1813-1820
THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS CONTINUED--MACDONELL ATTEMPTS TO CARRY OUT
THE RIGHTS OF FEUDALISM ON RED RIVER--NOR’WESTERS RESENT--THE COLONY
DESTROYED AND DISPERSED--SELKIRK TO THE RESCUE--LAJIMONIERE’S LONG
VOYAGE--CLARKE IN ATHABASCA.
Yearly the Hudson’s Bay boats now brought their little quota of
settlers for Red River. On June 28, 1813, more than ninety embarked in
_The Prince of Wales_ at Stromness. Servants and laborers took passage
on _The Eddystone_. On the third ship--a small brig--went missionaries
to Labrador, Moravian Brethren. More diverse elements could not have
made up a colony. There were young girls coming out alone to a lawless
land to make homes for aged parents the next year. Sitting disconsolate
on all their earthly belongings done up in canvas bags, were an old
patriarch and his wife evicted from Scottish home, coming to battle
in the wilderness without children’s aid. Irish Catholics, staid
Scotch Presbyterians, dandified Glasgow clerks, rough, gruff, bluff,
red-cheeked Orkneymen, younger sons of noble families taking service in
the wilds as soldiers of fortune, soft speaking, shy, demure Moravian
sisters and brethren--made up the motley throng crowding the decks of
the vessels at Stromness.
As the capstan chains were clanking their singsong of “anchor up,”
there was the sudden confusion of a conscription officer rushing to
arrest a young emigrant. He had been the lover of a Highland daughter
and had deserted following her to Red River. Then sails were spread to
a swelling breeze. While the young girl was still gazing disconsolately
over the railing toward the vanishing form of her lover, the shores
began to recede, the waters to widen. The farewell figures on the wharf
huzzahed. Men and women on deck waved their bonnets--all but the old
couple sitting alone on the canvas sacks. Tears blurred their vision
when they saw the hills of their native land fade and sink forever on
the horizon of the sea.
Two days later, there was a cry of “Sail Ho!” and the little fleet
pursued an American privateer towing a British captive. The privateer
cuts the tow rope and shows heels to the sea. Darkness falls, and when
morning comes neither captive nor captor is in sight. The passage is
swift across a remarkably easy sea--good winds, no gales, no plots,
no mutinies; and the ships are in the straits of Hudson’s Bay by the
end of July; but typhus fever has broken out on _The Prince of Wales_.
Daily the bodies of the dead are lowered over decks to a watery grave.
At the straits the boat with the Moravian missionaries strikes south
for Labrador. August 12th, the other ships run up the narrow rock-girt
harbor of Churchill, past the stone-walled ruins of the fort destroyed
by La Perouse to the new modern fur post.
It is not deemed wise to keep the ill and the well together. The former
are given quarters under sheeting tents in the ruins of the old stone
fort. The rest go on by land and boat south to York. The forests that
used to surround Churchill have been burnt back for twenty miles, and
when the fever patients recover, they retreat to the woods for the
winter; all but the old couple who winter in the stone fort whose ruins
are typical of their own lives. Fine weather favors the settlers’
journey south, though this wilderness travel with ridge stones that cut
their feet and swamps to mid-waist, gives them a foretaste of the trail
leading to their Promised Land. Fifty miles distant from York, they
run short of food and must boil nettle leaves; but hunger spurs speed.
Next night they are on the shores of Nelson River round a huge bonfire
kindled to signal York Fort for boats to ferry the Nelson.
April, 1814, the colonists are again united. Those who wintered at
Churchill sled down to York. On the way over the snow, Angus McKay’s
wife gives birth to a child. There are not provisions enough for the
other colonists to wait with McKay, but they put up his sheeting tent
for him, and bank it warmly with buffalo robes, and give him of their
scant stores, and leave the lonely Highlander with musket and a roaring
fire, on guard against wolves. What were the thoughts of the woman
within the tent only the pioneer heart may guess. June 1st, all the
colonists were welcomed to Red River by Miles MacDonell, who gave to
each two Indian ponies, one hundred acres, ammunition and firearms.
Of implements to till the soil, there is not one. There was no other
course but to join the buffalo hunters of Pembina and lay up a supply
of meat for the year. Then began a life of wandering and suffering.
Those families that could, remained at the Colony Buildings while the
men hunted. Those who had neither the money nor the credit to buy
provisions, followed hunters afield. The snow was late in falling, but
the winter had set in bitterly cold. There was neither canoeing nor
sleighing. Over the wind-swept plains trudged the colonists, ill-clad
against such cold, camping at nights in the hospitable tepee of
wandering Indians or befriended with a chance meal by passing hunters.
At Pembina log cabins with sod roofs were knocked up for wintering
quarters, and the place was called Fort Daer after one of Selkirk’s
names. No matter what happened afterward, let it be placed to the
everlasting credit of the buffalo hunters; their kindness this winter
of 1814-15 saved the settlers from perishing of starvation. Settlers
do not make good buffalo runners. The Plain Rangers shared their hunt
with the newcomers, loaned them horses, housed men and women, helped to
build cabins and provided furs for clothing.
They had arrived in June. The preceding January of 1814, Miles
MacDonell had committed the cardinal error of the colony. He was, of
course, only carrying out Selkirk’s ideas. What the motive was matters
little. The best of motives paves the way to the blackest tragedies.
Old World feudalism threw down its challenge to New World democracy.
Selkirk had ordered that intruders on his vast domain must be treated
as poachers, “resisted with physical force if you have the means.”
Conscientiously, Selkirk believed that he had the same right to exclude
hunters from the fenceless prairies as to order poachers from his
Scottish estates.
On January 8, 1814, Miles MacDonell, in the name of Lord Selkirk,
forbade anyone, “the Northwest Company or any persons whatsoever,”
taking provisions, dried meat, food of any sort by land or water from
Assiniboia, except what might be needed for traveling, and this only by
license. This meant the stoppage of all hunting in a region as large as
the British Isles. It meant more. All the Northwest brigades depended
on the buffalo meat of Red River for their food. It meant the crippling
of the Northwest Company.
MacDonell averred that he issued the proclamation to prevent
starvation. This was nonsense. If he feared starvation, his Hudson’s
Bay hunters could have killed enough buffalo in three months to support
five thousand colonists as the Northwesters supported five thousand
men--let alone a sparse settlement of three hundred souls.
The Nor’Westers declared that McDonell had issued the order because he
knew the War of 1812 had cut off their Montreal supplies and they were
dependent solely on Red River. Proofs seemed to justify the charge, for
Peter Fidler, the Hudson’s Bay man, writing in his diary on June 21,
1814, bewails “if the Captain (MacDonell) had only persevered, he could
have starved them (the Nor’Westers) out.”
The Nor’Westers ignored the order with the indifference of supreme
contempt. Not so the Half-breeds and Indians! What meant this taking of
their lands by a great Over-lord beyond the seas? Since time immemorial
had the Indians wandered free as wind over the plains. Who was this
“chief of the land workers,” “governor of the gardeners,” that he
should interdict their hunts?
“You are to enforce these orders wherever you have the physical means,”
Selkirk instructed MacDonell. It will be remembered that the buffalo
hunter between Pembina and the Missouri came back to Red River by two
trails, (1) west to Pembina, (2) north to Souris. A party of armed
Hudson’s Bay men led by John Warren came on the Northwest hunters west
of Pembina--in American territory--and at bayonet point seized the
pemmican stores of those Plain Rangers who had helped the wandering
colonists. Then John Spencer with more men ascended the Assiniboine
armed with a sheriff’s warrant and demanded admittance to the Northwest
fort of Souris. Pritchard, the Nor’Wester inside, bolted the gates fast
and asked what in thunder such impertinence meant. Spencer passed his
warrant in through the wicket. Pritchard called back a very candid and
disrespectful opinion of such a warrant, adding if they wanted in, they
would have to break in; he would not open. The warrant authorizing
Spencer “to break open posts, locks and doors,” his men at once hacked
down palisades and drew the staples of the iron bolts. Six hundred
bags of pemmican were seized and only enough returned to convey the
Nor’Westers beyond the limits of Selkirk’s domain.
When news of this was carried down to the annual meeting of Nor’Westers
at Fort William, in July, 1814, the effect can be more readily guessed
than told. Rumors true and untrue filled the air; how Northwest canoes
had been held up on the Assiniboine; how cannon had been pointed across
Red River to stop the incoming Northwest express; how the colonists
refused to embroil themselves in a fur traders’ war; how Peter
Fidler threatened to flog men who refused to fight. Such news to the
haughty Nor’Westers was a fuse to dynamite. “It is the first time the
Nor’Westers have ever permitted themselves to be insulted,” declares
William McGillivray. The fiery partners planned their campaign. At
any cost “a decisive blow must be struck.” Cuthbert Grant, the Plain
Ranger, is to keep his hand on all the buffalo hunters. James Grant of
Fond du Lac and Red Lake, Minnesota, is to see to it that the Pillager
Indians are staunch to Nor’Westers. Duncan Cameron, who had worked so
dauntlessly in Albany region and who had title to the captaincy of
a Canadian regiment, was to don his red regimentals, sword and all,
and hold the Forks at Red River to win the colonists across to the
Nor’Westers. And on the Assiniboine--it is to be a MacDonell against a
MacDonell; he of the murderous work in the Albany region with revenge
in his heart for the death of his brother at Hudson’s Bay hands--Alex
MacDonell is to command the river and keep the trail westward open.
“_Something serious will take place_,” writes Alex MacDonell on August
5, 1814. “_Nothing but the complete downfall of the colony will satisfy
some by fair or foul means--So here is at them with all my heart and
energy._” “_I wish_,” wrote Cameron to Grant of Minnesota, “_that some
of your Pilleurs_ (Pillagers) _who are full of mischief and plunder
would pay a hostile visit to these sons of gunpowder and riot_ (the
Hudson’s Bay). _They might make good booty if they went cunningly to
work; not that I wish butchery; God forbid._”
Dangerous enough was the mood of the Northwesters returning to their
field without adding fuel to flame; but no sooner were they back than
Miles MacDonell served them with notices in Lord Selkirk’s name, to
remove their posts from Assiniboia within six months, otherwise the
order ran, “_if after this notice, your buildings are continued, I
shall be under the necessity of razing them to the foundations_.”
As might have been expected, events came thick and fast. Cameron spoke
Gaelic. In six months he had won the confidence of the settlers.
Dances were given at the Nor’Westers’ fort by Cameron all the winter
of 1814-15, the bagpipes skirling reels and jigs dear to the hearts of
the colonists, who little dreamed that the motive was _to dance_ them
out of the colony. The late daylight of the frosty winter mornings
would see the pipers Green and Hector MacDonell plying their bagpipes,
marching proudly at the head of a line of settlers along the banks
of Red River coming home from a wild night of it. If the colonists
objected to fighting, Cameron kindly advised, let them bring the
brass cannon and muskets from the Colony Buildings across to Fort
Gibraltar. Miles MacDonell had no right to compel them to fight, and
the colony cannon were actually hauled across in sleighs one night to
the Northwest fort. Then weird tales flew from ear to ear of danger
from Indian attack. Half-breeds were heard passing the colony cabins
at midnight singing their war songs. Mysterious fusillades of musketry
broke from the darkness on other nights. Some of the people were so
terrified toward summer that they passed the nights sleeping in boats
on the river. Others appealed to Cameron for protection. The crafty
Nor’Wester offered to convey all, who wished to leave, free of cost
and with full supply of provisions, to Eastern Canada. One hundred
and forty people went bodily across to the Nor’Westers. Is it any
wonder? They had not known one moment of security since coming to
this Promised Land. They had looked for peace and found themselves
pawns in a desperate game between rival traders. Then Cameron played
his trump card. Before the annual brigade set out for Fort William in
June of 1815, he sent across a legal warrant to arrest Miles MacDonell
for plundering the Nor’Westers’ pemmican. MacDonell was desperate.
His people were deserting. The warrant, though legal in Canadian
courts, had been issued by a justice of the peace, who was a Nor’West
partner--Archibald Norman McLeod, For two weeks the Plains Rangers
had been hanging on the outskirts of the colony firing desultory
shots in an innocent diversion that brought visions of massacre to
the terrified people. A chance ball whizzed past the ear of someone
in Fort Douglas. MacDonell fired a cannon to clear the marauders from
the surrounding brushwood. The effect was instantaneous. A shower of
bullets peppered Fort Douglas. One of the fort cannon exploded. In the
confusion, whether from the enemy’s shots or their own, four or five
were wounded, Mr. Warren fatally. The people begged MacDonell to save
the colony by giving himself up. On June 21st, the governor surrendered
and was taken along with Cameron’s brigade and the deserting colonists
to Montreal for trial. Needless to tell, he was never tried. Meantime,
Cameron had no sooner gone, than the remnant of the colony was
surrounded by Cuthbert Grant’s Rangers. The people were warned to save
themselves by flight. Nightly, cabins and hay ricks blazed to the sky.
In terror of their lives, abandoning everything--the people launched
out on Red River and fled in blind fright for Lake Winnipeg. The Colony
Buildings were burned to the ground. The houses were plundered; the
people dispersed. By June 25th, of Selkirk’s colony there was not a
vestige but the ruined fields and trampled crops. Inside Fort Douglas
were only three Hudson’s Bay men.
* * * * *
The summer brigade from York usually reached Lake Winnipeg in August.
The harried settlers camped along the east shore waiting for help from
the North. To their amazement, help came from an opposite direction.
One morning in August they were astonished to see a hundred canoes
sweep up as if from Canada, flying the Hudson’s Bay flag. Signals
brought the voyageurs ashore--two hundred Frenchmen led by Selkirk’s
agent, Colin Robertson, bound from Quebec up the Saskatchewan to
Athabasca. Robertson had all along advocated fighting fire with fire;
employing French wood-runners instead of timorous Orkneymen, and
forcing the proud Nor’Westers to sue for union by invading the richest
field of furs--Athabasca, far beyond the limits of Red River. And
here was Robertson carrying out his aggressive policy, with “fighting
John Clarke” of Astor’s old company as second in command. The news he
brought restored the faint courage of the people. Lord Selkirk was
coming to Red River next year. A new governor had been appointed at
£1,000 a year--Robert Semple, a famous traveler, son of a Philadelphia
merchant. Semple had embarked for Hudson’s Bay a few months after
Robertson had sailed to raise recruits in Quebec. With Semple were
coming one hundred and sixty more colonists, a Doctor Wilkinson as
secretary, and a Lieutenant Holte of the Swedish Marines to command an
armed brig that was to patrol Lake Winnipeg and prevent the Nor’Westers
entering Assiniboia.
Robertson sent Clarke with the French voyageurs on to Athabasca. Clarke
departed boasting he would send every “Nor’Wester out a prisoner to the
bay.” Robertson led the colonists back to the settlement. When Duncan
Cameron came triumphantly from the Nor’Westers’ annual meeting, he was
surprised to find the colony arisen from the ashes of its ruin stronger
than ever. The first thing Robertson did was to recapture the arms of
the settlement. On October 15th, as Cameron was riding home after dark
he felt the bridle of his horse suddenly seized, and peered forward
to find himself gazing along the steel barrel of a pistol. A moment
later, Hudson’s Bay men had jerked him from his horse. He was beaten
and dragged a prisoner before Robertson, who coolly told him he was to
be held as hostage till all the cannon of the colonists were restored.
Twelve Nor’Westers at once restored cannon and muskets to Fort Douglas,
and Cameron was allowed to go on parole, breathing fire and vengeance
till Governor Semple came.
Semple with one hundred and sixty colonists and some one hundred
Hudson’s Bay men arrived at Kildonan on November 3rd. Robertson was
deeply disappointed in the new governor. A man of iron hand and
relentless action was needed. Semple was gentle, scholarly, courteous,
temporizing--a man of peace, not war. He would show them, he forewarned
Nor’Westers, whether Selkirk could enforce his rights. Forewarned
is forearmed. The Nor’Westers rallied their Plain Rangers to the
Assiniboine and Red River. “Beware, look out for yourselves,” the
friendly Indians daily warned. “Listen, white men! The Nor’Westers
are arming the Bois Brulés!” To these admonitions Semple’s answer
was formal notice that if the Nor’Westers harmed the colonists “the
consequences would be terrible to themselves; a shock that would be
heard from Montreal to Athabasca.” Robertson raged inwardly. Well he
knew from long service with the Nor’Westers that such pen and ink
drivel was not the kind of warfare to appall those fighters.
Across the river in what is now St. Boniface, there lived in a
little sod-thatched hut, J. Ba’tiste Lajimoniere and his wife, Marie
Gaboury. Robertson sent for Ba’tiste. Would the voyageur act as scout?
“But Marie,” interjects Ba’tiste. “Oh, that’s all right,” Robertson
assures him. “Marie and the children will be given a house inside Fort
Douglas.” “_Bon!_ Ba’tiste will go. Where is it? And what is it?” “It
is to carry secret letters to Lord Selkirk in Montreal. Selkirk will
have heard that the colony was scattered. He must be told that the
people have been gathered back. Above all, he must be told of these
terrible threats about the Plain Rangers arming for next year. “But
pause, Ba’tiste! It is now November. It is twenty-eight hundred
miles to Montreal by the trail you must follow, for you must _not_ go
by the Nor’Westers trail. They will lie in wait to assassinate you
all the way from Red River to St. Lawrence. You must go south through
Minnesota to the Sault; then south along the American shore of Lake
Huron to Detroit, and from Detroit to Montreal.”
Ba’tiste thinks twice. Of all his wild hunts, this is the wildest,
for he is to be the hunted, not the hunter. But leaving Marie and the
children in the fort, he sets out. At Pembina, two of his old hunter
friends--Belland and Parisien--accompany him in a cart, but at Red Lake
there is such a heavy fall of snow, the horse is only a hindrance.
Taking only blankets, provisions on their backs, guns and hatchets,
Ba’tiste and his friends pushed forward on foot with an Indian called
Monkman. They keep their course by following the shores of Lake
Superior--doubly careful now, for they are nearing Fort William.
Provisions run out. One of the friends slips through the woods to buy
food at the fort, but he cannot get it without explaining where he is
going. As they hide near the fort, a dog comes out. Good! Ba’tiste
makes short work of that dog; and they hurry forward with a supply of
fresh meat, shortening the way by cutting across the ice of the lake.
But this is dangerous traveling. Once the ice began to heave under
their feet and a broad crevice of water opened to the fore.
“Back!” called Lajimoniere; but when they turned they found that the
ice had broken afloat from the shore.
“Jump, or we are lost,” yelled the scout clearing the breach in a
desperate leap. Belland followed and alighted safely, but Parisien and
Monkman lost their nerve and plunged in ice-cold water. Lajimoniere
rescued them both, and they pressed on. For six days they marched, with
no food but rock moss--_tripe de roche_--boiled in water. At length
they could travel no farther. The Indian’s famine-pinched face struck
fear to their hearts that he might slay them at night for food, and
giving him money, they bade him find his way to an Indian camp. To
their delight, he soon returned with a supply of frozen fish. This
lasted them to the Sault. From Sault Ste. Marie, Lajimoniere proceeded
alone by way of Detroit to Montreal. Arriving the day before Christmas,
he presented himself at the door of the house where Selkirk was guest.
The servant asked his message.
“Letters for Lord Selkirk.”
“Give them to me. I will deliver them.”
“No Sir! I have come six hundred leagues to deliver these letters into
Selkirk’s hands and into no other hands do they go. Go tell Lord
Selkirk a voyageur from the West is here.”
Bad news were these threats against the colonists to my Lord Selkirk.
He told Lajimoniere to rest in Montreal till letters were ready.
Then he appealed to the governor of Quebec, Sir Gordon Drummond, for
a military detachment to protect Red River, but Sir Gordon Drummond
asked advice of his Council, and the McGillivrays of the Northwest
Company were of his Council; and there followed months of red tape in
which Selkirk could gain no satisfaction. Finally in March, 1816, he
received commission as a justice of the peace in the Indian country and
permission to take for his personal protection a military escort to
be provisioned and paid at his own cost. Canada was full of regiments
disbanded from the Napoleon wars and 1812. Selkirk engaged two hundred
of the De Meuron and De Watteville regiments to accompany him to Red
River. Then he dispatched Lajimoniere with word that he was coming to
the colonists’ aid.
But the Nor’Westers were on the watch for Lajimoniere this time. One
hundred strong, they had arranged their own brigade should go west from
Fort William this year. It was to be a race between Selkirk and the
Nor’Westers. Lajimoniere must be intercepted. “_Lajimoniere is again to
pass through your Department, on his way to Red River_,” wrote Norman
McLeod to the partners in Minnesota. “_He must absolutely be prevented.
He and the men along with him, and an Indian guide he has, must all be
sent to Fort William. It is a matter of astonishment how he could have
made his way last fall through your Department._”
Rewards of $100, two kegs of rum and two carrots of tobacco, were
offered to Minnesota Indians if they would catch Lajimoniere. They
waylaid his canoe at Fond du Lac, beat him senseless, stole his
dispatches, and carried him to Fort William where he was thrown in the
butter vat prison and told that his wife had already been murdered on
Red River.
* * * * *
Out on Red River, Colin Robertson was doing his best to stem the tide
of disaster. During the winter of 1815-16, Semple was continuing the
fatuous policy of seizing all the supplies of Northwest pemmican, and
had gone on a tour to the different fur posts in Selkirk’s territory.
For reasons that are now known, no word had come from Selkirk. Toward
March arrived an Indian from the upper Assiniboine, whom a Hudson’s
Bay doctor had cured of disease, and who now in gratitude revealed to
Robertson that a storm was gathering on both sides likely to break
on the heads of the colonists. Alex McDonell of the Assiniboine was
rallying the Bois Brulés to meet the spring brigade from Montreal,
and the spring brigade was to consist of nearly every partner in the
Northwest Company, with eighty fighting men. “Look out for yourselves,”
warned the Indian. “They are after the heads of the colony. They are
saying if they catch Robertson they will skin him alive and feed him to
the dogs for attacking Cameron last fall.”
Old Chief Peguis comes again and again with offers to defend the
colonists by having his tribe heave “the war hatchet,” but Robertson
has no notion of playing war with Indians. “Beware, white woman,
beware!” the old chief tells Marie Gaboury. “If the Bois Brulés fight,
come you and your children to my tepee.”
[Illustration: Map showing roughly what regions The Fur Traders
Explored.
1- Explored by Ogden 1824-38.
2- Explored by Ross 1824-38.
3- Explored by Thompson 1809-11; Fraser 1808; Anderson 1846.
4- Explored by Astor’s Men 1811-14.
5- Explored by H. B. Co. via Albany River before 1800.
6- Explored by Kelsey from Nelson River 1692.
7- Explored by Hendry & Cocking 1754-72.
8- Explored by Hearne 1769-73.
9- Explored by Joseph Howse.
10- Explored by Alexander MacKenzie.
11- Explored by Campell, Pelly, Murray.
12- Explored by Coats & McLean.
13- Explored by Radisson 1664.
]
Robertson did not wait for the storm to break. Taking half a dozen men
with him on March 13, 1816, he marched across to Fort Gibraltar to
seize Cameron as hostage. It was night. The light of a candle guided
them straight to the room where the Northwest partner sat pen in hand
over a letter. Bursting into the room, Robertson who was of a large
and powerful frame, caught Cameron by the collar. Two others placed
pistols at the Nor’Wester’s head. There lay the most damning evidence
beneath Cameron’s hand--the letter asking Grant of Minnesota to
rally the Pillager Indians against Fort Douglas. Cameron was taken
prisoner and when Semple returned, he was sent down in May to Hudson’s
Bay to be forwarded to England for trial. Ice jam in the straits
delayed him a whole year at Moose; and when he was taken to England,
Cameron, the Nor’Wester, was no more brought to trial by the Hudson’s
Bay Company than MacDonell, the Hudson’s Bay man, was brought to trial
by the Nor’Westers. I confess at this stage of the game, I can see very
little difference in the faults on both sides. Both sides were playing
a desperate, ruthless, utterly lawless game. Both had advanced too
far for retreat. Even Selkirk was involved in the meshes with his two
hundred soldiers tricked out as a bodyguard.
Semple and Robertson now quarreled outright. Robertson was for striking
the blow before it was too late; Semple for temporizing, waiting for
word from Selkirk. Robertson was for calling all the settlers inside
the palisades. Semple could not believe there was danger.
“Then I wash my hands of consequences and leave this fort,” vowed
Robertson.
“Then wash your hands and leave,” retorted Semple, and Robertson
followed Cameron down to Moose, to be ice-bound for nearly a year.
Semple continued his mad policy of enforcing English poaching laws on
Red River. Gibraltar was dismantled and the timber rafted down to Fort
Douglas.
Up in the North, Robertson’s Athabasca brigade, under fighting John
Clarke, had come to dire disaster. Clarke felt so cock-sure that his
big brigade could humble the Nor’Westers into suing for union with
the Hudson’s Bay that he had galloped his canoes up the Saskatchewan,
never pausing to gather store of pemmican meat. A third of the men were
stationed at Athabasca Lake, a third sent down the MacKenzie to Slave
Lake, a third, Clarke, himself, led up the Peace to the mountains.
On the way, the inevitable happened. Clarke ran out of provisions
and set himself to obtain them by storming the Nor’Wester, McIntosh,
at Fort Vermilion. McIntosh let loose his famous Northwest bullies,
who beat Clarke off and chased him down the Peace to Athabasca.
Archibald MacGillivray and Black were the partners at Chippewyan, and
many a trick they played to outwit Clarke during the long winters of
1815-16. Far or near, not an Indian could Clarke find to barter furs
or provisions. The natives had been frightened and bribed to keep
away. Once, the coureur brought word that a northern tribe was coming
down with furs. The Nor’Westers gave a grand ball to their rivals of
the Hudson’s Bay, but at midnight when revels were at their height,
a Northwest dog train without any bells to sound alarm, sped silently
over the snow. The Indian hunters were met and the furs obtained before
the Hudson’s Bay had left the dance. Another night, a party of Hudson’s
Bay men had gone out to meet Indians approaching with provisions.
Suddenly, Nor’Westers appeared at the night campfire with whiskey. The
Hudson’s Bay men were deluded into taking whiskey enough to disable
them. Then they were strapped in their own sleighs and the dogs headed
home.
Clarke was almost at the end of his tether when the Nor’Westers invited
him to a dinner. When he rose to go home, MacGillivray and Black
slapped him on the shoulder and calmly told him he was their prisoner.
As for his men, eighteen died outright of starvation. Others were
forced at bayonet point or flogged into joining the Nor’Westers. Many
scattered to the wilderness and never returned. Of the two hundred
Hudson’s Bay voyageurs who had gone so gloriously to capture Athabasca,
only a pitiable remnant found their way down to the Saskatchewan and
Lake Winnipeg. Clarke obtains not one pack of furs. The Nor’Westers
send out four hundred.
_Notes to Chapter XXVII._--The data for this chapter have been drawn
from the same sources as the preceding chapter.
In addition, I took the cardinal facts from two other sources hitherto
untold; (1) from Colin Robertson’s confidential letters to Selkirk;
(2) from Coltman’s report to the Canadian Government and Sherbooke’s
confidential report to the British Government--all in manuscript.
In addition there are the printed Government Reports (including
Coltman’s) and Trials and Archives, but I find in these public reports
much has been suppressed, which the confidential records reveal. I
am again indebted to Abbé Dugas for the legend of Lajimoniere’s trip
East. Events thicken so fast at this stage of the H. B. C. and N. W.
C. fight, space does not permit record of all the bloody affrays,
such for instance as the killing of Slater, the H. B. C. man, at
Abbittibbi, the death of Johnstone at Isle a la Crosse, or the
violence there when Peter Skene Ogden drove the Indians from the H. B.
C.
* * * * *
The name of the armed schooner, which was to patrol Lake Winnipeg
to drive the Nor’Westers off, Coltman gives as _Cathullin_, and a
personal letter of Lieut. Holte (H. B. C.) declares that he was to be
commander.
* * * * *
MacDonell’s proclamations seem to have been feudalism run mad. In
July of 1814, he actually forbade natives to bark trees for canoes
and wigwams, or to cut large wood for camp fires. Then followed his
notices ordering the N. W. C. to move their forts.
* * * * *
Howse, the explorer, was at this time in charge of Isle a la Crosse.
* * * * *
The H. B. C. colonists, who sided with Cameron and carried across to
the N. W. C. the four brass cannon, four swivels, one howitzer--were
George Bannerman, Angus Gunn, Hugh Bannerman, Donald McKinnon, Donald
McDonald, George Campbell. Robert Gunn, John Cooper, Angus McKay,
Andrew McBeth and John Matheson opposed giving the arms to Cameron and
were loyal to Selkirk.
* * * * *
Peter Fidler’s Journal (manuscript) gives details of 1815 at Fort
Douglas.
* * * * *
When the colony was dispersed in June, 1815, it consisted of thirteen
men and their families--forty persons. The N. W. C. took no part in
the flight of the colonists to Lake Winnipeg. It was the Half-breeds
who ordered them to leave Red River.
* * * * *
The Colony Buildings burnt were four houses grouped as the fort, five
farm houses, barns, stables, a mill and eighteen settlers’ cabins.
This was not done by order of the N. W. C. but by the Plains Rangers.
It appeared in N. W. C. records that as high as £100 was paid some of
the colonists to desert Red River.
* * * * *
Selkirk’s letter to Robertson, which the N. W. C. captured from
Lajimoniere, ran thus: “_There can be no doubt that the N. W. C. must
be compelled to quit ... my lands ... especially at the Forks ... but
as it will be necessary to use force, I am anxious this should be done
under legal warrant._” I cannot see much difference between Selkirk
bringing up De Meurons to drive the N. W. C. off, and Cameron calling
on the Indians to drive the H. B. C. off.
* * * * *
May 18th, Cameron was sent to the bay. June 11th, Robertson quarreled
with Semple and followed. June 10th, Semple had ordered the
dismantling of Gibraltar, which was completed after Robertson left.
* * * * *
Letters from McIntosh of Peace River give details of Clarke’s disaster
in Athabasca, describing his men “as starving like church rats and so
reduced they were not able to stand on their feet, and were a picture
of the resurrection.”
* * * * *
Some authorities, like McDonald of Garth, give the number of Voyageurs
sent to Athabasca by Robertson as four hundred. I follow Robertson’s
MS. account.
* * * * *
It is not surprising that one of the first settlers to desert Red
River for Ontario was that Angus McKay, whose child was born on the
sled journey to York.