1760-1810
“THE COMING OF THE PEDLARS” CONTINUED--VOYAGE UP TO FORT WILLIAM, LIFE
OF WILDWOOD WASSAIL AND GRANDEUR THERE--HOW THE WINTERING PARTNERS
EXPLOITED THE NORTHWEST--TALES OF THE WINTERERS IN THE PAYS D’EN HAUT
It was no easier for the Nor’Westers to obtain recruits than for the
Hudson’s Bay Company. French habitants were no more anxious to have
their heads broken in other men’s quarrels than the Orkneymen of the
Old Country; but the Nor’Westers managed better than the Hudson’s Bay.
Brigades were made up as the ice cleared from the rivers in May. For
weeks before, the Nor’Westers had been craftily at work. No agents
were sent to the country parishes with clumsy offers of £8 bounty,
which would be, of itself, acknowledgment of danger. Companies don’t
pay £8 bounty for nothing. Not agents were sent to the parishes,
but “sly old wolves of the North”--as one parish priest calls these
demoralizers of his flock--went from village to village, gay, reckless,
dare-devil veterans, old in service, young in years, clothed in all
the picturesque glory of beaded buckskin, plumed hats, silk sashes,
to tickle the vanity of the poor country bucks, who had never been
beyond their own hamlet. Cocks of the walk, bullies of the town,
slinging money around like dust, spinning yarns marvelous of fortune
made at one coup, of adventures in which they had been the heroes,
of freedom--freedom like kings to rule over the Indian tribes--these
returned voyageurs lounged in the taverns, played the gallants at all
the hillside dances, flirted with the daughters, made presents to the
mothers, and gave to the youth of the parish what the priest describes
as “dizziness of the head.” It needed only a little maneuvering for
our “sly wolves of the North” to get themselves lionized, the heroes
of the parish. Dances were given in their honor. The contagion invaded
even the sacred fold of the church. The “sons of Satan” maneuvered so
well that the holy festivals even seemed to revolve round their person
as round a sun of glory. The curé might preach himself black in the
face proving that a camp on the sand and a bed _à la belle étoile_,
under the stars, are much more poetic in the telling than in life; that
voyageurs don’t pass all their lives clothed in picturesque costumes
chanting ditties to the rhythmic dip of paddle blades; that, in fact,
when your voyageur sets out in spring he passes half his time in ice
water to mid-waist tracking canoes up rapids, and that where the
portage is rocky glassed with ice, you can follow the sorry fellow’s
path by blood from the cuts in his feet.
What did the curé know about it? There was proof to the contrary in
the gay blade before their eyes, and the green country bucks expressed
timid wish that they, too, might lead such a life. Presto! No sooner
said than done! My hero from the North jerks a written contract all
ready for the signature of names and slaps down half the wages in
advance before the dazzled greenhorns have time to retract. From now
till the brigades depart our green recruit busies himself playing
the hero before he has won his spurs. He dons the gay vesture and he
dons the grand air and he passes the interval in a glorious oblivion
of all regrets drowned in potions at the parish inn; but it is our
drummer’s business to round up the recruits at Montreal, which he does
as swiftly as they sober up. And they usually sober up to find that
all the advance wages have melted in the public house. No drawing back
now, though the rosy hopes have faded drab! A hint at such a thought
brings down on the poltroon’s head threats of instant imprisonment--a
fine ending, indeed, to all the brag and the boast and the brass-band
flourish with which our runaway has left his native parish.
Crews and canoes assemble above Lachine, nine miles from Montreal,
ninety or one hundred canoes with eight men to each, including
steersman, and a pilot to each ten canoes. Thirty or forty guides
there will, perhaps, be to the yearly brigade--men who lead the way
and prevent waste of time by following wrong water courses. And it is
a picturesque enough scene to stir the dullest blood, spite of all
the curé’s warning. Voyageurs and hunters are dressed in buckskin
with gayest of silk bands round hair and neck. Partners are pompous
in ruffles and lace and gold braid, with brass-handled pistols and
daggers in belt. In each canoe go the cargoes--two-thirds merchandise,
one-third provisions--oilcloth to cover it, tarpaulin for a tent, tow
lines, bark and gum for repairs, kettles, dippers and big sponges to
bail out water. As the canoes are loaded, they are launched and circle
about on the river waiting for the signal of the head steersman. The
chief steersman’s steel-shod pole is held overhead. It drops--five
hundred paddles dip as with one arm, and there shoots out from the
ninety-foot canoes the small, narrow, swift craft of the partners,
racing ahead to be at the rendezvous before the cargoes arrive.
Freight packers ashore utter a shout that makes the echoes ring. The
voyageurs strike up a song. The paddles dip to the time of the song.
The deep-throated chorus dies away in echo. The life of the _Pays d’en
Haut_ has begun.
Ste. Anne’s--the patron saint of canoemen--is the last chapel spire
they will see for many a year. The canoemen cross themselves in prayer.
Then the Lake of the Two Mountains comes, and the Long Sault Rapids and
the Chaudiere Falls, of what is now Ottawa City, and the Chat Rapids
and thirty-six other portages in the four hundred miles up the Ottawa
from Montreal, each portage being reckoned as many “pipes” long as
the voyageur smokes, when carrying the cargo overland in ninety-pound
packs on his back. Leaving the Mattawa at the headwaters of the
Ottawa, the brigades strike westward for the Great Lakes, down stream
through Nipissing Lake and French River to Lake Huron; easier going
now with the current and sheer delight once the canoes are out on the
clear waters of the lake, where if the wind is favorable, blankets are
hoisted for a sail and the canoes scud across to the Sault. But it
is not always easy going. Where French River comes out of Nipissing
Lake, ten crosses mark where voyageurs have found a watery grave, and
sometimes on the lake the heavily laden canoes are working straight
against a head wind that sends choppy waves ice-cold slapping into
their laps till oilcloth must be bound round the prow to keep from
shipping water where a wave-crest dips over and the canoe has failed
to climb. Even mounting the waves and keeping the gun’els clear of
the wash, at every paddle dip the spray splashes the voyageur to his
waist. The “old wolves” smoke and say nothing. The bowman bounces back
athwart so that the prow will lighten and rise to the climbing wave,
but the green hands--the gay dons who left home in such a flush of
glory--mutter “_c’est la misère, c’est la misère, mon bourgeois_,”
_bourgeois_ being the habitant’s name for the partners of the Company;
and misery it is, indeed, if ice glasses the canoe and the craft
becomes frost-logged. They must land then and repair the canoe where
the bark has been jagged, new bark being gummed on where the cuts are
deep, resin and tar run along all fissures. And these Nor’Westers are
very wolves for time. Repairs must be done by torchlight at night. In
fair weather, the men sleep on the sand. In bad weather, tarpaulin is
put up as a wind-break. Reveille is sounded at first dawn streak--a
bugle call if a partner is in camp, a shout from the chief steersman
if the brigades have become scattered--“Levé! Levé!” By four in the
morning, canoes are again on the water. At eight, the brigades land for
breakfast. If weather be favorable for speed, they will not pause for
mid-day meal but eat a snack of biscuit or pemmican as they run across
the portages. Night meal comes when they can see to go no farther, and
often relays of paddles are put on and the brigades paddle all night.
The men have slim fare--grease and barley meal and pemmican, and the
greenhorns frequently set up such a wail for the pork diet of the
home table that they become known as the “_mangeurs de lard_,” “_the
pork eaters_,” between Montreal and Lake Superior, or “the comers and
goers,” because the men on this part of the voyage to the Up Country
are freighters constantly coming and going. At each fresh portage the
new hand must stand for treats to his comrades, or risk a ducking, or
prove himself a better wrestler than they. At the hardest places and
the hardest pace, the bourgeois unbends and gives his men a _régale_,
which means rum.
The Sault at the west side of Lake Huron leading up to Lake Superior is
the last military post--the outermost reach of the law’s arm. Beyond
the Sault--as the priests had warned--is law of neither God nor man.
Beyond the Sault, letters from home friends to the voyageurs bear the
significant address, “_Wherever He May Be Found_.”
At the Sault on the north side, the Nor’Westers constructed a canal
with locks, for they had two sailing vessels patrolling the lakes--_The
Otter_ and _The Beaver_--one bound for the Detroit trade, the other
from the Sault across Lake Superior. As the superstitious half-breeds
passed from the Sault to Lake Superior, it was an Indian custom to
drop an arrow on the shore as an offering to keep the devil from doing
them harm on the boisterous waters of Lake Superior. Many a canoe
was swamped by head winds crossing Lake Superior. To avoid risk, the
brigades skirted close to the north shore, till they came to the
Company’s headquarters at Fort William, formerly known as Grand Portage.
Grand Portage was eighteen hundred miles from Montreal and lay at
the foot of a hill, the buildings engirt by eighteen-foot palisades.
It was here rival traders were usually stopped. When the Montreal
merchants first went to the Northwest, their headquarters had been
Michilimacinac, but this was too close to rival traders. The Frobishers
and McGillivrays and McTavishes decided to seek some good location on
the north shore of the lake leading directly to the Up Country. Grand
Portage on Pigeon River leading up to the height of land drained by
Rainy River, was chosen for the fort, but when the American boundary
was specified by treaty, it was found that Grand Portage was in foreign
territory. The partners looked for an eastern site that would still
be on waterways leading toward Rainy River. The very year, 1785, that
the Nor’Westers had petitioned the government for monopoly, they sent
voyageurs seeking such a site. The man who led the voyageurs was that
Edward Umfreville, who had been captured by the French on Hudson Bay,
in 1782, and had now come to join the Nor’Westers. Umfreville found
a chain of waterways leading up from Lake Superior to Lake Nipigon
and from Nipigon west to Winnipeg River, but later, in 1797, Roderick
MacKenzie found the trail of the fur traders in the old French
régime--by way of Kaministiquia; and to the mouth of the Kaministiquia
headquarters were moved by 1800, and the post named Fort William in
honor of that William McGillivray who had bought out Peter Pond.
The usual slab-cut palisades surrounded the fort. In the center of
the square stood the main building surmounted by a high balcony.
Inside was the great saloon or hall--sixty feet by thirty--decorated
with paintings of the leading partners in the full flush of ruffles
and court costume. Here the partners and clerks and leading guides
took their meals. Round this hall were the partners’ bedrooms; in
the basement, the kitchen. Flanking the walls of the courtyard were
other buildings equally large--the servants’ quarters, storehouses,
warerooms, clerks’ lodgings. The powder magazine was of stone roofed
with tin with a look-out near the roof commanding a view of the lake.
There was also a jail which the voyageurs jocularly called their _pot
au beurre_, or butter tub. The physician, Doctor McLoughlin, a young
student of Laval, Quebec, who had been forced to flee west for pitching
a drunken British officer of Quebec Citadel on his head in the muddy
streets, had a house to himself near the gate. Over the gate was a
guardhouse, where sentry sat night and day. Inside the palisades was
a population of from twelve hundred to two thousand people. Outside
the fort a village of little log houses had scattered along the river
front. Here dwelt the Indian families of the French voyageurs.
Here, then, came the brigades from Montreal--seven hundred, and one
thousand strong, preceded by the swift-traveling partners whose annual
meeting was held in July. A great whoop welcomed the men ashore and
they were at once rallied to the Canteen, where bread, butter, meal
and four quarts of rum were given to each man. About the same time
as the canoes from the East arrived, the fur brigades from the West
came in smaller canoes, loaded to the waterline with skins valued
at £40 a pack. To these also was given a _régale_. Then twenty or
a dozen kegs of rum were distributed to the Indian families; “and
after that,” says one missionary, “truly the furies of Hell were let
loose.” The gates were closed for reasons that need not be given,
and the Nor’ Westers often took the precaution of gathering up all
the weapons of the Indians before the _boisson_ or mad drinking bout
began, but the rum-frenzied Indians still had fists and teeth left,
and never a drinking bout passed but from one to a dozen Indians were
murdered--frequently wives and daughters because they were least
able to defend themselves--though the Indian murderer when sobered
was often plunged in such grief for his deed that he would come to
the white men and beg them to kill him as punishment. The stripping
of all restraint--moral, physical, legal--has different effects on
different natures. Some rise higher in the freedom. Others go far below
the level of the most vicious beast. Men like Alexander MacKenzie
and Doctor McLoughlin braced themselves to the shock of the sudden
transition from civilization to barbarism and rose to renown--one as
explorer, the other as patriot; but in the very same region where
Alexander MacKenzie won his laurels was another MacKenzie--James--a
blood relative, who openly sold native women to voyageurs and entered
them as an asset on the Company’s books; and in that very Oregon where
McLoughlin won his reputation as a saint, was his son McLoughlin,
notorious as a sot. Perhaps the crimes of the fur country were no
greater than those committed under hiding in civilization, but they
were more terrific, for they were undisguised and in open day where if
you would not see them you must close your eyes or bolt the gates.
Inside the bolted gates where the partners lived, the code was on the
whole one of decency and high living and pomp. In the daytime, the
session of the annual meeting was held in secret behind barred doors.
The entire Up Country was mapped out for the year’s campaign. Reports
were received on the past season, men and plans arranged for the coming
year, weak leaders shifted to easy places, strong men, “old winterers,
the crafty wolves of the North,” dispatched to the fields where there
was to be the hardest fighting against either Indians or English, and
English always meant Hudson’s Bay.
But at night the cares of the campaign were laid aside. The partners
dressed for dinner--ruffles and gold lace and knee breeches with
gold-clasped garters and silver-buckled shoes. Over the richly laden
dinner table was told many a yarn of hardship and danger and heroism in
the Up Country. The rafters rang with laughter and applause and song.
Outside the gates among the voyageurs the songs were French; inside
among the partners, Scotch. When plates were cleared away, bagpipes of
the beloved Highlands, and flutes, and violins struck up and “we danced
till daylight,” records Rod. MacKenzie; or “we drank the ten gallon
kegs empty,” confesses Henry; it was according to the man. Or when more
wine than wisdom had flowed from the festive board, and plates were
cleared, the jolly partners sometimes straddled wine kegs, chairs,
benches, and “_sauted_,” as one relates it--shot the rapids from the
dining table to the floor ending up a wild night with wild races
astride anything from a broom to a paddle round and round the hall till
daylight peeped through the barred windows, or pipers and fiddlers
fell asleep, and the servants came to pilot the gay gentlemen to bed.
Altogether, it wasn’t such a dull time--those two weeks’ holidays at
Fort William--and such revel was only the foam (“bees’ wings” one
journal calls it) of a life that was all strong wine. Outside the gates
were the lees and the dregs of the life--riot and lust.
It was part of the Nor’Westers’ policy to encourage a spirit of bluster
and brag and bullying among the servants. Bluff was all very well,
but the partners saw to it that the men could back up their bluff with
brawn. Wrestling matches and boxing bouts were encouraged between the
Scotch clerks and the French voyageurs. These took place inside the
walls. Half the partners were Catholics and all the voyageurs. The
Catholic Church did not purpose losing these souls to Satan. Not for
nothing had the good bishop of Quebec listened to confessions from
returned voyageurs. When he picked out a chaplain for Fort William, he
saw to it that the man chosen should be a man of herculean frame and
herculean strength. The good father was welcomed to the Fort, given
ample quarters and high precedence at table, but the Catholic partners
weren’t quite sure how he would regard those prize fights.
“Don’t go out of your apartments to-morrow! There’s to be a _régale_!
There may be fighting,” they warned him.
“I thank you,” says the priest politely, no doubt recalling the secrets
of many a confessional.
From his window, he watched the rough crowds gather next day in the
courtyard. As he saw the two champions strip to their waists, he
doubtless guessed this was to be no chance fight. Hair tied back, at
a signal, fists and feet, they were at it. The priest grew cold and
then hot. He began to strip off garments that might hinder his own
shoulder swing, and clad in fighting gear burst from his room and
marched straight to the center of the crowd. No one had time to ask
his intentions. He was a big man and the crowd stood aside. Shooting
out both his long arms, the priest grabbed each fighter by the neck,
knocked their heads together like two billiard balls, and demanded:
“Heh? That’s the way you bullies fight, is it? Eh? Bien! You don’t know
anything about it! You’re a lot of old hens! Here’s the way to do it!
I’ll show you how,” and with a final bang of cracking skulls, he spun
them sprawling across the courtyard half stunned. “If you have any
better than these two, send them along! I’ll continue the lessons,” he
proffered; and for lack of learners withdrew to his own apartments.
* * * * *
It is now necessary to examine how the Nor’Westers blocked out their
Northern Empire over which they kept more jealous guard than Bluebeard
over his wives.
Take a map of North America. Up on Hudson Bay is the English Company
with forts around it like a wheel. Of this circle, the bay is the
hub. Eastward are the forts in Labrador; southward, Abbittibbi
toward Quebec; westward, three lines of fur posts extending inland
like spokes of the wheel--1st, up Albany River toward the modern
Manitoba--(_Mine_, water; _toba_, prairie, that is, country of the
prairie water), along the valley of Red River to modern Minnesota
(_Mine_, water; _sotar_, sky-colored, that is, country of the
sky-colored water), and up the winding Assiniboine (country of the
stone boilers where the Assiniboines cooked food on hot stones) to
the central prairie; 2nd, up Hayes River from York (Nelson) to the
Saskatchewan as far as the Rockies; 3rd, up Churchill River from
Churchill Fort to Portage de Traite and Isle a la Crosse and far-famed
Athabasca and MacKenzie River.
The wheel that has for its hub Hudson Bay, has practically only five
spokes--two, eastward; three, westward. Between these unoccupied spokes
are areas the size of a Germany or a Russia or a France. Into these the
Nor’Westers thrust themselves like a wedge.
Look at the map again. This time the point of radiation is Fort William
on Lake Superior. Between Lake Superior and Hudson Bay northward for
seven hundred miles is not a post. Into these dark, impenetrable,
river-swamped forests the Nor’Westers send their men. Dangerous work,
this! For some unaccountable reason the Indians of these shadowy
forests are more treacherous and gloomy than the tribes of the plains.
Umfreville passes through their territory when he tries to find a
trail westward not on American soil. Shaw, the partner, and Long, the
clerk, are sent in to drum up trade. The field is entered one hundred
miles east of Fort William at Pays Plat, where canoes push north to
Lake Nipigon. First, a fort is built on Lake Nipigon named Duncan,
after Duncan Cameron. Long stays here in charge. Shaw, as partner,
pushes on to a house half way down to Albany on Hudson Bay. The
Indians call Mr. Shaw “the Cat” from his feeble voice. A third hand,
Jacque Santeron, is sent eastward to the Temiscamingue Lakes south of
Abbittibbi. The three Nor’Westers have, as it were, thrust themselves
like a wedge between the spokes of the Hudson’s Bay Company from
Moose River to Albany; but a thousand perils assail them, a thousand
treacheries. First, the Frenchman Santeron loses courage, sends a
farewell written on a birch-bark letter down to Long at Nipigon, and
deserts bag and baggage, provisions and peltries, to the Hudson’s Bay
at Abbittibbi. Determined to prevent such loss, Long tears across
country to Temiscamingue only to find Santeron’s cabins abandoned and
these words in charcoal on bark: “_Farewell my dear comrade; I go with
daring and expect a good price for my furs with the English. With the
best heart, I wish you luck. My regards to my partners. Good-by._” But
desertion and theft of Company goods are not the worst of it. Down at
Nipigon, Long hears that the Indians of the North are going to murder
“the Cat”--Mr. Shaw--probably to carry the plundered furs down to the
Hudson’s Bay. Long rushes to the rescue to find Shaw cooped up in the
cabin surrounded by a tribe of frenzied Indians whom he tried in vain
to pacify with liquor.
“My God! But I’m glad to see you,” shouts Shaw, drawing Long inside
the door. For a week the Indians had tried to set fire to his house
by shooting arrows of lighted punk wood at it, but every window and
crevice of the cabin bristles with loaded muskets--twenty-eight of
them--that keep the assailants back. The Indians demand more liquor.
Shaw gives it to them on condition they go away, but at daybreak back
they come for more, naked and daubed with war paint from head to foot.
“More,” shouts Long. “Come on then,” throwing the doors wide open and
rolling across the entrance a keg of gunpowder from which he knocks the
lid. “One step across the door and we all perish together,” cocking
his pistol straight for the powder. Pell-mell off dashed the terrified
Indians paddling canoes as fast as drunken arms could work the blades.
Another time, Long discovers that his Indian guide is only awaiting a
favorable chance to assassinate him. A bottle of drugged liquor puts
the assassin to sleep and another Indian with a tomahawk prevents him
ever awakening. When Long retires, Duncan Cameron, son of a royalist in
the American Revolution, comes to command Nipigon. Cameron pushes on
up stream past Nipigon two hundred miles to the English post Osnaburg,
where the Hudson’s Bay man, Goodwin, welcomes the Nor’Wester--a rival
is safer indoors than out, especially when he has no visible goods; but
Cameron manages to speak with the Indians during his visit and when he
departs they follow him back to the place where he has _cached_ his
goods and the trade takes place. Henceforth traders of the Nipigon do
not stay in the fort on the lake but range the woods drumming up trade
from Abbittibbi east, to Albany west.
Meanwhile, what are the brigades of Fort William doing? Fifteen days at
the most it takes for the “goers and comers” of Montreal to exchange
their cargo of provisions for the Northerners’ cargo of furs. When the
big canoes head back for the East at the end of July, the Montreal
partners go with them. Smaller canoes, easier to portage and in more
numerous brigades, set out for the West with the wintering partners.
These are “the wolves of the North”--the MacKenzies and Henry and
Harmon and Fraser and a dozen others--each to command a wilderness
empire the size of a France or a Germany.
By the new route of Kaministiquia, it is only a day’s paddling beyond
the first long portage to the height of land. Beyond this, the canoes
launch down stream, gliding with the current and “somerseting” or
shooting the smaller rapids, portaging when the fall of water is too
turbulent. Wherever there is a long portage there stands a half-way
house--wayside inn of logs and thatch roof where some stray Frenchman
sells fresh food to the voyageurs--a great nuisance to the impatient
partners, for the men pause to parley. First of the labyrinthine
waterways that weave a chain between Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg
is Rainy River, flowing northwest to Lake of the Woods, or Lake of the
Isles as the French called it. On Rainy River are the ruins of an old
fort of the French traders. Here the Northbound brigades often meet the
Athabasca canoes which can seldom come down all the way as far as Fort
William and go back to Athabasca before winter. Again an exchange of
goods takes place, and the Athabasca men head back with the Northbound
brigades.
Wherever the rivers widen to lakes as at Lake Francis and Lake of the
Woods, the canoes swing abreast, lash gun’els together by thwarting
paddles, hoist sails and drift lazily forward on the forest-shadowed,
placid waters, crews smoking, or singing with weird cadences amid the
loneliness of these silent places. In this part of the voyage, while
all the brigades were still together, there were often as many as five
hundred canoes spread out on the lakes like birds on wing. Faces now
bronzed almost to the shade of woodland creatures, splashes of color
here and there where the voyageurs’ silk scarf has not faded, blue sky
above with a fleece of clouds, blue sky below with a fleece of clouds
and all that marked where sky began and reflection ended the margin of
the painted shores etched amber in the brown waters--the picture was
one that will never again be witnessed in wilderness life. Sometimes
as the canoes cut a silver trail across the lakes, leather tepee tops
would emerge from the morning mists telling of some Cree hunters
waiting with their furs, and one of the partners would go ashore to
trade, the crew camping for a day. Every such halt was the chance for
repairing canoes. Camp fires sprang up as if by magic. Canoes lay keel
up and tar was applied to all sprung seams, while the other boatmen got
lines out and laid up supplies of fresh fish. That night the lake would
twinkle with a hundred fires and an army of voyageurs lie listening to
the wind in the pines. The next day, a pace would be set to make up for
lost time.
Lake of the Woods empties into Winnipeg River through a granite gap of
cataract. The brigades skirted the falls across the Portage of the Rat
(modern Rat Portage) and launched down the swift current of Winnipeg
River that descends northward to Lake Winnipeg in such a series of
leaps and waterfalls it was long known among the voyageurs as White
or Foaming River. Where the river entered the southeast end of Lake
Winnipeg, were three trading posts--the ruins of the old French fort,
Maurepas, the Nor’ Westers’ fort known as Bas de la Riviere, and the
Hudson’s Bay Post, now called Fort Alexander--some three miles from the
lake.
This was the lake which Kelsey, and perhaps Radisson and Hendry and
Cocking, had visited from Hudson Bay. It was forty days straight west
from Albany, three weeks from York on the Hayes.
At this point the different brigades separated, one going north to the
Athabasca, one west up the Saskatchewan to the Rockies, one southwest
across the lake to Dauphin and Swan Lake and what is now northwestern
Manitoba, two or three south up Red River destined for Pembina at the
Boundary, Grand Forks, the Mandanes on the Missouri, and the posts
along the Assiniboine River of the middle West. Look again to the map.
What kind of an empire do these Nor’Westers encompass? All of the great
West, all except the unknown regions of the Pacific Coast. In size
how large? The area of the Russian Empire. No wonder Simon McTavish,
founder of the Company, wore the airs of an emperor, and it is to be
remembered that Nor’Westers ruled with the despotism of emperors, too.
Let us follow the different brigades to their destinations.
_Notes to Chapter XXI._--The contents of Chapter XXI are drawn from
the Journals of the Northwest partners as published by Senator Masson,
from Long’s Voyages, from private journals in my own collection of
manuscripts, chiefly Colin Robertson’s, and from the Abbé Dugas’
inimitable store of Northwest legends in several volumes. The story
of the recruiting officers and of the holy father comes chiefly from
Dugas. Umfreville’s book does not give details of his voyage for the
N. W. C. to Nipigon, but he left a journal from which Masson gives
facts, and there are references to his voyage in N. W. C. petitions
to Parliament. Cameron tells his own story of Nipigon in the Masson
Collection. The best descriptions of Fort William are in Colin
Robertson’s letters (M. S.) and “Franchere’s Voyage.” In following N.
W. C. expansion, it was quite impossible to do so chronologically.
It could be done only by grouping the actors round episodes. For
instance, in Nipigon, Long was there off and on in 1768, ’72, ’82.
Cameron did not come on the scene till ’96 and did not take up
residence till 1802 to 1804. To scatter this account of Nipigon
chronologically would be to confuse it. Again, Umfreville found the
Nipigon trail to the Up Country, in 1784. Rod. MacKenzie did not find
the old Kaministiquia road till the nineties. Or again, Grand Portage
was a rendezvous till 1797 and was not entirely moved to Fort William
till 1801 and 1802. Why separate these events by the hundred other
episodes of the Company’s history purely for the sake of sequence on
dates? I have tried to keep the story grouped round the main thread of
one forward movement--the domination of the Up Country by the N. W. C.