RETROSPECT
One’s first impressions of Quebec yield a joy that cannot be recaptured
on subsequent visits; yet the better you get to know that old city, the
more you love it.
There was no moon shining when, nine years ago, a ship that had voyaged
for days across the sea, and for hours through the night, brought me
suddenly into view of an escarpment aglow with myriad friendly lights.
And soon a quaint old Frenchman in a white hat was driving me in a
quaint old carriage up quaint, steep streets where lamp-light gave
glimpses of walls of naked rock and mellow brickwork, of venerable
gabled houses with green shutters, of noble buildings grey with
antiquity, and of stately monuments standing amid leafy gardens, with
here and there a moss-grown cannon peeping out of its crumbling
embrasure. Nor was it long before, in the garden of the Château
Frontenac—that huge, handsome hotel—I was stealing nasturtium blooms.
Next day revealed how beautiful is the situation of Quebec. Standing on
Dufferin Terrace—that superb promenade running along the brow of the
cliff—you look out upon the great blue river sweeping through a
landscape of purple mountains. Quebec has been well defined as “a small
bit of mediæval Europe perched upon a rock,” and Charles Dickens wrote
of “its giddy heights, its citadel suspended, as it were, in air; its
picturesque steep streets and frowning gateways.”
The old French capital is a pleasure resort. Thousands of American
tourists visit it every year; golf is played on the battlefield where
Wolfe fell victorious; and the city’s ice carnivals and other winter
frolics are famous. The old French capital is also of growing commercial
importance, and its industries must receive a great impetus from the new
St. Lawrence bridge—the largest cantilever structure in the world—and
the projected dock extensions. But the old French capital commands
admiration mainly for its age and its associations. Of all the fine
Canadian cities it is the finest and the least Canadian. Quebec even
possesses two slums—the only two slums, I verily believe, in the entire
Dominion; and they are far too picturesque to be demolished.
It is surprising to find such an obvious piece of the Old World at the
threshold of the New World; and Quebec’s antiquity is emphasised when,
on travelling through the Dominion, one notes the modern aspect of the
other cities. Clues to that contrast will be found in Canada’s lop-sided
history.
Indeed, to look at the Dominion through the historian’s telescope is to
be baffled by a picture that will not get into focus. An eastern portion
is full of background, middle-distance and foreground; southern and
western strips reveal nothing but foreground; a central northern region
has detail only in the middle distance; and the bulk of the area is
equally without definition here, there and beyond. In other words, one
part of the Dominion has much history, other parts have some, and many
parts have none.
As I have already hinted, the word “Canada” is a territorial ambiguity,
since it applies both to a little old country (with a history commencing
in the year 1000, when Icelandic settlers in Greenland discovered
Labrador) and to a large new country (with a history commencing in 1873,
when Confederation was completed). In reviewing the evolution of the
Dominion, therefore, it is difficult to keep history in anything like a
proportionate relation to geography. Ancient Canada, being so rich in
material for the historian, is apt to monopolise nearly all his space.
Beginning with events contemporaneous with the Saxon era in England, he
plods through the centuries, peppering his pages with memorable dates,
unrolling a long scroll of illustrious names, tracing the varying
fortunes of two races and three nationalities in their struggles for
supremacy, and recording bloody battles innumerable. When he has done
all that, he finds himself with latitude for only vague and brief
mention of the bulk of the Dominion; and his readers, thinking they have
been reading a history of Canada (whereas they have only been reading a
history of a fraction of Canada) are left with an unfortunate impression
that Canada is an old, instead of a new, country.
To follow the course of events, one must eliminate existing geographical
boundaries from one’s mind, and think of eastern North America
(stretching along the present seaboards of Canada and the United States)
as a whole.
Voyagers from England and Portugal got there first, towards the close of
the fifteenth century; but France and Spain took the lead in forming
colonies. The situation soon resolved itself into a rivalry between the
French and the English.
In 1535 Jacques Cartier explored the St. Lawrence (which he named), and
advanced as far as an Indian town that he christened Mont Royal (since
corrupted into Montreal); and afterwards there came other French
expeditions, whose attempts to found settlements were frustrated by
Indian hostility. At the opening of the seventeenth century, however,
Samuel de Champlain established in Acadia (now Nova Scotia) the first
European colony that took root within the boundaries of the present
Dominion; and in 1608 he visited the St. Lawrence and founded the City
of Quebec. Thus was brought into being “New France”—a large territory
which included eastern Canada of to-day and stretched south across the
existing international boundary line. There was also a rival colony,
known as “New England,” which extended north from Virginia.
The struggle between Great Britain and France continued, with intervals
of peace and with an ebb and flow of fortunes, for a century and a half;
and in the history of this period the most inspiring chapter is that
which tells of the unflinching zeal and dauntless courage of Roman
Catholic priests who, penetrating to the interior of the country, sought
to carry Christianity and civilisation to the Indians.
By the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) the possession of Hudson Bay (the
history of which I shall glance at later), Acadia and Newfoundland was
definitely vested with Great Britain, France retaining authority over a
vast stretch of territory. Thirty years afterwards the war of the
Austrian Succession justified a resumption of hostilities, which were
interrupted by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. A few years later the two
Powers reached the final stage of their long contest for mastery in
North America; and, following Wolfe’s victory at Quebec in 1759, French
rule in Canada came to an end.
But the French people remained, and their descendants remain, in Canada;
and their presence there—those two million fine, happy, prosperous
French-Canadians, who combine loyalty to the British Empire with a love
for France—supplies, I think, the noblest object-lesson in
international fraternity anywhere to be found on the earth. It is an
object-lesson that grows in distinctness as our eyes open to new
possibilities of unarmed amity; for at last we are slowly awakening to
the knowledge that brotherhood is a higher interest of the human race,
and may even call for a loftier type of bravery than bloodshed.
There was, of course, some little initial unrest in the Franco-English
colony, but this was largely allayed when, in 1774, the British
Parliament passed the Quebec Act, which restored the French civil code
and defined Canada as extending from Labrador to the Mississippi, and
from the watershed of Hudson Bay to the Ohio—in other words, as
including the present Provinces of Quebec and Ontario, and a number of
States over which the Stars and Stripes now float. Then came the War of
Independence, which turned our brothers into our cousins, and caused the
Great Lakes to be Canada’s southern boundary, instead of her waist-belt.
The English population of Canada—far smaller than the French
population—was now increased by the arrival from the south of 25,000
persons who, loyal to the old tie with Great Britain, refused their
allegiance to the newly-created United States. French and English were
soon united in a desire to enjoy such constitutional privileges as had
already been granted to the Maritime Provinces; but while the majority
were anxious that their own national traditions should be followed, the
minority wished for institutions modelled on English lines. The British
Government solved the problem by splitting Canada into two—an Upper
Canada for the English, and a Lower Canada for the French—and giving to
each a Legislature of its own, though a Legislature in which the
people’s representatives were under the thumb of Crown nominees.
The war between the United States and Great Britain, in 1812-14, exposed
the two Canadas and the Maritime Provinces to a severe ordeal, through
which they came triumphant; and afterwards our French and English
fellow-subjects resumed their agitation for a full measure of popular
government. They went ultimately to the length of rebellion; and then it
was not long before the Home Government granted their desire. Friction
had occurred between the two Canadas on questions of revenue, and so, by
the Act of 1840 that conceded a democratic constitution, these two
Canadas, after half a century of separation, were again made into one
Canada under one Legislature; the two halves of a political whole being
now distinguished as Canada East and Canada West. Happily, however, a
clash of interests arose between the French population and the
English—happily, I say, because it led to the union, in 1867, of Canada
West and Canada East (thence-forward to be known as the Provinces of
Ontario and Quebec) with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; and this was the
first stage of Confederation, a process whereby the name “Canada” was
transferred to the great country, stretching from ocean to ocean, which
bids fair to develop wealth and population like the United States of
America, and to become the foremost nation of the British Empire.
I have only told, in broad outline, the story of Eastern Canada—that
part of the Dominion which holds the accumulated interest of stirring
vicissitudes experienced over a period of four hundred years. We will
now turn to the only other part of the Dominion that has a history
stretching back to the Middle Ages. I refer to the Hudson Bay region.
Man is a toy in the hands of Time. Things he does in one century are
apt, in the light of another, to assume the character of a droll misuse
of opportunity. The early history of the Hudson’s Bay Company tells, in
effect, of men who worked in a rich gold mine and collected nothing but
quartz.
In 1610 Henry Hudson—that glorious, pathetic hero—discovered the great
northern indentation in the map of Canada; and it was re-discovered
overland, about sixty years later, by two dashing adventurers from “New
France”—Medard de Groseillers and Pierre Radisson, who returned from
Hudson Bay with rich booty, of which they were despoiled by the
authorities at Quebec. The two indignant Frenchmen went with the story
of their wrongs to France, where they were treated with laughing
contempt. Then they crossed to England and told our King all about it.
Charles II. (who was staying at Oxford, to avoid the plague of London)
pricked up his ears, and—some of his followers being minded to invest
their money in a promising business speculation—a Royal Charter was
granted to “Gentlemen Adventurers trading to Hudson’s Bay.” His Majesty
did the thing handsomely while he was about it; for the Charter gave the
Adventurers all the country and all it contained for all time.
What was the booty Radisson and Groseillers (whom, by the way, Charles
II. insisted upon calling “Mr. Gooseberry”) had brought from Hudson Bay?
It took the form of 600,000 beaver skins. Resident in that part of the
world are many four-footed creatures which, because the weather is apt
to be cold, are provided by nature with warm, hairy coats; and the fur
that is a necessary for them is a luxury for man—and especially for
woman. Accordingly, the Adventurers sent their ships to Hudson Bay for
pelts they could turn into pelf. The actual trapping and skinning was
done by the Indians, from whom the Adventurers’ agents secured the
valuable furs in exchange for tobacco, shot, brandy, and other
commodities of civilisation. Sometimes, not content with killing the
beaver, the mink, and the silver fox, the Indians killed the
Adventurers’ agents, and vice versa; but in a general way the natives
and the visitors traded on a footing of mutual toleration—business
being done on these lines: six beavers for one blanket, half a pound of
beads for one beaver, twelve buttons or twenty fish-hooks for ditto, and
twelve beavers for one gun. The Hudson’s Bay men built themselves forts,
and their commercial transactions with the red man were always conducted
through a small wicket in the palisades.
Nor were picturesque touches lacking at the London end. Prince Rupert
was the governor, and for colleagues he had a committee who, by way of
tempering the austerity of the company’s affairs, permitted occasional
latitude to a festive spirit. Lord Preston having rendered the company a
service, the warehouse keeper was instructed to deliver “as many black
beaver skins as will make my lord a fine covering for his bedd”; and, in
gratitude for favours from a more exalted quarter, “two pairs of beaver
stockings are ordered for the King and the Duke of York.” The
Adventurers were equally alive to domestic claims on their goodwill, as
may be inferred from orders “to bespeak a cask of canary for ye
governor,” and “a hogshead of claret for ye captains sailing from
Gravesend.”
[Illustration: THE ONLY SLUM IN CANADA—LITTLE CHAMPLAIN STREET, QUEBEC
]
“One of the quaintest customs that I found in the minute books,” writes
Agnes C. Laut, the company’s painstaking historian, “was regarding the
home-coming ships. The money that had accrued from sales during the
ships’ absence was kept in an iron box in the warehouse on Fenchurch
Street. It ranged in amount from £2,000 to £11,000. To this, only the
governor and deputy-governor had the keys. Banking in the modern sense
of the word was not begun till 1735. When the ships came in, the strong
box was hauled forth and the crews paid. . . . An average of ten
thousand beaver a year was brought home. Later, otter and mink and
marten became valuable. These, the common furs, whalebone, ivory, elks’
hoofs and whale blubber made up the list of the winter sales. Before the
days of newspapers, the lists were posted in the Royal Exchange, and
sales held ‘by candle’ in lieu of the auctioneer’s hammer—a tiny candle
being lighted, pins stuck in at intervals along the shaft, and bids
shouted till the light burned out. One can guess with what critical
caress the fur fanciers ran their hands over the soft nap of the silver
fox, blowing open the fur to examine the depth and find whether the pelt
had been damaged in the skinning. Half a dozen of these rare skins from
the fur world meant more than a cargo of beaver. What was it,
anyway—this creature; rare as twentieth-century radium, that was
neither blue fox nor grey, neither cross nor black? . . . Was it
senility or debility or a splendid freak in the animal world like a
Newton or a Shakespeare in the human race? Of all the scientists from
Royal Society and hall of learning, who came to gossip over the sales at
the coffee houses, not one could explain the silver fox.”
The Adventurers’ right to the greater part of the present Dominion of
Canada was disputed by the French. A nation went to war with a company.
France dispatched fighting fleets. So did the Adventurers; for, what
with the high price of silver fox and the low price of beads, the iron
box at Fenchurch Street kept well filled. Hudson Bay was again and again
the scene of horrible carnage; now one party having the best of it, now
another. Anybody wishing to have his eyes opened to what happened
between 1682 and 1713 should read “The Conquest of the Great North
West,” by the authoress I have just quoted. Let us fix our gaze on one
typical scene in the grim retrospect.
In 1697 five French men-of-war arrived in Hudson Straits under the
command of the redoubtable Iberville. On his ship, the _Pelican_, forty
men were down with scurvy. On another, the _Wasp_, a gun broke loose
during a gale, crushing several of the crew. For eighteen days the
little fleet was ice-jammed in an impenetrable fog. Later, the _Pelican_
became separated from the rest of the fleet. Seeing three ships on the
horizon, Iberville hastened towards the supposed friends. They proved to
be English men-of-war, the _Hampshire_, the _Dering_, and the _Hudson’s
Bay_. When the French commander made that discovery, it was too late to
flee. “Quickly, ropes were stretched to give the mariners hand-hold over
the frost-slippery deck. 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. Bienville, 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 keels. . . . 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 Smithsend’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 full blast, forty French were mowed down; but
the batterymen below never ceased their crash of bombs straight into the
_Hampshire’s_ hull.”
For four hours the 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 sails on fire. Sails and mast poles and
splintered davits were a mass of roaring flame that would presently
extend to the powder magazines and blow all to eternity. . . . 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 had rushed _en masse_ for the last leap,
the hand-to-hand fight, when a frantic shout went up. . . . The
batteries of the _Hampshire_ had suddenly silenced. The great ship
refused to answer to the 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 batteries of his shattered ship full force on
Smithsend’s _Hudson’s Bay_. Promptly the _Hudson’s Bay_ struck colours,
but while Iberville was engaged boarding his captive and taking over
ninety prisoners, Grimmington on the _Dering_ showed swift heel and
gained refuge in Fort Nelson.”
Iberville had not noticed the gathering storm, which now broke upon him.
“Mist and darkness and roaring sleet drowned the death cries of the
wounded, washed and tossed and jammed against the railings by the
pounding 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.”
The boats had been shot away. Men swam ashore with guns and powder-horns
between their teeth. They also strove to tow rough rafts on which the
wounded were placed. Eighteen lives were lost in the darkness. As for
the survivors, “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 them, they became
targets for sharpshooters from the fort, who aimed at the camp fires.
Then three of Iberville’s other ships arrived, one without her steering
gear, another without her rudder. The _Violent_ had foundered in a
storm. A Frenchman went with flag of truce and bandaged eyes to demand
surrender of the fort. Its English garrison sent him back with “No” for
his answer. Under cover of fog, the French landed and erected their
cannon in the very teeth of the fort. A mutual bombardment occupied two
days. Then the French sent another emissary to explain that, if the fort
did not surrender, no quarter would be given. “Quarter be cursed!”
thundered Bailey, the English commander. Afterwards the palisades were
hacked down; and when the inevitable capitulation took place, the
garrison marched out with flags flying, to the defiant music of fife and
drum.
Truly, the French and English of those days were game and tough, and not
lacking in the more conspicuous qualities of the tiger and the bulldog.
For all those ships and men to have been fighting over the beaver and
the silver fox, and the filling of that iron box in Fenchurch Street,
gives the modern mind a good deal to think about. As one reads the story
of fierce international hatred, of incursions and pillage and crafty
ambuscades, of frequent battles on land and water, Hudson Bay figures to
the imagination as a frozen inferno of bloodshed, famine, disease and
human anguish unspeakable. The rival traders and raiders timed their
death-grips as far as possible to correspond with official periods of
warfare between France and Great Britain; but European compacts did not
always carry weight with the moving spirits of Hudson Bay. However, the
Peace of Utrecht left the company at last in uncontested possession of
that huge area, and brought to a close the Adventurers’ long maritime
struggle. Their warlike operations, however, were not over, for
presently the company became involved in sustained and sanguinary inland
strife.
When the French King held sway in “New France,” certain of its citizens,
acting under Royal licence, adventured into the forests to collect furs
from the Indians. Strangely enough, the extinction of French authority
in Eastern Canada gave a great impetus to that French industry. Licences
being no longer needed, an augmented army of daring spirits went forth
in canoes to voyage into the unknown territories, and barter beads and
brandy for the red man’s furry booty. Merchants at Montreal fitted out
the dashing _voyageurs_, and waxed opulent from the sale of skins. A
fierce rivalry grew among the enterprising Frenchmen, who strove to
out-vie one another in hospitality to the much-sought-after Indians.
There were incidents like this:
A party of drunken Crees became so obstreperous in their demand for more
rum that three traders, who had a little fort as shelter, sought to
strengthen their position by adding laudanum to the liquor. One Indian
drank too much and died, whereupon his enraged followers smashed the
fort and slaughtered their three treacherous hosts, as well as seven
other men who happened to be present. Nor did revenge stop there. Word
was sent to other tribes that all white traders had better be massacred;
and not far away, three companies of Frenchmen, sleeping within the
inadequate protection of three wooden houses, were aroused one night by
the dread war cry of the Assiniboines, and, for the most part, were
promptly slain.
Meanwhile the English fur traders were traversing the rivers that flowed
into Hudson Bay, and erecting their fortified posts away inland. Just
how far “Rupert’s Land” extended in any given direction they were not in
a position to say—they merely knew that, be it little or much, it all
belonged to them; Charles II., having, indeed, given away most of the
North American continent with true kingly generosity.
And thus it came about that the French fur traders, besides having to
put up with a rivalry among themselves, and with spasmodic Indian
savagery, found themselves confronted by English competitors, who looked
upon them as trespassers and thieves. In the circumstances, the Montreal
merchants (who, to add to the complication, were Scotsmen) judged it
advisable to combine, so that the _voyageurs_ from Eastern Canada should
present a united front to their foes. Such was the origin, in 1783, of
the North-West Company, destined to grow exceedingly rich and reckless
and to maintain a long, fierce and bloody feud with the Hudson’s Bay
Company.
Let us glance at a few representative incidents recorded by Agnes Laut:
“The North-West partner, Haldane, came to Bad Lake in 1806 with five
_voyageurs_ and knocked up quarters for themselves 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 heads of Corrigal and his men, and plundered the place of
furs.” There was further trouble at the same place a little later. “An
Indian had come to the post in September. Corrigal outfitted him with
merchandise for the winter’s hunt, and three English servants
accompanied 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 the sword,
Eneas MacDonell cut Tait’s wrist off, and with another hack on the 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
madman, 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.
Coming from the house door, John Mowat, a Hudson’s Bay man, drew his
pistol and shot Eneas MacDonell dead. Couriers went flying to the
North-West camp 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 surrendered,” and, after being
confined for a year at Fort William, was sentenced by Montreal judges to
be imprisoned for six months and to be branded.
The business rivals overran the whole country right to the Pacific, and
the names of rivers and passes in Western Canada bear witness to the
enterprise and hardihood of those pioneer explorers. Indeed, the
Hudson’s Bay men and the Nor’-Westers discovered between them the bulk
of the Dominion. That is their title to the respect and gratitude of
posterity. For the rest, what a tragic farce the whole business was!
Here was a country so enormous that the fastest trains to-day occupy
nearly a week in crossing it by a direct route from east to west; a
country stretching so far northward that its present population of eight
million merely suffices thinly to sprinkle a southern strip; a country
with agricultural and mineral resources adequate for the support of over
one hundred million people—and those two commercial corporations turned
their opportunities to no better account than in murdering one another’s
representatives over the miserable business of trading beads and brandy
for the hides of small quadrupeds.
Please do not suppose that I write in any spirit of criticism and
censure. The world evolves in its own strange way; and the human race is
permanently incapacitated by altered circumstances from sitting in
judgment on its ancestors. Still, the spectacle of those two companies
feeling cramped by each other’s presence in a roomy place like Canada,
and using pistols and daggers to lessen the pressure of commercial
competition, is exceedingly droll, if grim.
The state of affairs to which I have referred continued until 1821, when
the Hudson’s Bay Company absorbed its formidable opponent. That
amalgamation was preceded by a very interesting and important event.
Lord Selkirk, a wealthy viscount, and one of the noblest characters in
Canadian history, established the first community of immigrant settlers
in the North-West—a fact to which I shall recall the reader’s attention
in my chapter about Winnipeg. The area conceded for settlement was known
as the Red River district, and included much of the present Province of
Manitoba and part of what is now the State of Minnesota. To secure the
co-operation of the Hudson’s Bay Company in his philanthropic design,
Lord Selkirk had taken the precaution first to buy up a controlling
interest in that commercial concern. Warfare between Nor’-Westers and
Hudson’s Bay men involved those early settlers in some bloody horrors.
But in the present chapter we need only consider the affairs of the
pioneer community in relation to the future opening up of the entire
North-West to colonisation. And first I would mention a peaceful
understanding at which the Selkirk settlers arrived with the Indians of
the district. Land was surrendered in consideration of the annual
payment to each tribe of “one hundred pounds of good merchantable
tobacco”; that compact of 1817 being interesting as the forerunner of an
important series of treaties with the red man.
United as one company, the fur traders flourished exceedingly, and came
in time to exercise authority, not merely throughout the present
Dominion, but over territory since absorbed into the American Republic,
besides extending their sway to Alaska and across the ocean to the
Sandwich Islands—a tolerably large area to be exploited in the
interests of the iron box of Fenchurch Street. The coming of human
settlers to disturb the furry quadrupeds was, of course, a calamity to
be prevented, or at any rate delayed, by all the power and statecraft at
the company’s command. But the tide of democracy could not for ever be
resisted, and the pelt-collectors’ title to a huge empire melted before
the hard facts of American, British and Russian occupation.
The company was not so foolish as to take up arms in defence of its
flimsy rights. Its policy was to hinder human encroachment as long as
possible, and then bow to the inevitable. By 1835 its spheres of
influence had sadly dwindled, and its titles to territorial possession
were becoming more and more shadowy. The governor and his committee
perceived the necessity for doing something to arrest the decay of their
power and prestige. So it was the strange fate of the Red River colony
to be bought back by the Hudson’s Bay Company, for a sum of £84,000,
from the heirs of Lord Selkirk. In that colony the fur traders now
established an autocratic government that aimed primarily at the
vigorous suppression of all private trade in pelts. It was not long
before the settlers were gasping for freedom. Vainly they demanded the
representative government that had been secured under the American flag
by their comrades in Minnesota. At the opening of the second half of the
nineteenth century, indeed, the fate of the Red River settlement—the
pioneer colony of the West—hung in the balance. Would it, like Oregon,
join the Union? In that critical situation, an independent element of
unrest was provided by the growing discontent of the Half-Breeds. For
long years past, the fur traders—and more particularly the French
Nor’-Westers—had intermarried with the Indians, and brought into
existence that numerous, pathetic people, who inherited the conflicting
traditions of two races.
In view of growing unrest in the Red River settlement, the Home
Government instituted a Parliamentary inquiry into the affairs of the
Hudson’s Bay Company. That inquiry seemed to effect nothing. But, hey
presto! a change came over the position immediately afterwards. In 1863
a syndicate of capitalists, known as the International Financial
Association, bought up the Hudson’s Bay Company for £1,500,000, and
turned over the concern to new shareholders in a new Hudson’s Bay
Company on a footing of increased capital. The tension was relieved; for
public interests were represented by a wisely-controlled force working
in the background. With the confederation in 1867 of Canada East, Canada
West, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the creation of the Dominion of
Canada commenced. The newly established Federal Government promptly
arrived at an understanding whereby the Hudson’s Bay Company
relinquished any rights of territorial administration it may anywhere
have possessed; and in 1870 the Red River colony became the Province of
Manitoba and an invaluable part of the Dominion of Canada.
But before suffering the Company to pass out of this narrative, I must
satisfy the reader’s curiosity concerning the terms it secured. It
received a money payment of £300,000; it was granted one-twentieth of
the arable land in the country over which, at the date of the
arrangement, it held dominion; and its title to all land on which its
forts stood was confirmed. Probably the shareholders have never
regretted the bargain made on their behalf. “How valuable one-twentieth
of the arable land was to prove,” says Agnes Laut, “the company itself
did not realise till recent days, and what wealth it gained from the
cession of land where its forts stood may be guessed from the fact that
at Fort Garry (Winnipeg) this land comprises five hundred acres of what
are now city lots at metropolitan values.” Moreover, I understand that
the business of collecting furs is still a lucrative one; while visitors
to Canada will not fail to notice, in all the great cities, the
magnificent general stores of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
[Illustration: OLD FORT GARRY, WINNIPEG]
[Illustration: NEW UNION STATION, WINNIPEG]
One regrettable fact has to be noted in connection with the creation of
the Province of Manitoba. The anxious and bewildered Half-Breeds,
fearing their interests were in peril, rose in rebellion under Louis
Riel, the trouble not being repressed until Colonel (afterwards
Viscount) Wolseley crossed the continent with an armed force. The growth
of Manitoba under representative government has been one of the most
inspiring achievements of modern times; but the history of that province
merges at this point into the history of Western Canada, to which it had
become the open door.
Western Canada provided the Federal Government with several problems, of
which the most pressing concerned the status of the roving bands of
Indians. In the States, civilisation was driving back the natives with
fire and sword. In Canada, recourse was had to milder and more effective
methods. But in one respect the Yankees and the Canadians acted in
concert. They joined in a war of extermination against the buffalo. Of
the number of those animals roaming the prairie, it is difficult for
anybody nowadays to form a conception. One traveller recorded that he
rode for twenty-five miles through an unbroken herd, which he estimated
to include one million animals. In the States, “Buffalo Bill” (Colonel
Cody) took an active part in the work of extermination. He is credited
with shooting forty-eight of the poor creatures in fifty minutes. In a
period of some eighteen months—when he was under contract to supply all
the meat needed by the huge army of men engaged in constructing the
Kansas Pacific Railway—he accounted for 4,280 buffaloes. On both sides
of the international boundary line, the country was swept clean of these
fine beasts. I have seen places on the prairie white with an
accumulation of their bones, whereof the weathered relics may still be
found.
When the Indians saw what was being done, they were filled with
apprehension. The buffalo was their means of subsistence. Its flesh
supplied them with meat, both fresh and, when pounded down and mixed
with fat, as pemmican; its skin provided them with clothing, tents,
canoes, bridle and reins; its sinews made strings for their bows; and
its horns served them as powder flasks. But the Federal Government had
no intention of permitting the Indians to starve. Their helplessness
without the buffalo was the means of bringing them, willy-nilly, within
the pale of civilisation. I have mentioned the pioneer compact with the
red man achieved by the Selkirk settlers. That had been followed by
similar understandings in Eastern Canada. And now the Federal Government
effected a series of treaties with the North-West Indians, who
surrendered any general claim they may have had to the country at large,
and accepted a specific title to ample lands, or reserves, set apart for
their exclusive use. Moreover, the Government agreed to make them annual
money payments, and to grant them free rations until such time as they
should be self-supporting—an end Canada is striving (and not without a
very encouraging measure of success) to further by providing the tribes
with schools, both general and agricultural, and with cattle, seed, and
farming implements.
The interests of the natives were served in another way. American
traders, in defiance of the law, were supplying them with intoxicants;
and the fascinating, maddening “fire water” was a temptation wellnigh
irresistible to the red man. To sweep that traffic from the prairie, the
Government enrolled the North-West Mounted Police—a force that has won
for itself a splendid reputation for tact, pluck and all-round
efficiency. The suppression of the illicit liquor trade was one of the
earliest and best of its achievements. The Riders of the Plains won the
respect and confidence of the Indians, and carried through a treaty with
the warlike Blackfeet—the last tribes to be won from a footing of
irresponsible independence. When the Half-Breeds, again under Louis
Riel, once more raised the flag of revolt, the mounted police rendered
effective assistance in repressing the trouble; and this time it was
repressed permanently.
The year of that rebellion witnessed the completion of the Canadian
Pacific Railway, and the creation of modern Western Canada.