia as
well as Oregon. In fact, the union left the fur traders ten times more
strongly intrenched than before. {407} By the new arrangement Dr. John
McLoughlin was appointed chief factor of the western territories known as
Oregon and New Caledonia. When the War of 1812 closed, treaty provided
that Oregon should be open to the joint occupancy of English and American
traders till the matter of the western boundary could be finally settled.
Oregon roughly included all territory between the Columbia and the
Spanish fort at San Francisco, namely, Washington, Oregon, Northern
California, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, parts of Montana and Wyoming. It was
cheaper to send provisions round by sea to the fur posts of New
Caledonia, in modern British Columbia, than across the continent by way
of the Saskatchewan; so McLoughlin's district also included all the
territory far as the Russian possessions in Alaska.

This part of the Hudson's Bay Company's history belongs to the United
States rather than Canada, but it is interesting to remember that just as
the French fur traders explored the Mississippi far south as the Gulf of
Mexico, so English fur traders first explored the western states far
south as New Spain. This western field was perhaps the most picturesque
of all the Hudson's Bay Company's possessions.

Fort Vancouver, ninety miles inland from the sea on the Columbia, was the
capital of this transmontane kingdom, and yearly till 1846 the fur
brigades set out from Fort Vancouver two or three hundred strong by pack
horse and canoe. Well-known officers became regular leaders of the
different brigades. There was Ross, who led the Rocky Mountain Brigade
inland across the Divide to the buffalo ranges of Montana. There was
Ogden, son of the Chief Justice in Montreal, who led the Southern Brigade
up Snake River to Salt Lake and the Nevada desert and Humboldt River and
Mt. Shasta, all of which regions except Salt Lake he was first to
discover. There was Tom McKay, son of the McKay who had crossed to the
Pacific with MacKenzie, who, dressed as a Spanish cavalier, led the
pack-horse brigades down the coast past the Rogue River Indians and the
Klamath Lakes to San Francisco, where Dr. Glen Rae had opened a fort for
the Hudson's Bay Company. {408} Then there was the New Caledonia
Brigade, two hundred strong, which set out from Fort Vancouver up the
Columbia in canoes to the scream of the bagpipes through the rocky
canyons of the river. Close to the boundary, shift was made from canoe
to pack horse, and, leaving the Columbia, the brigade struck up the
Okanogan Valley to Kamloops, bound for the bridle trail up Fraser River.
This brigade, in later days, was under Douglas, who became the knighted
governor of British Columbia. Tricked out in gay ribbons, the long file
of pack ponies, two hundred with riders, two hundred more with packs,
moved slowly along the forest trail with a drone as of bees humming in
midsummer. So well did ponies know the way that riders often fell
asleep, to be suddenly jarred awake by the horses jamming against a tree,
or running under a low branch to brush riders off, or hurdle-jumping over
windfall. Each of these brigades has its own story, and each story would
fill a book. For instance, Glen Rae at San Francisco has a difficult
mission. The company has a plan to take over the debts of Mexico to
British capitalists and exchange them for California. Glen Rae is sent
to watch matters, but he commits the blunder of furnishing arms to the
losing side of a revolution. The debt for the arms remains unpaid. Glen
Rae suicides, and the company withdraws from California.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34