1810-1813
THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS--LORD SELKIRK BUYS CONTROL OF THE H. B.
C.--SIMON M’GILLIVRAY AND MACKENZIE PLOT TO DEFEAT HIM--ROBERTSON
SAYS “FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE” AND SELKIRK CHOOSES A M’DONELL AGAINST A
M’DONELL--THE COLONISTS COME TO RED RIVER--RIOT AND PLOT AND MUTINY.
Not purely as a fur trader does my lord viscount, Thomas Douglas of
Selkirk, begin buying shares in the Company of Honorable Adventurers to
Hudson’s Bay. Not as a speculator does he lock hands with Sir Alexander
MacKenzie, the Nor’West explorer, to buy Hudson’s Bay stock, which has
fallen from £250 to £50 a share.
To every age its dreamer! Radisson had dreamed of becoming a voyageur
to far countries; and his dream was realized in finding the Great
Northwest. Iberville’s ambition was to be conqueror, and he drenched
the New World with the blood that was the price of this ambition; and
now comes on the scene the third great actor of Northwest drama, a
figure round whom swings the new era, a dreamer of dreams, too, but who
cares not a farthing for discovery or conquest, whose dream--marvel
of marvels--is neither gain nor glory, but the phantom thing men
call--Good!
Born in 1771, Selkirk came to his title in 1779, and in 1807 married
the daughter of James Colville, one of the heaviest shareholders in
the Hudson’s Bay Company. All that life could give the young nobleman
possessed, wealth, position, love, power. But he possessed something
rarer than these--a realizing sense that in proportion as he was
possessed of much, so much was he debtor to humanity.
During his youth great poverty existed in Scotland. Changes in farming
methods had driven thousands of humble tenants from the means of
a livelihood. Alexander MacKenzie’s voyages had keenly interested
Selkirk. Here, in Scotland, were multitudes of people destitute for
lack of land. There, in the vast regions MacKenzie described, was an
empire the size of Europe idle for lack of people.
Young Selkirk’s imagination took fire. Here was avenue for that passion
to help others, which was the mainspring of his life. He would lead
these destitute multitudes of Scotland--Earth’s Dispossessed--to this
Promised Land of MacKenzie’s voyages. The one fact that Selkirk failed
to take into consideration was--how the fur traders, how the lust of
gain, would regard this aim of his. He addresses a memorial to the
British Government on the subject, which the British Government ignores
with a stolid ignorance characteristic of all its dealings in colonial
affairs. “It appears,” says Selkirk, “that the greatest impediment to a
colony would be the Hudson’s Bay Company monopoly.”
Meanwhile he sends eight hundred colonists to Eastern Canada--some to
Prince Edward Island, some to Baldoon in Ontario; but neither of these
regions satisfies him as does that unseen Eldorado which MacKenzie
described. Then he comes to Montreal, himself, where he is the guest
of all the ostentatious hospitality that the pompous Nor’Westers can
lavish upon him. At every turn, at the Beaver Club banquets, in the
magnificent private houses of the Nor’Westers, Selkirk learns for the
first time that there is as great wealth in the fur trade as in Spanish
mine. Then, he meets Colin Robertson, the young Nor’West clerk, who
was dismissed by McDonald of Garth out on the Saskatchewan; and Colin
Robertson tells even more marvelous tales than MacKenzie, of a land
where there are no forests to be cleared away; where the turning of a
plowshare will yield a crop; where cattle and horses can forage as
they run; where, Robertson adds enthusiastically, “there will some day
be a great empire.”
“What part of the great Northwest does Mr. Robertson think best fitted
for a colony?” Selkirk asks.
“At the forks of the Red and the Assiniboine,” the modern Manitoba,
Robertson promptly answers.
Selkirk’s imagination leaps forward. Difficulties? Ah, yes, lots of
them! The Hudson’s Bay Company holds monopoly over all that region.
And how are settlers to be sent so far inland? And to whom will they
sell their produce two thousand miles from port or town? But where
would humanity be if imagination sat down with folded hands before the
first blank wall? Selkirk takes no heed of impossibles. He invites
Colin Robertson to come back with him to meet the Hudson’s Bay Company
directors, and he listens to Sir Alexander MacKenzie’s big scheme to
monopolize all the fur trade by buying up Hudson’s Bay stock, and he
makes mental note of the fact that if stock can be bought up for a
monopoly, it can also be bought up for a colony.
At the table of the Beaver Club dinner sit Sir Alexander MacKenzie and
Simon MacGillivray.
“He asks too many questions,” says MacGillivray, nodding toward
Selkirk’s place.
“But if we spent £20,000, the North-West Company could buy up a
controlling share of H. B. C.,” laconically answers Sir Alexander.
“Tush,” says the Highlander MacGillivray, resplendent in the plaids of
his clan. “Why should _we_ spend money for that? We can control the
field without buying stock. Only £2,000 of furs did they sell last
year; and only two dividends in ten years!”
“If you don’t buy control of H. B. C.,” says MacKenzie, “take my
advice!--beware of that lord!”
“And take my advice--don’t buy!” repeats the Highlander.
Selkirk goes back to Scotland. By 1810, he controls £40,000 out of the
£105,000 capital of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Another £20,000 is owned
by minors, with no vote. Practically, Selkirk and his relatives, the
Colvilles, own the Company. Sir Alexander’s anger knows no bounds. It
is common gossip on what we would to-day call “Change” that Selkirk has
bought control, not for the sake of the fur trade, but for a colony.
Sir Alexander quarrels violently with my Lord Selkirk, whom he regards
as an enthusiast gone mad. MacKenzie turns over to MacGillivray, what
Hudson’s Bay stock he owns and again urges the Nor’Westers to buy on
the open market against Selkirk.
Not so does the canny Simon MacGillivray lose his head! To the
Hudson’s Bay Company he writes proposing a division of territory. If
the Hudson’s Bay will keep entirely to the bay and the rivers running
into the bay, the Nor’Westers will keep exclusively to the inland
country and the Athabasca, which is pretty much like playing Hamlet
with Hamlet left out, for the best furs are from the inland country
and the Athabasca. Among his own partners, MacGillivray throws off all
masks. “_This colony of his will cause much expense to us_,” he writes
from London on April 9, 1812, to the wintering partners, “_before
Selkirk is driven to abandon the project; yet he must be driven to
abandon it, for his success would strike at the very existence of our
trade_.”
While the lords of finance are fighting for its stock, the old Company
is floundering through a slough of distraction not far from bankruptcy.
The Bank of England advances £50,000 credit, but the Company can
barely pay interest on the advance. Two hundred and fifty servants
came home in 1810, and not a recruit can be hired in the Orkneys, so
terrible are the tales now current of brutality in the fur country.
Corrigal and Russell and McNab came home from Albany with news of the
McDonell clan’s murderous assaults and of Mowat’s forcible abduction to
Montreal. All these are voted a bounty of £50 each from the Company.
Joseph Howse sends home word of his wild wanderings in the Rockies
on the trail of David Thompson, and the Company gives him a present
of £150 “as encouragement” to hold the regions west of the Rockies.
Governor Auld reports that the Canadians have stopped _all trade_ west
of Churchill. Governor Cook reports the same of York. Governor Thomas
reports worse than loss from Albany--his men are daily murdered. They
go into the woods and never return.
On Selkirk’s advice, the Company calls for Colin Robertson, the
dismissed Northwest clerk. For three years Robertson remains in London
and Liverpool, advisor to the Company. “If you cannot hire Orkneymen,
get Frenchmen from Quebec as the Nor’Westers do,” he advises. “Fight
fire with fire! Your Orkneymen are too shy, shy of breaking the law
in a lawless land, shy of getting their own heads broken! Hire French
bullies! I can get you three hundred of them!”
The old Company see-saws--is afraid of such advice, is still more
afraid not to take it. They vote to reject “Mr. Robertson’s proposals”
in January of 1810, and in December of the same year vote a complete
turn-about “to accept Mr. Robertson’s suggestions,” authorizing
Maitland, Garden & Auddjo, a legal firm of Montreal, to spend £1,000
a year and as high as £20,000 if necessary, to equip expeditions for
the North. William Bachelor Coltman is appointed to look after the
Company’s clients in Quebec city, and the Hudson’s Bay changes its
entire system of trade. Barter is to be abolished. Accounts are to be
kept. Each year’s outfit is to be charged against the factor, and that
factor is to have his own standard of money prices. One-half of all net
profits goes to the servants--one-sixth to the chief factor, one-sixth
to the traveling traders, one-sixth to the general laborers. General
superintendents are to have salaries of £400 a year; factors, £150;
traders, £100; clerks, £50; and servants are to have in addition to
their wages thirty acres of land, ten extra acres for every two years
they serve.
It was as if the Governing Committee of London were the heart of a
dying body and these proposals the spasmodic efforts to galvanize the
outer extremities of the system into life. At this stage Lord Selkirk
came into action with a scheme that not only galvanized the languid
Company into life, but paralyzed the rival Nor’Westers with its
boldness.
[Illustration: Lord Selkirk, Founder of the First Settlement on Red
River, 1812, from a Photograph in the Ontario Archives.]
After buying control in the Company, Selkirk had laid the charter
before the highest legal critics of England. _Was it valid? Did
the Company possess exclusive rights to trade, exclusive rights to
property, power to levy war?_ That was what the charter set forth.
Did the Company possess the rights set forth by the charter? _Yes or
no--did they?_”
The highest legal authorities answered unequivocally--Yes: the Company
possessed the rights.
It was perfectly natural that legal minds trained in a country, where
feudalism is revered next to God, should pronounce the chartered rights
of the Hudson’s Bay Company valid.
One fact was ignored--the rights given by the charter applied _only
to regions not possessed by any other Christian subject_. Before the
Hudson’s Bay Company had ascended the Saskatchewan, French traders had
gone west as far as the Rockies, south as far as the Missouri, and when
French power fell, the Nor’Westers as successors to the French had
pushed across the Rockies to the Pacific, north as far as the Arctic,
south as far as the Snake.
It was perfectly natural that the Nor’Westers should regard the rights
of first possession as stronger than any English charter.
Which was right, Nor’Wester, or Hudson’s Bay? Little gain to answer
that burning question at this late day! From their own view, each was
right; and to-day looking back, every person’s verdict will be given
just and in exact proportion as feudalism or democracy is regarded as
the highest tribunal.
All unconscious of the part he was acting in destiny, thinking only
of the fearful needs of Earth’s Dispossessed, dreaming only of his
beloved colony, Lord Selkirk was pushing feudalism to its supreme test
in the New World. Of the nobility, Selkirk was a part of feudalism. He
believed the powers conferred by the charter were right in the highest
sense of the word, valid in the eyes of the law; and no premonition
warned that he was to fall a noble sacrifice to his own beliefs. Where
would the world’s progress be if the onward movements of the race
could be stopped by a victim more or less? Selkirk saw only People
Dispossessed in Scotland, Lands Unpeopled in America! The difficulties
that lay between, that were to baffle and beat and send him heartbroken
to an early grave--Selkirk did not see.
* * * * *
The rights of the Company had been pronounced valid. On February 6,
1811, Lord Selkirk laid his scheme before the Governing Committee. The
plan was of such a revolutionary nature, the Committee begs to lay
the matter before a General Court of all shareholders. After various
adjourned meetings the General Court meets on May 30, 1811. A pin fall
could have been heard in the Board Room as the shareholders mustered.
Governor William Mainwaring is in the chair. My Lord Selkirk is
present. So are all his friends. So are six Nor’Westers black with
anger, among them Sir Alexander MacKenzie, and Edward Ellice, son of
the Montreal merchant. Their anger grows deeper when they learn that
two of the six Nor’Westers cannot vote because the ink is not yet dry
with which they purchased their Hudson’s Bay stock; for shareholders
must have held stock six months before they may vote.
In brief, Lord Selkirk’s scheme is that the Company grant him a region
for colonizing on Red River, in area now known to have been larger than
the British Isles, and to have extended south of modern Manitoba to
include half Minnesota. In return, Lord Selkirk binds himself to supply
the Hudson’s Bay Company with two hundred servants a year for ten
years--whether over and above that colony or out of that colony is not
stated. Their wages are to be paid by the Company. Selkirk guarantees
that the colony shall not interfere with the Hudson’s Bay fur trade.
Other details are given--how the colonists are to reach their country,
how much they are to be charged for passage, how much for duty.
The main point is my Lord Selkirk owning £40,000 out of £105,000
capital and controlling another £20,000 through his friends--asks
for an enormous grant of land larger than the modern province of
Manitoba--the very region that Colin Robertson had described to him as
a seat of empire--the stamping ground of the great fur traders.
Promptly, the Nor’Westers present rise and lay on the table a protest
against the grant. The protest sets forth that Lord Selkirk is giving
no adequate returns for such an enormous gift--which was very true and
might have been added of the entire territory granted the Hudson’s Bay
Company by Charles II. If it was to the interests of the Hudson’s Bay
Company to sell such valuable territory, it should have been done by
public sale. Then there are no penalties attached to compel Selkirk to
form a settlement. Also, the grant gives to the Earl of Selkirk without
any adequate return “an immensely valuable landed estate.” And, “in
event of settlement, colonization is at all times unfavorable to the
fur trade.” Other reasons the memorialists give, but the main one is
the reason they do not give--that if Selkirk owns the central region of
the fur country, he may exclude the Nor’Westers.
The protest is tabled and ignored. Sir Alexander MacKenzie is so angry
he cannot speak. This does not mean the grand monopoly of the fur trade
which he had planned. It means the smashing of the fur trade forever.
Ellice, son of the Montreal potentate, sees the wealth of that city
crumbling to ruins for the sake of a blind enthusiast’s philanthropic
scheme.
Some one asks what the Hudson’s Bay Company is to receive for their
gift in perpetuity to the Earl.
Two hundred servants a year for ten years!
But--interjects a Nor’Wester--Selkirk doesn’t pay those servants. That
comes out of the Company.
To that, the Company, being Selkirk himself, has no answer.
What will Selkirk, himself, make out of this grant? Then Alexander
MacKenzie tells of agents going the rounds of Scotland to gather
subscribers at £100 a piece to a joint stock land company of 200
shares. This land company is to send people out to Red River, either
as servants to the Hudson’s Bay Company, which is to pay them £20 a
year in addition to a free grant of one hundred acres, or as bona
fide settlers who purchase the land outright at a few pence an acre.
The servants will be sent out on free passage. The settlers must
pay £10 ship money. It needed no prophet to foretell fortune to the
shareholders of the land company by the time settlers enough had
come out to increase the value of the grant. This and more, the six
Nor’Westers argue at the General Court of the Hudson’s Bay Company in
the hot debate over Selkirk’s scheme. To the Nor’Westers, Selkirk,
the dreamer, with his head in the clouds and his vision set on help
to the needy and his feet treading roughshod over the privileges of
fur traders--to the Nor’Westers this Selkirk is nothing but a land
speculator, a stock jobber, gambling for winnings.
But the chairman, Governor Mainwaring, calls the debaters to order. The
Selkirk scheme is put to the vote. To a man the Hudson’s Bay Company
shareholders declare for it. To a man there vote against it all those
Nor’Westers who have bought Hudson’s Bay stock, except the two whose
purchase was made but a week before: £29,937 of stock for Selkirk,
£14,823 against him. By a scratch of the pen he has received an empire
larger than the British Isles. Selkirk believed that he was lord of
this soil as truly as he was proprietor of his Scottish estates, where
men were arrested as poachers when they hunted.
“_The North-West Company must be compelled to quit my lands_,” he wrote
on March 31, 1816, “_especially my post at the forks. As it will be
necessary to use force, I am anxious this should be done under legal
warrant._”
“_You must give them_ (the Northwest Company) _solemn warning_,” he
writes his agent, “_that the land belongs to the Hudson’s Bay Company.
After this warning, they should not be allowed to cut any timber
either for building or fuel. What they have cut should be openly and
forcibly seized and their buildings destroyed. They should be treated
as poachers. We are so fully advised of the unimpeachable validity of
these rights of property, there can be no scruple in enforcing them
when you have the physical means._”
It was the tragic mistake of a magnificent life that Selkirk attempted
to graft the feudalism of an old order on the growing democracy of a
New World. That his conduct was inspired by the loftiest motives only
renders the mistake doubly tragic. Odd trick of destiny! The man who
sought to build up a feudal system in the Northwest, was the man who
forever destroyed the foundations of feudalism in America.
* * * * *
Let us follow his colonists. Long before the vote had granted Selkirk
an empire, Scotland was being scoured for settlers and servants by
Colin Robertson. The new colony must have a forceful, aggressive
leader on the field. For Governor, Selkirk chose a forest ranger
of the Ottawa, who had been an officer in the Revolutionary War of
America--Captain Miles MacDonell of the riotous clan, that had waged
such murderous warfare for the Nor’Westers in Albany Department. This
was fighting fire with fire, with a vengeance--a MacDonell against a
MacDonell.
It was the end of June, in 1811, before the Hudson’s Bay ships sheered
out from the Thames on their annual voyage. Of the three vessels--_The
Prince of Wales_, _The Edward and Anne_, _The Eddystone_--destined
to convey the colonists to the Great Northwest--_The Eddystone_ was
the ship which the Nor’Westers had formerly sent to the bay. Furious
gales drove the ships into Yarmouth for shelter, and while he waited,
Miles MacDonell spent the time buying up field pieces and brass cannon
for the colony. “_I have learned_,” he writes to Selkirk, “_that Sir
Alexander MacKenzie has pledged himself so opposed to this project that
he will try every means in his power to thwart it_.” He might have
added that Simon McGillivray, the Nor’Wester, was busy in London in the
same sinister conspiracy. Writes McGillivray to his Montreal partners
from London on June 1, 1811, that he and Ellice “_will leave no means
untried to thwart Selkirk’s schemes, and being stockholders of the
Hudson’s Bay Company we can annoy him and learn his measures in time to
guard against them_.”
Soon enough MacDonell learned what form the sinister plot was to take.
Colonists enlisted were waiting at Stornoway in the Hebrides. In all
were one hundred and twenty-five people, seventy settlers, fifty-nine
clerks and laborers, made up of Highlanders, Orkneymen, Irish farmers
and some Glasgow men. MacDonell was a Catholic. So were many of the
Highlanders; and Father Bourke, the Irish priest, comes as chaplain.
The first sign of the Nor’Westers’ unseen hand was the circulation
of a malicious pamphlet called “The Highlander” among the gathered
colonists, describing the country as a Polar region infested with
hostile Indians. To counteract the spreading panic, MacDonell ordered
all the servants paid in advance. Then, while baggage was being put
aboard, the men were allured on shore to spend their wages on a night’s
spree. MacDonell called on the captain of a man-of-war acting as convoy
to seize the servants bodily, but five had escaped.
Next came the customs officer, a relative of Sir Alexander MacKenzie’s,
called Reid, a dissipated old man, creating bedlam and endless delay
examining the colonists’ baggage. MacDonell saw clearly that if he was
to have any colonists left he must put to sea that very night; but out
rows another sham officer of the law, a Captain MacKenzie, to bawl
out the Emigration Act from his boat alongside “to know if every man
was going of his own free will.” Exasperated beyond patience, some of
the colonists answered by heaving a nine-pound cannon ball into the
captain’s rowboat. It knocked a hole through the bottom, and compelled
MacKenzie to swim ashore. Back came another rowboat with challenge to
a duel for this insult; but the baggage was all on board. By the grace
of Heaven, a wind sprang up. At 11 P. M. on the 25th of July, the three
Hudson’s Bay ships spread their sails to the wind and left in such
haste they forgot their convoy, forgot two passengers on land whom
Robertson rowed out like mad and put on board, forgot to fire farewell
salutes to the harbor master; in fact, sailed with such speed that
one colonist, who had lost his courage and wanted to desert, had to
spring overboard and swim ashore. Such was the departure of the first
colonists for the Great Northwest.
The passage was the longest ever experienced by the Company’s ships.
Sixty-one days it took for these Pilgrims of the Plains to cross the
ocean. Storm succeeded storm. The old fur freighters wallowed in the
waves like water-logged tubs, straining to the pounding seas as if the
timbers would part, sails flapping to the wind tattered and rotten as
the ensigns of pirates. MacDonell was furious that the colonists should
have been risked on such old hulks, and recommended the dismissal of
all three captains--Hanwell, Ramsey and Turner; but these mariners of
the North probably knew their business when they lowered sails and lay
rolling to the sea. In vain MacDonell tried to break the monotony of
the long voyage, by auctioning the baggage of the deserters, by games
and martial drill. One Walker stood forward and told him to his face
that “they had not come to fight as soldiers for the Hudson’s Bay
Company: they had come as free settlers”; besides, he spread the report
that the country did not belong to the Hudson’s Bay anyway; the country
had been found by the French and belonged to the Nor’Westers. MacDonell
probably guessed the rest--the fellow had been primed.
On September the 6th, the ships entered the straits. There was not much
ice, but it was high, “like icebergs,” MacDonell reported. On September
24th, after a calm passage across the bay, the colonists anchored off
York and landed on the point between Hayes and Nelson Rivers. Snow
was falling. The thermometer registered eight degrees below zero. No
preparations had been made to house the people at the fort. It was
impossible to proceed inland, and in the ships’ cargoes were provisions
for less than three months. Having spent two months on the sea, the
colonists were still a year away from their Promised Land.
Nelson and Hayes Rivers--it will be remembered--flow into Hudson Bay
with a long, low point of wooded marsh between. York was on Hayes
River to the south. It was thought better hunting would be found away
from the fort on Nelson River to the north. Hither MacDonell sent his
colonists on October 7th, crossing the frozen marsh himself two days
later, when he was overtaken by a blinding blizzard and wandered for
three hours. On the north side of the river, just opposite that island,
where Ben Gillam and Radisson had played their game of bravado, were
camped the colonists in tents of leather and sheeting. The high cliff
of the river bank sheltered them from the bitter north wind. Housed
under thin canvas with biting frost and a howling storm that tore at
the tent flaps like a thing of prey, the puny fire in mid-tent sending
out poor warmth against such cold--this was a poor home-coming for
people dreaming of a Promised Land; but the ships had left for England.
There was no turning back. The door that had opened to new opportunity
had closed against retreat. Cold or storm, hungry or houseless, type of
Pioneers the world over, the colonists must face the future and go on.
By the end of October, MacDonell had his people housed in log cabins
under shelter of the river cliff. Moss and clay thatched the roofs.
Rough hewn timbers floored the cabins and berths like a ship’s were
placed in tiers around the four walls. Bedding consisted of buffalo
skins and a gray blanket. Indian hunters sold MacDonell meat enough
to supply the colonists for the winter; and in spring the people
witnessed that wonderful traverse of the caribou--three thousand in
a herd--moving eastward for the summer. Meat diet and the depression
of homesickness brought the scourge of all winter camps--scurvy; but
MacDonell plied the homely remedy of spruce beer and lost not a man
from the disease.
Winter was passed deer hunting to lay up stock of provisions for the
inland journey. All would have gone well had it not been for the
traitors in camp, with minds poisoned by Northwest Company spies.
On Christmas day, MacDonell gave his men a feast and on New Year’s
day the chief factor of York, Mr. Cook, sent across the usual treat.
Irish rowdies celebrated the night by trying to break the heads of the
Glasgow clerks. Then the discontent instilled by Nor’West agents began
to work. If this country did not belong to the Hudson’s Bay, why should
these men obey MacDonell? On February 12th, one put the matter to the
test by flatly refusing to work. MacDonell ordered the fellow confined
in a hut. Fourteen of the Glasgow clerks broke into the hut, released
the rebel, set fire to the cabin and spent the night in a riotous
dance round the blaze. When MacDonell haled the offenders before Mr.
Hillier, a justice of the peace, they contemptuously walked out of
the extemporized court. The Governor called on Mr. Auld of Churchill
for advice, and learned from him that by a recent parliamentary act
known as 43rd Geo. III, all legal disputes of the Indian country could
be tried only in Canada. “_If that is so_,” writes the distracted
MacDonell, seeing at a glance all the train of ills that were to come
when Hudson’s Bay matters were to be tried in Canadian courts made up
of Northwest partners, “_then adieu to all redress for us, my lord_.”
But Auld and Cook, the two factors, knew a trick to bring mutineers
to time. They cut off all supplies. The men might as well have been
marooned on a desert island. By the time boats were ready to be
launched in June, the rebels were on their knees with contrition.
Wisely, MacDonell did not take such unruly spirits along as colonists.
He left them at the forts as clerks.
Spring came at last, tardy and cold with blustering winds that jammed
the ice at the river mouths and flooded the flats with seas of floating
floes. Day after day, week after week, all the month of May, until the
21st of June, the ice float swept past endlessly on the swollen flood.
MacDonell ordered the cabins evacuated and baggage taken to Hayes River
round the submerged marsh. At York, four large boats--twenty-eight
feet long and flat-bottomed--were in readiness to convey the people.
While the colonists camped, there came sweeping down the Hayes on
June the 29th, in light birch canoes, the spring fur brigade of
Saskatchewan, led by Bird and Howse. All rivers were reported free of
ice. MacDonell marshaled his colonists to return with the brigade.
Father Burke, who was to drum up more colonists at home, the chief
factors Auld and Cook, and the Company men watched the launching of
the boats the first week of July. Baggage stored, all hands aboard,
all craft afloat--the head steersman gives the signal by dipping his
pole. The priest waves a God-speed. The colonists signal back their
farewell--farewell to the despair of the long winter, farewell to the
lonely bay, farewell to the desolate little fort on the verge of this
forsaken world! Come what may, they are forward bound, to the New Life
in their Promised Land.
If we could all of us see the places along the trail to a Promised
Land, few would set out on the quest. The trail that the colonists
followed was the path inland that Kelsey had traversed with the Indians
a century before, and Hendry gone up in 1754, and Cocking in 1772, up
Hayes River to Lake Winnipeg. While the fur brigade made the portages
easily with their light canoes, the colonists were hampered by their
heavy boats, which had to be rolled along logs where they could not
be tracked up rapids. Instead of three weeks to go from York to Lake
Winnipeg, it took two months. The end of August, 1812, saw their boats
heading up Red River for the Forks, now known as Winnipeg. Instead
of rocks and endless cataracts and swamp woods, there opened to view
the rolling prairie, russet and mellow in the August sunlight with
the leather tepee of wandering Cree dotting the river banks, and
where the Assiniboine flowed in from the west--the palisades of the
Nor’Westers’ fort. MacDonell did not ascend as high as the rival fort.
He landed his colonists at that bend in Red River, two miles north of
the Assiniboine, where he built his cabins, afterward named Douglas
in honor of Selkirk. Painted Indians rode across the prairie to gaze
at the spectacle of these “land workers” come not to hunt but to till
the soil. No hostility was evinced by the Nor’Westers, for word of the
Northwest Company’s policy had not yet come from London to the annual
meeting of winterers at Fort William. The Highlanders were delighted to
find Scotchmen at Fort Gibraltar who spoke Gaelic like themselves, and
the Nor’Westers willingly sold provisions to help the settlers.
In accordance with Selkirk’s instructions, MacDonell laid out farm
plots of ten acres near the fort, and farm plots of one hundred
acres farther down the river at what is now known in memory of the
settlers’ Scottish home as Kildonan. The farm lots were small so that
the colonists could be together in case of danger. The houses of this
community were known as the Colony Buildings in distinction from the
fort. It was too late to do any farming, so the people spent the winter
of 1813 buffalo hunting westward of Pembina.
Meanwhile, Selkirk and Robertson had not been idle. The summer that
Miles MacDonell had led his colonists to Red River, twenty more
families had arrived on the bay. They had been brought by Selkirk’s
Irish agent, Owen Keveny. The same plotting and counter-plotting of
an enemy with unseen motives marked their passage out as had harassed
MacDonell. Barely were the ships at sea when mutineers set the
passengers all agog planning to murder officers, seize the ships and
cruise the world as pirates; but the colonists betrayed the treachery
to the captain. Armed men were placed at the hatches, and the swivel
guns wheeled to sweep the decks from stem to stern. The conspirator
that first thrust his head above decks received a swashing blow that
cut his arm clean from his shoulder, and the plot dissolved in sheer
fright. Keveny now ruled with iron hand. Offenders were compelled to
run the gauntlet between men lined up on each side armed with stout
sticks; and the trickery--if trickery it were by Nor’West spies--to
demoralize the colonists ceased for that passage.
Father Burke, waiting to return by these ships, welcomed the colonists
ashore at York, and before he sailed for Ireland performed the first
formal marriage ceremony in the Northwest. The Catholic priest married
two Scotch Presbyterians--an incident typical to all time of that
strange New World power, which forever breaks down Old World barriers.
The colonists were so few this year, that the majority could be housed
in the fort. Some eight or ten risked winter travel and set out for Red
River, which they reached in October; but the trip inland so late was
perilous. Three men had camped to fish with the Company servants on
Lake Winnipeg. Fishing failed. Winter closed the lake to travel. The
men went forward on foot along the east shore southward for Red River.
Daily as they tramped, their strength dwindled and the cold increased.
A chance rabbit, a prairie chicken, moss boiled in water--kept them
from starvation, but finally two could journey no farther and lay down
on the wind-swept ice to die. The third hurried desperately forward,
hoping against hope, doggedly resolved if he must perish to die hard.
Suddenly, a tinkling of dog bells broke the winter stillness and the
pack trains of Northwest hunters came galloping over the ice. In a
twinkling, the overjoyed colonist had signaled them and told his story,
and in less time than it takes to relate, the Nor’Westers were off
to the rescue. The three starving men were carried to the Northwest
fort at Winnipeg River where they were cared for till they regained
strength. Then they were given food enough to supply them for the rest
of the way to the settlement. Plainly--if the Nor’Westers’ opposition
to Lord Selkirk’s colony had been confined to trickery at the ports
of sailing, there would be no tragedy to relate; but the next year
witnessed an aggressive change of policy on both sides, which had fatal
consequences.
_Notes to Chapter XXVI._--The data for this chapter are mainly drawn
from H. B. C. papers, minute books and memorials. There are also
some very important letters in the Canadian Archives, namely on 1897
Report--State Papers of Lower Canada--letters of Simon MacGillivray;
also in 1886 Report, letters of Miles MacDonell to Lord Selkirk on
the colony. I had made in the Public Records Office of London exact
transcript of all confidential state papers bearing on this era.
These also refer to the hostility of MacKenzie and MacGillivray.
Donald Gunn who was one of the colonists of 1813, is, of course, the
highest authority on the emigration of that year. Three volumes throw
sidelights on the events of this and the succeeding chapter, though it
must be observed all are partisan statements; namely, “_Narrative of
Occurrences on the Indian Country, London, 1817_,” which is nothing
more or less than a brief for the Nor’Westers; “_Statement Respecting
Earl of Selkirk’s Settlements_,” London, 1817, which is the H. B. C.
side of the story; and “_Amos’ Report of Trials_,” London, 1820; also
extremely partisan. The scope of this work does not admit of ampler
treatment, but in view of the coming centenary of colonization in the
West, it should be interesting to know that the heirs of Lord Selkirk
have some three thousand letters bearing on this famous colony and its
disputes.
I should not need to explain here that the novel, “Lords of the
North,” was not written as history, but as fiction, to portray the
most picturesque period in Canadian life, and the story was told as
from a Nor’Wester, _not because the author sided with the Nor’Westers
in their fight_, but because the Nor’Westers sending their brigades
from Montreal to the Pacific afforded the story-teller as a Nor’Wester
a broader and more dramatic field than the narrator could have had
telling it as a Hudson’s Bay partisan. Let me explain why. The only
expedition sent from Montreal west by the H. B. C. at that time was a
dismal fiasco in a region where the story of the stolen wife did not
lead. On the other hand, the N. W. C. canoes that left Montreal in
1815 led directly to the region traversed by the unfortunate captive.
Therefore, I told the story as a Nor’Wester and was surprised to
receive furious letters of defense from H. B. C. descendants. Apart
from this disguise and one or two intentional disguises in names and
locale, I may add that every smallest detail is taken from facts on
the life at that time. These disguises I used because I did not feel
at liberty to flaunt as fiction names of people whose grandchildren
are prominent among us to-day; certainly not to flaunt the full
details of the captive woman’s sufferings when her son has been one of
the most distinguished men in Canada.
Robertson’s letters--unpublished--contain the most graphic description
of the West as a coming empire that I have ever read. There is no
mistaking where Selkirk got his inspiration--why he decided to send
settlers to Manitoba instead of Ontario. More of Robertson will follow
in a subsequent chapter.