1780-1810
“THE COMING OF THE PEDLARS” CONTINUED--MACKENZIE AND MCTAVISH
QUARREL--THE NOR’WESTERS INVADE HUDSON BAY WATERS AND CHALLENGE THE
CHARTER--RUFFIANISM OF NOR’WESTERS--MURDER AND BOYCOTT OF HUDSON’S
BAY MEN--UP-TO-DATE COMMERCIALISM AS CONDUCTED IN TERMS OF A CLUB AND
WITHOUT LAW.
The next spring, MacKenzie left the West forever. Again his report of
discovery was coldly received by the partners on Lake Superior. The
smoldering jealousy between Simon McTavish of the old Nor’Westers and
Alexander MacKenzie broke out in flame. MacKenzie seceded from the
Nor’Westers and with Pierre de Rocheblave and the Ogilvies of Montreal
reorganized the Little Company variously known as “The Potties,” from
“Les Petits,” and “the X. Y.’s” from the stamp on their pelts, X. Y.,
to distinguish them from the N. W. MacKenzie’s Journal was published.
He was given a title in recognition of his services to the Empire. Now
in possession of an independent and growing fortune, he bought himself
an estate in Scotland where the fame of his journal attracted the
attention of another brilliant young Scotchman--Lord Selkirk. The two
became acquainted and talked over plans of forming a vast company, that
would include not only the X. Y.’s and Nor’Westers, but the Hudson’s
Bay and Russian companies. Hudson’s Bay stock had fallen from £250
to £50 a share. With the aim of a union, MacKenzie and Selkirk began
buying shares in the Hudson’s Bay, and Selkirk comes on a visit to
Canada.
Meanwhile--out in Canada--Simon McTavish, “the Marquis,” was not idle
up to the time of his death. The Hudson’s Bay had barred out other
traders from Labrador. Good! Simon McTavish accepted the challenge,
and from the government of Canada rented the old King’s Domain of
Southern Labrador for £1000 a year. The English company had forbidden
interlopers on the waters of Hudson Bay. Good! The Nor’Westers accepted
that challenge. Duncan McGillivray, a nephew of McTavish, dictates
a letter to the ancient English company begging them to sue him for
what he is going to do, so that the case may be forever settled in the
courts. Then he hires Captain Richards away from the Company and sends
him on the ship _Eddystone_, in 1803, straight into Hudson Bay, to
establish a trading post at Charlton Island and another at Moose for
the Nor’Westers. The Hudson’s Bay Company declines the challenge. They
will not sue the Northwest Company and so revive the whole question
of their charter; but they sue their old Captain, John Richards, and
order Mr. Geddes to hire more men in the Orkneys, and they freeze
those interlopers out of the bay by bribing the Indians so that Simon
McTavish’s men retire from Charlton and Moose with loss. And the
English Adventurers go one farther: they petition Parliament, in 1805,
for “authority to deal with crimes committed in the Indian country.”
Simon McTavish dies in 1804. The X. Y.’s and the Nor’Westers unite,
and well they do, for clashes are increasing between Hudson’s Bays and
Nor’Westers, between English and French, from Lake Superior to the
Rockies.
Down at Nipigon in 1800, where Duncan Cameron had attracted the Indians
away from Albany, first blood is shed. Young Labau, a Frenchman, whose
goods have been advanced by the Nor’Westers, deserts for the Hudson’s
Bay. Schultz, the Northwest clerk, pursues and orders the young
Frenchman back. Labau offers to pay for the goods, but he will not go
back to the Northwest Company. Schultz draws his dagger and stabs the
boy to death. For this, he is dismissed by the Nor’Westers, but no
other punishment follows for the murder.
Albany River at this time was the trail inland from Hudson Bay to the
plains, to the Red River and the Missouri and modern Edmonton. The
Nor’Westers determined to block this trail. The Northwest 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 head of
Corrigal and his men, and plundered the place of furs. Never dreaming
that Haldane, the Northwest partner, would countenance open robbery,
Corrigal dressed and went across to the Northwest house to complain.
Haldane met the complaint with a loud guffaw. “I have come to this
country for furs,” he explained, “and I have found them, and I intend
to keep them.”
Red Lake in Minnesota belonged to the same Albany department. Before
Corrigal could dispatch the furs to the bay, Haldane’s bullies swooped
down and pillaged the cabins there, this time not only of furs, but
provisions.
Up at Big Falls near Lake Winnipeg, John Crear and five men had built
a fort for the English. One night toward fall a party of Northwest
voyageurs, led by Alexander MacDonell, landed and camped. Next morning
when all of Crear’s men had gone fishing but two, MacDonell marched to
the Hudson’s Bay house, accused Crear of taking furs owed in debt to
the Nor’Westers, and on that excuse broke open the warehouse. Plowman,
a Hudson’s Bay hunter, sprang to prevent. Quick as flash, MacDonell’s
dagger was out. Plowman fell stabbed and the voyageurs had clubbed
Crear to earth with the butt ends of their rifles. Furs and provisions
were carried off. As if this were not enough and ample proof that the
accusation had simply been an excuse to drive the Hudson’s Bay men off
the field, MacDonell came back in February of 1807, surrounded Crear’s
house with bullies, robbed it of everything and had Crear beaten till
he signed a paper declaring he had sold the furs and that he would
never again come to the country.
This was no fur trading. It was raiding--such raiding as the
Highlanders carried into the Lowlands of Scotland. It was a banditti
warfare that was bound to bring its own punishment.
Besides Albany River, the two great river trails inland to the plains
from Hudson’s Bay were by Churchill River to Athabasca and by Hayes
River to Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan. From 1805 J. D.
Campbell was the Northwest partner appointed to block the advance
inland to this region. John Spencer was at Reindeer Lake for the
Hudson’s Bay in 1808. Knowing when the Indians from the Athabasca were
due, he had sent William Linklater out to meet them, and Linklater was
snowshoeing leisurely homeward drawing the furs on a toboggan, when
toward nightfall he suddenly met the Northwest partner and his bullies
on the trail. There was the usual pretence that the furs were a debt
owed to the Nor’Westers, and the hollowness of that pretence was shown
by the fact that before Linklater could answer, a Northwest bully had
seized his snowshoes and sent him sprawling. Campbell and the bullies
then marched off with the furs. This happened twice at Caribou Lake.
But the worst warfare waged round Isle a la Crosse, the gateway to
Athabasca. Peter Fidler went there in 1806 with eighteen men for the
Hudson’s Bay. Then came J. D. Campbell, the Nor’Wester, with an army
of bullies, forbidding the Indians to enter Fidler’s fort or Fidler
and his men to stir beyond a line drawn on the sands. On this line was
built a Nor’West sentry box, where the bullies kept guard night and
day. For three years, Peter Fidler stuck it out, sending men across
the line secretly at night, directing the Indians by a detour down
to the other Hudson’s Bay forts and in a hundred ways circumventing
his enemies. Then Campbell’s bullies became bolder. Fidler’s firewood
was stolen, his fish nets cut, his canoes hacked to pieces. He was
literally starved off the field and compelled to retire in 1809.
Down in Albany, things were going from bad to worse with Corrigal. The
contest concentrated at Eagle Lake, half way between Lake Superior and
Lake Winnipeg just where Wabigoon River intersects with the modern
Canadian Pacific Railroad. The English company had strengthened
Corrigal with more Orkneymen, and he had a strongly palisaded fort. But
the Nor’Westers set the MacDonell clan with their French bullies on his
trail.
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 his sword Eneas MacDonell cut Tait’s wrist off and with another
hack on his 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 mad man, 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. Coureurs went
flying to Northwest camps 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
declared he would shoot any Nor’ Wester on the same provocation.
For this crime and before the Company in England could be notified,
Mowat was carried away in irons. Two servants--McNab and Russell--and
one of the Corrigals volunteered to accompany him as witnesses for the
defense. For a winter Mowat was imprisoned in the miserable butter
vat of a jail at Fort William, and when it was found that every
indignity and insult would not drive the three witnesses away, they
were arrested as abettors of the so-called crime. At Mowat’s trial in
Montreal, of the four judges who presided, one was notoriously corrupt
and two, the fathers of Northwest partners. Of the jury, half the
number were Nor’Westers. Naturally, Mowat was pronounced guilty. He
was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and branding. When he was
discharged penniless, he set out through the United States to take ship
for England. It is supposed that he was lost in a storm, or drowned
crossing some of the New England rivers.
The rivalry between Hudson’s Bay and Nor’Westers had become lawless
outrage. The Company in England is meantime having troubles of its
own. The English government desires them in 1807 to state what “the
boundaries of Louisiana ought to be” in the impending treaty with
the United States, which is to give access for American traders to
the country north of Louisiana in return for similar free access for
British traders to American territory. The English traders state what
the boundaries of Louisiana ought to be, and to the ignorance of the
English shareholders do we owe in this case, as in a hundred others,
the fifty years’ boundary dispute as to limits from the Lake of the
Woods to Oregon.
As for reciprocity of access to each other’s hunting field, the
Hudson’s Bay Company opposes it furiously. Access to American
territory they already have without the asking and are likely to have
for another fifty years, as there is no inhabitant to prevent them,
but to grant the Americans access to Hudson’s Bay territory is another
matter; so in the treaty of reciprocal favors across each other’s
territory, My Lord Holland provides “always the actual settlements of
the Hudson’s Bay Company excepted.”
If the Hudson’s Bay Company is to hold its monopoly by virtue of
settlements, it must see to the welfare of those settlements, so in
June, 1808, the first schoolmasters of the Northwest are sent out at
salaries of £30 a year--James Clouston, and Peter Sinclair, and George
Geddes. There is no dividend, owing to the embargo of war, and the
Company is driven, in 1809, to petition the Lords of Trade for help.
They aver there are six hundred families at their settlements, that the
yearly outfits cost the Company £40,000; that the sales never exceed
£30,000 and this year are only £3,000; they apply for remission of duty
on furs and a loan of £60,000 from the imperial treasury. The duty is
remitted but the loan is not granted, and My Lord Selkirk becomes, by
virtue of having purchased nearly £40,000 of stock, a leading director
in the Hudson’s Bay Company. My Lord Selkirk has been out to Montreal.
He has been fêted and feasted and dined and wined by the Beaver Club of
the Nor’Westers, whom he pumps to a detail about the fur trade. Also
he meets John Jacob Astor and learns what he can from him. Also he
meets that Northwest clerk who had been dismissed up the Saskatchewan
and came over to the Hudson’s Bay Company--Colin Robertson. He brings
Colin Robertson back with him to England, and the aforetime Northwest
clerk is called on January 3, 1810, to give advice to the Hudson’s Bay
directors on the state of the fur trade in Canada.
* * * * *
But to return to that Louisiana Boundary--it is as great a shock to
the Nor’Westers as to the Hudson’s Bay. In the first place, as told
elsewhere, the boundary treaty of 1798 has compelled them to move
headquarters from Grand Portage to Fort William. The Nor’Westers
suddenly awaken to the value of Alexander MacKenzie’s voyage to the
Pacific. Supposing he had followed that great river on down to the
sea, would it have led him where the American, Robert Gray, found
the Columbia, and where the explorers, Lewis and Clarke, later
coming overland from the Missouri, wintered? It was determined to
follow MacKenzie’s explorations up with all speed. It became a race
to the Pacific. Which fur traders should pre-empt the vast domain
first--Hudson’s Bay, Astor’s Americans, or Nor’Westers?
It is barely twenty years since Peter Pond came to Athabasca and Peace
River region, but already there are six forts between Athabasca Lake
and the Rockies--Vermilion and Encampment Island under the management
of the half-breed son of Sir Alexander MacKenzie, then Dunvegan and
St. John’s and Rocky Mountain House managed by the McGillivrays and
Archibald Norman McLeod. By 1797, James Finlay had followed MacKenzie’s
trail across the Divide, then struck up the north branch of Peace
River, now known as Finlay River; but it was not till 1805 that the
fur traders, who made flying trips across the mountains, remained to
build forts. In 1793, when MacKenzie crossed the mountain, there had
joined the Northwest Company as clerk, a lad of nineteen, the son
of a ruined loyalist in New York State, whose widow came to live in
Cornwall, Ontario. This boy was Simon Fraser. Two years later, in 1795,
there had come to the Northwest Company from Hudson Bay that English
surveyor, David Thompson, whom the MacKenzies had met in Athabasca
working for the Hudson’s Bay traders. David Thompson had been born in
1770 and was educated in the Blue Coat School, London. In 1789 he had
come as surveyor to Churchill and York, penetrating inland as far as
Athabasca; but Colen, chief factor of York, did not encourage purely
scientific explorations. Thompson quit the English service in disgust,
coming down to the Nor’Westers on Lake Superior.
These were the two young men--Fraser, son of the New York loyalist;
Thompson, the English surveyor--that the Northwest Company appointed in
1805 to explore the wilderness beyond the Rockies.
[Illustration: NORTHWEST TERRITORIES]