1816-1821
BOTH COMPANIES MAKE A DASH TO CAPTURE ATHABASCA WHENCE CAME THE MOST
VALUABLE FURS--ROBERTSON OVERLAND TO MONTREAL, TRIED AND ACQUITTED,
LEADS A BRIGADE TO ATHABASCA--HE IS TRICKED BY THE NOR’WESTERS, BUT
TRICKS THEM IN TURN--THE UNION OF THE COMPANIES--SIR GEORGE SIMPSON,
GOVERNOR.
It was mid-winter before word that Fort Douglas had fallen into the
hands of the Nor’Westers and Fort William into the hands of Lord
Selkirk, came to Colin Robertson ice-bound at Moose. Robertson was
ever the stormy petrel of every fight--one of those doughty heroes of
iron strength who thought no more of tramping seven hundred miles on
snowshoes for Christmas dinner with some comrade of the wilds than town
men think of a voyage across their own dining-room. Though he knew very
well that the Half-breeds had threatened “to flay him alive,” that the
Indians had been bribed to scalp him, and that warrants were out in
Montreal for his arrest in connection with the seizure of Gibraltar
from the Nor’Wester, Cameron--Robertson did not hesitate for a moment.
He set out on snowshoes for Montreal. Now that Selkirk was on the
field, Robertson knew it would be a fight to the death. The company
that captured Athabasca, whence came the wealth of furs, would be able
to force the other to terms of union.
To be sure, Sherbrooke, Governor General of Canada, had issued a Royal
Proclamation commanding peace; but Williams, the new Hudson’s Bay
governor, declared “the royal proclamation was all d---- nonsense!”
He “would drive every Nor’Wester out of the country or perish in
the attempt.” On the Nor’Westers’ side was equal defiance of the
Proclamation. The most of the Northwest Eastern partners were either
under bail or yet in confinement. Of their Western partners, Norman
McLeod, the justice of the peace, was the ruling spirit; and his views
of the Canadian Proclamation may be guessed from orders to his bullies
in Athabasca: “Go it, my lads! Go it! You can do what you like here!
There is no law in the Indian Territory!”
Down to Montreal, then, came Colin Robertson, full of fight as an
Irishman of Tipperary. “The effusions of the Nor’Westers might have
staggered my resolution to come to Montreal,” he writes in his letters
of 1817 to officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company. “‘Robertson go to
Montreal! No! He may find his way to the States if we don’t catch him!’
Such was the language held forth at Sault Ste. Marie, Lake Superior,
which had no other effect on me than calling forth a little caution....
I was at the Sault when a fur trader made his appearance in a light
canoe on his way from Red River to Montreal. With him, I embarked
and arrived at the Lake of the Two Mountains on the 11th of August,
1817.... As soon as the fur trader pushed off, I requested a Frenchman
to furnish me with a small Indian canoe and two faithful Iroquois ...
I embarked at midnight ... and crossed the lake about an hour after
sunrise.... M. de Lotbiniere ... furnished me with a calash at eleven
that night.... I entered Montreal at five in the morning and drove to
Dr. Monroe’s, the least suspicious place, his profession making early
calls frequent. I was at once recognized by the doctor, who informed
me that a partner of the North-West Company had apartments in the
upper part of the house. I immediately muffled myself in my cloak
and so entered.... As soon as I had breakfast, I made my appearance
in the streets of Montreal, where I was stared at by friends of the
Nor’Westers as if I were a ghost ... and my appearance gathered such a
crowd, I was obliged to disappear inside a boarding house....”
“The residences of the Nor’Westers in London and Montreal are splendid
establishments, the resorts of the first in society, the benefit
from this ostentatious display of wealth being the friendship of
legal authorities.... Even the prisons of Montreal are become places
of public entertainment from the circumstance of yet holding some
partners of the North-West Company.... Every other night, a ball or
supper is given; and the Highland bagpipes utter the sound of martial
music as if to deafen public censure. The most glaring instance of
the Nor’Westers’ contempt for law is their attempt to attract public
notice by illuminating all the prison windows every night. Strangers
will naturally ask: ‘for what crimes are these gentlemen committed? For
debt?’ No ... for murder ... arson ... robbery.... Our old friend, Mr.
Astor, is here.... He is frequently in the society of the Nor’Westers
... and feels very sore toward them about Astoria.”
Robertson’s letters then tell of his trial for the seizure of Gibraltar
and his acquittal. He frankly hints that his lawyers had to bribe the
Montreal judge to secure “a fair” hearing. So passed the year. In
1818 came Selkirk back from Red River to Montreal, who agreed with
Robertson that the only way to force the Nor’Westers to their knees
was to send a second expedition to capture Athabasca, whence came the
wealth of furs that enabled the rival Company to bribe the courts.
In April, 1819, Robertson set out with a flotilla of nineteen canoes
from Ste. Anne’s, each canoe with five French voyageurs, and went up
the Ottawa across Lake Superior to Thunder Bay. “This place gave me
a bad turn the other day,” he writes. “The wind blew fresh but the
swell was by no means high. My Indians seemed reluctant to attempt the
traverse. I imprudently ordered them a glass of rum, when the whoop was
immediately given! In a moment, our canoe was in the swell. We came
where a heavy sea was running. Here, we began to ship water. The guide
ordered the bowman removed back to the second thwart. This lightened
the head. An oilcloth was then thrown over the head of a canoe to
avoid the breaking of the sea. The silence that prevailed, when one of
those heavy swells was rolling upon us, was truly appalling. Paddles
were lifted and all watched the approach with perfect composure. Our
steersman kept balancing the slender bark by placing her in the best
position to the waves.... The moment the roller passed, every paddle
was in the water, every nerve stretched to gain the land! Although
two men were employed bailing out water, fifty yards more would have
swamped us....”
From Lake Superior, the brigade passed up to the Lake of the Woods and
Lake Winnipeg, where Robertson was joined by the same John Clarke who
had suffered defeat in Athabasca on the first expedition. Here the
forces were increased to one hundred and thirty men by the refugees
of the first brigade, who had escaped from the North. Robertson’s
letter from this point gives some particulars of the first brigade’s
expulsion from Athabasca: “The Nor’Westers did not confine themselves
to the seizure of persons and property. They administered an oath to
our servants, threatening with starvation and imprisonment if they
did not comply, that for the space of three years these Hudson’s Bay
servants would not attempt to oppose the North-West Company. One of the
guides, a witty rogue, who knew theology from the circumstance of his
cousin being a priest, fell on a way of absolving his French countrymen
from this oath ... to repair to the woods and cross themselves and ask
pardon of their Maker for a false oath to a heretic; but some poor
Scotchmen could not cheat their conscience so easily, and I have had to
let them leave me on that account....”
The Nor’Westers had kept as a deadly secret from the Indians all
knowledge of the fact they had been beaten by Lord Selkirk. Robertson’s
next letter tells how the secret leaked out in Athabasca. Amidst the
uproarious carousals of the Nor’Westers at Chippewyan, the Hudson’s Bay
captives were brought to the mess room to be the butt of drunken jokes.
On one occasion, Norman McLeod bawled out a song in celebration of the
massacre of settlers at Red River, of which each verse ended in this
couplet:
“The H. B. C. came up a hill, and up a hill they came,
The H. B. C. came _up_ the hill, but _down_ they went again!”
Roars of laughter were making the rafters ring when it suddenly struck
one of the Hudson’s Bay prisoners that the brutal jeer might be paid
back in kind.
“Y’ hae niver asked me for a song,” says the canny Hudson’s Bay
McFarlane to his Nor’West tormentor. “If agreeable, I hae a varse o’ me
ain compaesin’.”
“Silence, gentlemen,” roars McLeod to the drunken roomful of partners
and clerks and Indians. “Silence! Mr. McFarlane, your song.”
Remembering that the power of the Northwest Company with the Indians
depended on the frightened savages being kept ignorant of Lord
Selkirk’s victories, the Hudson’s Bay man’s thin voice piped up these
words to the same tune:
“But Selkirk brave went up a hill, and to Fort William came,
When in he popped--and out from thence--could not be driven--a-g-a-i-n!”
Before the last words had died in the appalling silence that fell on
the rowdies, or the Indians could quite grasp what the song meant,
McLeod had jumped from his chair yelling:
“I’ll give you a hundred guineas if you’ll tell the name of the man who
brought news of that here.”
But McFarlane had no wish to see some faithful coureur’s back ripped
open with the lash. “Tut-tut,” says he, “a hundred guineas for twa
lines of me ain compaesin’--Extravagant, Mr. McLeod, Sir!”
October saw Robertson at last on the field of action--in Athabasca.
“Well may the Nor’Westers boast of success in the North,” he writes.
“Not an Indian dare speak to the Hudson’s Bay. At Isle a la Crosse, a
clerk and a few of our men were in a hut surrounded by the sentinels
of our opponents. Apart from no intercourse with the Indians, they
were thankful to be able to procure mere subsistence for themselves.
All their fish nets and canoes had been destroyed by the Nor’Westers
in prowling excursions. The only canoe on which their escape depended
was hidden in a bedroom. No Indian dared to approach. The windows
were covered by damaged table cloths. Wild fowl shot flying over the
house had to be plucked with the door shut.... Not an Indian could
be found.... As we voyaged up to Athabasca, we began firing and kept
our men singing a voyageur’s song to let the Indians know we were
passing.” Finally, an Indian was seen hiding behind brush of the river
bank, and was bribed to go and bring his tribe. The truth was told to
the Chippewyans about the Nor’Westers’ defeat on Red River and Lake
Superior. Peace pipes were whiffed, and a treaty made.
The consternation of the Nor’Westers when they saw Robertson, and
Clarke whom they had abused in captivity three years before, now draw
up on Athabasca Lake before Fort Chippewyan with a force of one hundred
and thirty armed men, at once gave place to plots for the ruin of the
intruders. Black, who had been the chief tormentor of Clarke, dashed
down to the waterside shouting: “Mr. Robertson! Mr. Robertson! To
avoid trouble, let me speak to our Indians before you land! You are an
honorable man--give us justice!”
“Honorable,” roared the indignant Clarke, shaking the canoe in his
wrath. “Justice be blanked! Did you give _us_ justice when you hounded
us out of Athabasca,” and he followed the serenade up with a volley
that brought the whole Northwest Company to the shore.
Before trouble could brew, Robertson marshaled his men to the old
Hudson’s Bay quarters, and within a few days more than forty Indian
tents had deserted from the Nor’Westers. Clarke was sent up Peace
River for the winter. Robertson retained a force of one hundred men
well equipped with arms and provisions to hold the fort at Lake
Athabasca. “We had completed the fitting out of the Indians,” he
writes, “established our fisheries and closed the fall business when
the loaded canoes of the Northwest hunters began to arrive. Black, the
Nor’Wester, is now in his glory, leading his bullies. Every evening
they come over to our fort in a body, calling on our men to come out
and fight pitched battles. One of their hair-pulling bullies got his
challenge accepted and an unmerciful thrashing to boot from a little
Frenchman of ours--Boucher. Mr. Simon McGillivray, the chief partner
of the Nor’Westers, who is with Mr. McLeod, was rather forward on this
occasion. Having a strong force, he approached too near. I ordered our
men to arms and his party made a precipitate retreat. Our men are in
high spirits. The Indians have regained confidence in us and boldly
leave the Nor’Westers every day for the Hudson’s Bay.”
Now that their winter hunters had come in, and they were stronger, the
Nor’Westers were not to be so easily routed from Athabasca. Robertson’s
next letters are dated from the Nor’Westers’ fort. He had been captured
within ten days of his arrival. “You ... will perceive from the date
of this letter, the great reverse.... If I were the only sufferer it
might be borne, but when I reflect on the consequences to the Hudson’s
Bay Company and to Lord Selkirk, it almost drives me mad.... On the
morning of the 11th of October, about an hour before day, my servant
entered my bedroom and informed me a canoe had just arrived with the
body of a fisherman accidentally shot the night before.... Sleep was
out of the question. I rose and ordered an early breakfast, but just as
we were sitting down one of the men entered with word that a Northwest
bully had come and was daring little Boucher to fight. As was my
custom, I put a pistol in my pocket and going toward the fellow saw
Mr. Simon McGillivray, the Northwest partner.... Just then eight or
ten Nor’Westers made a rush from concealment behind.... It was all a
trick.... I was surrounded.... In the struggle my pistol got entangled
and went off.... At the sound, they rushed on me and dragged me to
the beach.... I freed myself and laid about with my empty pistol....
When thrown in the canoe, I tried to upset and escape by swimming,
but Black put a pistol to my head till we arrived at the Nor’Westers’
fort.... Landing, I dashed for their Indian Hall and at once ... called
on the Indians, representing that the cowardly attack was an effort to
reduce _them_ to slavery; but Black rushed up to stop me. Seizing a
fork on the hall table I kept the vagabond at bay. I loaded him with
every abuse and evil name I could think of, then to the Indians: ‘Do
not abandon the Hudson’s Bay on this account! There are brave men at
our fort to protect you! That fellow was not brave enough to _seize_
me; he _stole_ me, and he would now rob you of your hunt if it were
not for the young men I have left in my fort. Tell Clarke not to be
discouraged. We will be revenged for this, but not like wolves prowling
in the bushes. We will capture them as we captured them at Fort
William, with the sun shining on our faces.’ At this moment, the Indian
chief came up and squeezing my hand, whispered, ‘Never mind, white man!
All right! We are your friends.’... This closed the turbulent scene....
Figure my feelings ... tumbled by an act of illegal violence from the
summit of hope ... confidence of friends withdrawn ... all my prospects
for life blasted ... mere personal danger is secondary now--I am in
despair.”
Simon McGillivray, Black, McIntosh, McLeod, in a word, the most
influential partners in the Northwest Company were at Fort Chippewyan
when Robertson was captured; but the post was in charge of that John
George McTavish, who had helped to trick Astor out of his fur post
on the Columbia. It was probably the ruinous lawsuits against the
Nor’Westers that now restrained their savage followers from carrying
out their threat “to scalp Robertson and feed him to the dogs,” but
the Hudson’s Bay leader was clapped into a small room with log walls,
under guard day and night. He was compelled to state his simplest wants
in a formal daily letter. Pen and paper, the clothes on his back, a
jack-knife in his pocket--that was Robertson’s entire paraphernalia
during his captivity; but for all that, he outwitted the enemy. One of
his written requests was that a Nor’Wester go across to the Hudson’s
Bay fort under flag of truce for a supply of liquor. The Nor’Westers
were delighted at the chance to spy on the Hudson’s Bay fort, and
doubly delighted at the prospect of their captive fuddling himself
_hors de combat_ with drink. It was an easy trick to give a rival his
quietus with whiskey.
Taking long strips of writing paper, the Hudson’s Bay man invented
a cipher code in numbers from one to six hundred, some well known
trading phrase placed opposite each number. This he rolled like a
spool, so tight it was waterproof, sealed each end with wax, knocked
the bung out of the whiskey barrel, bored a tiny hole beside the bung
with his jack-knife, hooked a piece of twine through one end to the
sealed message, the other to the inner end of the plug, thrust the
paper inside the liquor and plugged up the hole. Then dusting all
over with mud from the floor of the cabin, he complained the whiskey
was musty--diluted with rum. He requested that it be sent back with
orders for his men to cleanse the barrel. Before sending it back, the
Nor’Westers actually sealed the barrel “contents unknown.” But what
was Robertson’s disgust when the men of the fort instead of cleansing
_this_ barrel, sent back a fresh one!
Again he put his wits to work. Sending for a volume of Shakespeare’s
plays, he wrote in fine pencil opposite Falstaff’s name:
“Examine--the--first--keg.” The messenger, who went for the weekly
supply, carried the Shakespeare back to the Hudson’s Bay fort. A week
passed. No sign came from his men. Exasperated to the point of risk,
Robertson tried a last expedient. The next week, the messenger carried
an open letter to Robertson’s men. It was inspected by his captors but
allowed to pass. It read: “To amuse myself, I am trying to throw into
verse some of Falstaff’s good sayings. There is one expression where
he blows out, ‘I am not a _wit_ but the cause of _wit_ in others.’ This
sounds harsh. Please send exact words as in the play.” No doubt the
Northwest partners thought poor Robertson far gone with liquor when he
took to versifying. Back came word with the week’s supplies, stating
that the volume of Shakespeare had been carried off to the fishery by
one of the traders; but “would Mr. Robertson please let his men know
if he wished the following traders to have the following supplies”--a
string of figures conveying the joyful news that the cipher had been
found; the Hudson’s Bay fort was on guard against surprise; the men
were in good spirits; the Indians loyal; all things prosperous.
For eight months a prisoner in a small room, Robertson directed the
men of his own fort by means of the whiskey kegs, sending word of all
secrets he could learn in the enemy’s camp, checkmating every move of
the Nor’Westers among the Indians. In vain, he urged his followers to
sally out and rescue him. The Hudson’s Bay traders were not willing to
risk another such massacre as on Red River. Immunity bred carelessness.
In the month of May a Nor’Wester, spying through crevices of the logs,
caught Robertson sealing up the bung in the whiskey keg. Swords and
pistol in hand, the angry partners burst into the room with torrents of
abuse that Robertson was quite able to return. He was too dangerous
a man to keep prisoner. The Nor’Westers decided to ship him out of
the country on pain of assassination if he dared to return. No doubt
Robertson smiled. His own coureurs had long since been sent speeding
over prairie and swamp for Red River to warn the Hudson’s Bay governor,
Williams, to catch the Northwest fur brigade when the canoes would be
running the rapids of the Saskatchewan in June.
Of the forty Nor’Westers conducting the June brigade to Montreal,
half a dozen were directors. “I was embarked with Simon McGillivray,”
Robertson writes. “At Isle a la Crosse ... seeing the strong rapids
before us, I threw off my cloak as was my custom when running
rapids.... What was my horror when I perceived our canoe swept out
of its track into a shute over the rocks.... Our steersman shouted,
‘My God, we are all lost.’... The canoe upset.... I attempted to swim
ashore but the strong eddies drew me under the falls where I found Mr.
Simon McGillivray and two or three others clinging to the gun’els of
the canoe.... The canoe swept on down the current and Mr. Shaw, one
of the partners, caught us below.” What was almost an escape through
an accident evidently suggested to Robertson’s mind that it was not
absolutely necessary he should be deported out of the country against
his will. At Cumberland House, where the brigade camped for a night,
there was a Hudson’s Bay as well as a Northwest post. Robertson asked
leave to say good-by to his old friends, but no sooner was he inside
the gates of the Hudson’s Bay post than bolts were shot and every man
of the ten inside the palisades, armed ready to fire if the Nor’Westers
approached. “I have escaped,” he writes, “but not agreeable to my
feelings.... However my friends may applaud the act, my conscience
tells me I have not done right in breaking my parole.... However, it is
all over now.... At half past ten in the morning, the Northwest canoes
pushed off from the beach without me.”
Where the Saskatchewan empties into Lake Winnipeg are rough ledges
of rock known as Grand Rapids. Here, it was usual to lighten loads,
passengers landing to walk across the portage, the voyageurs running
the canoes down full swirl to a camp below the rapids. Robertson
knew that Williams, the Hudson’s Bay governor from Red River, would
be waiting for the Northwest brigade at this point. Barely had his
captors’ canoes paddled away from Cumberland House, when Robertson
launched out on their trail far enough behind to escape notice, bound
for the exciting rendezvous of Grand Rapids. “In paddling along,” he
writes, “we were suddenly interrupted with a shout ‘Canoe ahead!’...
A shot was fired.... We arranged our pistols. The canoe was plainly
approaching us. What shall be done? If these are enemies, the water is
the safest place for defense. It was a moment of anxiety. As the canoe
came nearer, a stranger stood up, waved his hat and shouted, ‘Glorious
news! Five North-West partners captured at Grand Rapids--Shaw,
McIntosh, Campbell, McTavish and Frobisher taken! I am sent to meet
Mr. Robertson!’ We at once shaped our course to the canoe when our
voyageurs struck up a song the men of both canoes yelling a cheer
at each chorus.” At eleven on the morning of July 30th, Robertson
crossed the portage of Grand Rapids. He found himself in the midst of a
stirring scene. Strung across the river at the foot of the rapids were
barges mounted with swivels. On the bank lay the entire year’s output
of Athabasca furs, the poor French voyageurs huddling together, the
loudest bully cowed; and apart from the camp in the windowless lodge of
an old French hunter, were the captured Northwest partners surrounded
by the guard of a hundred De Meuron soldiers under Governor Williams.
This was a turning of the tables with a vengeance. As Williams blurted
out in a gasconade striding forward to welcome Robertson, “two could
play at the capturing business.”
And a sorry thing “the capturing business” proved. Robertson does not
give any details. He is evidently both ashamed of the episode and
sorry; but the account is found in the journals of the Nor’Westers.
Anxious to rescue Robertson, the Hudson’s Bay governor had his barges
strung across the river and his soldiers in ambush along the trail of
the portage, when the unsuspecting Athabasca brigade, laden with furs
to the water line, glided down the Saskatchewan. The canoes arrived
in three detachments on the 18th, and 20th, and 30th of June. Rapids
behind and pointed swivels before, the voyageurs were easy victims,
surrendering to the soldiers at once. It was another matter with the
partners. Both Hudson’s Bay and Nor’Westers knew these lawless raids
would be condemned by the courts; but each side also knew if it could
capture and hold the other out of the Athabasca for a single year, the
excluded rival would be ruined.
Frobisher and Campbell, accompanied by two servants, were the first
partners to set out across the portage. Half way over, a movement in
the grass caught their attention, and before they could speak they were
surrounded by fifteen Hudson’s Bay soldiers with pointed bayonets.
Frobisher was a man of enormous strength and violent temper. No
Nor’Wester had exercised more wanton cruelty over Hudson’s Bay captives
than he. As he saw himself suddenly looking into the barrel of a
Hudson’s Bay gun, he had involuntarily knocked aside the muzzle and
doubled his fist for a blow, when sharp bayonet prods in the small of
his back sent him along the path at a run. The other partners as they
came were captured in the same summary way. Cooped up in the hunter’s
lodge at the foot of the rapids, they demanded of Governor Williams his
warrant for such proceedings.
“Warrant?” roared the Hudson’s Bay governor. “What warrant had you
when you held Robertson captive all last winter in Athabasca? What
warrant had you for flogging Clarke out of the country two years ago?
Talk to me of your Royal Proclamations of peace! I don’t care a curse
for your royal proclamations. I rely on the charter of the Hudson’s
Bay Company. Your governor of Canada is a d---- rascal! He is bribed
by your Northwest gold! Warrants--indeed! Warrants are d---- nonsense
in this country! Out of this country you go. I’ll drive out every
Nor’Wester or die in the attempt.” In the midst of the tornado, some
excitement arose from McIntosh, a Northwest partner, who was ill and
had run the rapids with his canoemen, jumping overboard and trying
to swim ashore. Two Hudson’s Bay canoemen pursued, caught him by the
scruff of the neck and towed him ashore. Satisfied that he had captured
all the partners in this brigade, Williams at once released the clerks
and voyageurs with their cargoes of furs to proceed to Montreal. As the
canoemen walked out of the hunter’s cabin past the sentry, Frobisher
beside himself with rage at the governor’s rating--attempted to follow.
He was clubbed to the ground. He hurled the full force of his herculean
strength at his assailant. This time, the gun-stock struck him on the
head. It is said from that moment he became so violently insane that
he had to be kept under guard of two personal servants, Turcotte and
Lepine. During the week that Williams waited at Grand Rapids for the
coming of Robertson, the Northwest captives were kept on an island in
midstream, forbidden even to leave their tent. One night, the partner
McIntosh, succeeded in rolling himself out under the tent flap to the
rear. Crawling to that side of the island farthest from the sentries,
he bound two or three floating logs together in a raft and with a dead
branch as a sweep, succeeded in escaping across the river. When he was
missed in the morning, William, the Hudson’s Bay governor, ordered his
Indian scouts out “to take McIntosh dead or alive,” but Indian friends
faithfully concealed the Nor’Wester. He was recaptured by force the
next winter.
When Colin Robertson came down the Saskatchewan in his canoe on the
30th of June, instead of being a prisoner as he had expected, he was
one of a party of one hundred and thirty Hudson’s Bay men to conduct
the captured Northwest partners across Lake Winnipeg to Norway House.
Here, Robertson remained. Governor Williams took the prisoners on to
York Factory on Hudson’s Bay. The question was--what to do with the
prisoners? At any cost, they must be kept out of Athabasca. That would
effect the ruin of the Northwest Company in a year, but the Hudson’s
Bay Company would not thank Williams for landing them in any more
lawsuits by illegal acts, and they could not be taken to Montreal. Shaw
and Campbell and McTavish--the same McTavish who had sent Astor’s men
packing from the Columbia--were treated as prisoners of honor in the
main house of York Fort at Hudson’s Bay and allowed to exercise on the
lead roof of the building. On the 30th of August came Franklin, the
explorer, with letters of introduction to both Northwest and Hudson’s
Bay traders. It was suggested by Franklin that the Northwest partners
be sent home to England by the boat that had brought him out. Shaw
and McTavish sailed as steerage passengers. Campbell chose to go
down to the end of James Bay and overland to Canada, where the story
of his adventures ran like wildfire; but the Hudson’s Bay governor
went back to the interior without leaving any instructions as to
Frobisher. Either the Company would not forgive his cruel treatment of
Hudson’s Bay servants, or it was unsafe to release him in his violent
condition. He was confined in a dilapidated outhouse where rain formed
pools of water on the mud floor, with no protection against the cold
but the clothes on his back and a three-point blanket. With him were
the servants, Turcotte and Lepine. His violent ravings and maniacal
struggles gradually gave place to a great depression. A servant of the
fort took pity on the three prisoners and began smuggling extra rations
at night through the iron-barred window.
From this time, Benjamin Frobisher planned a desperate escape, saving
at the cost of physical strength food from their daily allowance for
the inland voyage. His men expostulated. A voyage inland so late meant
certain death. It was a pitch dark night on the 30th of September.
Frobisher and his men broke gaol, coaxed the friendly Hudson’s Bay man
to give them three extra pairs of moccasins and mits, picked up an old
fish net, with a piece of deerskin to act as tent, and clambered over
the palisades. Winter had set in early. The rain-swollen river was
cold as ice, but in the three emaciated fugitives plunged, and swam
to the far shore where there chanced to rock an old canoe. With the
help of the tide, they made ten miles that night. Frobisher began to
recover courage, singing wildly and paddling buoyant as a school boy,
irresponsible as a maniac. Hudson’s Bay fur brigades were still passing
down the river. The three Nor’Westers passed these at night with
muffled paddles, keeping to the far side of the stream. At intervals
were abandoned hunter’s cabins. Here, the three would take refuge for
a night, leaving their net set in the river for fish. The pemmican
saved from the allowance at the fort and the fish caught at night were
the only food. By the 19th of October, they had passed the Hudson’s
Bay post, now called Oxford House, half way between Hudson Bay and the
Saskatchewan. The nights now became bitterly cold, and there were no
more old lodges--only a wind-break made of the canoe and the deerskin.
Frobisher had become apparently quite sane, but provisions were running
low, and he was visibly feebler each day.
The river here widened to a labyrinth of winding lakes, and the men
kept losing themselves, missing in the blinding rains the poles stuck
up here and there to mark the way. They were wasting time, and it
was a race against death. When they arose on October 23rd, six inches
of snow lay on the ground, and shore ice was so thick they could not
break it with their paddles. The canoe had to be left behind and the
march continued by land. At the end of that week, there were only two
pounds of pemmican left, and the men begged Frobisher to give himself
up at the Hudson’s Bay post of Norway House near Lake Winnipeg, but
Frobisher bade them push on. There would be Indians at Lake Winnipeg.
By a curious perversity of weather, a thaw now came, and they found
themselves at Lake Winnipeg before open water without a canoe. Whether
they waited here with an Indian camp until the ice would bear them,
or followed the north shore of the lake on foot, cannot be told from
Frobisher’s disjointed journal. Their moccasins were worn to shreds,
their feet bleeding, their only food the bit of deerskin and tatters
of buffalo hide stuck up on the bushes as trail marks by the Indians.
Staggering through snow and water to their waists, tripped and tangled
by windfall, losing themselves in the autumn storms, the three men were
now barely conscious. About the third week of November, Frobisher could
walk no farther, and the brave Half-breeds, who could have saved their
own lives by deserting him long ago, carried him by turns on their
backs. Such conduct needs no comment. On the 20th of November, they
were only two days from the first Northwest post on the Saskatchewan.
With a last flickering gleam of reason, Frobisher realized the only
hope was for the men to leave him and get help. “For God’s sake,” he
penciled on a slip of paper, “lose not a moment to relieve me,” and
he ordered Turcotte and Lepine to carry this to the Northwest post on
the Saskatchewan. They kindled fire for him and left him broiling a
piece of the old deerskin for food; but the men were so feeble they
made poor progress. It was four days before they reached the fort,
having actually eaten their leather clothing and crawled the last day’s
travel. The two Half-breeds arrived delirious. It was three days more
before messengers reached Frobisher’s camp. His lifeless body was found
lying across the ashes of the fire. So perished one of the founders of
the Great Northwest Company--the victim of his own policy of lawless
violence.
But a life more or less was not to stand in the way of the fur trade.
The very next winter, Colin Robertson was back with the Hudson’s Bay
fur brigade on the Saskatchewan and Athabasca, pushing the traders
over the mountains to the Pacific Coast. “Opponents have given us no
trouble,” he writes, “but starvation nearly forced us to abandon
the country. From November to February, I lived on dried berries and
water with flour.” Letters record how at one post famine compelled
the Hudson’s Bay men to surrender to the Nor’Westers; how at another,
Black, “the Northwest bully,” was cudgelled from his post by Hudson’s
Bay partisans. So the merry play went on with these dare-devil
gamesters of the wilderness till in the spring of 1820, bringing
the fur brigade down the Saskatchewan, Robertson found the tables
reversed. The gamesters were again playing with loaded dice. “The
Nor’Westers have assembled to catch _us_ at Grand Rapids,” he writes.
What defense can be expected from our sixty men worn down by hunger?
This is returning the blow with a vengeance.... I told Mr. Miles, my
assistant, all was not right at Grand Rapids. The governor was not
there to protect our passing.... We hid the Company’s papers in a
pemmican sack between beef and fat. If no scouts came back, either
our spies were seized, or the Grand Rapids were clear and the passage
free.... Passing a sleepless night, we embarked at daybreak, descended
the current slowly, passed to the north bank ... then asked my guide
to run the rapids without the men disembarking. This he positively
refused to do, saying he would not venture the rapids unless the men
got out and each carried a pack to lighten the canoe.... So we began to
cross the portage and had nearly reached the end when a large party of
Half-breeds and Indians started from concealment, armed.... A Northwest
agent snatched my gun ... my men hesitated whether to come to the
rescue, but I signalled them to be off and escape in the canoes.
The Nor’Wester who had captured Robertson, was the same J. D.
Campbell captured at this very place and sent down to Hudson’s Bay
with Robertson’s aid two years before. Fortunately, this Northwest
partner was deadly tired of the policy of gasconading violence. He
told Robertson frankly he must either sign an oath never to return to
Athabasca, or go a prisoner to Montreal. “I gave the fellow one look
of perfect contempt,” writes Robertson. On his way down to Montreal,
he succeeded in borrowing a few dollars from a friendly passer-by.
At Wright’s Farm, near the present city of Ottawa, the brigade was
ordered to rest for some days. Robertson knew it was only to enable
constables to come up from Montreal to arrest him. When the order was
given to embark, he seized a biscuit (his enemies say a crow-bar) and
hurling it in the face of the Northwest partner, leveled his pistol
and dared the whole company to take him. The Northwesters did not
accept the challenge. They no doubt knew as Robertson says, “that most
of the constables in Montreal were out after me.” After a few days’
rest at the wayside inn, the doughty Hudson’s Bay fighter rode like
mad for American territory, pausing only to change horses at Montreal.
“The night was dark. The rain fell in torrents. A faithful friend rode
before day and night all the way.... At three in the morning ... we
reached Plattsburg.”
On the way to Montreal, Robertson had heard that the Nor’Westers were
about to propose a union with the Hudson’s Bay, and he judged that he
could serve his Company best by hurrying to London and pressing on
the General Court the fact that the country was already in the hands
of the Hudson’s Bay traders without any union. What was his amazement
on taking ship at New York to find as fellow passengers two Northwest
partners, Bethune and McLoughlin, now on the way to London to urge the
union. “Hunting bees’ wings in their champagne glasses,” as Robertson
describes their postprandial talks, the two Nor’Westers actually
asked Robertson to introduce them to the Hudson’s Bay Company, but
the feud lasted to the end of the voyage. “Wine went round freely and
subscriptions were opened for the ship’s hands,” writes Robertson. “Our
friend, the Nor’Wester, Dr. McLoughlin, had put down his name. I took
the pen to put mine down, but seeing Bethune, the other Nor’Wester,
waiting, said to Abbé Carriere:
“‘Come Abbé, put down your name. I don’t want to sign between two
Nor’Westers.’
“‘Never mind, Robertson,’ says the Abbé, ‘Christ was crucified between
two thieves.’
“McLoughlin flew in a dreadful passion, but being a good Catholic, had
to stomach it.”
As the world knows, the embassy of the Nor’Westers was successful. The
two companies were united, and the aforetime bitter rivals returned to
serve the Hudson’s Bay for many a year as faithful friends and loyal
partners.
Over the united companies there was appointed as governor in America,
George Simpson, who had been sent as clerk to Athabasca, quietly to
observe the true state of affairs.
_Notes on Chapter XXIX._--The contents of this chapter are taken from
Robertson’s letters to the directors of the Hudson’s Bay Company--some
two hundred foolscap pages (manuscript). Frobisher’s death is given in
the Masson Collection of N. W. C. Journals.
* * * * *
The terms of union of the two companies as given in the H. B. C.
Minutes of March 20, 1821, were in brief as follows: Present at
the General Court: Joseph Berens, Gov.; John Pelly, Deputy; Thos.
Langlois, Benj. Harrison, Andrew Colville, Thomas Pitt, Nicholas
Garry, Wm. Smith, Simon McGillivray, Edward Ellice, Jno. Liebenwood,
Wm. Thwaytes, Robt. Whitehead, M. P. Lucas, Alex. Lean.
The Governor laid before the court draft of agreement proposed between
the Adventurers of England on the one part and Wm. McGillivray, Simon
McGillivray, Edward Ellice on the second part, in behalf of the N. W.
C., by which deed it was agreed to unite the whole fur trade carried
on into one concern from the first day of June next, the said H. B.
C. and N. W. C. to find an equal share of capital and to divide the
profits and losses for the term of 21 years.... £150,000 of the sd.
joint stock apportioned among holders of H. B. C. stock in proportion
to their respective interests, and £100,000 apportioned to the N. W. C.
* * * * *
Nicholas Garry was appointed to go out with Simpson and reorganize the
united companies. With them as representing the N. W. C. went Simon
McGillivray.
* * * * *
Most of the actors mentioned in the episodes of this chapter retired
to become great nabobs in Montreal. The McGillivrays bought an estate
in Scotland. Robertson served the H. B. C. for many years. John Clarke
became a magnate of the Montreal aristocracy and was to be seen
driving John Jacob Astor every time the American came to Montreal.
Those men, who did not retire to Montreal, went to Red River or the
Oregon. Among those going to the Columbia were: McLoughlin, Ogden,
McKay, Ermatinger. Just as this volume went to press, the widow of
John Clarke, who is still living at a very advanced age in Montreal,
and her daughter, Miss Adele Clarke, issued a small brochure of
recollections of the old days in Montreal--a rare little treatise with
a flavor of old wine.
* * * * *
The gross sales of the H. B. C. from the time Athabasca was
successfully invaded, ran up from £2,000 a year to £68,261.
* * * * *
The cost of Robertson’s first Expedition to Athabasca is given in the
minutes as £20,000--sheer loss.
* * * * *
George Simpson went out at a salary of £600, with £400 for traveling
expenses. He was the first governor to enter Red River by way of
Montreal.
* * * * *
It was in the winter of 1820-21 that Robertson and the Nor’Westers
went to London. The company voted £1,000 to Robertson 21 Feb., 1821,
as reward for his success, and granted him 21 shillings a day for
expenses and £50 passage money back to Montreal.
PART IV
1821-1871
The Passing of the Company--McLoughlin’s Transmontane Empire of Oregon,
Washington, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, California--The Famous
Mountain Brigades--How the Company Lost Oregon--Why the Chartered
Monopoly Was Relinquished.
CHAPTER XXX
1821-1830
RECONSTRUCTION CONTINUED--NICHOLAS GARRY, THE DEPUTY GOVERNOR,
COMES OUT TO REORGANIZE THE UNITED COMPANIES--MORE COLONISTS FROM
SWITZERLAND--THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN BRIGADES--ROSS OF OKANOGAN.
It fell to Nicholas Garry to come out and reorganize the united
traders, because he chanced to be the only unmarried man on the
Governing Committee. The task was not easy. Bitter hatreds must
be harmonized. Indians must be conciliated. Fire-eaters must be
transferred to new districts, where old animosities would be unknown.
Williams, the swashbuckler governor, must be replaced by George
Simpson, the tactful man of business. Necessarily, a great many
officers must be displaced altogether from both the old Companies.
It was not desirable that Garry should come out with active partisans
of either Company. Bethune and Simon McGillivray and Doctor
McLoughlin--the Nor’Westers--and Colin Robertson, the Hudson’s Bay
man, all arrived at Montreal by different routes and took passage to
Fort William by different canoes. So eager were the partisans, Garry
was met in New York by such well-known Nor’Westers as Judge Ogden, and
such well-known Hudson’s Bay agents as Auddjo, the Company’s lawyer.
Leaving Montreal, Garry proceeded up the Ottawa in a canoe followed
by Robertson and Simon McGillivray--all bound for Fort William, where
the partners would sign the deed of union and Garry re-arrange the
positions of the officers. At Long Sault the canoes passed the house
of Red River’s first governor--Miles MacDonell--now mentally a wreck
from the terrible struggle. Frobisher dead of starvation, Selkirk of
a broken heart, Sir Alexander MacKenzie of ills contracted through
exposure in the wilds, Miles MacDonell out of his mind--men of both
sides had paid a deadly toll for mistakes and wrongs. Ottawa City
when Garry passed West, in 1821, consisted solely of Wright’s farm at
Hull. At the Sault was David Thompson, surveying boundaries for the
government. Then Garry’s canoe landed him safely at Fort William, where
the deed of union was signed that extinguished the lawless glory of
that famous place. Then with partners assembled, old enemies glaring at
each other across the table, the tactful George Simpson doing his best
to help to suppress the ill-concealed hatred of former rivals, both
sides proceeded to distribute the officers.
“The comfortable districts were set aside for friends of the N. W.
C.,” declared the discontented Robertson, failing to see that his very
loyalty to the old Company stood in the way of his promotion. “It never
occurred to the new concern that such men as John Clarke and Colin
Robertson were in existence. One cannot but admire the staunchness of
these old Northwest partners. They are parting from life-long friends.
The N. W. C. have gained a complete victory for the best places. John
George McTavish becomes superintendent of York. McLoughlin goes to the
Columbia. I am to have Norway House. Mr. John Clarke, full of health
and vigor, was represented as compelled to go to Montreal for his
health for a time. Mr. Simpson, the new governor, who did such good
work in Athabasca as clerk, felt a good deal hurt at the way Mr. Garry
made the appointments. Simon McGillivray lost his temper again and
again. Mr. Simpson is one of the most pleasant little men I have ever
met. He is full of spirit, can see no difficulties and is ambition
itself. He requires bridle more than spur.”
Appointments having been made, Garry proceeds west, pausing at Rainy
Lake, at Winnipeg River and at Red River to meet the Indians in treaty
and hear Simon McGillivray assure them they must now all obey the
Hudson’s Bay Company. At all trading places the fur posts are combined
in one palisaded fort. At Red River, so bitter is the feeling, Garry
decides both Hudson’s Bay and Northwest forts must be abandoned and a
new one built slightly back from the forks of the river. This is named
after himself--Fort Garry. Ten years have passed since Selkirk sent
his first colonists to Red River, and Garry finds that the settlement
numbers two hundred and twenty-one Scotch people on the west side of
Red River; sixty-five De Meuron soldiers, who remained as farmers, on
the east side of Red River, and one hundred and thirty-three retired
Canadian fur traders. Of the four hundred and nineteen people, only
one hundred and fifty-four are women. The De Meurons are dissatisfied.
They will not marry Indian wives, and no others are to be had, so the
De Meurons grow tired of their homeless, wifeless cabins and become
somewhat noted in Kildonan for tavern brawls and midnight raids on
the hen roosts. Also, cattle mysteriously disappear, of which the De
Meurons offer the hides for sale.
Garry then hastens from Lake Winnipeg to York on Hudson Bay to meet
the incoming ships and return on one of them to England. He is just in
time at York to meet one hundred and seventy Swiss settlers brought out
by Walter von Husser, a Swiss nobleman. Garry foresees exactly what
afterward happens. Here are wives for the De Meuron soldiers, but
he fears these comely Swiss girls will fare badly with “the lawless
banditti De Meurons.” Garry’s fears were not realized. The West has a
wonderful way of raising the status of women through sheer scarcity
of femininity. The De Meurons were so glad to see the Swiss that the
emigrants were welcomed to the soldiers’ lodges for the winter. But
in another way the Swiss settlers did not fare well. They were nearly
all artisans, unused to farming--clockmakers and cabinet workers and
carvers, who found small service for their labors on Red River. The
consequence was the majority abandoned Red River and moved down to
Minnesota, squatting near the newly built military post--Fort Snelling,
near what is now St. Paul. Thus Selkirk--all unwitting--had builded
better than he dreamed--laying the foundation colonies of two western
empires; for these Swiss were the first settlers in Minnesota, as
distinguished from mere fur traders. St. Paul, it may be added, was
in those days known as “Pig’s Eye,” from the uncanny countenance of a
disreputable whiskey dealer there.
* * * * *
Let us follow some of the newly organized brigades to their hunting
fields. John McLoughlin has been sent to Oregon. Born on October 19,
1784, at Riviere de Loup, on the St. Lawrence, six feet three in
stature, the doctor is comparatively a young man to rule the vast
empire beyond the mountains, but exposure has given him an appearance
of premature age, of premature gentleness. His long hair, white as
snow, wins him the name among the Indians of “White Eagle,” and his
manners have the benign pomp of a man sure of himself. Douglas of
Stuart Lake, who has been with Fraser, accompanies him as second. A
Doctor Barclay goes as physician. Tom McKay, McLoughlin’s stepson,
son of the McKay of the MacKenzie voyages, is leader of the brigades.
Scattered at the different forts, at Colville and Walla Walla and
Okanogan, are many of Astor’s old men, many of David Thompson’s old
brigades. When the war of 1812 closed, by treaty of 1818 Fort George
is restored to the Americans; but there are no Americans on the field.
The Nor’Westers continue at the fort till Governor Simpson and Dr.
John McLoughlin come in 1824-5, and to avoid the baleful effects of
skippers’ rum from passing ships, move headquarters up the Columbia on
the north side opposite Willamette River, some ninety or one hundred
miles from the sea. The new fort is called Vancouver. While treaty has
restored Fort George to the Americans, it has not restored Oregon.
Oregon is in dispute. For the present, England and the United States
agree “to joint occupancy,” the treaty in no way to affect the final
question of ownership.
* * * * *
[Illustration: Sir James Douglas, Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company
in British Columbia.]
If Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Switzerland were united under
one flag, if that flag had the motto _Pro Pelle Cutem_--“Skin for
Skin”--and the mystic letters H. B. C.--Hudson’s Bay Company--it
would give some idea of the size of the fur traders’ kingdom ruled by
McLoughlin. At a bend in the Columbia on the north side, far enough
from the coast to be away from the rivalry of Pacific schooners, near
enough to be in touch with tidewater, stood the capital of the kingdom,
Fort Vancouver. Spruce slabs half a foot thick, twenty feet high, sharp
at both ends and in double rows, composed the walls. Great gates with
brass hinges extending half way across the top and bottom beams, opened
leaf-wise toward the river. On the northwest corner stood a bastion
whose lower stories served as powder magazine and upper windows as
look-out. Cannon bristled through the double palisades of the fort,
and to one side of the main gate was the customary wicket through
which goods could be exchanged for furs from the Indians. The big,
two-story, timbered house in the center of the court was the residence
of the Chief Factor. On both sides were stores and warehouses and fur
presses and the bachelors’ quarters and the little log cabins, where
lived the married trappers. Trim lawns decorated with little rockeries
of cannon balls divided the different buildings, and in front of the
Chief Factor’s residence on the top of a large flagpole there blew to
the breeze the flag with the letters H. B. C.--sign that a brigade was
coming in, or a brigade setting out; or a ship had been sighted; or it
was Sunday and the flying flag was signal to the Indians there would be
no trade, a flag custom on Sundays that has lasted to this day.
At the mouth of the Columbia, all that remained of Astor’s Fort
Astoria and Lewis and Clarke’s Fort Clatsop was a moldering pile of
rain-rotted logs with a little square-timbered hut where one lone
Scotchman kept watch for incoming ships and possible wrecks. Eastward,
where the Columbia takes its first bend was Walla Walla, under trader
Pambrum; northward, where it takes a second bend, Okanogan under Ross;
west, where it turns up into the Arrow Lakes of British Columbia,
Fort Colville under Firman MacDonell; and half way between these two
posts southward, Spokane House, founded by that John Clarke, who was
with Robertson in Athabasca. These were the strongholds from which
the Company ruled its transmontane kingdom, five little fur posts,
all except Spokane, close to the main river trail, the capitals and
sub-capitals of an empire big as half Europe.
By right, the treaty of joint occupation had reference only to
Washington and Oregon; but who was to prevent McLeod leading his
brigade down the coast to California as far as Sacramento, or Ogden
his brigade up the Snake as far as the Nevada deserts, or Ross his
mountaineers through Washington and Idaho over the Bitter Root and
Rocky Mountains to the buffalo plains of the Missouri in Montana?
It was a no-man’s-land, where trappers might wander whither their
beaver quest led, with no other law but what each man’s right arm was
strong enough to enforce. Fish diet palled at Fort Vancouver. Buffalo
meat was needed for the brigades. Up at Fort Okanogan was Alexander
Ross, studying the language of the mountain Indians, leading a lonely
existence “with no other company,” as he relates, “but my dog Weasel
and the Bible.” A mid-winter express brought Ross orders to proceed
over the mountains by way of Clarke’s Fork or Flathead River to the
headwaters of the Missouri and Yellowstone and Big Horn. His hunting
field was the very stamping ground of the most dangerous warriors
among the Indians--the Blackfeet and Piegans and Crows. Yet if this
express had ordered Ross to march down to Hell’s Gate and jump over
the precipice into that cañon, he would have obeyed. A better man for
the field could not have been chosen. Ross had come to the Pacific on
John Jacob Astor’s first ship. He had been almost at once sent North to
establish Fort Okanogan, where by studying the Indian languages during
the long isolated winters, he soon became a proficient trader. He was
both religious and scholarly, but either the intense loneliness of the
life, or the danger of being among the Indians without a companion,
drove him into marriage with a daughter of the Okanogans. This wife
became one of the grand old ladies of the Red River Settlement, when
Ross retired to Manitoba. Beaver must be sought as usual at the
headwaters of the Missouri and the Yellowstone and the Big Horn; and to
reach those headwaters for the spring hunt, Ross must do his buffalo
hunting in mid-winter. The mountain passes must be traversed through
bottomless depths of snow, for the climate was so mild no crust formed,
and above the tree line in the cloud region was a fall--fall of snow
almost continuous for the winter months till the precipices overhung
with dangerous snow cornices of ponderous weight, and the cut-rocks
were heaped into huge snow mushrooms. But Ross was no novice at snow
work in the mountains. One of his first winters at Okanogan, he had
become so desperately lonely that he decided to pay a three days’ visit
to his next door neighbor at Spokane House, one hundred and fifty miles
away. The country was rocky and the trail steep. Coming home the horses
had fagged so completely climbing the last mountain that Ross and his
Indian servants dismounted to beat the way up through the snow for the
animals to follow. It was not easy work. Snow cornice broke under the
weight, and down men and horses slithered in miniature avalanche. The
soft crust of drift over rocks broke, plunging the path-makers in snow
to their armpits, and all the while the way was zigzagging up till Ross
and his Indians were blowing with heat like whales. First, pack straps
came off, then gun cases, then coats and waistcoats to be hung on the
saddle pommels. A sharp turn in the trail brought them suddenly on
one of those high, bare Alpine meadows where Arctic storms sweep when
flowers may be blooming in the valley. Before they could find their
horses darkness and snow so completely hid everything Ross could only
shout against the wind for the men to shift for themselves and let the
horses run. Then he realized that he was without either coat or buffalo
blanket. Luckily, a bewildered pack horse jammed against him in the
whirl. Ross gripped the saddle straps, cut the pack ropes, threw off
the load, and leaped astride the saddle trees with no other blanket
than the patch of wool that served as saddle cloth. Certain that he was
near Okanogan, he rode like mad through the howling darkness, but the
floundering broncho fagged in the drifts, and Ross became so numb he
could not keep his seat. Dismounting, he tried to keep himself warm by
walking, but was soon so exhausted he could only cling to the warm body
of the horse. Tying the saddle cloth round his neck, he tried to dig
a hole of shelter in the snow, but there, his feet became so cold, he
had to take off his boots to keep from freezing, and passed the night
in a frantic effort against the frost-sleep. In the morning he was too
stiff to mount his horse. He had no strength to beat the wind, and had
almost determined to kill his horse and crawl inside the body, when the
storm began to lessen. To his relief, Okanogan House was only a short
distance away. When trappers went out to rescue the Indians of the
party, they found one horse dead, torn to pieces by the wolves. Ross
knew mountain travel.
It was February 11, 1824, when Ross struck east from Cœur d’Alene
Lake--the Lake of the Pointed Heart, so called from the sharp trading,
like “an awl” of the Indians--to cross the mountains of Idaho and
Montana for the buffalo plains. Between Okanogan and Spokane House, he
had succeeded in mustering twelve Hudson’s Bay trappers, Iroquois most
of them, with a few Canadians like Pierre and Goddin and Sylvaille.
Of the freeman who roved the mountains, forty-three joined Ross’
brigade. In all, there were forty-five men, two hundred and six traps,
sixty-two guns, including a large brass cannon, and two hundred and
thirty horses. In a few days they were on Horse Prairie, where roved
herds of wild, Spanish ponies, claimed by the Flatheads and valued at
four beaver skins each. Passing travelers might seize these horses, but
woe betide them if full value were not left in beaver skins. Without
warning, the Flatheads would pursue and exact a scalp for each horse
stolen. From the outset Ross had trouble with his men. They had first
served under Astor, then under the Nor’Westers, and now were unsettled
by the recent change of allegiance to Hudson’s Bay. Besides, General
Ashley’s mountaineers, Pierre Chouteau’s trappers, had begun coming
across the plains from St. Louis. For each beaver the American trader
paid $5.00, where the Hudson’s Bay paid only $1.00 and $2.00. Ross’
trappers were dissatisfied. For the first month--the mid-winter month
when all game is quiet--no beaver were seen. Snow storms met the
marchers as they neared the mountains, and on the 13th of February
Ross awakened to find that the Iroquois hunters under old Pierre had
deserted. Mounting post haste, Ross pursued, overtook the seceders, and
demanded the cause of their complaint. They complained that the price
allowed for their furs was so small in proportion to the exorbitant
advance on goods, that they were never able to pay debts, much less
make money, and declared they would not risk their lives any more.
Ross, himself, acknowledges that goods worth six pence were traded for
beaver worth $5.00 in China. “The Iroquois declared Mr. Ogden last
fall had promised they should be paid half in currency. I told them
that promise would be performed. They grumbled and talked, and talked
and grumbled, and at last consented to proceed. Thinks I to myself--is
_this_ the beginning?” Four days later, the first beaver was caught,
but only the toes were left in the trap. Wolves had howled all night
round the camp. To avoid future mutiny, Ross appointed three leaders,
old Pierre at the head of the Iroquois; Montour of the Half-breeds
and himself for the Company’s trappers, the three to meet each night
and exchange the views of the camp. On February 23rd, the brigade
struck into that defile of the mountains between the Rockies east and
the Bitter Root west, along the trail from what is now from Butte and
Missoula to De Smet and Kootenay. They had left Clarke’s Fork and were
on Hell Gate River, “so named,” explains Ross, “from being frequented
by war parties of roving Blackfeet.” While the brigade camped came a
tinkle of dog bells over the snow, and eight Piegans appeared driving
loaded dog sleds with provisions to trade in the Flathead country.
Before Ross could stop them, his rascally Iroquois were out of the
leather lodges with a whoop and flare of firearms and had stripped the
poor Piegans naked, leaving not so much as a piece of fat on their
sleighs. There was nothing for Ross to do but “pay treble the value of
the trash” and invite the victims into his own lodge. As the Piegans
were going off next day, he gave them a salute of honor from the brass
gun, “_just to show them_,” he explains, “_that it makes a noise_.”
Barely was this trouble past, when two Iroquois again deserted. After
them on horseback rode Ross with old Pierre as lieutenant. “Partly by
persuasion, and partly by force,” he relates, “we put them on horseback
and brought them into camp before dark.”
It was necessary to reach the buffalo plains and get the store of
pemmican before the spring hunt. Already it was March, and Ross found
himself in a narrow mountain cañon three hundred miles from any post,
the trail forward blocked by snow twelve feet deep for twenty miles.
No time for mutineers to plot. Daydawn to dark for a week, Ross sent
his men forward to cut a way through the snow, the horses disappearing
through the soft drifts altogether in their plunges, and the end of a
week saw only three miles clear with a howling blizzard that filled up
the trench as fast as the trappers could work. Ross kept his men too
busy to think of turning back and sent forward a fresh relay of horses
to stamp the way open. The end of another week saw eight miles clear,
but storm kept the men idle in camp for a day, and that day worked the
mischief with discipline. “John Grey, a turbulent Iroquois, came to
my lodge as spokesman to inform me he and ten others had resolved to
turn back. I asked him _why_? He said this delay would lose the spring
hunt. Anyway, the Iroquois had not engaged to dig snow and make roads.
I told him I was surprised to hear a good, quiet, honest fellow like
he was utter such cowardly words. (God forgive me for the lie!) I said
by going back they would loose the whole year’s hunt. A change in the
weather any day now might allow us to begin hunting. It was dangerous
for us to separate. John answered he was no slave to work in this way.
I told him he was a freeman of good character and to be careful to keep
his character good. (God forgive me. In my heart, I thought otherwise.
I saw him in his true colors, a turbulent blackguard, a d---- rascal, a
low trouble maker.) He said: ‘Fair words are all very well; but back I
am going to go.’ I thought a moment. Then I said: ‘You are no stronger
than other men. Stopped, you will be. I will stop you!’ He said he
would like to see the man who could stop him. I said: ‘I can.’ Old
Pierre interrupted by coming in and John went off cursing the Company,
the brigade, the country, the day he came to it. If his party deserts,
this trip will fail. So another day ends.”
The next day, not a soul would go to work. With the storm howling round
the tepee as if it would tear the buffalo flaps away, the solitary
white man sitting by the fire inside the lodge, knew the mutiny was
spreading. Up and down the cañon roared the blizzard, booming down
from the mountains for almost a week, the bitter North wind drifting,
piling, packing in a wall of snow from end to end of the eight-mile
trench that had been cleared. Watching the smoke curl up from the
central fire to the tepee top, Ross though alone, could afford to
smile. With that wall of snow behind, it would be just as hard to
go back as to go forward. The storm was cutting off the mutineers’
retreat. That night as the fires were smoldering and the hobbled
bronchos huddling about the lodge walls for shelter from the wind,
a furious barking of dogs aroused camp and the shout of “enemies,
enemies, Blackfeet,” brought the trappers dashing out muskets in hand.
The fire inside a tepee is too good a target for attack. Outside,
even in storm is safer, but the snow muffled forms emerging from the
wooly darkness proved to be no enemies at all, but six friendly Nez
Percés, who had come from the buffalo hunt across the mountains on
snowshoes. Five days the journey had taken. They reported buffalo in
plenty but the snow deeper farther down the cañon. Taking advantage of
the diversion created, Ross sent for John, the mutineer, and offered
to reduce his debt to the Company “if the intriguing scamp would hunt
the hills for game to keep the camp in meat.” John disposed of, Ross
called for thirty volunteers to go back over the mountain on snowshoes
with the Nez Percés to the buffalo hunt. With thirty men across the
mountains, there was no danger of the rest turning back. Storm was
followed by thaw, that increased the pasturage for the horses, and
sent the Indian women picking cranberries in the marshes, and set
the snow-slides rumbling down the mountains like thunder. Birds were
singing in the cañon, geese winging north overhead, but still the snow
lay packed like a wedge in the pass, barring way for horses or cannon.
“I feel anxious, very anxious at our long delay here,” writes Ross
at the end of a month. “The people grumble much. That sly, deep dog
of an Iroquois, Laurent, deserted camp to-day before I knew. A more
headstrong, ill-designing set of rascals than form this camp, God
never permitted together in the fur trade.” In a few weeks the buffalo
hunters were back with store of meat, which the squaws began to pound
into pemmican; but the sun glare had been so strong on the unsheltered
slopes of the uplands that six of the hunters were led home snow-blind.
This discouraged the freemen, fickle as children; and rebellion began
to brew again. In vain, Ross called a council, and went from lodge to
lodge, and urged, and ordered, and pleaded, and bribed. Not a man but
Old Pierre, the Iroquois, would go to work to clear the road.
The nights were spent in gambling, the days in grumbling; and old
Cadiac, a Half-breed, had made himself an Indian drum or tom-tom
of buffalo skin stretched on bare hoops. John Grey, the rebel, had
uncased his fiddle and was filing away all night to the Red River jig
and native dances of Indian pow-wow. Ross proposed the camp should
give a concert. A concert meant that a dram of liquor would go the
rounds. Two or three lodges were thrown into one. Vanished into
thin air the mutinous mood of the rebels. Hither came Cadiac with
the tom-tomtom of the Indian drum! Hither John Grey, the Iroquois,
scraping his fiddle strings with the glee of a Troubadour! Hither
Half-breeds with concertinas, and shaggy hunters with Jews’ harps,
and French Canadians with a fife! The night was danced away with such
wild Western jigs as Hell Gate had never seen before and did not see
again till the mountains resounded to the music halls of the tin-horn
gamblers in the construction days of the railway. When morning came
over the hills, Ross sprung his surprise. Whether the surprise was
mixed with what cheered the French half-breeds’ inner man--he does
not tell. With a whoop and hurrah, he proposed they all go down the
pass and dig that snow out to the strains of John Grey’s fiddle! The
sun was coming over the mountains. The hunters were happy as grown-up
children. What did the old snow matter anyway? Off they went! John
Grey, the arch-rebel, literally fiddling them through the mountains!
But alas, four days later, when the novelty or spree had worn off, on
the morning of April 14th, every man of the camp except seven, refused
to go to work. However, it was the last mile of the blockade, and those
seven cleared the way. “Thursday, April 15th. This day we passed the
defile of the mountains after a most laborious journey both for man and
beast. Long before daylight we were on the road, in order to profit
by the hardness of the crust before the thaw. From the bottom to the
top of the mountains is about one and a half miles. On the one side is
the source of the Flathead River, on the other of the Missouri. The
latter creek runs south-southeast through the mountains till it joins
a branch of the Missouri beyond Grand Prairie. For twelve miles, the
road had been made through five feet of snow, but the wind had filled
it up again. The last eight miles we had to force our way through snow
gullies, swimming the horses through in plunges. At four P. M. we
encamped on the other side of the defile without accident. Distance
to-day eighteen miles, though only a mile and a half as the crow flies.
This delay has cost loss of one month. We encamp to make lodge poles
for the rest of the journey.”
From the journals sent in by Ross to Hudson’s Bay House, it is hard to
follow the exact itinerary of his movements for the next two months.
Nor do the books, which he wrote of his life in the West, throw much
light on the _locale_ of his travels. Wherever there were beaver and
buffalo, the brigade marched. One week, the men were spread out in
different parties on the Three Forks of the Missouri. Another week,
they were on the headwaters of the Yellowstone in the National Park of
Wyoming. They did not go eastward beyond sight of the mountains, but
swung back and forward between Montana and Wyoming. “Saturday--April
17th--proceeded to the main fork of the Missouri and set watch. It was
on this flat prairie, four hundred Piegans last year attacked Firman
McDonald’s brigade and killed a freeman named Thomas Anderson. As we
are on dangerous ground, I have drawn up the following rules: (1)
All hands raise camp together by call; (2) The camp to march close
together. (3) No person to run ahead; (4) No person to set traps till
all hands are camped; (5) No person to sleep out of camp. All agreed
to these rules, but they were broken before night. Thursday, 22nd of
April--thirty-five beaver taken last night, six feet left in the traps,
twenty-five traps missing (dragged off by the beaver or stolen by the
Indians). The freemen let their horses run. They will not take care of
them.” And then poor Ross varies the formalities of his daily report by
breaking out in these lines against his unruly followers:
“Loss and misfortune must be the lot
When care and attention are wholly forgot.”
“That scamp of a Saulteaux Indian threatens to leave because I found
fault with him for breaking the rules. If he dares, I will strip him
naked, horses, blankets and clothes, to fare forth on the plain.
Saturday 24th--We crossed beyond the Boiling Fountains. The snow is
knee-deep. Half the people are snow-blind from sun glare.”
Ross now swung west over the Bitter Root Mountains to Salmon River,
following as far as I can tell, the path of the modern Oregon Short
Line Railway from Salt Lake to the Northern Pacific. So has it always
been in America. Not the bridge builder but the fur trader has been the
pathfinder for the railway. On leaving the middle fork of the Missouri,
he refers to one of those wilderness tragedies of which word comes
down to latter day life like a ghost echo of some primordial warfare.
“Passed a deserted Piegan camp of thirty-six lodges rendered immemorial
as the place where ten Piegan murderers of our people were burnt to
death. The road through the mountains from the Missouri to Salmon River
is a Blackfoot Pass of a most dangerous sort for lurking enemies; and
yet the freemen insist on going out in twos and twos. Three people
slept out of camp by their traps. I had to threaten not to give a
single ball to them if they did not obey rules; fifty-five beaver
to-day.”
Ross now scattered his trappers from the valley of the Three Tetons
north along the tributaries of the Snake in Idaho. One Sunday
night--Ross always compelled his trappers to dress for Sunday and hold
prayers--two French Canadian freemen ran into camp with moccasins torn
to shreds and a breathless story. Contrary to rules, they had wandered
in quest of game forty miles away, sleeping wherever night found them,
with no food but what they carried in a blanket on their backs. “On
their way to our camp, they saw a smoke, and taking it for our people
had advanced within pistol shot when behold, it proved to be a camp of
Piegans. Wheeling, they had hardly time to take shelter among a few
willows, when they were surrounded by armed warriors on horseback.
Placing their own horses between themselves and the enemy, our two
men squatted on the grass to conceal themselves. The Piegans advanced
within five paces, capering and yelling, cock sure of their prey. The
women had gathered to act a willing part, armed with lances. The two
crept through mud and water out of sight and when night came escaped,
abandoning horses, saddles, traps and all. They had traveled on foot
after dark the entire distance, hiding by day.”
By June, Ross had a thousand beaver; but the Piegans had followed up
the trail of the two escaping men. “Saturday, 19th--Had a fight. This
morning when all hands were at their traps scattered by twos, and only
ten men left in the camp, forty Blackfeet all mounted, descended on
us at full speed. The trappers were so scattered, they could render
each other no assistance and took to their heels among the brushwood,
throwing beaver one way, traps another. Jacques and John Grey were
pursued on the open plain. Seeing their horses could not save them,
our two heroes wheeled and rode pell mell into the enemy. The Piegans
asked them to exchange guns. They refused. The chief seized Jacques’
rifle, but Jacques jerked it free, saying in Piegan: ‘If you wish to
kill us, kill us at once; but our guns you shall never get while we are
alive.’ The Piegans smiled, shook hands, asked where the camp was, and
ordered the men to lead the way to it. With pulses beating, Jacques
and John advanced with the unwelcome guests to the camp, a distance of
eight miles. A little before arriving, Jacques broke away at full speed
from his captors whooping and yelling--‘Blackfeet! Blackfeet!’ In an
instant, camp was in an uproar. Of the ten men in camp, eight rushed to
save the horses. Myself and the other instantly pointed the big gun,
lighted the match and sent the women away. The party hove in sight.
Seeing John with them, restrained me from firing. I signaled them to
pause. Our horses were then secured. I received the Indians coldly. All
our people had time to reach camp and take up a position of defense. I
invited the Indians to smoke. After dark, they entertained us to music
and dancing, which we would gladly have dispensed with. All slept
armed. In the morning I gave the Piegans presents and told them to be
off and play no tricks as we would follow them and punish them. The big
gun did it. Sixty-five beaver to-day.”
Moving down Snake River in October, Ross met a party of Americans from
the Big Horn from Major Henry’s brigade of St. Louis. They had nine
hundred beaver but would not sell to Ross. Ross reached Spokane House
with about $18,000 of fur in November. Here he helped to fit out Peter
Skene Ogden for that first trip of his to the Snake Country, of which
there is no record except what Ross gives here. He says Ogden set out
with one hundred and seventy-six men under him, and definitely counted
on collecting 14,500 beaver. No doubt the St. Louis trappers that Ross
left on the Snake were the men, who “relieved” Peter Skene of his furs,
and it is interesting to note that at the price St. Louis traders paid
for furs, $5.50 a beaver, those 14,500 Hudson’s Bay beaver would make
the exact amount with which General Ashley retired from the Indian
Country.
_Notes to Chapter XXX._--The contents of this chapter are drawn
(1) as to reorganization from Colin Robertson’s manuscript journal
and Nicholas Garry’s Journal; (2) as to the Columbia, from Ross’
manuscript journals sent to H. B. C. House, London. Ross was the
author of three well-known books on western life, but this journey is
taken entire from his official report to H. B. C.--a daily record of
some six hundred foolscap folios.
CHAPTER XXXI
1824-1838
JOURNALS OF PETER SKENE OGDEN, EXPLORER AND FUR TRADER, OVER THE
REGIONS NOW KNOWN AS WASHINGTON, OREGON, CALIFORNIA, IDAHO, MONTANA,
NEVADA AND UTAH--HE RELIEVES ASHLEY’S MEN OF 10,000 BEAVER--HE FINDS
NEVADA--HE DISCOVERS MT. SHASTA--HE TRICKS THE AMERICANS AT SALT LAKE.
Gay were the fur brigades that swept out from old Fort Vancouver
for the South. With long white hair streaming to the wind, Doctor
McLoughlin usually stood on the green slope outside the picketed walls,
giving a personal hand-shake, a personal God-bless-you to every packer,
every horseman of the motley throng setting out on the yearly campaign
for beaver. There were Iroquois from the St. Lawrence. There were
Ojibways from Lake Superior. There were Cree and Assiniboine and Sioux
of the prairie, these for the most part to act as packers and hunters
and trappers in the horse brigades destined inland for the mountains.
Then, there were freemen, a distinct body of trappers owning allegiance
to no man, but joining the Company’s brigades for safety’s sake and
selling the beaver they trapped to the trader who paid the highest
price. Of coast Indians, there were very few. The salmon runs of the
river gave the coast tribes too easy an existence. They were useless
for the hardships of inland service. A few Cayuses and Flatheads, and
Walla Wallas might join the brigades for the adventure, but they did
not belong to the Company’s regular retainers.
Three classes, the Company divided each of the hunting brigades
into--gentlemen, white men, hunters. The gentlemen usually went out
in twos--a commander and his lieutenant, dressed in cocked hat and
buttons and ruffles and satin waistcoats, with a pistol somewhere
and very often a sword stuck in the high boot-leg. These were given
the best places in the canoes, or mounted the finest horses of the
mountain brigades. The second class were either servants to beat the
furs and cook meals, or young clerks sent out to be put in training for
some future chieftaincy. But by far the most picturesque part of the
brigades were the motley hunters--Indians, Half-breeds, white men--in
buckskin suits with hawks’ bills down the leggings, scarlet or blue
handkerchief binding back the lank hair, bright sash about the waist
and moccasins beaded like works of art. Then somewhere in each brigade
was a musician, a singer to lead in the voyageurs’ songs, perhaps a
piper from the Highlands of Scotland to set the bagpipes droning “The
Campbells Are Coming,” between the rock walls of the Columbia. And,
most amazing thing of all, in these transmontane brigades the men were
accompanied by wives and families.
A last hand shake with Doctor McLoughlin; tears mingled with fears
over partings that were many of them destined to be forever, and out
they swept--the Oregon brigades, with laughter and French voyageurs’
song and Highland bagpipes. A dip of the steersman’s lifted paddle,
and the Northern brigades of sixty men each were off for Athabasca and
the Saskatchewan and the St. Lawrence. A bugle call, or the beat of
an Indian tom-tom, and the long lines of pack horses, two and three
hundred in each brigade, decked with ribbons as for a country fair,
wound into the mountain defiles like desert caravans of wandering
Arabs. Oregon meant more in those days than a wedge stuck in between
Washington and California. It was everything west of the Rockies
that Spain did not claim. Then Chief factor McLoughlin, whom popular
imagination regarded as not having a soul above a beaver skin, used to
retire to his fort and offer up prayer for those in peril by land and
sea.
The man chosen to lead the southern brigades to the mountains and whose
wanderings led to the exploration of Oregon, northern California,
Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada and Utah--was a short rotund,
fun-loving, young barrister of Montreal, Peter Skene Ogden. His
ancestors had founded Ogdensburg of New York State and at an earlier
day in the history of Scotland had won the surname “Skene,” through
saving the life of King Malcolm by stabbing a wolf with a dagger--“a
skene.” During the American Revolution, his father left New York for
Montreal, and had risen to be chief justice of the courts there, so
that the young barrister could claim as relatives the foremost families
of New York State and the Province of Quebec: but an evil star presided
at the birth of Peter Skene.
[Illustration: OGDEN AND ROSS EXPLORATIONS]
He was finishing his law course when his boyhood voice changed, and
instead of the round orotund of manhood came a little, high, falsetto
squeak that combined with Peter’s little, fat figure and round head
proved so irresistibly comical, it blasted his hopes as a pleader at
the bar. John Jacob Astor was in Montreal wrangling out his quarrel
over Mississippi territory with the Northwest Company. Judge Ogden was
a friend of Astor’s. Peter applied to go out to Astoria on the Pacific.
Astor took him as supercargo on _The Lark_; but in 1813, _The Lark_
was wrecked in a squall two hundred miles off the Sandwich Islands,
and young Ogden was of those who, lashed to the spars of the drifting
wreck, fell to the mercies of the Hawaiians, and finally reached
Astoria only to find it captured by the Northwest Company. That was his
introduction to the fur trade of Oregon, and it was typical. McLoughlin
had no sooner moved headquarters from Astoria inland to Fort Vancouver,
than Peter Skene was sent to the Flatheads of the West. Here, one of
his servants got into a scuffle with the Indians over a horse, and
Ogden was carried to the Flathead chief to be shot.
“What?” he demanded of the astonished chief. “Do you think a white man
is to be bullied over a horse? Do you think a white man fears to be
shot? Shoot,” and he bared his breast to the pistol point.
But the Flathead chief did not shoot. “He brave man,” said the chief,
and he forthwith invited Ogden to remain in the tent as a friend,
and proposed another way out of the quarrel that would be of mutual
benefit to the Company and to the Flatheads. The Company wanted furs;
the Flatheads, arms. Let Ogden marry the chief’s daughter--Julia Mary.
It was not such a union as his relatives of New York would approve,
or his father, the chief justice of Montreal. She was not like the
young ladies he had known in the seminaries of the East, but her
accomplishments were of more use to Peter Ogden. When Peter Skene
walked out of the Flatheads’ tent, he had paid fifty ponies for a wife
and was followed by the chief’s daughter. To what period of his life
they belong, I do not know. His own journals tell nothing of them, but
legends are still current in the West about this Flathead princess of
the wilds; how when a spring torrent would have swept away a raft-load
of furs, Julia leaped into the flood tide, roped the raft to her own
waist, and towed the furs ashore; how when the American traders, who
relieved Ogden of his furs, in 1825, stampeded the Hudson’s Bay horses
and Julia’s horse galloped off with her first-born dangling from the
saddle straps in a moss bag, she dashed into the American lines. With
a bound, she was in the saddle. She had caught up the halter rope to
round baby and horses back to the Hudson’s Bay camp, when a drunken
Yankee trader yelled, “Shoot that d---- squaw!” But the squaw was
already hidden in a whirl of dust stampeding back to the British tents.
This, then, was the man (and this the wife, who accompanied him)
chosen to lead the mountain brigades through the unexplored mountain
fastnesses between the prairie and the Pacific. Lewis and Clarke had
crossed to the Columbia, and the Spaniards to the Colorado, but
between the Colorado and the Columbia was an absolutely unknown region.
With Ogden as first lieutenant went Tom McKay. McKay was the best shot
in the brigade, a fearless fighter, a tireless pathfinder, and one old
record says “combined the affable manners of a French seigneur with
the wild-eyed alertness of a mountaineer.” With hatred of the Indian
bred in him from the time of his father’s murder, he could no more
see a savage hostile without cracking off his rifle than a war horse
could smell powder and not prance. Among the trappers were rough, brave
fellows--freemen, French Canadians--whose names became famous in Oregon
history: La Framboise, Astor’s old interpreter, who became a pathfinder
in California; Gervais, who alternately served American and British fur
traders, helped to find Mt. Shasta, finally sold his trapping outfit
and retired to the French colony of the Willamette; Goddin and Payette
and Pierre, the Iroquois, and Portneuf, who have left their names to
famous places of Idaho. The brigade numbered a score of white men,
some fifty or sixty nondescript trappers, as many women, some children
and an average of three horses for each rider in the party. These
horses came from the Cayuse Indians of the Walla Walla plain. This was
the rendezvous after leaving Fort Vancouver. Here was always good
pasturage for the horses, and the fur post had store of pemmican traded
from the buffalo hunters of the Cayuse and Flathead nations.
Pouring into the south side of the Columbia between Walla Walla and
Fort Vancouver, were the Walla Walla, Umatilla, John Day’s, the River
of the Falls. In the mountains southward, were the beaver swamps. As
the entire region was unknown, Ogden determined to lead his brigade
West close to the Columbia, then strike up the fartherest west
river--double back eastward on his own tracks at the headwaters, and so
come down to the Columbia again by the Snake. The circle would include
all the south of Oregon and Idaho. He writes: “Monday, November 21st,
1825--Having sent off all hands yesterday from Walla Walla, I took my
departure and overtook my party awaiting my arrival. We are following
the banks of the Columbia southwest. Our road is hilly, and we have
great trouble with our horses, for they are all wild. We are followed
by a large camp of Indians bent on stealing our horses. Although we
rise at day dawn, we are never ready to start before ten o’clock, the
horses are so difficult to catch. Wednesday, 30th--We have reached
John Day’s River. A great many Indians have collected about us. Each
night the beaver traps are set out, and in the morning some have been
stolen by the Indians. Many horses missing, having been stolen. This
does not prevent raising camp, as by remaining we should lose more
horses than we could get back. Saturday, December 3rd--We bade farewell
to the Columbia River and struck south up the River of the Falls. It
is scarcely credible, though we are such a short distance from the
Columbia, what a difference there is in the country. This soil is
rich. The oaks are large and abundant. The grass is green, though at a
distance on both sides all the hills are powdered with snow. Sunday,
December 4th--It is now very cold, for we have begun ascending the
mountains and camp wherever we can find a brook. The man I sent back
for the lost horses, found them on the north side of the Columbia. He
was obliged to give the Indians thirty balls of powder to get them
back, no doubt a trick, and the thief, himself, restored them, a common
practice with all the Indians. We are coming to the end of the Columbia
hills. Mt. Hood, a grand and noble sight, bears west; Mt. Helen’s
north; and to the south are lofty mountains the shape of sugar loaves.
On all of these are pines, that add to the grandeur. After descending
the divide we reached a plain and struck east, gathering some curious
petrifactions of fir trees. Our horses are greatly fatigued, for the
road is of cut rocks. Deer are abundant. We saw upward of one hundred
to-day, but too swift to be overtaken on this dangerous ground. Many
of the bare hills are of blood-red color. In this quarter are three
boiling fountains of sulphur. I must find an Indian, who will guide us.
If not, we must attempt to cross east without. Our horses are saddle
deep in mire.”
From the time Ogden crossed the sky line of the Blue Mountains for the
headwaters of the Snake, his difficulties began. Hunters to the fore
for the game that was to feed the camp, the cavalcade began zigzagging
up the steep mountain sides. Here, windfall of pines and giant firs,
interlocked twice the height of a man, scattered the wild Cayuse ponies
in the forest. There, the cut rocks, steep as a wall and sharp as
knives, crowded the pack horses to the edge of bottomless precipices
where one misstep meant instant death for rider and horse. And the
mountain torrents tearing over the rocks swept horses away at fording
places, so that once Ogden was compelled to follow the torrent down its
cañon to calmer waters and there build a canoe. In this way his hunters
crossed over by threes and fours, but how to get the fractious horses
across? It was too swift for men to swim, and the bronchos refused to
plunge in. Getting two or three of the wise old bell-mares, that are
in every string of packers, at the end of a long rope, the canoemen
shot across the whirl of midstream and got footing on the opposite
shore. Then by dint of pulling and yelling the frantic horses were half
frightened, half-tumbled into the river, and came out right side up a
hundred yards farther down. At other places, the cut-rocks--a local
term that explains itself--were so steep and sharp, Ogden ordered all
hands dismounted and half the packs carried up on the men’s backs. It
was high up the mountain, and the snow that falls almost continuously
in winter above tree line made the rocks slippery as ice. For a few
days, owing to the altitude and cold, no beaver had been taken, no
game seen. The men were toiling on empty stomachs and short tempers.
Night fell with all hands still sweating up the slippery rocks. A
slave Indian lost his self control and struck Jo. Despard, one of
the freemen, on the back. Throwing down his load, Despard beat the
rascal soundly, but when the battle was over and all the bad temper
expended, the slave Indian was dead. Poor Despard was mad with grief,
for no death was ever passed unpunished by the Hudson’s Bay. Sewing the
murdered man in rolls of buffalo skin, they buried him with service of
prayers on the lonely heights of the Blue Mountains. “It is not in my
power,” writes Ogden, “to send Despard to Vancouver. Until we return to
the headwaters, I will let the affair remain quiet. The poor fellow is
wretched over the murder.”
[Illustration:
Peter Skene Ogden, who led the Hudson’s Bay Company Mountain Brigades
of three and four hundreds through Idaho, Nevada, Utah, California,
Arizona.]
During the march eastward across the valleys, between the Cascade range
and the Rockies, one hundred and sixty traps for beaver were set out
each night. In the mornings, when camp was broken, from thirty to sixty
beaver were considered a good night’s work. Snake Indians were met
and a guide engaged, but the Snakes were notorious horse thieves, and
a guard was kept round the horses each night. Ogden makes a curious
discovery about the beaver in this region. “Owing to the mildness
of the climate,” he writes, “beaver here do not lay up a stock of
provisions as in cold countries.” As the cold of mid-winter came, the
beaver seemed simply to disappear to other haunts. In vain, the men
chiselled and trenched the ice of the rivers above and below the beaver
dams. The beaver houses were found empty. Tom McKay was scouring the
cut-rocks for game with his band of hunters; but it is the season when
game leaves the cut-rocks, and night after night the tired hunters came
in hungry and empty handed. The few beavers trapped were frequently
stolen at night, for there are no ten commandments to hungry men, and
in spite of cold and wet the trappers began sleeping in the swamps near
their traps to keep guard. “If we do not soon find game,” writes Ogden
on December 22nd, “we shall surely starve. My Indian guide threatens
to leave us. If we could only find the headwaters of the Snake
without him, he might go to the devil. We do not see the trace of an
animal. I feel very uneasy about food. Sunday, December 25th--This
being Christmas, all hands remained in camp and I held prayers. The
cold increases. Prospects, gloomy; not twenty pounds of food in camp.
If we escape starvation, God preserve us, it will depend on Tom McKay’s
hunters. On collecting our horses, we found one-third limping. Many of
them could not stand and lay helpless on the plain. If this cold does
not soon pass, my situation with so many men will be terrible. December
31st--One of the freemen, three days without food, killed one of our
horses. This example will soon be followed by others. Only one beaver
to-day. Gave the men half rations for to-morrow, which will be devoured
to-night, as three-quarters in camp have been two days without food.
Sunday, New Year’s, 1826--Remained in camp. Gave all hands a dram. We
had more fasting than feasting. This is the first New Year’s day since
I came to the fur country that my men were without food. Only four
beaver to-day. Sent my men to the mountains for deer. Our horses can
scarcely crawl for want of grass; but march they must, or we starve. In
the evening, Tom McKay and men arrived without seeing the track of an
animal, so this blasts my hope. What will become of us? So many are
starving in camp that they start before daylight to steal beaver out
of their neighbors’ traps. _Had the laconic pleasure of seeing a raven
watching us to-day!_ The wolves follow our camp. Two horses killed for
the kettle. January 11th--Reached the source of Day’s River. Our horses
are too lame to move. A horrible road we have had for ten days of rock
and stone. We have taken in all two hundred and sixty-five beaver and
nine otter here. Our course is due east over barren hills, a lofty
range of mountains on both sides covered with Norway pines. Thank God
if we can cross these mountains I trust to reach Snake River. There
are six feet of snow on the mountain pass here. We must try another.
For ten days we have had only one meal every two days. January 29th--A
horse this day killed--his hoof was found entirely worn away, only the
raw stump left.”
February 2nd, they left the streams flowing west and began following
down a cañon of burnt windfall along the banks of a river that ran
northeast. The divide had been crossed, and the worn bronchos were
the first to realize that the trails of the mountains were passed.
Suddenly pricking forward, they galloped full pace into the valley
of Burnt River, a tributary of the Snake. “A more gloomy looking
country,” writes Ogden, “I never saw. We have been on short allowance
too long and all resemble so many skeletons. We are skin and bone.
More beggarly looking fellows the world could not produce. All the gay
trappings at the beginning of the march have disappeared. Still I have
no complaint of my men. Day after day, they labor in quest of food and
beaver without shoe or moccasin to their feet. The frozen ground is
hardly comfortable for people so scantily clothed. Ten days east is the
buffalo country of the plains, but in our present weak state we could
not reach it in a month.” Ogden was now in the beaver country of the
Snakes and to avoid starvation divided his brigade into small bands
under McKay and Gervais and Sylvaille. These, he scattered along the
tributaries of the Snake River north and south, in what are now known
as Oregon and Idaho, some to the “Rivier Malheur (Unfortunate River)
so-called because this is the place where our goods were discovered and
stolen by the Americans last year”; others to Sandwich Island River,
and Reed’s River, and Payette’s and the Malade, given this name because
beaver here lived on some root which made the flesh poisonous to the
trapper.