Few Snakes were met, because this was the season when the Snakes went

buffalo hunting, but “in our travels this day (26 February) we saw a

Snake Indian’s hut near the road. Curiosity induced me to enter. I had

often heard these wretches subsisted on ants, locusts and small fish

not larger than minnies (minnows); and I wanted to find out if it were

not an exaggeration, but to my surprise I found it was true. One of the

dishes was filled with ants collected in the morning before the thaw

commences. The locusts are gathered in summer in store for the winter.

The Indians prefer the ants. On this food the poor wretches drag out

existence for four months of the year and are happy. During February,

we took one hundred and seventy-four beaver. Had the weather been

mild, we should have had three thousand. An incredible number of deer

here, but only skin and bone, nevertheless most exceptable (?) to us

starving.” He mentions that it was on Sickly or Malade River that the

Blackfeet killed one of his men the preceding year. “If the Americans

have not been here since, we shall find beaver.” On the 13th of March,

McKay came in with a dozen elk, and the half-starved hunters sat up

till dawn feasting. But alas, on March 20th, near Raft River, came a

camp of Indians with word “that a party of Americans are not three

days’ march away. If this be true, our hunts are damned. We may prepare

to go home empty handed. With my discontented men, I dread meeting the

Americans. After the sufferings the men have endured with me, they

will desert.” Snake camps now began to pass westward at the rate of

four hundred people a day, carrying their supply of buffalo meat and

also--what struck sorrow to Ogden’s heart--an American flag. A thousand

Snake warriors were on the way to the Spanish settlements of the South

to trade buffalo meat and steal horses. Near the American Falls, the

Brigade fell in with marauding Blackfeet, friendly, no doubt, because

of Ogden’s wife, who was related to the Northern tribes. “The Blackfeet

informed me, they left the Saskatchewan in December and were in quest

of the Snakes, but finding them so strong did not attempt it. They

consisted of eighty men with the usual reserve of twenty or thirty

Piegans hidden in the hills. March 31st--To-day, twenty-seven beaver,

which makes our first thousand with two to begin the second thousand. I

hope to reach Fort Vancouver with three thousand.”

“Sunday, April 9th, Portneuf River, headwaters of the Snake--About 10

A. M., we were surprised by the arrival of a party of Americans, and

twenty-eight of our deserters of last year. If we were surprised, they

were more so. They expected their threats of last year would prevent

us returning to this quarter, but they find themselves mistaken. They

encamped a short distance away. With the glass, we could observe the

Blackfeet on the hills spying on our movements.

“Monday, April 10th--The strangers have paid me a visit. I had a busy

day settling old scores with them and more to my satisfaction and

the Company’s than last year’s disaster. We received from them eight

thousand one hundred and seventy-two beaver in payment of their debts

due the company and two notes of hand from Mr. Monton. _We secured all

the beaver they had._ Our deserters are tired of their new masters and

will soon return to us. How the Americans make profit when they pay

$3.00 per pound for beaver, I cannot imagine. Within ten months the

Indians have stolen one hundred and eighty traps from these Americans.”

In those few words, does Peter Skene Ogden record an episode that has

puzzled the West for fifty years. How did these Americans come to

sell all the beaver they had to him, at less than they had paid, for

the Hudson’s Bay Company never paid $3.00 a beaver? Were they short

of powder as well as traps? And what old score was Ogden paying off?

What had happened to him the year before? Was that the year when the

Americans stampeded his horses? The record of Ogden’s 1824-25 trip has

been either lost or destroyed, and the Americans’ version of the story

was very vague. General Ashley’s hunters had gone up from St. Louis

and were in the mountains destitute. Suddenly, they met Ogden’s brigade

on the banks of the Snake north of Salt Lake. When the rival hunters

parted, Ogden was destitute and the Americans had Hudson’s Bay furs

variously valued at from $75,000 to $350,000--a variation accounted for

by the fact that the St. Louis traders valued beaver five times higher

than the Hudson’s Bay. The legend is that Ogden’s men were demoralized

by laudanum and whiskey. He acknowledges that twenty-eight of his men

deserted. If the deserters took their furs with them, the transaction

is explained. The Hudson’s Bay would be out of pocket not only the furs

but the hunting outfit to the men. Ashley’s record of the matter was

that he got “a fortune in furs for a song.” Whatever the explanation,

Ogden now scored off the grudge. He took the entire hunt from his

rivals and exacted two promissory notes for former debts.

With almost 10,000 beaver, Ogden now led his brigade down the Snake

northwest for Fort Vancouver on the Columbia. “The Blackfeet,” he

writes, “have set fire to the plains to destroy us, and collect war

parties to surround us. May 6th--It began to snow and continued all

night. Our trappers come in almost frozen. Naked as many are and

without shoes, it is surprising not a murmur or complaint do I hear.

Such men are worthy to follow a Franklin to the Pole. Two-thirds are

without blanket or any shelter and have been so for the last six

months. This day, thirty-four beaver from the traps. Sunday, June

18th--All along the plains of Snake River are women digging the bitter

root. Their stones are sharp as flint. Our tracks could be followed

by the blood from our horses’ feet.” From the headwaters of Day’s

River, the brigade wound across westward to the beautiful valley of the

Willamette. “A finer stream is not to be found,” relates Ogden of the

valley that was to become famous. “All things grown in abundance here.

One could enjoy every comfort here with little labor. The distance

from the ocean is ninety miles. No doubt in years a colony will be

formed on the stream and I am of opinion it will flourish with little

care. Thus ends my second trip to the Snake Country.” The accuracy of

Ogden’s prophecy is fulfilled in prosperous cities on the banks of the

Willamette to-day.

* * * * *

So far, the Oregon brigades had not gone south over the height of

land that divides the Columbia from the Sacramento, but as they had

followed up to the headwaters of the Willamette and the River of the

Falls and John Day’s River, they found their sources in those high,

beautiful Alpine meadows just fringed by trees, walled in by the

snowy peaks and presenting the peculiar phenomenon of swamps above the

clouds. Here were beaver runs and houses in a network. Seventy beaver

a day--each worth two dollars to the trapper--the hundred traps set

out each night--yielded in these uplands. But many of the mountain

torrents, that took their rise in these swamps, flowed south and west.

Would these streams, too, yield as rich harvest of beaver? “The country

must be explored,” writes Ogden, “though we may waste our pains doing

it”; and he steered his brigade of 1826-27 to that region, which was to

become so famous for its gold and silver mines, California and Nevada.

Striking straight south from the Dalles of the Columbia, Ogden had

twenty-five trappers behind in line. Tom McKay, the hunter, marched

to the fore with twenty-five more. Gervais and Sylvaille and Payette

each boasted a following of five or six, some seventy men all told, not

including the women and Indian hangers-on. From the first night out,

horse thieves hung on the heels of the marchers. Half way up the River

of the Falls, one night in October, when a high, dry wind was blowing

a gale, and the brigade had camped in a meadow of brittle rushes seven

feet high, the horse thieves drew off in hiding till the hunters’

ponies had been turned loose. Then they set fire to the grass and

swooped down with a yell to stampede the camp. But Tom McKay was too

keen a hunter to be caught napping. Mounted on his favorite cayuse, he

was off through the swale like an arrow and rounded the entire brigade

into a swamp of willows, where fire could not come. Another time,

Payette and that Pierre, whose death a few years later gave his name

to the famous trappers’ rendezvous of Pierre’s Hole, had gone over a

hillock to set their traps in a fresh valley, when they came on seven

of their own horses being quietly driven off by two Snake Indians. With

a shout, the two indignant trappers fell on the Indians with fists

and clubs. Indian spies, watching from ambush, dashed to the rescue,

with the result that four of the horses were shot, three rushed off

to the hills, and the two trappers left weltering in blood more dead

than alive. Ogden thus expresses his feelings: “It is disgraceful. The

Indians have a contempt for all traders. For the murders committed not

one example has been made. They give us no credit for humanity but

attribute our not revenging murders to cowardice. If opportunity offers

for murder or theft, they never allow it to pass. I am of opinion if

on first discovery of a strange tribe, a dozen Indians were shot, it

would be the means of saving many lives. Had this plan been adopted

with the Snakes, they would not have been so daring and murdered forty

of our men in a few years. Scripture gives us a right to retaliate for

murder. If we have means to prevent murder, why not use them? Why allow

ourselves to be butchered and our property stolen by such vile wretches

not fit to be numbered among the living and the sooner dead, the

better?... It is incredible the number of Snake Indians here. We cannot

go ten yards without finding their huts of grass. No Indian nation in

all North America is so numerous as the Upper and Lower Snakes, the

latter as wild as deer. They lead a most wretched life. An old woman

camped among us the other night. She says from the severe weather last

winter, her people were reduced for want of food to subsist on the

bodies of their children. She, herself, did not kill any one, but fed

on two of her children who died of starvation--an encouraging example

for us at present, reduced to one meal a day.”

By November, the brigades were on the height of land between the

Sacramento and the Columbia, in the regions of alkali plains and desert

mountains in northern California and Nevada. Ogden at once sent back

word of his whereabouts to Chief Factor McLoughlin of Fort Vancouver,

little dreaming that the trail southward, which he was now finding,

would be marked by the bleaching bones of treasure hunters in the rush

to the gold mines. Trappers under McKay and Gervais and Sylvaille were

spread out on the headwaters of the Willamette, and the Klamath and

the Sacramento; but the dusty alkali plains were too dry for beaver.

In three months, only five hundred were taken, while man and beast

were reduced to extremity of endurance from lack of food and water. By

the 16th, they were on the very apex of the divide, a parched, alkali

plain, where the men got water by scooping snow from the crevices

of the rocks and tried to slake their horses’ thirst by driblets of

snow-water in skin-bags. Two thirst-maddened horses dropped dead on

the march, the famished trappers devouring the raw flesh like ravenous

wolves. Two little lakes, or alkali sinks were found--“a Godsend

to us”--writes Ogden, and the horses plunged in to saddle girths

drinking of the stagnant, brackish stench. From where they paused to

camp--though there was neither wood nor sage bush for fire--they could

see the Umpqua in the far north, the Klamath straight northwest, a

river which they did not know was the Sacramento, south; and towering

in the west above the endless alkali and lava beds of the plains

stretching east, the cones of a giant mountain high as Hood or Baker,

opalescent and snow-capped. Ogden named both the mountain and the river

here Shasta, after the name of the Indian tribes whom he met. He was

on the borderlands of California, on the trail which thousands of

gold-seekers were to follow from Oregon in ’49.

Speaking of the Klamath Indians, he says: “They live in tents built on

the water of their lakes, approachable only by canoes. The tents are of

logs like block houses, the foundation stone or gravel made solid by

piles sunk six feet deep. The Indians regretted we had found our way

through the mountains. They said, ‘the Cayuses tried to attack us, but

could not find the trail. Now they will follow yours.’”

McKay had brought in only seven hundred beaver from his various raids

on the waters west of Shasta. In these alkali swamps were no beaver.

Ogden had explored the height of land. He now determined to cross

the alkali desert eastward while there was still a chance of winter

snow and rain quenching thirst; and he only awaited the return of his

messengers from McLoughlin. “Friday, December 2nd--Late last night,

I was overjoyed by the arrival of my expressmen from the fort. One

of the trappers hunting lost horses discovered them; otherwise, they

would never have reached camp. They could no longer walk and were

crawling. For fourteen days they had been without food, for nine days

without quenching thirst. Their horses were stolen by the Snakes. On

entering my lodge, the poor man fell from weakness and could not

rise. I immediately sent back for the other man. About midnight he

was brought in, thank God, safe!” Christmas was spent on the edge of

the desert: “Did not raise camp. We are reduced to one meal a day.

Discontent prevails. We have yet three months of winter travel. God

grant them well over and that our horses escape the kettle. I am the

most unfortunate man on earth, but God’s will be done.”

Possibly, Ogden’s low spirits may be traced to drinking that alkali

water on the divide. For two months the whole camp suffered. The

brigade was still among the Shastas and Klamaths in February, and Ogden

records a curious incident of one Indian: “Among our visitors is a man

with only one arm. I asked him how he lost the other. He informed me

the other arm was badly wounded in battle, very painful and would not

heal; so he cut it off himself three inches below the socket with his

flint knife and axe made of flint. It is three years since. He healed

it with roots and is free from pain.” Rains now began to fall in such

torrents the leather tents fell to pieces from rain rot and for twenty

days not a blanket in camp was dry. Ogden set out to cruise across the

desert, thankful that sickness quieted the cravings for food. Shasta

River was left on the rear on March 13th, “our unruly guide being

forcibly tied on horseback by ropes and all hands obliged to sleep in

pouring rains without blankets. Not one complaint in camp. This life

makes a young man old. Wading in swamps ice-cold all day, the trappers

earn their ten shillings for beaver. A convict at Botany Bay has a

gentleman’s existence compared to my poor fellows. March 26th--Our

guide discovered a grizzly bear. One of the trappers aimed but only

wounded it. Our guide asked permission to pursue it. Stripping himself

naked, armed only with an axe, he rushed after the bear, but he paid

dearly for the rashness, for his eyes were literally torn out, and the

bear escaped to the sage-bush.”

The guide had to be left with his tribe and the white men to shift

for themselves crossing the desert. Knowing vaguely that Snake River

was northeast, Ogden struck across the northwest corner of the Nevada

desert, Desert of Death it was called among the trappers. Each night

a call was made for volunteers, and two men set out by moonlight to

go ahead and hunt water for the next camp. The water was often only a

lava sink, into which horses and men would dash, coming out, as Ogden

describes it, “looking blistered and as if they had been pickled.”

Sometimes, the trail seekers came back at day-dawn with word there

was _no_ water ahead. Then Ogden sat still beside his mud lakes, or

stagnant pools whose stench sickened man and beast, and sent out fresh

men by twos in another direction till water was found. Again and again

he repeats the words: “It is critical, but the country must be explored

if we can find water to advance.... We can’t go on without water, but

the country must not remain unknown any longer. There are Snake huts

ahead. There must be muddy lakes somewhere. June 2nd--I sent two men to

proceed southeast and try that direction. They will march all night to

escape the heat. If we do not succeed in that direction, our starvation

is certain. Sunday, June 3rd--8 A. M., the two men arrived and report

nothing but barren plains--no water. No hope in that direction. I at

once ordered the men off again northeast. They left at 9 A. M. All

in camp very sick owing to stagnant water. If I escape this year, I

will not be doomed to come again. June 4th, at dawn of day, men came

back. They found water, where we camped last fall (on the Snake). At 9

A. M. we started quick pace, _sauve qui peut_ over dreary, desolate,

sandy country, horses panting from thirst. At 6 A. M., June 6th, we

reached water to the joy of all.” They were really on the upper forks

of Sandwich and Malheur rivers. The end of July saw the horses of the

brigade pasturing in the flowery meadows at Walla Walla and the happy

trappers forgetful of all past miseries, sweeping down the swift

current of the Columbia for Fort Vancouver, where Doctor McLoughlin

awaited with a blessing for each man.

Ogden had vowed he would not be doomed to cruise in the wilderness

another year. He reached Vancouver in July. On August 24th, he was

again at the head of the Oregon brigade, leading off from Walla Walla

for the Grande Ronde, a famous valley of the Snake where the buffalo

runners gathered to trade with the mountaineers and coastal tribes.

There was good pasturage summer and winter. A beautiful stream ran

through the meadow and mountains sheltered it from all but the warm

west winds. Indian women came here to gather the camas root and set out

from the Grande Ronde in spring for the buffalo hunts of the plains.

Here, trappers could meet half a dozen tribes in friendly trade and

buy the cayuse ponies for the long trips across the mountains to the

Missouri, or up the Snake to Great Salt Lake, or across the South

Pass to the Platte. Ogden divided his brigade as usual into different

parties under McKay and Payette and Sylvaille, scattering his trappers

on both sides of the Snake south as far as the bounds of the present

State of Utah.

Toward the end of September, when in the region of Salmon Falls on the

Snake, he was disgusted to encounter a rival party of forty American

traders led by a man named Johnson. “My sanguine hopes of beaver are

blasted,” he despairingly writes. “I am camped with the Americans.

Their trappers are everywhere. They will not part with a single beaver.

Kept advancing south. The Americans informed me they meant to keep on

my trail right down to the Columbia. We are surrounded by Blackfeet

and Snakes bound to the buffalo hunt. I am uneasy. The Snake camp has

upward of fifteen hundred warriors and three thousand horses. We are

in full view of the Pilot Knobs or Three Tetons where rise the waters

of the Columbia, the Missouri, and the Spanish River. The waters of

Goddin’s River disappear in this plain, taking a subterraneous route

to Snake River. The chief of the Snakes carries an American flag. The

headquarters of the Americans are south of Salt Lake (on Green River).

December 14th--Another party of six under a leader named Tullock, a

decent fellow, has joined us. He told me his Company wished to enter

an agreement with the Hudson’s Bay regarding the return and debts of

deserters who go from us to them, or from them to us. He says the

conduct of Gardner at our meeting four years ago”--when Ogden was

robbed--“has not been approved. Our trappers have their goods on

moderate terms, but the price we pay them for beaver is low compared

to the Americans. The Americans pay $5.00 for beaver large or small.

We pay $2.00 for large and $1.00 for small. Here is a wide difference

to the free trapper. If he takes his furs to St. Louis, he will get

$5.50. Most of the American trappers have the following plan: Goods are

sold to them at 150 per cent. advance, but delivered to them here in

the Snake country. Not requiring to transport their provisions, they

need few horses. For three years, General Ashley has brought supplies

to this country from St. Louis and in that time cleared $80,000 and

retired, selling his goods at an advance of 150 per cent., payable

in five years in beaver at $5.00 a beaver. Three young men, Smith,

Jackson, Sublette, bought the goods and in the first year cleared

$20,000. Finding themselves alone, they sold their goods to the Indians

one-third dearer than Ashley did. What a contrast to myself. They

will be independent in a few years.” It may be explained that Ogden’s

prediction of these American trappers was fulfilled. Those who were not

killed in the Indian country retired rich magnates of St. Louis, to

become governors and senators and men of honor in their state.

But Ogden could not forget these men were of the same company who had

robbed him four years before, and when snow fell six feet deep in the

mountain pass to Green River, Ogden laid his plans to pay back the

grudge in his own suave way. “Tullock, the American, who failed to

get through the snow to Salt Lake, tried to engage an Indian to carry

letters to the American camp. This, I cannot prevent. _I cannot bribe

all the Indians_, but I have succeeded in keeping them from making

snowshoes for the Americans. The Americans are very low spirited. They

cannot hire a messenger or purchase snowshoes, nor do they suspect

that I prevent it. I have supplied them with meat, as they cannot kill

buffalo without snowshoes. I dread if they go down to Salt Lake, they

will return with liquor. A small quantity would be most advantageous

to them but the reverse to me. If I had the same chance they have (a

camp near) long since I would have had a good stock of liquor here;

and every beaver in the camp would be mine. As all their traps have

been stolen but ten, no good can result from their reaching their camp

and returning here. We have this in our favor--they have a mountain to

cross and before the snow melts can bring but little from Green River

here.”

Three times the Americans set out for their rendezvous south of

Salt Lake, and three times were driven back by the weather. “It is

laughable,” chuckles the crafty Briton, who was secretly pulling the

strings that prevented his rivals getting either goods or snowshoes.

“It is laughable, so many attempts, and no success. They have only

twenty-four horses left. The rest of the fifty they brought are dead

from cold. I have small hope that our own horses can escape, but I can

cover them with robes each night.”

On the 16th of March, the entire encampment of Americans and Hudson’s

Bay were paralyzed with amazement at a spectacle that was probably

never seen before or since so far south in the mountains--messengers

coming through the snow-blocked mountain pass from the American camp

on Green River by means of dog sleds. “It was a novel sight to see

trappers arrive with dogs and sleds in this part of the world; for

usually, not two inches of snow are to be found here. They brought the

old story, of course, that the Hudson’s Bay Company was soon to quit

the Columbia. At all events the treaty of joint occupation does not

expire till November. By their arrival, a new stock of cards has come

to camp, and the trappers are gambling day and night. Some have already

lost upwards of eight hundred beaver. Old Goddin, who left me last

year, goes to St. Louis, having sold his eight horses and ten traps for

$1,500. His hunt is worth $600.00 more, which makes him an independent

man. In our Hudson’s Bay service, with the strictest economy, he could

scarcely save that in ten years. Is it any wonder the trappers prefer

the American service? The American trader, Mr. Campbell, said their

treatment of me four years ago is greatly regretted. The Americans

leave for the Kootenay Country of the North. We separate on the best

of terms. They told me their traders from St. Louis failed to arrive

last fall owing to severe weather and their camp south of Salt Lake had

been attacked by Blackfeet, and Pierre, my old Iroquois, was cut to

pieces.” In other words, Ogden’s narrative proves that the St. Louis

traders, with a camp on the upper waters of Colorado River, had gone as

far north as Kootenay by 1828. I fancy this will be news to the most

of investigators, as well as the fact that the Hudson’s Bay were as

far south as California before 1828. Two months later, in May, on his

way down the Snake River to Vancouver, Ogden met a large band of Snake

warriors returning from raiding the Blackfeet on the Saskatchewan.

In the loot captured from the Blackfeet, were the clothes and entire

camp outfit of the forty Americans, who had wintered with Ogden, a

convincing enough proof of foul play. The Snakes reported that the furs

of the Americans had been left scattered on the plains, and the party,

itself, massacred. “The sight of this booty caused gloom in camp. God

preserve us from a like fate,” writes Ogden. Two weeks later, LaValle,

one of his own trappers, was found dead beside his traps. Near-by lay

a canvas wrapper with the initials of the American Fur Company, proof

that the marauders had been the same band of Blackfeet who attacked the

Americans, first on Green River and then on the Saskatchewan.

* * * * *

Ogden’s wanderings had now taken him along all the southeastern

tributaries of the Columbia from Mt. Shasta across California, Nevada

and Idaho to the headwaters of the Snake, but there was still one

beaver region unpenetrated by him--between Salt Lake desert and the

Nevada desert. In crossing from Mt. Shasta to the Snake, he had but

scampered over the northern edge of this region, and hither he steered

his course in 1828. As usual, the brigade went up the valley of the

Walla Walla, pausing in the Grande Ronde to prepare tent poles, for

the year’s wandering was to be over the treeless desert. Powder River,

Burnt River, Malheur, where the Americans had robbed him--were passed

in succession. Then Sandwich Island and Portneuf were trapped. They

were now on the borders of the arid, sage-bush plains. Ashley’s man,

Jim Bridger, sometime between 1824 and 1828, had found the south side

of Salt Lake; and as early as 1776, the Spaniards had legends of its

waters. Ogden now swung four days’ march southwest and explored the

entire surroundings of Salt Lake. Then he struck westward across those

wastes that were to be the grave of so many California and Nevada

gold-seekers. High winds swept the dry dust in clouds through the air.

The horses sank to their saddle girths through the fine sand, and hot

winds were succeeded by a blanketing fog, that obliterated all marks of

direction, so that the brigade was blindly following the trail of some

unknown Indian tribe. “Nov. 1st, 7 A. M.--Our track this day between

high mountains on both sides over a plain covered with wormwood. The

scouts saw two Indians, whom they captured and brought to camp. More

stupid brutes I never saw. We could not make them understand our

meaning. Gave one a looking glass and set them at liberty. In less than

ten minutes, they were far from us. Had not advanced three miles next

morning when we found three large lakes covered with wild fowl. The

waters were salt. Next day the men in advance discovered the trail to a

large river. Reached a bend in the river and camped. Indians numerous.

They fly from us in all directions. We are the first whites they have

seen. This is the land of the Utas. I have named the river the River of

the Lakes, not a wide stream but certainly a long one.”

Ogden had discovered the river that was called by his own name among

trappers, but was later named Humboldt by Freemont. To his great joy,

beaver were as abundant as the Indians. The traps set out each night

yielded sixty beaver each morning. Ogden at once scattered his brigade

in three directions: west toward Salt Lake, where the river seemed to

but did not take its rise; north toward the forks of the Snake four

days’ march away, and southwest where the river seemed to flow. “Nov.

9th--One of the hunters going downstream returned with word this river

discharges into a lake, no water or grass beyond, only hills of sand.

Advanced to the lake and camped. I was surprised to find the river

takes a subterranean passage and appears again, a large stream lined

with willows. So glad was I to see it, that at the risk of my life I

dashed over swamps, hills, and rocks to it and the first thing I saw

was a beaver house well stocked. Long before dawn of day, every trap

and trapper was in motion. As dawn came, the camp was deserted. Success

to them all! As far as I can see, this river flows due west. Trappers

arrived at night with fifty beaver. Indians paid us a visit. On asking

them what they did with their furs, they pointed to their shoes.

Examination showed them to be made of beaver. It is warm here as in

September and the Indians wear no clothing. They are without houses or

arrows or any defence.”

In the midst of all this jubilation over the discovery of a large river

and the success in trapping, one of the hunters, Jo Paul, the same Jo

Paul who had acted as guide for the Nor’Westers in Athabasca, fell

dangerously ill. He was in too great pain to be moved. Yet to remain

for the sake of one man meant starvation for the whole camp. Ogden

would not hasten the poor fellow’s death by marching and the brigade

waited till the horses were out of grass. Ogden sent spies forward to

reconnoiter good camping ground, sent the tenting kit on, and had the

sick man moved on a stretcher. There was no blare of trumpets after

the manner of civilized heroism, but on the morning of the 11th of

December, two hunters came forward to Ogden and quietly volunteered

to remain in the desert with the sick man. The man, himself, had been

begging Ogden to throw him in the river or shoot him, as it was quite

apparent he could not recover. “I gave my consent for the two men to

remain,” relates Ogden, not even mentioning the names of the heroes.

“There is no other alternative for us. It is impossible for the whole

party to remain and feed on horse flesh for four months. One hundred

horses would not suffice, and what would become of us afterward?”

Turning back up Unknown River, Ogden wintered on Salt Lake; “a gloomy,

barren region, except for wolves, no other animals seen,” he relates

of the backward march. “Here we are at the end of Great Salt Lake,

having this season explored half the north side of it, and we can

safely assert, as the Americans have of the south side, that it is

a country destitute of everything.” On the 1st of January, came the

trappers who had nursed their comrade to the time of his death.

“Of all the men who first came to the Snake country,” writes Ogden,

“there remains now only one alive. All the others have been killed

except two, who died a natural death. It is incredible the number who

have perished in this country.” When spring came, Ogden again set

out for Unknown or Humboldt River, following it westward where it

disappears into alkali sinks. Two thousand beaver in all were taken

from the river. “Country level far as eye can see. I am at a loss

to know where this river discharges. We start at dawn to escape the

heat. The journey is over beds of sand. The horses sink leg deep. The

country is level, though hills can be seen southwest. The Indians are

not so numerous as last fall, but from the number of fires seen in

the mountains, I know they are watching us and warning their tribes.

Nowhere have I found beaver so abundant. The total number of American

trappers in this region is eighty. My trappers average one hundred and

twenty-five a man for the season and are greatly pleased. The number of

pelicans seems to indicate a lake. If it is salt, there is an end to

our beaver.”

It was not the desert but the Indians that finally drove Ogden back.

He had advanced almost to the Shasta in California when a tribe of

Indians from Pit River began mauling his trappers, though Ogden had

taken the precaution of sending them out only in twos. It was the 28th

of May. The brigade had turned northeast to strike for some branch of

the Columbia, to pass from what is now known as Nevada to Oregon, when

“a man who had gone to explore the lake (where the river disappears)

dashed in breathless with word of ‘Indians.’ He had a narrow escape.

Only the fleetness of his horse saved him. When rounding a point within

sight of the lake, twenty men on horseback gave the war cry. He fled.

An Indian would have overtaken him, but the trapper discharged his gun

in the fellow’s face. He says the hills are covered with Indians. I

gave orders to secure our horses, and for ten men to advance and spy

on what the Indians were doing, but not to risk a battle, as we were

too weak. They reported more than two hundred warriors marching on us.

On they galloped. Having signaled a spot for them to halt five hundred

yards from our camp, I went out, met them, desired them to be seated.”

One wonders what would have happened at this point if instead of the

doughty little man with the squeaky voice and podgy body and spirit of

a lion, there had been a coward at the head of the Oregon brigade. What

if the leader had lost his head and fled in panic, or fired?

“This order,” writes Ogden, “was obeyed. They sat down. From their

dress and drums, I knew it was a war party. If they had not been

discovered, they had intended to attack us. Weak as we were--only

twelve guns in camp--they would have been successful. They gave me

the following information through a Snake interpreter: this river

discharges in a lake, that has no outlet. In eight days’ march is a

large river but no beaver” (the Sacramento, or Rogue River named after

these Indians). “There is another river (Pit River). We saw rifles,

ammunition and arms among them. This must be the plunder of the sixteen

Americans under Jedediah Smith, who were murdered here in the fall”

(Smith had reached Fort Vancouver naked, and Doctor McLoughlin had

sent Tom McKay out to punish these Indians). “They wanted to enter my

camp. I refused. A more daring set of rascals I have never seen. The

night was dark and stormy. The hostile fires burned all night. As I do

not wish to infringe on the territory of Mr. McLeod’s Umpqua brigade,

I gave orders to raise camp and return. McLeod’s territory is on the

waters emptying in the Pacific. If Mr. McLeod had reached Bona Venture,

he must have passed this stream. I told the Indians in three months,

they would see us again, and we steered for Sylvaille’s River. Passed

Paul’s grave where he must sleep till the last great trumpet sounds.”

In July, the brigade reached Fort Vancouver by way of John Day’s River.

In four years, the South Brigades had explored Oregon, Idaho, the north

of California, Nevada and Utah as well as the corner of Wyoming--a

fairly good record for brave men, who made no pretenses and thought no

greatness of daily deeds. The next few years, other men led the Oregon

brigade South. Ogden was sent North to open up that Russian strip of

coast leading to the interior of British Columbia. Henceforth, he led

the canoe brigade to the famous Caribou and Cassiar regions, but he

came back to pass his last days in Oregon, where he died on the banks

of the Willamette about 1854. Looking back over the plain little man’s

plain life, told in plain words without a thought of heroism, I cannot

say I am surprised that his numerous descendants and distinguished

relatives of the East are as proud of him as other people are of the

Mayflower and William the Conqueror.

_Notes to Chapter XXXI._--Ogden’s daily journals as sent in to H. B.

C. House, London, fill some six or eight note-books--foolscap size--of

three hundred pages each. The contents of this chapter are taken

entirely from my copies of these daily journals.

* * * * *

The Jo. Paul and his son, Jo. Paul, were two of the most famous

guides and bullies in the West during the last century. Of them both

the same story is told: of the father in these H. B. C. journals,

of the son in the Oblate Missionary annals. In an article on Père

Lacombe, I told the story as of the son. What was my surprise to find

the same story turn up in the H. B. C. journals, about Jo. Paul, Sr.

Whether father or son, here is the legend of their prowess. In the

days when the French bullies used to meet and fight the Orkneymen on

the Saskatchewan, Jo. Paul chanced to enter an H. B. C. post. Knowing

his fame for strength, the clerk thought to put up a trick on him. A

sugar barrel was filled with lead. “There, Jo. Paul,” said the clerk,

“lift that barrel of sugar on the counter for me--will you?” Jo.

Paul gave it a tug. It did not budge. He gave it another tug. Not a

move! Very heavy sugar. Jo. Paul scented a trick. Mustering all his

strength, he seized the barrel and hurled it with a slam right on

the counter. It splintered through counter and floor to the bottom

of the cellar. “_Voila, mon enfant_,” says Jo. Paul with a shrug.

Whether the incident occurred with the Jo. Paul whose body lies lonely

on the desert river, or the Jo. Paul who guided the Oblates up the

Saskatchewan, I do not know, It is just a Jo. Paul legend of those

early days.

CHAPTER XXXII

1825-1859

MCLOUGHLIN’S TRANSMONTANE EMPIRE CONTINUED--DOUGLAS’ ADVENTURES

IN NEW CALEDONIA, HOW HE PUNISHES MURDER AND IS HIMSELF ALMOST

MURDERED--LITTLE YALE OF THE LOWER FRASER--BLACK’S DEATH AT

KAMLOOPS--HOW TOD OUTWITS CONSPIRACY--THE COMPANY’S OPERATIONS IN

CALIFORNIA AND SANDWICH ISLANDS AND ALASKA--WHY DID RAE KILL HIMSELF

IN SAN FRANCISCO?--THE SECRET DIPLOMACY.

McLoughlin’s empire beyond the mountains included not only the states

now known as Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, Utah,

Colorado, Wyoming and parts of Montana, but it extended north of what

is now the International Boundary through Okanogan and Kamloops and

Cariboo to the limits of the Yukon. This Northern Empire was known

as New Caledonia. Soon after coming to Oregon, McLoughlin realized

that it was a fearful waste of energy and life to transport the furs

and provisions of British Columbia all the way across America to and

from York on Hudson Bay, or Lachine on the St. Lawrence. Both could

be conveyed cheaper round the world by ship from London; so the ship

_Cadboro_ begins to ply on yearly voyage from London to the Columbia,

with Hawaii as half-way house in the Pacific, where Alex Simpson, a

relative of Governor Simpson, acts as Hudson’s Bay Company agent to

buy supplies from the natives and trade to them in turn hides and

provisions from the Hudson’s Bay Company farms of Oregon. Later, comes

the little steamer _Beaver_, the first steam vessel of the Pacific, to

run between Columbia and the Company posts up and down the coast.

Henceforth, though Oregon is under Governor Simpson’s direction, it

becomes a kingdom by itself, with McLoughlin the sole autocrat. Furs

from the mountain brigades of the South--of the Sacramento and the

Snake and Salt Lake--from the mountain brigades of the East--from

Idaho and Montana and Wyoming--from the mountain brigades of the

North--Okanogan and Kamloops and Fraser River and New Caledonia--poured

into Fort Vancouver to be exchanged for supplies and transshipped to

London.

The Northern brigades were more picturesque even than those of Snake

River and Montana. The regions traversed were wilder, the Indians

more hostile, the scenery more varied. The Caledonia brigade set out

from Fort Vancouver by boat. Sixty or seventy voyageurs manned the

large canoes that stemmed the floodtide of the Columbia, the pilot’s

canoe flying an H. B. C. flag from its prow, the steersman of each

boat striking up the tune of a voyageurs’ song, the crew joining in

full-throated chorus, keeping time with the rap of their paddles,

and perhaps some Highlander droning his bagpipes as the canoes wound

up the rocky cañons of the great river. Did Indians hang about the

Dalles meditating mischief? “Sing!” commands the head steersman, and

the weird chant echoing among the lonely hills, rouses the courage of

the white men and stems the ardor of the Indians. Where the canoes

thwart the boiling torrent of cross currents or nearing rapids--to a

man the voyageurs brace themselves, reach forward in their places, and

plunge the flying paddles into a sweep of waters that takes all their

strength. The singing ceases. Another singing is in their ears--the

roar of the waters with the noise of an angry sea till the traverse is

thwarted, or the portage reached and the distance measured off by “the

pipes” a man smokes as he trots overland pack on back. “Five pipes” are

the long portages.

At Okanogan, canoes are exchanged for horses--two or three hundred in

the pack train led by the wise old bell-mares, whose tinkling in the

peopleless wilderness echoes through the forests like the silver notes

of a flute. Pack horses are like pack people--with characters of as

many colors as Joseph’s coat. There are the rascals, who bolt at every

fording place, only to be rounded back with a shoulder nip by the old

bell-mares. There are the lazy fellows, who go to sleep in midstream

till the splashing waves have soaked every article in the pack. There

are the laggards, who slip aside and hide till the tinkling bell has

faded in the distance. There are the quarrelers, who are forever

shouldering their nearest neighbor off the trail, and the mischief

makers, who try to rub packs off against every passing tree, and the

clumsy footers, who lose a leg and go down head over heels where the

sand slithers or the trail narrows, and the good old steady goers who

could find their way unled from Okanogan, eight hundred miles north,

to New Caledonia--sleek, well-fed, fat fellows all of them, when they

leave Okanogan, however tagged and lamed they may be when they wind up

Fraser River.

To the fore, near the pilot, rides the Chief Factor--black beaver hat

which must have caused the gentleman a deal of trouble riding under

low hanging branches, dark blue or black suit, white shirt, ruffled

collar to his ears, frock coat, and when it is cold a great coat with

as many capes as a Spanish lady’s mantilla, lined throughout with red

or tartan silks. When camp is made, first duty is to erect the Chief

Factor’s tent apart from the common people. Though the old Company

no longer swash-bucklered a continent in gold braid with swords and

pistols in belt, its rulers still kept up the pomp and pageantry of

little kings. Near the Chief Factor often rode an incoming missionary.

The traders and clerks strung out in a line behind, with the married

men and their families to the rear. Bugle or shout roused all hands

at five in the morning, but what with breakfast and loading the pack

horses and rounding all in line, it was usually ten o’clock before

the long caravan began to move forward. The swish of leather leggings

against saddle girths, the grass padded trampling of the horses, the

straining of the pack ropes as the long line filed zigzag up a steep

mountain side to a sky-line pass--all produced a peculiarly drowsy

humming sound like a multitude of bees. No stop was made for nooning.

With hunters alert for a chance shot to supply the supper table, with

other riders nodding half asleep, the brigade wound north and north,

through the mossed forests, now among the rolling hills, with here

and there a snowy peak looming opal above the far clouds; now in the

valleys where the river flowed with a hush and the sunlight came only

in shafts; now on the sky-line of a pass where forests and hills and

valleys rolled a sunbathed, misty panorama below; now in shadowy cañons

where the only sign of life was the eagle circling overhead!

Kamloops was the great half-way house for the north-bound brigades.

Here, worn horses were exchanged for fresh mounts. Half the

far-traveled traders dropped off to stay in this district. The rest for

a week enjoyed the luxury of sleep in a bed, and limbs uncramped from

saddle stiffness. The fort was palisaded as usual and was the trading

post for the Shushwaps and Lower Fraser River Indians. It had been the

headquarters of David Thompson, the mountain explorer long ago, and had

been named after him; but on a change of the site was called after the

name of the Indian lake. The mountains, which have seemed to crush in

on the wayfarers like walls, widen out at Kamloops to upland prairies

and rolling meadows flanked by forested hills. To the wearied hunters

of the north-bound brigades, it was like a garden in a desert, an oasis

of life in a wilderness of mountain wilds. Saddles were hung on the

wooden pegs stuck in the clay of the log walls and horses turned out to

pasture in grass knee-deep.

* * * * *

Round Kamloops cling a thousand legends of that border region in human

progress between savagery and civilization. Indeed, the legends of

Kamloops might be pages taken from the border tales of England and

Scotland. With Hubert Howe Bancroft of San Francisco rests the credit

of rescuing these legends from oblivion. At Kamloops were stationed

many of the famous old worthies of the Northwest Company. First was

David Thompson. Then came Alexander Ross of Okanogan, later of Red

River. Soon after the union of the two great companies, there came

to Kamloops as chief factor that Samuel Black, who had been such a

redoubtable rival to Colin Robertson in Athabasca. So high did Black

stand in the esteem of his old comrades in adventure, that when the

union took place he had been presented with a ring on which were

engraved the words--“To the most worthy of the worthy North-Westers.”

With one of the brigades came David Douglas, the famous botanist, to

Kamloops. The two Scotchmen, thrown together alone in the wilderness,

became friends at once; but one night over their wine the discussion

grew hot. Douglas, the visitor, bluntly blurted out that in his opinion

“there was not an officer in the Hudson’s Bay Company with a soul above

a beaver skin.” Like a flash, Chief Factor Black sprang to his feet,

as keen to defend the Company as he had formerly been to revile it.

He challenged the botanist on the spot to a duel; but it was already

dark, and the fight had to be postponed till morning. Scarcely had

day-dawn come over the hills when Black tapped on the parchment window

of his guest’s chamber--“Meester Dooglas! Meester Dooglas! A’ ye ready?”

But a night’s sleep had cooled the botanist’s ardor. He excused himself

from the contest, and as daylight cleared the fumes of their wine away,

the two Scotchmen, no doubt, laughed heartily over their foolishness.

The Shushwaps were warlike and treacherous and changeable as wind.

Living alone among them, it may be guessed that the white trader needed

the proverbial wisdom of the serpent. Chief of the Shushwaps in 1841,

was that Tranquille, after whom the river is named. Tranquille and

Black had had words over a gun, which another Indian had left at the

stores; but the chief had gone home with good humor restored. Almost at

once he fell ill.

“An enemy hath done this! It is the evil eye!” muttered his wife.

“No,” answered the chief, “my only sorrow is that before I die I cannot

take by the hand my best friend, Mr. Black, and ask forgiveness for any

hasty words.”

“Subtle is the evil medicine of the white men,” answered his wife.

“Peace, fool!” Then to the Indians in his tent: “Pay no heed to her

words. Mr. Black’s heart is good. Ask him to have me buried after the

white man’s fashion.”

After his death the chief’s wishes were fulfilled, and Mr. Black sent

across a board coffin for the body.

But in the dead chief’s lodge lived a nephew to whom the disconsolate

widow made moan.

“Ah, great chief, must thy spirit go to the happy hunting grounds

alone, while he who sent thee thither bathes in the blessed sunlight?

Ah, that there is none to avenge thee! Who shall now be our chief? Our

young men are cowards!”

“Enraged beyond endurance,” relates Bancroft, “the youth sprang to his

feet and gave the old woman a smart slap on the cheek.

“‘Very brave to strike an old woman,’ she taunted; ‘but to avenge an

uncle’s death is a different matter.’

[Illustration: John McLoughlin, King of Oregon, who ruled from Alaska

to California.]

“Burning with sorrow, the boy arose, threw off his clothing, blackened

his face, seized his gun and hurried to Kamloops. There he received

every kindness. Though warned by the interpreter, who feared that the

blackened face and scanty clothing on a cold February day indicated

mischief, Mr. Black directed the boy to the fire in the Indian hall

and sent him food and pipe and tobacco. The nephew smoked in moody

silence. Toward evening, as Black was passing through the room, the

young savage raised his gun and fired. The chief trader staggered into

the next room and fell dead before his wife and children. The murderer

escaped. The news spread. From Fort Vancouver, McLoughlin sent men to

hunt to the death the murderer, ordering John Tod to take charge of

Kamloops. All traffic at the fort must be stopped until the murderer

should be delivered. Calling the Shushwaps, Mr. Tod informed them not a

hair of their heads should be hurt; but the guilty person must be found.

“Then arose Nicola, chief of the Okanogans. ‘You ask for powder and

ball,’ he declared, ‘and the whites refuse you with a scowl. Why do the

white men let your children starve! Look there!’--pointing to Black’s

grave--‘Your friend lies dead! Are the Shushwaps such cowards to shoot

their benefactor in the back? Alas, yes; you have killed your father!

You must not rest till you have brought to justice his murderer.’

Action quickly followed. The murderer lay hidden in the mountains

of Cariboo. A few picked men started in pursuit. They found the boy.

Placing heavy irons on him, they threw him across a horse and started

for Kamloops. They were obliged to cross the river in a canoe. In

midstream, with a sudden jerk, the prisoner capsized the boat. But on

the opposite bank was old Nicola with a band of warriors. The boy knew

his hour had come. As he floated down the stream, he raised his death

song, which was hushed by the crack of rifles, and the lifeless body

sank beneath the crimson waters.”

This legend Bancroft obtained from Tod, who was on the spot at the

time, and from McKinlay of Walla Walla, who had received the story

first hand.

Tod took up the reins of authority at Kamloops. Tod moves the fort to

a better site, has seven buildings erected inside the palisades, and

two bastions placed at opposite angles to protect the walls. Then he

sends his hunters afield and remains in the fort with no companion save

his wife and three children. Four years passed tranquilly and Chief

Lolo rose to be the ascendant leader of the Shushwaps. For the story

of Tod’s rule at Kamloops, the world is again indebted to Bancroft,

who obtained the facts from Tod, himself. In the band of three hundred

brigade horses roaming outside the palisades was a beautiful cayuse

pony, which Lolo, the chief, coveted. “It was the custom,” says

Bancroft, “to send a party from Kamloops to fish on the Fraser. This

year (1846) Lolo was to lead the party. The second night after the

departure, just as the chief trader was retiring, a knock was heard at

the door. Beside himself, his family and a Half-breed boy, there was

not a soul about the place. The fort gates were not even fastened.

“‘Come in,’ exclaimed Tod.

“Slowly the door opens until the black eyes of Lolo were seen

glistening. Though fearful that some misfortune had happened to the

party, Tod was Indian enough never to manifest surprise. The Shushwap

pushed open the door and slowly entered.

“‘Your family will be glad to see you,’ Tod remarked, wondering what

had happened.

“‘The sorrel horse,’ began the chief. ‘I want that horse, Mr. Tod.’

“‘The river has risen,’ observed Tod.

“‘For twenty years I have followed the fortunes of the Hudson’s Bay

Company ... and never before have I been denied a request.’

“‘Fill your pipe,’ said Tod.

“‘Alas! My wives and little ones! Though I am old and not afraid to

die, they are young and helpless....’

“‘What the devil is the matter?’ now blurted out Tod. ‘Who talks of

dying? Where are the men? Why have you returned? Speak!’

“Briefly, Lolo declared that the Shushwaps had formed a conspiracy to

attack the Kamloops brigade.

“‘Where are the men and horses?’

“‘I hid them as well as I could off the trail, telling them I was going

to hunt a better camping ground. I said nothing about the conspiracy,

knowing the attack would not be made till we reached the river. Time

was when I would not have turned back for such a threat, but my

services are no longer valued.’

“‘Well, go to your family, and let me think about it!’

“Was it true, or a trick to get the horse? Tod was puzzled. While deep

in thought as to what was best to do, Lolo’s head thrust in again.

“‘Will you not let me have that horse, Mr. Tod?’

“‘No--damn you! Go home! If you say horse to me again, I’ll break every

bone in your body.’

“Trick or no trick, Tod must go to the waiting brigade. Calling the

Half-breed boy, he ordered him to saddle two of the fleetest horses.

He explained the situation to his wife. Then he wrote a general

statement for headquarters, in case he should never return. While

Lolo was still asleep, the chief trader and his boy were on the trail

for Fraser River, galloping as fast as their horses could carry them.

He reached his men by noon. They were surprised to see him; but he

merely gave orders to move forward next morning. By sunrise, the party

was on the trail. In advance, rode Tod alone. He had told his men

to keep three hundred yards behind him, to march when he marched,

stop when he stopped. By 9 o’clock they approached a small open plain

enclosed in thick brushwood. Tod motioned his men to halt while he

rode forward apparently unconcerned but with a glance to every rock

and shrub. His eye caught unmistakable signs ... a large band of armed

and painted savages were moving about excitedly. Lolo was right, but

what was Tod to do? He had not ten men, and here were three hundred

arrayed against him, powerful Shushwaps, who could handle the rifle

as well as any white man.... The men to the rear ... had by this time

seen the savages.... They knew now why the leader had so unexpectedly

appeared.... Tod motioned one of his party ... a George Simpson ... to

come.

“‘George! Fall back with the horses! If things go wrong, make your way

to the fort! Go!’

“The brave fellow hesitated to leave his leader alone.

“‘Damn you! Go!’ shouted Tod....

“The enemy stand watching intently the fur trader’s every move....

Turning full-front on the glowering savages, Tod puts spurs to his

horse.... As he rushes, they raise their guns ... the horseman does not

flinch, but quickly drawing sword and pistol, he holds them aloft in

one hand ... then hurls them all aheap on the plain ... and he charges

into the very midst of the savages. Why did they not kill him?...

Curiosity.... They wished to see what he would do next.... There sat

the smiling Scotchman amid the thickest of them.

“‘What is all this?’ demanded the chief trader.

“‘We want to see Lolo. Why came you here?’

“‘Then you have not heard the news.... The smallpox is upon us!...’

“Well they knew what the smallpox was and that it raged on the Lower

Columbia.

“‘That is why I come,’ continued Tod. ‘I come to save you. You are my

friends. You bring me furs; but you must not come to Kamloops, else you

will die; see, I have brought the medicine to stop it!’”

Ten minutes later, Tod is sitting on the stump of a fallen tree,

vaccinating the Shushwaps, and Kamloops’ traditions say, indeed, Tod,

himself, acknowledged to Bancroft, that when the Indians, who were

leaders of the conspiracy, held up their arms to be vaccinated, he

took good care to give them a gash that would disable their arms for

some weeks. A Scotchman abhors a lie; at least, a straightforward

lie that gives no quarter to conscience, but somehow Tod conveyed to

those Shushwap warriors the astounding warning, that if they lowered

or used their vaccinated arms for some time, it would be absolutely

and swiftly fatal. So Tod saved Kamloops, and volumes might be written

of the legends lingering about the old fur post. Other chief traders

succeeded Tod at Kamloops. McLean, son of the colonist murdered at

Seven Oaks, Red River, was at Kamloops in the early fifties when all

the world was agog with excitement over the discovery of gold in the

Rockies. An Indian was drinking on the banks of the Thompson when he

saw what he thought was a shining pebble. The pebble was carried to

McLean of Kamloops. It was a gold nugget. It was the beginning of the

end of the fur traders’ reign in the mountains.

* * * * *

From Kamloops, the New Caledonia brigade struck northwesterly on a

trail to the Fraser and along the banks of that torrential river up as

far as Alexandria, where MacKenzie had headed his canoes back upstream

on his trip to the Pacific. Alexandria was now a fur post. Here horses

were left to pasture for the year, and the brigade ascended the Fraser

in canoes to Fort George and Fort St. James on Stuart Lake, and Fort

McLeod on McLeod Lake, and Fraser Fort, and those other northern posts

variously known as Babine and Connolly, where the Company had erected

permanent quarters.

If Kamloops resembled some Spanish redoubt perched on some high sierra

amid parched, rolling hills, the Stuart Lake region--New Caledonia

proper--was like a replica of the Trossachs on some colossal scale.

Lakes with the sheen of emerald lay hidden in the primeval forests

reflecting as in a mirror woods, cloud-line, treeless peaks and the

domed opal of the upper snows, where the white drifts lie forever and

the precipices are criss-crossed by the scar of the avalanche as by

some fantastic architect. In area, the region is the size of modern

Germany. It was here Simon Fraser, the discoverer, had planted the flag

of the fur trader and established posts in the land that reminded him

of Scottish Highlands.

Fort St. James, being the center of the most populous Indian tribe--the

Carriers--has become the capital of this mountain kingdom, and many old

worthies of the Northwest days have played the king here. Ordinarily,

the fort drowses in security like a droning bee on a summer day, but

in times of Indian treaty, or on such occasions of pomp as Sir George

Simpson, the governor, coming on a visit of inspection, Fort St. James

puts on an air of military pomp, the sentinel going on duty at 9 P. M.

and with monotonous tread calling out, “All’s Well” every half hour

till 5:30 A. M., when a rifle is fired to signal all hands up. Six A.

M. work begins. Eight o’clock is breakfast. Nine, the traders turn to

work again. At 12:00, a bell signals nooning; at 1:00, back to work; at

6:00 P. M., duty done for the day.

Harmon, who came West with Henry’s brigade of Pembina back in 1811,

remains almost to the time of the Company’s union, when he retires to

Vermont. John Stuart, who voyaged with Fraser, comes after Harmon;

but he retires to spend his last days in Scotland. He is succeeded by

William Connolly, an Irishman of Babine Lake, a northern post. East

at McLeod Lake is Tod, who is to win fame at Kamloops. South is Paul

Fraser, son of the explorer, at the Fraser Lake post. Down at Fort

George on the Fraser, is little James Murray Yale, who served as a boy

under John Clarke in Athabasca, when, on one of the terrific marches

of the famine stricken Hudson’s Bays, little Yale’s short legs could

keep the pace no longer and the boy fell exhausted on the snow to die.

“Come on! Come on _garçon_,” called a big voyageur, whose admiration

had been won by Yale’s pluck. “Go on,” retorted Yale. “I’ve reached

the Great Divide,” and the big voyageur turned to see that the brave

boy preferred to die rather than impede the others. The rough fellow’s

heart smote within him. He burst in tears, tore back mumbling out a

cannonade of oaths, bent his big back, hoisted Yale on his shoulders

like a papoose in a Squaw’s mossbag, and rejoined the marchers,

muttering a patois of pidgin English and jargon French--“_Sacré!_ Too

much brave, he little man! _Misere! Tonnere!_ Come on!” Here, then is

Yale, grown man, though still small, now serving the united companies

at Fort George and later to be shifted down the Fraser to Fort Langley

at tidewater, and Yale Fort, higher up, and Hope at the mountain

gorge. To keep track of these little kings ruling in the wilderness,

shifted from post to post, would necessitate writing chapters to vie

with Hebrew genealogies. The careers of only the most prominent may be

followed, and of all the traders serving under Chief Factor Connolly of

Stuart Lake, in 1822-23, the most important was James Douglas, a youth

of some twenty years.

Born in Demerara, on August 11, 1803, of a beautiful Creole mother

and father, who was the scion of the noble Black Douglas of Scottish

story--James Douglas had been carefully educated in Scotland and joined

the fur companies a soldier of fortune before he was twenty-one.

Douglas inherited the beauty of his mother, the iron strength and iron

will and never-bending reserve of his father’s race. At first, he had

been disgusted with the ruffianism of the two great companies, and had

intended to retire from the country; but McLoughlin of Fort William

had taken a fancy to the Scotch youth and persuaded Douglas to come

West after the union. McLoughlin advised as a friend that Douglas

serve in as many posts as possible and climb from the bottom rung of

the ladder so that every department of the trade would be mastered

first-hand. Hence, Douglas was assigned as clerk under Connolly of

Stuart Lake at a salary of £60 a year. He, who was to become titled

governor of British Columbia, had now to keep the books, trade with the

Indians, fish through ice with bare hands, haul sleighloads of furs

through snowdrifts waist deep--in a word, do whatever his hand found to

do, and do it with his might.

Chief Factor Connolly had a beautiful daughter of native blood, as

Douglas’ mother had been of Creole blood. The girl was fifteen.

Douglas was twenty-one. The inevitable happened. Nellie Connolly

and Douglas fell in love and were married according to the rites of

the Company--which simply consisted of open avowal and entry on the

books--a pair of children dreaming love’s dream in surroundings that

would have made fit setting for the honeymoon of monarchs. Later, when

there came a Reverend Mr. Beaver to the Columbia in 1837-38, breathing

fire and maledictions on unions which had not been celebrated by his

own Episcopal Church, Douglas was re-married to Nellie Connolly.

In fact, Douglas and McLoughlin who had both married their wives

according to the law of the Company--and there was no other law--had

an uncomfortable time of it as missionaries came to the Columbia.

The Reverend Beaver openly preached against McLoughlin living in a

state of sin. McLoughlin, being good Catholic, kicked the reverend

gentleman soundly for his impudence; but to still the wagging of

tongues had himself married by the church to McKay’s widow. Even that

did not suffice. Catholics did not recognize ceremonies performed

by Protestants. Protestants did not recognize unions cemented by

Catholics. It is said that the saintly old Father of Oregon actually

had himself married two or three times to satisfy his critics; and at

this distance of time one may be permitted to wonder which ceremony was

written down as holiest in the courts of heaven--the civil contract

of the Company by which a chivalrous gentleman took the widow of

his friend under his protection, or the later unions lashed like a

“diamond” hitch by well meaning enthusiasts.

Meanwhile, up at Stuart Lake, was Douglas learning what was

untellable--the daily discipline of strong, absolutely self-reliant

living; Douglas developing what McLoughlin meant should be developed

when he sent the young man to such a hard post--iron in muscle, iron

in nerve, iron in will.

The story is told that once at a later era in Douglas’ life at

Victoria, a clerk dashed breathless into his presence gasping out

that a whole tribe of unruly Indians had got possession of the fort

courtyard. “Will we fire, sir? Will we man the guns?” asked the

distracted young gentleman. Douglas looked the young man over very

coldly, then answered in measured, deliberate tones: “Give them some

bread and treacle! Give them some bread and treacle!” Sure enough! The

régale pacified the discontent, and the Indians marched off without so

much as the firing of a gun. People asked where Douglas had learned the

untellable art of governing unruly hordes. It was in New Caledonia, and

the school was a hard one. Douglas’ first lesson nearly cost him his

life. This story has been told often and in many different versions.

The first version is that of McLean of Kamloops. All legends are

variations of this story, but the facts of the case are best set forth

by the missionary to the Carrier Indians--Father Morice, who questioned

all the old traders and Indians on the spot. Here is the substance of

the story as told to Morice:

Jimmie Yale went home from Stuart Lake to Fort George on the Fraser one

night in 1823 to find his two white workmen murdered by two Fraser

Lake Indians, mutilated and thrown in outhouses for dogs to eat. The

Hudson’s Bay Company never let a murder pass unpunished. One of the

murderers was secretly done to death by paid agents of the Company,

“who buried the remains,” relates Morice, “in a way to suggest accident

as the cause of death.” Five years passed. Surely the Company had

forgotten about the crime. The other murderer ventured a visit to

Stuart Lake. Chief Factor Connolly was away. James Douglas was the only

white man at Fort St. James. As soon as he heard of the murderer’s

visit, he bade the Indians arm themselves with cudgels and follow him.

The criminal had hidden in terror under a pile of skins in a sick

woman’s lodge. Douglas dragged him forth by the hair, demanding his

name. The fellow mumbled out some assumed cognomen.

“You lie,” answered Douglas to the stammered answer, firing point-blank

in the fellow’s face; but in the struggle, the ball went wide. The

Indians thereupon fell on the criminal and beat him to death.

“The man he killed was eaten by dogs. By dogs let him be eaten,”

Douglas pronounced sentence, ordering the body to be cast unburied

outside the palisades. This was enforcing the savage law of a tooth for

a tooth with a vengeance. The chief of the Carriers determined to give

young Douglas the lesson of his life. Punish murderers? Yes; but not as

if Indians were dogs.

A few weeks afterward, followed by a great concourse of warriors from

Fraser Lake, old Chief Kwah marched boldly into the Indian Hall of

Fort St. James. Douglas sprang to seize a musket hanging on the wall.

Fort hands rushed to trundle cannon into the room, but the Indians

snatched the big guns, though brave little Nancy Boucher, wife of the

interpreter, managed to slam the doors shut against more intruders

and Nellie Connolly came from her room half dazed with sleep just in

time to grasp a dagger from the hands of the murdered Indian’s father.

Chief Kwah’s nephew had a poniard at Douglas’ heart and was asking

impatiently:

“Shall I strike? Shall I strike? Say the word and I stab him!”

It was woman’s wit saved the captive Douglas. Quick as flash glided

Nellie Connolly to the old chief, knowing well the Indian custom of

“potlatch,” gift-giving, appeasing for bloodshed with costly presents.

She offered old Kwah all he might ask to spare the life of her husband.

Then dashing upstairs, the two women began throwing down tobacco,

handkerchiefs, clothing. The Indians scrambled for the gifts. Douglas

wrenched free, and Old Chief Kwah bade his followers come away. He

had done all he meant--taught Douglas a lesson, though those so-called

lessons have a ghastly sudden way with angry Indians of turning to

tragedy, as the massacre at Red River testifies.

An event that has gone down to history at Fort St. James, was the

visit of Governor Simpson, in 1828. Simpson was young, but what he

lacked in years, he made up in hard horse-sense and pomp to impress

the Indians. Music boxes, bugles, drums, fifes--all were used in

Simpson’s pow-wow of state with the Indians. September 17th, his scouts

sighted Stuart Lake. The guide to the fore unfurled a British flag.

Buglers and bagpipes struck up a lively march that set the echoes

flying among the mountains and brought the Carrier Indians out agape.

First, clad in all the regalia of beaver hat, ruffled choker, velvet

cape lined with red silk, leather leggings and gorgeous trappings to

his saddle--rode Governor Simpson. Behind came his doctor and a chief

factor riding abreast. Twenty men followed with camp kit, then one of

the McGillivrays to the rear. In all, Simpson traveled with a retinue

of sixty. A musket shot notified the fort of the ruler’s approach. Fort

St. James roared back a welcome with cannon and musketry, all hands

standing solemnly in line, while Douglas advanced to meet his lord,

Connolly being absent on the Fraser. What with a band playing and the

cannon booming, such wild echoes were set dancing in the mountains

as almost frightened the Carrier Indians out of their senses. Was

the great white lord coming to be avenged on them for the attack on

Douglas? But the great white lord, who was nothing more nor less than

a clever little gentleman bent on business, kept his band marching up

and down the inner gallery of the palisades, chests puffed out, pipers

skirling, while he as lord ascendant of the mighty mountains shook

hands with the Indians and treated them to tobacco. Simpson passed

south to Vancouver.

New Year’s Day, 1829, the clerks of St. James determined to punish

the Carriers for their raid. Bounteous was the régale of rum dealt

out. When the Carriers lay drunk, out sallied the voyageurs and gave

the Indians such a pummeling as stirred up bad blood for a year.

Douglas’ life was no longer safe in Caledonia. In 1830, he left Fraser

River to join McLoughlin in Oregon. He had come to New Caledonia,

raw, impulsive, violent in his forcefulness to succeed. He went down

to Oregon, still young, but a drilled disciplinarian of life’s hard

knocks--reserved to a fault, deliberate to a degree, cautious and

tactful in a way that must have delighted McLoughlin’s heart. When

Connolly left New Caledonia for Montreal, where he rose to eminence,

there came as Chief Factor, Peter Skene Ogden, fresh from leading the

southern brigades.

* * * * *

McLoughlin needed Douglas in Oregon. The Company, that had begun two

centuries before with one little fort on a frozen sea, had not only

stretched its tentacles across the continent but was reaching out to

Hawaii, to Mexico, to Alaska. And this galvanizing energy resulted

directly from the energy of that little man, George Simpson. “If” is

a word that opens the door of lost opportunities. _If_ Sir George

Simpson had been seconded in his aims by the Governing Board of the

Hudson’s Bay Company; and _if_ those gentlemen who lived fat on their

fur dividends had mended their ignorance sufficiently to know what

Sir George was driving at; and _if_ the Company had bought over the

bonded debts of Mexico--as Simpson advised--and traded the debts for

the grant of California to the English; and _if_ the Company had been

less niggardly and paid down promptly the $30,000 asked for Russia’s

holdings in California--_if_ all these things, then, one wonders

whether the southern bounds of British Columbia to-day would be the

northern bounds of modern Mexico. But man’s blunders are destiny’s

plays; and the opportunities missed by one nation the prizes seized by

another.

Far reaching and statesmanlike in grasp were the schemes McLoughlin had

in hand.

Baranoff, the famous old governor of Alaska, had died just a few years

before the union of the two English companies, and from the time of his

death the grip of the Russian Fur Company slackened on Alaska. Naval

officers came out as governors. Naval officers knew nothing of the

tricks of the fur trade. Returns to the St. Petersburg company began to

decrease. Was Alaska worth holding? That was the question Russians were

asking.

As the Hudson’s Bay Company pressed toward the Pacific from New

Caledonia, their traders and trappers came in violent collision with

Russians working inland from the coast. There ensued the usual orgies

of rum and secret raid. It became apparent that it would be cheaper

for the Hudson’s Bay Company to ship some of its New Caledonia furs

by sea south to the Columbia than to send the packs inland and south

by the horse brigades. The Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1825 had granted

the Hudson’s Bay Company free navigation of streams across Russian

territory to the interior of northern British Columbia.

Year by year, English forts had been creeping up the west coast toward

Russian Alaska. Fort Langley had been built on the Fraser by McMillan

and twenty-five men, in 1827. The party had come from the Columbia

overland to Puget Sound. There Captain Simpson on _The Cadboro_ met

them and carried all some thirty miles up Fraser River to a point on

the south bank. The Indians were notoriously hostile, but McMillan kept

men on guard day and night, and had his builders sleep in midstream

on board _The Cadboro_. By autumn, an oblong fort with the regular

palisades, inner gallery for artillery and corner bastions, had been

completed; and the men scattered afield to hunt. Expresses were

regularly sent overland to Fort Vancouver and one of these led by a

MacKenzie with four men, was murdered on an island in the straits in

January, 1828. In October, comes Governor George Simpson in pompous

estate with band and outriders and retinue of twenty men. McMillan went

down to the Columbia with the governor and was succeeded by little

James Yale of Caledonia, who promptly sought to render himself secure

with the natives by marrying an Indian wife. Gradually, this post

became the great fishing station of the Company for the salmon shipped

to Hawaii.

Near Nisqually River on Puget Sound sprang up, in 1833, a cluster of

cabins known as Nisqually Fort, the half-way house between the Columbia

and the Fraser, between Fort Vancouver and Fort Langley.

The same spring Captain Kipling’s _Dryad_ is sent North with Duncan

Finlayson and forty men to build an outpost yet farther north--Fort

McLoughlin on Millbank Sound. Work proceeds all summer. Finlayson goes

back to the Columbia, Manson taking charge. In spite of every caution

against the treachery of the notorious Bella Coola Indians, who long

ago proved so hostile to Sir Alexander MacKenzie, a trader by name of

Richards disappears--whether a deserter or captive, Manson cannot tell.

A chief is seized as hostage till the white man is returned. Sunday,

the flag signals no trade. Not a breath of wind stirs the water. Not a

canoe is visible, not an Indian to be seen. A drowsy sense of security

comes over the fort sweltering in the summer heat. Toward night, the

men ask permission to go outside the palisades for pails of fresh

water. Anderson does not approve; but Chief Trader Manson takes his

pistol and sword, opens the sally port, and leads his men down to a

fresh water stream. Instantly, in the twilight, the dense forests come

to life. There is the Bella Coola’s war-whoop, the crash of ambushed

sharpshooters, a spitting of bullets against pebbles and pails, a wild

rush of traders and Indians to reach the gates first.

“Bind your hostage! Quick--fire the cannon!” bellowed Anderson

sprinting for safety.

The cannon shots drove back the savages and the whites got safely

inside the palisades with only one water carrier lost. One may guess

there was no sleep. Rain clouds rolled up rendering the night pitch

dark with never a sound but the lapping of the waters, the tramp, tramp

of the sentries, the shuffle of men hurriedly handing down all the

muskets from the wall racks, the “All’s Well” of the watch every half

hour as he passed the entrance to the main house. About midnight out of

the dark came a terrified shout.

“Mr. Manson! Mr. Manson! Can you hear me?” It was the captured water

carrier.

“Hello! Where are you?”

“Tied in their canoe, and the devils say they are going to kill me

unless you let the chief go!”

Manson and Anderson hoist the hostage to the gallery inside the

palisades and bid him assure his people he is safe and will be

exchanged at daybreak for the water carrier. Daydawn after sleepless

night, prisoners are exchanged; and the rescued man reports that the

other missing trader had long since been stoned to death by Indian

boys. Fort McLoughlin proves too dangerous a fort for the traders to

hold. It is torn down, in 1839, and moved across to the north end of

Vancouver Island, where it is re-named Fort Rupert and flourishes to

modern times.

Nisqually, Langley, McLoughlin, Rupert--nothing daunted, the Company

still pushes northerly and builds Port Simpson. Then, in 1834, it

is decided to send Peter Skene Ogden up on _The Dryad_ to cross the

Russian frontier and build a company post on Stickine River. This is

more easily said than done. It is one thing to have free access across

foreign territory. It is quite another thing to use that privilege to

build a fort on the frontier of a friendly power. Baron Wrangel is

governor at Sitka this year. _The Dryad_ has barely poked her prow up

the turbulent current of the Stickine breasting toward the Russian

redoubt of St. Dionysius--a log fort later known as Wrangel--when puff

goes a cannon shot! Is it a salute, or command to stop? Out rows a boat

with a Russian officer presenting a formal proclamation forbidding the

English company from ascending the Stickine.

“This is clear violation of our treaty,” thunders Ogden.

The Russian officer shrugs his shoulders and mutters some politeness

through his beard. The Englishmen visit the Russian fort. Very polite

are the Russians but very deficient in English speech when Ogden

blusters about treaty rights.

“The thing can be arbitrated. We’ll go on up the river anyway,”

protests the Britisher with that bull-dog persistence of getting his

teeth in and hanging on, which characterized his Company. Then the

Russians suddenly find their English.

“If you do, we’ll fire.”

Word is sent to Baron Wrangel of Sitka, but Baron Wrangel is

opportunely absent. For ten days, they jangle, these rival traders.

Then Peter Skene retires from the coast to be appointed Chief Factor of

New Caledonia.

But the matter is not permitted to end here. In 1838, McLoughlin visits

England. The case is laid before the Board of the Hudson’s Bay Company,

and the Hudson’s Bay Company lays the case before the great British

Government, and for those ten days’ delay and those violations of

treaty rights and those damages to British dignity, a bill of £20,000

is presented to the Russian Government. It would be interesting to know

how the items of that bill were made up. Deep is the craft of these

gamesters of the wilderness. They probably never intended that the bill

should be paid, but it acts as a lever for what they really do want;

and they will generously waive all claims of compensation for damaged

dignity if the Russians will lease to them a ten-mile shore strip at

the rate of 2,000 land otter skins a year.

“Owning half a continent, what in thunder did they want with a ten-mile

shore strip?” a British diplomat asked; but it takes more than a

British diplomat to fathom the motives of a Hudson’s Bay Company man.

The short strip was a mere bagatelle. The English Company wanted to

get into trade relations with the Russians. For this purpose any wedge

would do--any wedge but asking trade as a favor. The fine point was

to put the other fellow at a disadvantage and make him sue for the

privilege of granting the favor, which the Hudson’s Bay Company wanted.

Curious--you may search the records of the Hudson’s Bay Company from

the time of Radisson to Simpson; the method is always the same; motives

not only secret but deliberately hidden by every subterfuge and trick

that craft could devise; a secret aim worked out by diplomatic cunning,

so that the other party to the aim shall sue for the privilege of

doing exactly what the Hudson’s Bay Company wants. Altogether, it is

very funny; and altogether, marvelously clever; and with it all--don’t

forget--was the _noblesse oblige_ of the grand old gentlemen of the

grand old school, who play patron to every good cause and would not rob

man, woman, child, bird or beast of as much as a crumb. Where does it

come from--that curious diplomacy of the Hudson’s Bay Company? Is it

an inheritance of feudalism, of the mediæval court ways, when a prince

made his subjects thankful to God for having their pockets picked

by his dainty fingers? To Radisson, the Company owed its existence.

Yet they made him glad to beg for a penny. The French won the bay

fairly in open war. Yet the Company made France glad to give up all

possessions by the simple trick of presenting claims of £200,000.

And when negotiations opened with Canada for the surrender of the

monopoly in the Northwest, by some legerdemain of diplomacy, Canadian

statesmen were glad to pay millions in cash and millions in land for

the relinquishment of a charter--which, from the Canadian point of

view--the Company ought never to have been allowed to possess. The very

year that Russian negotiations are in progress, Pelly, the English

governor of the Company, and Simpson, the colonial governor, have both

been knighted for their loyal care of British interests abroad.

* * * * *

Let us follow the diplomacy of the ten-mile strip. While diplomats are

busy in England, Fort Simpson has been rebuilt on a better site by

the same men of _The Dryad_ repulsed at Stickine. At the mouth of the

Skeena, the H. B. C. flag now flies above Port Essington (1835). Also

on the Stickine inland from the Russian strip, Glenora and Mumford have

been built.

Back came McLoughlin and the newly knighted Simpson from the Board

Meeting in London. McLoughlin came by way of Canada. A special brigade

is organized at Montreal to take possession of the leased ten-mile

strip. Spring, 1840, James Douglas in command, assisted by Glen Rae,

McLoughlin’s son-in-law, by John McLoughlin, Jr., and fifty others,

the brigade leaves Fort Vancouver, ascends the Cowlitz River, portages

overland to Puget Sound and at Nisqually boards the little steamer

_Beaver_ for the North. Pause is made at Langley on the Fraser just

in time to see the embers of the burnt fort. Jimmie Yale is housed in

tents with the savages howling around him ready to attack. Douglas

lands his men and rebuilds Langley. Next stop at Fort Simpson, then up

to the Russian redoubt on the Stickine, where fifty Russian soldiers

are in charge. McLoughlin, Jr., drops off here with eighteen men to

take over the fort.

“Eighteen men! Do these British traders know the nature of the

savages?” ask the amazed Russians. And the _Beaver_ goes on to Sitka

with Douglas. Loud roars the welcome from the Russian guns in honor

of Douglas. Green were the waters of the mountain girt harbor, gold

and opal the shimmering mountains. Etholine is Russian Governor in

charge now, a military officer with his bride; and gay is Sitka with

bunting and Chinese lanterns and feast and dance while the Hudson’s

Bay men visit the fort. What did they talk about over their cups, these

crafty gamesters of the wilderness, when Etholine’s bride and Glen

Rae’s wife-- Eloise McLoughlin--had withdrawn and left the feasters to

wassail till midnight?

Who knows! It was the policy of the Hudson’s Bay Company from the

beginning to tell absolutely nothing. Until they played their cards,

these gamesters never showed their hands. All we know is when Douglas

left Stickine, the Russian company had agreed to buy all the supplies

they could procure from the Hudson’s Bay Company farms on Puget Sound

and the Willamette and the Columbia. That was cheaper than bringing

supplies all the way across Siberia; and the supplies were paid for in

Alaskan furs. You see the fine hand of the Company’s diplomacy? On the

supplies was a profit varying from 1000 to 2000 per cent. On the furs

taken in exchange was another profit unspecified but easily guessed

when it is known that the Russians got their furs from the Aleutians by

club law. What had the deal cost the English? Two thousand land otter

a year for a ten-mile strip, the said otter bartered from the Indians

at about two shillings each. But one bad blunder was made, which did

not come out till long after. Russia had tried in vain to raise her

own supplies on a farm at Bodega, California. On the farm were some

1500 sheep and 3000 cattle and horses. Etholine offered to sell the

Hudson’s Bay Company all Russia’s holdings in California for $30,000.

There the old diplomacy of always haggling till you caught the other

party to the bargain at a disadvantage--over-reached itself. Douglas

haggled and missed the bargain; and the bargain was a chance to give

his Company foothold in a country, owned by Mexico, which in turn owed

debt of five million pounds to British financiers. It is a sort of

subterranean diplomacy, after all, but one can guess to what end these

hidden motives were aiming.

While the Company builds yet more forts up the Pacific Coast--Tako,

and later Nanaimo--John McLoughlin, Jr., reigns at Stickine. Glen Rae,

who came with Douglas to help establish the post, has gone on down

to California in connection with that secret Hudson’s Bay diplomacy.

McLoughlin was an example of reversion to ancestral type. In his veins

flowed the blood of his mother’s Indian race; and in him were all the

passions and few of the virtues of either his mother’s or father’s

race. Morose, severe, vindictive with his men, he had neither the

strength of will nor good fellowship to hold the loyalty of his staff.

Outside the fort were two thousand of the fiercest Indians on the

Pacific Coast. McLoughlin rightly forbade the use of liquor with these

savages, but while he interdicted his men from all vices, he indulged

in wildest orgies himself. In his cups, like many morose men, he became

so genial that he actually plied his traders with the forbidden liquor.

Excesses followed such outbursts as are better guessed than told. One

night toward the end of April, 1842, McLoughlin was on one of his

sprees and the fort was a roaring bedlam of drunken, yelling, fighting

white men; while outside camped the Indian warriors ready for a raid.

A French Canadian was for breaking rules and rushing past the sentry

out to the Indian camp. McLoughlin roared out an oath forbidding him.

The drunken Frenchman turned and shot his leader dead. Four days later

came Sir George Simpson to find flags at half-mast and the murderer

in irons. Henceforth, no more rum in Pacific Coast trade! Governor

Simpson for the English, and Governor Etholine for the Russians, bound

themselves to abolish the use of liquor in trade. The murderer was

carried to Sitka for trial but escaped punishment, probably because

McLoughlin was so much in the wrong that the dead trader’s conduct

would not bear the light of investigation. This caused the first

friction between Governor Simpson and Chief Factor McLoughlin. The

governor blamed the doctor for placing such a worthless son in charge

of any fort.

What was William Glen Rae, Eloise McLoughlin’s husband, doing in

California?

He had been McLoughlin’s chief lieutenant before Douglas came down from

New Caledonia. Swarthy, straight as a lance, somber and passionate in

his loves and hates, Rae was a Scotchman of princely presence, like all

the men whom McLoughlin chose for promotion. Loyal to his father-in-law

to a degree, he was the very man for a delicate mission of possibly

far-reaching importance.

Away back in 1828, when Ogden was leading the Southern Brigades to

Nevada and Utah and Mt. Shasta, four white men--Jedediah Smith and

American trappers--had escaped with their lives from the Umpqua River

region and come to Fort Vancouver destitute, wounded, almost naked.

They had been trapping in California and following up the valley of the

Sacramento had crossed over to the Umpqua intending to proceed East

by way of the Columbia when the party of twenty was attacked at the

ford of Umpqua River. Fifteen of the trappers were shot down instantly

by the Umpqua and Rogue River Indians. All the horses were stampeded.

Goods, furs, everything was plundered, the results of two years’ toil.

Breathless and foredone, the refugees rapped at the gates of Fort

Vancouver. They were Americans. They were rivals. “You must positively

drive out _all_ American trappers,” Simpson had ordered McLoughlin. And

these men belonged to the same St. Louis outfitters, who had profited

by the robbing of Peter Skene Ogden. “Heh! What? American trappers?

Bless my soul,” exclaimed the Hudson’s Bay McLoughlin. “How on earth

did you come over the mountains all this way? What--robbed? You don’t

tell me? Plundered; and by our Indians? Fifteen men murdered! Come in!

Come in! McKay, there, I say McKay,” he shouted to his stepson scout,

“I say McKay, hear this! These gentlemen have been robbed by the Rogue

River Indians. Where’s La Framboise? (the guide). Saddle the horses

quick! Take the South Brigade! Go rescue these gentlemen’s property!”

And the hoofs of the South Brigade have not clanked far on the trail

at a gallop before McLoughlin has the refugees in the mess-room plied

with food, while he questions them of minutest detail. The Americans

are completely in his power. He supplies them with clothing and an

outfit to proceed East by way of the Columbia; but what does he do with

the furs Tom McKay brings back with the South Brigade after a wordy

tussle and the giving of many presents to the Rogue River Indians?

Ogden had been robbed by Americans. Surely here is a chance to even the

score! Can one imagine a grasping Wall Street Crœsus missing such an

opportunity to cripple a rival? And I have just related how deep, how

crafty, how subtle and devious the Company policy could be at times.

What did McLoughlin with these rivals in his power, who had injured

him? He wrote Smith a draft for the entire lot of furs at the current

London prices--$20,000 some reports say; others put it $40,000.

McKay and McLeod are at once sent down with the South Brigade to build

a Hudson’s Bay fort on the Umpqua. It is known as McKay’s fort. La

Framboise--Astor’s old interpreter--and McKay now regularly range the

Sacramento, though Sutter, the Swiss adventurer, who has a fort of his

own on the Sacramento, tries to stir up the Spaniards against them

and a subsequent arrangement with the Spanish authorities expressly

stipulates that only thirty trappers shall be allowed in the brigades.

Who is to count those thirty trappers in mountain wilds? La Framboise

and McKay led as many as two hundred to the very doors of Monterey. It

may have been a necessity of the climate. It may have been a disguise;

but the H. B. C. brigades of California dressed so completely disguised

as Spaniards that they almost deceived Sir George Simpson.

It was in Simpson’s fertile brain that the whole California scheme

originated. December, 1841, McLoughlin, Douglas and Simpson sail into

the harbor of San Francisco. By land go McKay and La Framboise and

Ermatinger with the brigades. Presto! First news! Sutter, the Swiss,

had already bought the Russian fort at Bodega for $30,000. Douglas

grinds his teeth; but Sir George Simpson is not discouraged. Mexico

owes England five million, he says; and these Spanish colonies are

having fresh revolutions almost every year. They are wined and dined

and feasted and fêted by the pleasure-loving Spaniards at General

Vallejo’s, and later meet General Alvarado at Monterey. What did they

talk about? Again I answer--we must judge by the cards which the

gamesters played. It is permitted the Hudson’s Bay may have a trading

post at Yerba Buena, in other words, San Francisco. It is permitted

they may buy Spanish hides and Spanish stock to be paid in trade from

the stores of Fort Vancouver--goods from England. Also, of course, it

is understood these South Brigades have not come to trap at all, but

just to drive the purchased stock North by way of the Sacramento to the

Columbia. Simpson and Douglas and McLoughlin depart well satisfied.

Next year, in May, came Rae by boat to carry out the plans, and

Birnie, the Scotch warder of the Columbia bars at old Astoria, as

clerk, and Sinclair as trader, and McKay and Ermatinger by land as

leaders of the inland brigades. Rae lands goods worth $10,000, and

takes possession of a 1000 acre farm on the site of the modern San

Francisco, and purchases a building worth $4,600 to house the goods.

Eloise McLoughlin, Rae’s wife, does not come at once; and the Spaniards

are a pleasure-loving people. Wines are used more than water, and

the handsome Scotchman is no unwelcome visitor to the lavish homes

of the proud Mexicans. What with wine and beautiful Spanish women as

different from the Half-breed wives of the North as wine from water,

and plotting and counter-plotting of revolutionists--did Rae lose his

head? Who can tell? It would have needed a wise head to remain steady

in an atmosphere so charged with political intrigue--intrigue which Rae

had been appointed to watch. He certainly drank hard, and he may have

cherished errant love, too, for when Eloise McLoughlin, his girl bride,

came down from the Columbia River, high words were often heard between

the two. American influence was waxing strong in San Francisco; and

in his cups, Rae was wont to boast “that it had cost £75,000 to drive

Yankee traders from the Columbia, and the Hudson’s Bay Company would

drive them from California if it cost a million.”