Came one of the sporadic revolutions. The revolutionists were partial

to the English, hostile to the Americans. Rae furnished the rebels

with arms. They were defeated. They had not paid for their arms. Rae

found himself responsible for a loss of $15,000--some accounts say

$30,000--to his Company. That he was in love with a Spanish woman may

have been a baseless rumor; but if there were a shadow of truth in it,

it must have furnished additional reason for discrediting him with his

father-in-law--McLoughlin. January, the 19th, at eight A. M., Sinclair,

the clerk, heard loud cries above the store. He dashed upstairs into

Rae’s apartments to find him standing in the presence of Eloise

McLoughlin with a pistol in his hand ready to kill himself. Sinclair

knocked the weapon from his hand. A shot rang out. Rae had had another

pistol and fell to the floor with his brains blown out. On a table

near were the bottle of an opiate, which he had taken to deaden pain,

and his will, written that very morning. His wife fainted. Absolutely

nothing more is known of the tragedy than the facts I have set down

here. It is a theme rather for the novelist than the historian.

Simpson ordered the San Francisco post closed. Dugald McTavish came

down in March of ’46 to close up affairs. The one-thousand-acre farm,

which would have netted the Company more than all the furs of Oregon

if they had held on to it till San Francisco grew to be a city, was

relinquished without any compensation of which I could find a record.

The store was sold for $5,000. So ended the Hudson’s Bay Company’s

ambitions for empire in California. The truth is--in spite of Sir

George Simpson’s efforts, and owing to blunders on the part of the

British Government, which will be given in the next chapter, the

Company was playing such a losing game in Oregon, it was useless to

hold on to California longer.

_Notes to Chapter XXXII._--This entire chapter deals with such a vast

field and with so many disputed points, it would literally require

a large volume to give all the authorities or deal in detail with

the disputes. I have not attempted to give a chronological account

of McLoughlin’s empire. So vast was it and so varied the episodes,

a chronological account would have required a jumping from spot to

spot from Alaska to California, resembling the celerity of a flea.

Instead, I have grouped the leading episodes and leading characters

and leading legends according to area, and told each district’s story

in a separate group. This gives at least enough coherence to keep the

facts in memory.

* * * * *

As to authorities, I have drawn my data primarily from the Archives of

H. B. C. House; secondarily from such marvelous collections of data

as Hubert Howe Bancroft’s, and Father Morice and the hundreds of old

navigators and traders whose journals of this era have been given to

the world. In addition, I have consulted every authority who has ever

written on the era. Naturally, among so many authorities, there are

wide discrepancies. Where I have taken my information from Hubert Howe

Bancroft, I have quoted him word for word, with full credit, but in

two or three cases, it will be seen my story differs from his; for

instance, the story of Douglas at Stuart Lake, in which his version

makes Douglas out a hero, mine makes Douglas out a very human hero,

learning the lessons that afterward made him great. In each case where

my version differs from Mr. Bancroft’s, my authority has been the H.

B. C. Archives--which were not accessible when Mr. Bancroft wrote,

or such well-known sources as Morice, who got his facts on the spot,

while Bancroft had to depend on the memory and contradictory testimony

of old retired factors.

* * * * *

Again in the case of names, take one example. Different authorities

refer to the ubiquitous McKay as Robt., Alex, Dan, Joseph. Now

there may have been all these McKays in the Oregon service, for the

McKays of the fur trade were legion. But the McKay, who led the

South Brigade, was one and the same and only Tom McKay, son of Mrs.

McLoughlin’s first husband. Another error--it is said this McKay took

cruel part in the Seven Oaks massacre. To say that Tom McKay, who

from the time of his father’s death hated Indians from the marrow of

his bones, took part in a massacre of white men--is simply absurd.

As a matter of fact, this Tom McKay must have been about ten years

old at that time. He certainly was present; but I should be reluctant

to believe that a boy of that age fought and killed a full grown H.

B. C. soldier. A hundred such discrepancies occur in the California

story, which space forbids my pointing out, but where I have departed

from old authorities, I have been guided by H. B. C. manuscripts. For

instance, all authorities say H. B. C. trappers were not in California

before 1835; yet I read fifteen hundred pages of their wanderings

there, before 1828.

* * * * *

Okanogan is spelled as many ways as it has letters. I have spelled it

the way it is pronounced--O-kan-og-an. I need not explain such place

names as Okanogan, Kamloops, Nicola are from Indian tribes.

* * * * *

In H. B. C. House are simply tons of MSS. bearing on McLoughlin, which

I did not go over because they deal with the story where I leave

off--namely where the history of the H. B. C. becomes the history of

the pioneer and the colonist. He, who takes up the story where I leave

off, will need to spend both time and money on transcripts of these

folios. There are literally tons.

* * * * *

The descriptions of the fur brigades are taken from the journals of

the leaders and of the missionaries who accompanied them.

* * * * *

Bancroft has been accused of telling his legends too dramatically. How

could the legends be anything but dramatic? It was a dramatic life day

and night all the year round.

* * * * *

Two or three places, I have not given the names of the factors who

succeeded each other directly, skipping nonentities, or men, who

ruled for only a few months, for instance, McDonald and Manson at

Langley before Yale. In H. B. C. Archives is a very full account of

these Fraser River forts. Also it has been impossible to give the

founding of the coast forts chronologically. Rupert and Nanaimo both

came after the abandonment of McLoughlin Fort, and there were two Fort

Simpsons.

* * * * *

A tragic story attaches to Paul Fraser, son of Simon, which space

forbids giving. It will be found in Morice’s “New Caledonia.”

* * * * *

Jno. Stuart of New Caledonia was a cousin of Lord Strathcona and the

influence that induced young Donald Smith to join the fur traders.

* * * * *

Mayne is responsible for the story of Douglas and the treacle.

* * * * *

A great many Kiplings served in the H. B. C. from 1750; all as seamen.

CHAPTER XXXIII

1840-1859

THE PASSING OF THE COMPANY--THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS TO OREGON--THE

FOUNDING OF VICTORIA NORTH OF THE BOUNDARY---WHY THE H. B. C. GAVE UP

OREGON--MISRULE OF VANCOUVER ISLAND--MCLOUGHLIN’S RETIREMENT.

Another subject had McLoughlin and Simpson laid before the Governing

Board of London in that winter of 1838-39. The treaty of joint

occupation continued between the United States and Great Britain; but

Americans were yearly drifting into the valley of the Columbia. First

came such occasional trappers as Jedediah Smith and Wyeth, retreating

with loss of life at the hands of the Indians and loss of profits from

the opposition of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Of the two hundred men who

followed Wyeth through the mountains in the early thirties, one hundred

and sixty were killed; but men like Wyeth and Kelley, of Boston, sent

back word to the Eastern States of the marvelous wealth in forest and

land of this Oregon empire. Then came the missionaries in 1834, the

Lees, and Whitmans, and Spauldings--a story that is, in itself, a

book; but it does not concern this record of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Missionaries were not in the service of the English corporation. They,

too, sent word to the East of openings in the Oregon country for the

American settler. To be sure, two thousand miles of waste land and

mountain lay between the Eastern home seeker and this Promised Land,

but was that a thing to deter frontiersmen whose ancestors had hewn

their way from Virginia across the Blue Mountains to the Bloody Ground

of Tennessee and Kentucky? The adventure of it but acted as a spur.

Old pathfinders who had settled down as farmers on the frontier of

the Missouri and Mississippi, felt again the call of the wilderness,

shouldered their rifles, and with families in tented wagons set out for

Oregon. Another cause stimulated the movement. In the East were hard

times. The railroad had not yet reached the pioneer of the prairie.

He had no way of sending his produce to market. Far off hills looked

green. If he could but reach the Columbia--he thought--there was the

ocean at his door as a highway for commerce.

American farmers began to drift to the Columbia Valley. At first there

was no general movement. The thing was almost imperceptible. Wandering

trappers turned farmers and squatted down with their families in

the valleys of the Willamette and the Walla Walla and the Cowlitz.

Then, as early as 1838, four families from the East came riding over

the mountains seeking homesteads. McLoughlin shook his head. The

thing seemed almost impossible. He remembered what the coming of the

colonists had meant in Red River--the beginning of the end with the

fur trade; and in Oregon, the coming of the colonist would be fraught

with more importance. If American settlers outnumbered English traders,

diplomacy might fold its hands. Joint occupancy would end in American

possession. From the first, McLoughlin had encouraged his old traders

and trappers to settle on farms in the Willamette Valley--at the famous

Champoeg Colony. Fort Vancouver, itself, now comprised thirty miles of

cultivated land, but between the Columbia and the Russian posts to the

north was _no_ settlement, only fur posts, and this was the very region

where hinged the dispute between England and the United States for

possession.

“Fifty-four forty or fight,” became the slogan of the jingoists, which

meant the United States claimed territory as far as 54°; in a word to

the Russian possessions. In a nutshell, the reasons for the claim were

these:

When the United States took over Louisiana, Louisiana extended to the

Columbia. Gray, the Boston trader, had discovered the Columbia River.

Lewis and Clarke, the American explorers, had erected their wintering

fort on its banks. Astor, the American trader, had built his fur post

on the Columbia before the Canadians had come; and though the fort

was sold to the Canadians, after the war of 1812, the American flag

had been restored to Astoria, though it remained in possession of the

Canadians.

Answered the British to these claims: Louisiana may extend to the

Columbia, but it does not extend beyond it. Gray, the Boston man,

may have discovered the mouth of the Columbia, but Vancouver, the

Englishman, in the same year as Gray’s voyage, ascended the Columbia,

and explored every inch of the coast from the Columbia to the Russian

settlements, taking possession for Great Britain. Especially, did he

discover all parts of Puget Sound. Astor, the American, may have built

the first fur post on the Columbia, but Astor’s managers sold that post

to the Canadian Company; and though the American flag was restored to

Astoria, it was distinctly on the specified understanding that the

treaty of joint occupancy should not prejudice the final decision of

possession in Oregon.

Jingoists in England wanted all of Oregon. Jingoists in America wanted

all of British Columbia’s coast up to Sitka. Wise heads in England were

willing that the boundary should be compromised at the north bank of

the Columbia. Wise heads in America were willing to relinquish United

States claims beyond the forty-ninth parallel; but the foolish catch

cry of “Fifty-four forty or fight” was being used as an election dodge

and stirred up ill feeling enough to prevent compromise on either side.

While pompous statesmen, who knew absolutely nothing about Oregon, were

deluging Congress and Parliament with orations on the subject of the

boundary, ragged men and women, colonists in homespun, colonists many

of them too poor for even homespun, with barefooted children, and men

and women clad in buckskin, were settling the question in a practical

way. They were not _talking_ about possessions. They were _taking_

possession.

This was the situation as McLoughlin and Simpson laid it before the

Governing Board in the winter of 1838-39. Now fur traders never yet

welcomed colonists. The coming of the colonists means the going of the

game; but something must be done to counteract these American settlers

and if possible hold the Columbia River as a highway for the Hudson’s

Bay brigades. The Puget Sound Agricultural Company was formed with

Hudson’s Bay men as stockholders and McLoughlin as manager, to hold the

country between Columbia River and Puget Sound--modern Washington--for

the English. The capital was £200,000 in 2000 shares; but there never

was any intention that the venture should pay. Very little of the

capital was ever paid in. The aim was to hold a region as large as

England and Scotland for the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Coming back to Oregon, in 1839, with his son David, now a graduated

doctor, McLoughlin sent his old trappers into the Cowlitz Valley as

settlers, and had a farm of five thousand acres measured off for the

Puget Sound Company. Here the stock was raised that supplied the inland

posts with food. Hudson’s Bay men from Red River were sent overland to

colonize the Puget Sound region.

* * * * *

The precaution was useless. There are times when the ragged colonist

in homespun is wiser than the wariest diplomat that kingcraft ever

produced. Congressional disputes, missionary lectures, the report of

the American secret agent Slocum sent from Washington to observe the

trend of events on the Pacific, the efforts of the Oregonian Society

formed in Massachusetts--all fanned the flame of emigration to the West

to a furore. More settlers in tented wagons rolled slowly westward

from the Missouri. Jason Lee comes back with more missionaries in 1840.

Lieutenant Wilkes of the American Exploring Squadron slips up the

Columbia, in 1841, to observe things for himself. In 1842, Doctor White

leads more than one hundred and twenty people to the Columbia, and all

the while the settlers are clamoring to Washington for two things: (1)

land grants for the farms on which they have “squatted”--some of them

have “squatted” on as much as 1000 acres; (2) extension of American

Government over them. And all the while, Washington politicians delay

to close the boundary dispute. Why? Every day’s delay brought more

settlers into the country and strengthened the American claim.

Lieutenant Wilkes of the American Squadron visits McLoughlin at Fort

Vancouver. McLoughlin returns the courtesy by going across to the

American ships off Puget Sound and dining with Wilkes. Unfortunately,

while McLoughlin was absent, down came Sir George Simpson with

the Columbia brigade from New Caledonia. It was the 5th of July.

Simpson’s suspicions took fire. Was McLoughlin--the Company’s Chief

Factor--celebrating the 4th of July on the American ship? As a matter

of fact, McLoughlin had been invited to do so, but out of respect for

his Company had gone across a day late. McLoughlin returned to find

Simpson in a towering rage, raking Douglas and Ogden and Ermatinger

over the coals for not “driving out the Americans.” Wilkes came back

with McLoughlin. The encounter must have been comical. Sir George, icy

and frigid and pompous at the head of the banquet table; Wilkes, the

American, suave and amused; Douglas, grave, plainly perceiving the time

had come when he must choose between loyalty to McLoughlin or loyalty

to Simpson; Ogden, down from New Caledonia, pudgy and good natured as

usual, but missing not a turn of the by-play; Ermatinger doing his best

to fill in the heavy silence with tales of his mountain brigade; the

Governor’s Highland pipers puffing and skirling and filling the great

dining hall with tunes of Scottish Highlands. What were McLoughlin’s

thoughts? Who knows? Simpson’s orders were to give _no_ aid of any

sort to American colonists and missionaries; but McLoughlin--as one

of the Company’s directors afterward reported--was not a man to be

bulldozed. He, too, perceived the time had come when he must choose

between his Company and his conscience; for no man ever appealed in

vain to McLoughlin for aid. To colonists and missionaries alike, he

extended goods on credit. If he had not, the chances are they would

have passed their first year on the Columbia in semi-starvation; and

to their shame, be it said, some forgot to pay the debts they owed

McLoughlin. To them, he was the hated aristocrat, representative of the

hated English monopoly, that was trying to wrest Oregon from American

control. Not the reproofs of his Company, not the rage of his governor,

but the ingratitude of the people whose lives he had saved at sacrifice

to himself--cut McLoughlin to the quick. The very winter after Governor

Simpson’s visit, a petition was drawn up by the settlers and forwarded

to Congress, bristling with bitter charges against the Hudson’s Bay

Company.

[Illustration: _Adam Thom_

In the early days of Red River Settlement there were neither judges

nor juries. The Company was autocrat supreme. When the people began

to clamor for self-government, Adam Thom, a writer of Montreal, was

brought up as First Recorder, and his régime became noted for his

autocratic rule. Enemies, of course, said that Thom was the tool of the

Company.]

One more influence tended to quicken the pulse of public interest in

Oregon. This was the famous and disputed Whitman Ride. Did Doctor

Whitman, the missionary, save Oregon? For years popular sentiment

cherished the belief that he did. Of late, historical critics have

gone to the other extreme. The facts are these. It is not easy to make

converts of Indians. Results are of slow growth. In the fall of 1842,

the Missionary Board of the East decided to withdraw its mission on

the Walla Walla. To Whitman such a move at this critical time when a

straw’s weight might turn the balance either way to England or to the

United States--seemed nothing short of a national calamity. “I must

go East,” he told his wife. “I must see Webster at Washington, but

the Mission can send me to Boston. I don’t want the Hudson’s Bay to

know what I am about.” It was already October. Snow was falling on the

mountains. The passes were closed for the year. “Can I get through to

the East?” Whitman asked trappers and Indians. In answer, they laughed.

The thing was not only impossible--it was mad. But Whitman had already

accomplished things both mad and impossible. He had brought wagons

across mountains, where fur traders said wagons could never come; and

he had led missionaries over mountain barriers difficult as any Alps

scaled by European warriors. Accompanied by Lovejoy, a lawyer, Whitman

set out on October 3rd. Mrs. Whitman remained alone at the mission till

the danger of a brutal Indian, trying to force his way into her room at

night, induced the dauntless woman to accept Chief Trader McKinlay’s

invitation to go down to the Hudson’s Bay fort at Walla Walla, where

Mrs. McKinlay, Peter Ogden’s daughter, afforded companionship. On

pressed Whitman over the mountains. This was the ride famous in

the Western States. Its story belongs more to the pioneer than the

Company. Therefore, it may not be related here. Suffice to say, Whitman

increased “the Oregon fever” already raging in the East. He stirred

up Webster, and he stirred up Congress, and he stirred up missionary

boards of every denomination. Frémont was appointed by Congress to

convoy the emigrants westward. The Oregon movement of 1843 would have

been important without Whitman’s crusade. With his crusade, it became

epoch-marking. If this was “saving Oregon,” then spite of historic

critics, Whitman played an important rôle.

The movement westward had become a tide. From Massachusetts, from the

Mississippi States, from the South, the emigrants gathered to Fort

Independence on the Missouri for the long trip overland. This was

the starting point of the Oregon Trail. Tented wagons--the prairie

schooner--pack horses, ox carts, straggling herds of horses and cattle

and sheep came rolling to the Missouri in ’43. May 22nd, with a

pilot to the fore and a whoop as signal, the long line files out for

Oregon--one thousand persons, one hundred and twenty wagons, some five

thousand head of stock. On the Kansas, in June, pause is made to elect

officers and maintain some kind of system. Peter Burnett, a lawyer, is

chosen Captain; J. W. Nesmith, second in command, with nine others as

assistant officers. Later, the travelers going light--on horseback or

in light wagons--march to the fore. The heavy wagons and ox carts and

stock come behind. The former division is known as “the light,” the

latter as “the cow column.” Chief leader of the slow-goers is Jesse

Applegate, a man to become famous in Oregon.

It is like the migration of ancient people in prehistoric times--the

rise at dawn, the rifle shot to signal watch for the night is over, the

tents and wagons pouring out the people to begin another day’s march,

the women cooking breakfast over campfire, the men rounding up the

stock! Forward scour the scouts to see that no danger besets the trail.

Oxen are slowly hitched to the wagons forming a circular fort for the

night camp; and these drag out in divisions of fifteen or twenty each.

Young men on horseback flank the trail as out-guards and hunters. These

have arduous work. They must ride twenty miles from the humming caravan

before they will find scampering game for the night supper. Sharp at

seven A. M. a trumpet blows. The long whips lash out. The wagons rumble

into motion. The outriders are off at a gallop. The long caravan moves

drowsily forward, and the camping place sinks on the horizon like a

sail at sea. Pilots choose watering place for the noon hour, but teams

are not unhitched. Promptly at one, writes Mr. Applegate, “the bugle

sounded and the caravan resumed its western journey. Drowsiness falls

on man and beast. Teamsters drop asleep on their perches ... till the

sun is low in the west.” Again the pilot has chosen good watering

place for camping ground, and the wagons circle into a corral for the

night.

By the end of August, the pioneers are in the mountains at Fort Hall,

on the very borders of their Promised Land. Two-thirds of the journey

lies behind them, but the worst third is to the fore, though they are

now on the outskirts of what was then called Oregon. Doctor Whitman

goes ahead with the trail breakers to cut a road for the wagons through

the dense mountain forests. Space does not permit the details of this

part of the journey. This, too, belongs to the story of the pioneer. It

was November before the colonists reached the Columbia. How splendid

was the reward of the long toil, they now know; but ominous clouds

gathered over the colony. The Columbia was a swollen sea with the

autumn rains. The Indians were rampant, stampeding the stock.

“Shall we kill--is it good we kill--these Bostonais who come to take

our lands?” the excited natives asked McLoughlin, the Hudson’s Bay man,

at Fort Vancouver. To Pacific Coast Indians, all Americans were Boston

men, so named from the first ship seen on the coast. “Shall we kill

these Boston men who make bad talk against the King George men?”

“Kill? Who said the word?” thundered McLoughlin, thinking, no doubt,

to what lengths such a game on the part of the fur trader led in Red

River; and it is said he knocked the Indian miscreant down.

“The people have no boats. They are without food or clothing,”

messengers reported at the Company fort.

The weather had turned damp and cold. Autumn rains were slashing down

slantwise. Again McLoughlin had to choose between his Company and his

conscience. Had he but restrained his hand--done nothing--disease and

exposure would have done more than enough to the incoming colonists;

but he did not hesitate one moment, not though the colonists were

cursing him for a Hudson’s Bay oppressor and the Company threatening to

dismiss him for his friendship with the Americans. Instantly, he sent

his traders upstream with rafts and boats and clothing and provisions

for the belated people.

“Pay me back when you can,” was the only bond he laid on the needy

people; and a good many paid him back by cursing him for “an

aristocrat.” Rain was drenching down as the boats came swirling

opposite Vancouver Fort. On the wharf stood the Chief Factor, long

hair, white as snow, blowing wet in the wind, with hand of welcome and

cheer extended for every comer. One woman had actually given birth to

a child as the rafts came down the Columbia. For days, the Company’s

fort was like a fair--five hundred people at a time housed under

Vancouver’s roofs or camped in the courtyard till every colonist had

erected, and taken his family to, his own cabins.

Among so many heterogeneous elements as the colonists were some

outlaws, and these within a few months were threatening to “burn Fort

Vancouver about the old aristocrat’s ears.” The colonists had organized

a provisional government of their own--which is a story by itself; and

they begged McLoughlin to subscribe to it that they might protect Fort

Vancouver from the lawless spirits.

“You must positively protect your rights here and at once or you will

loose the country,” McLoughlin had written to the Governing Board of

London. No answer had come. The threats against Fort Vancouver became

bolder. The Indian conspiracy, that shortly deluged the land in blood,

was throwing off all concealment. McLoughlin built more bastions and

strengthened his pickets. Still no answer came to his appeal for

protection by the English Government. Colonists, who loved McLoughlin

as “the father of Oregon,” begged him to subscribe to the provisional

government. Ogden advised it. Ermatinger was ready to become an

American citizen. Douglas was absent in the North. Fearful of Indian

war now threatening and dreading still more an international war over

the possession of Oregon, McLoughlin, after long struggles between

Company and conscience, after prayers for hours on his knees for God’s

guidance in his choice--subscribed to the provisional government in

August, 1844.

Six months too late came the protection for which he had been asking

all these years--the British Pacific Squadron. Perhaps it was as well

that the war vessels did come too late, for Captain Gordon, commander

of the fleet and brother to Aberdeen, then Cabinet Minister of England,

was a pompous, fire-eating, blustering fellow, utterly incapable of

steering a peaceful course through such troublous times. With Gordon

boasting how his marines could “drive the Yankees over the mountains,”

and outlaws among the colonists keen for the loot of a raid on Fort

Vancouver--friction might have fanned to war before England or the

United States could intervene.

The main fleet lay off Puget Sound. The ship _Modiste_, with five

hundred marines, anchored in the Columbia off Vancouver and patrolled

the river for eighteen months, men drilling and camping on the

esplanade in front of the fur post.

Came also in October, 1845, two special commissioners from the Hudson’s

Bay Company to report on Oregon. The report was sent back without

McLoughlin’s inspection. They had reported against him for favoring

the American settlers. Knowing well this was the beginning of the end,

McLoughlin sent for Douglas to come down and take charge. The mail of

the following spring dismissed McLoughlin from the service. That is

not the way it was put. It was suggested he should retire. McLoughlin

gave up the reins in 1846 and withdrew from Vancouver Fort to live

among the settlers he had befriended at Oregon City on the Willamette.

He died there in 1857. It is unnecessary to express an opinion on his

character. The record of his rule in Oregon is the truest verdict on

his character. His was one of the rare spirits in this world that not

only followed right, but followed right when there was no reward;

that not only did right, but did right when it meant positive loss to

himself and the stabs of malignity from ungrateful people whom he had

benefited. The most of people can act saintly when a Heaven of prizes

is dangling just in front of the Trail, but fewer people can follow

the narrow way when it leads to loss and pain and ignominy. McLoughlin

could, and that Christ-like quality in his character places him second

to none among the heroes of American history. As Selkirk’s name is

indissolubly connected with the hero-days of Red River, so McLoughlin’s

is enshrined in the heroic past of Oregon. In Hudson’s Bay House,

London, I looked in vain for portraits or marble busts of these men.

Portraits there are of bewigged and beruffled princes and dukes who

ruled over estates that would barely make a back-door patch to Red

River or Oregon; but not a sign to commemorate the fame of the two men

who founded empires in America, greater in area than Great Britain and

France and Germany and Spain combined.

* * * * *

It would be interesting from a colonial point of view to know just

what qualifications the British Government thought Commander Gordon of

the Pacific Squadron and his officers, Lieut. William Peel, son of Sir

Robert Peel, and Lieutenant Parke of the Royal Marines, possessed to

judge whether Oregon was worth keeping or not. It would be interesting

from a purely Canadian point of view. American historians, who ought

to be profoundly grateful to Gordon for his blunders, pronounce him

the most consummate bungler ever sent on an International mission.

Reference has been made in an introductory chapter as to how these

naval officers dealt with the matter and the grave injustice they did

the Hudson’s Bay Company. Parke and Peel came down to the Columbia

and passed some weeks on hunting expeditions up the Walla Walla and

the Willamette. They surveyed Fort Vancouver and laughed. All the

international pother about that wooden clutter! They observed the

colonists and laughed! Why, five hundred marines from any one of their

fifteen war ships lying in Puget Sound could send these barefooted,

buckskin-clad, tobacco-spitting settlers skipping back over the

mountains to the United States like deer before the hunt in English

parks! To the two naval officers, these people were but low-living

peasants. It did not enter into the narrow vision of their insular

minds that out of just such material as these rough pioneers do new

nations grow. The two gentlemen regarded the whole expedition as a

holiday lark. _They had a good time!_ Up on Puget Sound Gordon was

serving the British Government still more worthily. He had landed at

the Hudson’s Bay Company’s new post of Victoria--of which more anon. He

was given the best that the fur post could offer--table of wild fowl

and the Company’s best wines, but Half-breed servants do not wait on a

table like an English butler; and berth bunks are not English feather

beds; and an ocean full of water is not an English bath. Alas and alas,

poor gentleman! Such sacrifices is he called to make for his country’s

service! Then my gentleman demands what sport. “Deer,” says Finlayson,

“or bear hunting; or fishing.”

“Do you use flies or bait?” asks Gordon with a due sense of

condescension for having deigned to enquire about this barbarous

land’s sport at all. Finlayson must have had some trouble not to

choke with laughter when my gentleman insists on fishing with flies

in streams where salmon could be scooped in tubfuls. Later, he deigns

to go hunting and insists that deer be run down in the open as they

hunt in enclosed Scottish game preserves, not still-hunted, which

is a barbarous way; with the consequence that Gordon does not get a

shot. In vain Finlayson and Douglas, who comes North, try to please

this mannikin in gold braid. In response to their admiration of the

mighty mountains, he makes answer that goes down to history for

civility--“that he would not give the bleakest knoll on the bleakest

hill of Scotland for all these mountains in a heap.”

Oregon’s provisional government forced the boundary dispute to an

issue. It must be settled. The Hudson’s Bay Company press their case,

pleading that if the American colonists are to retain all south of

the Columbia, then the Company, having settlers between the Columbia

and Puget Sound, should retain all between Columbia River and Puget

Sound. The case hangs fire. Gordon is called in. In language which I

have given in a former chapter, he declares the country is not worth

keeping. Naturally, Aberdeen listens to his own brother’s opinion and

Peel to his son’s. By treaty of June, 1846, England relinquishes claims

to all territory south of 49°. Gradually fur trader is crowded out by

settler. In 1860, Fort Vancouver is dismantled and taken over as a

military station by the United States. Ermatinger, for having joined

the Oregon government, is packed off to a post in Athabasca. Ogden

saves himself from punishment by following McLoughlin’s example and

resigning to become a settler on the Willamette. For the Puget Sound

farms, the Company receives compensation of $450,000 and $200,000 from

the American Government; the former amount payable to the Hudson’s

Bay Company proper, the latter to the Puget Sound Company, though the

shareholders were nominally the same persons.

So ended the glories of the fur trade in Oregon. It still had a few

years to run in British Columbia. Long ago McLoughlin had plainly seen

the beginning of the end in Oregon and sent Douglas to spy out the site

of a permanent fort north of 49°.

* * * * *

It is really one of the most interesting studies in American history to

observe--if it can be done without prejudice or prepossession--how

when this great Company, changing in its personnel but ever carrying

down in its apostolic succession the same traditions of statecraft, of

obedience, of secrecy, of diplomacy--how when this great Company had to

take a kick, it took it gracefully and always made it a point of being

kicked _up_, not down. This is illustrated by the Company’s policy now.

Cruising north in June of ’42, Douglas notices two magnificent bays

north of 49°, on the south end of Vancouver Island opposite what

is now British Columbia. The easterly bay named by the Indians,

Camosun, meaning rush of waters, offers splendid sea space combined

with a shore of plains interspread with good building timber. Also,

there are fresh-water streams. The other bay, three miles west,

called Esquimalt--the place of gathering of roots--is a better, more

land-locked harbor but more difficult of anchorage for small boats.

Simpson and McLoughlin decide to build a new fort at Camosun--the

modern Victoria. Those, who know the region, need no description

of its beauty. To those who do not, descriptions can convey but a

faint picture. Islands ever green, in a climate ever mild, dot the

far-rolling blue of a summer sea; and where the clouds skirt the

water’s horizon, there breaks through mid-heaven, aërial and unreal,

the fiery and opal dome of Mt. Baker, or the rifted shimmering, ragged

peaks of the Olympic Range in Washington. So far are the mountains,

so soft the air, that not a shadow, not a line, of the middle heights

appear, only the snowy peaks, dazzling and opalescent, with the

primrose tinge of the sheet lightning at play like the color waves of

Northern Lights. Westward is the sea; eastward, the rolling hills,

the forested islands, unexpected vistas of sea among the forests, of

precipices rising sheer as wall from the water. Hither comes Douglas to

lay the foundations of a new empire.

To Hubert Howe Bancroft the world is indebted for details of the

founding of Victoria. Bancroft obtained the facts first-hand from

the manuscripts of Douglas, himself. Fifteen men led by Douglas left

the Columbia in March, ’43. Proceeding up the Cowlitz, they obtained

provisions from the Puget Sound Company at Nisqually and embarking

on _The Beaver_, March the 13th, at ten A. M., steamed northward for

Vancouver Island. At four o’clock, the next afternoon, they anchored

just outside Camosun Bay. “On the morning of the 15th of March, Douglas

set out from the steamer in a small boat to examine the shore.... With

the expedition was a Jesuit missionary, Bolduc.... Repairing to the

great house of the Indian village, the priest harangued the people ...

and baptized them till arrested by sheer exhaustion. The 16th, having

determined on a site, Douglas put his men at work squaring timbers

and digging a well. He explained to the natives that he had come to

build among them, whereat they were greatly pleased and pressed their

assistance on the fort builders, who employed them at the rate of a

blanket for every forty pickets they would bring.... Sunday, the 19th,

Bolduc decided to celebrate mass. Douglas supplied him with men to

aid in the holy work. A rustic chapel was improvised; a boat’s awning

serving as canopy, branches of fir trees enclosing the sides. No

cathedral bell was heard that Sabbath morning ... and yet the Songhies,

Clallams, and Cowichins were there, friends and bloody enemies....

Bolduc, desirous of carrying the gospel to Whidby Island, was paddled

thence on the 24th....”

While his men proceeded with the building, Douglas went north on _The

Beaver_ to dismantle Fort Tako and Fort McLoughlin and bring the

men from these abandoned posts to assist at Camosun. “The force now

numbered fifty men ... armed to the teeth ... constantly on guard.”

By September, stockades, bastions and dwelling houses were complete.

Douglas departed in October, leaving Charles Ross in charge, but Ross

died in the spring of ’44 and Roderick Finlayson became chief trader

at Camosun, first named Albert Fort after the Prince Consort, then

Victoria, its present name, after the Queen of England. Finlayson had

been in charge of a little post at Bytown--the modern Ottawa, but

coming to Oregon had been dispatched north to Stickine.

The steamer had not been long gone when the Cowichin Indians fell to

the pastime of slaughtering the fort cattle. Finlayson demanded pay or

the surrender of the Indian “rustlers.” The Indian chief laughed the

demand to scorn.

“The fort gates will be closed against you,” warned Finlayson.

“And I will batter them down,” retorted the chief.

[Illustration: Fort Vancouver, at the bend in Columbia River, where

Chief Factor McLoughlin held sway for fifty years, and where the First

American Colonists were welcomed and sheltered.]

“The spirit of butchery,” relates Bancroft, “was aroused. Within the

fort, watch was kept day and night. After a lapse of two days, the

threatened attack was made. Midst savage yells, a shower of musket

balls came pattering down upon the fort, riddling the stockades and

rattling on the roofs. Instantly, Finlayson shouted his order that

not a shot was to be returned.... The savages continued their fire

... then rested from the waste of ammunition.... Then the commander

(Finlayson) appeared ... and beckoned (the chief).... ‘What would you

do?’ exclaimed Finlayson. ‘What evil would you bring upon yourselves!

Know you that with one motion of my finger I could blow you all into

the bay? And I will do it! See your houses yonder!’

“Instantly, a nine-pounder belched forth with astounding noise, tearing

to splinters the cedar lodge.

“Finlayson had ordered his interpreter to run to the lodges and warn

the inmates to instant flight. Hence no damage was done save shivering

to splinters some pine slabs.”

The results were what one might expect. The Indians sued for peace, and

paid full meed in furs for the slaughtered cattle.

It may be added here as a sample of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s economy

in detail--that Fort Victoria was built without the driving of a single

nail. Wooden pegs were used. After the relinquishment of Oregon, the

old Okanogan-Kamloops trail could be no longer used. Anderson of Fort

Alexandria in New Caledonia succeeded in 1845-46 in finding and cutting

a new trail down the Fraser to Langley and Victoria. This was the trail

that later developed into the famous Cariboo Road of the miners and

of which ruins may still be seen clinging to the precipices above the

Fraser like basket work, the strands of the basket bridges being huge

cedar logs mortised in places for a depth of hundreds of feet. Except

where the embankment has crumbled beneath the timber work, Anderson’s

old fur trail is still used to enter Cariboo. From 1846, one Joseph

McKay becomes chief clerk under Chief Factor Douglas of Victoria.

Indians brought first word of the famous coal beds of North Vancouver

Island. Hence the building of Fort Rupert on Beaver Harbor in ’43.

And now occurs the fine play of the Company’s rare diplomacy. Rumors

of gold in California are arousing the fever that is to result in the

pell-mell stampede of the famous ’49. At any time, similar discoveries

may bring a stampede to the North. No one knew better than the Company

those Indian legends of hidden minerals in the Rockies, and when

colonists came there would be an end to the fur trade. Did the Company,

then--as is often charged--conceal knowledge of precious minerals in

its territory? Not at all. It simply let the legends slumber. Its

business was not mining. It was fur trading, and the two were utterly

hostile.

Came Sir John Pelly, Governor of the Company in England, and Sir

George Simpson, Governor of the Company in America, to the Cabinet

Minister of Great Britain with a cock-and-bull story of the dangers of

an American, not invasion, but deluge such as had swept away British

sovereignty in Oregon. What, they ask, is to hinder American colonists

rolling in a tide north of the boundary and so establishing rights

of possession there as they had in Oregon. Any schoolboy could have

guessed the trend of such argument, and let us not blame the Hudson’s

Bay Company for cupidity. It was a purely commercial organization,

not a patriotic or charitable association; and it pursued its aims

just as commercial organizations have pursued their aims since time

began--namely, by grabbing all they could get. To talk cupidity is

nonsense. Cupidity, according to the legal rules of the game, is the

business of a money-getting organization. Not the cupidity of the

Hudson’s Bay Company was to blame for the extraordinary episodes in its

history. Place the blame where it belongs--at the door of an ignorance

as profound as it was indifferent on the part of the British statesmen

who dealt with colonial affairs.

My Lord Grey listens to the warning of this impending disaster. What

would the Hudson’s Bay Company suggest to counteract such danger?

Modestly, generously, with a largesse of self-sacrifice that is

appalling to contemplate, the two Hudson’s Bay governors offer to

accept--_accept_, mind you, not _ask_--the enormous burden of looking

after “_all England’s possessions in North America_.” As a _quid pro

quo_, it is a mere detail of course--they would expect exclusive

monopoly of trade in the same regions. It is said when Gladstone, now

rising to fame, heard the terms of this offer, he burst out in a loud

laugh that brought the blush of misunderstood modesty to the brow of

the two Hudson’s Bay men. The Company dropped the subject like a hot

coal for the matter of a few months to let the coal cool. Then they

came at it again with an aggrieved air, demanding government protection

for their interests on the Pacific Coast. Earl Grey tumbled into the

trap with a celerity that was beautiful. He answered “that the Company

must protect themselves.” Exactly the answer expected. Then if “the

Company must protect themselves from dangers of American encroachment,

they ask for exclusive monopoly for purposes of colonization

in--Vancouver Island.”

For two years furious waxed debate in Parliament and out on this

request of the Company. The Hudson’s Bay Company as a colonizer was

a new rôle. Mr. Isbister, descendant of Red River people and now a

barrister in London, has something to say as to how the Hudson’s Bay

Company act in the colony of Red River, and Mr. Gladstone in Parliament

openly and hotly opposes the request on the ground that a company which

had a charter of exclusive monopoly for two hundred years entitling it

to colonize and had done nothing, had proved itself incompetent as a

colonizer.

Furious waxed the debate, but the one thing lacking in all long-drawn

out debates is a basis of fact. Only the Hudson’s Bay Company possessed

the facts about this West Coast. Reports of such government emissaries

as Gordon of the Squadron were worse than useless. The opponents were

working in the dark. In the House of Commons were several shareholders

of the Hudson’s Bay Company, chief among them, Ellice, son of the old

Nor’Wester.

The request was officially granted in January, 1849, but with such

absurd restrictions attached, that any one possessing the slightest

knowledge of West Coast conditions must have been aware that the

alleged aim to colonize was but a stalking horse for other designs. The

Company was to be permitted to retain only one-tenth of the proceeds

from its land sales. The other nine-tenths were to be spent improving

the island. What bona fide colonization company would accept such

conditions? Ten per cent. of land sales would not suffice to pay for

advertising. If no settlement were made, the grant was to be revoked

in five years. To the colonists, land was to be sold at £1 ($5.00) an

acre. In Oregon, the colonist could have 640 acres for nothing. For

every one hundred acres sold at $5.00 an acre, the buyer was bound

by covenant to bring to Vancouver Island at _his_ own expense three

families, or six single persons. Last of all and most absurd of all,

at the end of five or ten years, the Government might buy back the

Island by paying to the Company all it had expended. Another point--but

this was not in the official terms--retired servants of the Hudson’s

Bay Company might buy the land at a few shillings an acre. Looking

squarely at this extraordinary contract, only one of two conclusions

can be reached: either the ignorance of conditions was so dense that

dynamite could not have driven a hole through it, or there was no

intention whatever of colonizing Vancouver Island, the real design

being twofold: (1) on the part of the Government to keep this remote

region securely British, for Mormons had talked of escaping persecution

by going to Vancouver Island; (2) on the part of the Company, to hold

colonizing in its own control to be forwarded or retarded as suited its

interests. The Company declared that from the time Lord Grey framed

the conditions of the grant, they knew the scheme was foredoomed to

failure. This did not prevent them accepting the terms; but the fur

traders were too tactful to suggest one of their own men as governor

of the new colony. Earl Grey suggested Richard Blanchard, a barrister,

as governor; and Blanchard foolishly accepted the appointment without

a single stipulation as to residence, salary, land, or staff. Pelly

talked unofficially of the governor being given one thousand acres, but

when Blanchard reached Victoria he found that Chief Factor Douglas had

received no instructions. The governor of the colony was to have only

the use of the one thousand acres, not the possession. One year of such

empty honors satisfied Blanchard’s ambitions. He had neither house nor

salary, subjects nor staff, and came home to England in 1851, £1,000

the poorer. James Douglas, the Chief Factor, was at once appointed

Governor of Vancouver Island.

The record of the colony is not a part of the history of the English

Adventurers, and therefore is not given here. How many colonists were

sent out, I do not know; exclusive of the Company’s servants, certainly

not more than a dozen; including the Company’s servants, not more than

three hundred in ten years. Provisions must be bought from the Company.

Produce must be sold to the Company--a one-sided performance that

easily accounted for the discontent expressed in a memorial sent home

with Blanchard when he retired.

The man, who had hauled fish and furs in New Caledonia at $300 a year,

was now governor of Vancouver Island. James Douglas received his

commission in September of 1851. Five years ago, he had been compelled

to choose between loyalty to McLoughlin, and loyalty to his Company.

He took his choice, was loyal to his Company and had been promoted to a

position worth $15,000 a year. Events were now coming that would compel

Douglas to choose between his country and his Company. Wisely, he

chose the former, sold out all interests in the Hudson’s Bay Company,

received knighthood in ’59 and died at Victoria full of honors in 1877.

Upon renewing the grant of Vancouver Island to the Company in 1854,

the English Government requested Douglas to establish representative

government in the colony. This was not easy. Electors were scarce,

consisting mainly of retired Hudson’s Bay officers; and when Douglas

met the first parliament of the Island on August 12, 1856, it consisted

of less than a dozen members; all directly connected with the Hudson’s

Bay Company; so that the governor was able to report to England that

“the opening” passed off quietly without exciting “interest among the

lower orders”--upon which Bancroft, the American, wants to know “who

the _lower orders_ were” unless “the pigs on the parson’s pig farm.”

As told in the story of Kamloops, gold was discovered this very year on

Thompson River. A year later, the air was full of wild rumors of gold

discoveries north of Colville, in Cariboo, on Queen Charlotte Island.

The tide, that had rolled over the mountains to California, now turned

to British Columbia. When the second five-year grant of Vancouver

Island to the Hudson’s Bay Company expired in 1859, it was not renewed.

Douglas foresaw that the gold stampede to the North meant a new British

empire on the Pacific. The discovery of gold sounded the death knell

of the fur lords’ ascendancy. Douglas resigned his position as Chief

Factor and became governor of the new colony now known as British

Columbia, including both Vancouver and the mainland. For the repurchase

of Vancouver Island, the British Government paid the Hudson’s Bay

Company £57,500. The Company claimed that it had spent £80,000. Among

the gold seekers stampeding north from Oregon were our old trappers

and traders of the mountain brigades, led by Dr. David McLoughlin, now

turned prospector.

_Notes to Chapter XXXIII._--The contents of this chapter are drawn

from the same sources as XXXII; in addition Hansard and Congressional

Reports for both the Vancouver Island and Oregon disputes, the Parl.

Enquiry Report of 1857; H. B. C. Memorial Book on Puget Sound Company;

Fitzgerald’s Vancouver Island, 1849; Martin’s H. B. Territories, 1849;

De Smet’s Oregon Missions, 1847; Oregon (Quarterly) Hist. Soc. Report,

1900; Schafer’s Pacific Northwest, 1905; and most important--H. H.

Bancroft’s invaluable transcripts of Douglas and Finlayson MS. in

his “British Columbia.” For a popular account of McLoughlin from an

absolutely American point of view nothing better exists than Mrs.

Dye’s “Old Oregon,” though it may be sniffed at by the higher critics

for unquestioning acceptance of what they please to call the “Whitman

myth.” Whitman’s ride was not all myth, though the influence was

greatly exaggerated; and the truth probably exists half way between

the critics’ skepticism and the old legend. Wilkes’ Narrative of the

Exploring Squadron, 1845; the reports of Warre and Vavasseur, the two

special spies on McLoughlin; early numbers of the old _B. C. Colonist_

and _Cariboo Sentinel_; Sir Geo. Simpson’s Journey Round the World;

Lord’s Naturalist, 1866; Macfie’s Vancouver Island, 1865; Mayne’s B.

C., 1862; Milton’s North-West Passage, 1869; Paul Kane’s Wanderings,

1859; Dunn’s Oregon Territory, 1844; Grant’s Ocean to Ocean, 1873;

Gray’s Oregon, 1870; Greenhow’s Oregon, 1844; Dawson’s Geol. Reports,

Ottawa; Peter Burnett’s Letters to _Herald_ N. Y.--also throw side

lights on the episodes related.

CHAPTER XXXIV

1857-1870

THE PASSING OF THE COMPANY

The tide of American colonization rolling westward to Minnesota, to

Dakota, to Oregon, was not without effect on the little isolated

settlement of Red River. Oregon had been wrested from the fur trader,

not by diplomacy, but by the rough-handed toiler coming in and

taking possession. The same thing happened in British Columbia when

the miner came. What was Red River--the pioneer of all the Western

colonies--doing?

The union of Nor’Wester and Hudson’s Bay had thrown many old employés

out of work. These now retired to Red River, where they were granted

one hundred acres of land and paid a few shillings an acre for another

twenty-eight acres, making up farms of one hundred and twenty-eight

acres, all facing the river and running back in long, narrow lots to

the highway now known as St. John’s Road. St. John’s and Kildonan

expanded to St. Paul’s and St. Andrew’s settlements northward. Across

the river were three sets of settlers--the French Plain Rangers,

descendants of the old Nor’Westers, the De Meuron soldiers, and the

Swiss. These gradually clustered round the settlement just opposite the

Assiniboine, where the Catholic missionaries were building chapel and

school, and the place became known as St. Boniface, after the patron

saint of the Germans. In the old buildings of Fort Douglas lived the

colony governor distinct from the Company governor, Sir George Simpson,

whose habitat was Fort Garry, near the site of old Fort Gibraltar, when

he was in the West, and Lachine, at Montreal, when he was in the East.

The colonists continued to hunt buffalo in Minnesota during the winter

and to cultivate their farms in the summer; but what to do for a

market? Colonists in Oregon could sell their produce to the Spaniards,

or the Russians, or the Yankee skippers passing up and down the coast.

Colonists in British Columbia found a market with the miners, but to

whom could the Red River farmer sell but to the fur company? For his

provisions from England, he paid a freight of 33 per cent. ocean rate,

58 per cent. profit to the Company, and another 20 per cent. land rate

from Hudson Bay to Red River--a total of over 110 per cent. advance

on all purchases. For what he sold to the Company, he received only

the lowest price, and he might on no account sell furs. Furs were

the exclusive prerogative of the Company. For his produce, he was

credited on the books, but the credit side seldom balanced the debit

side; and on the difference the Red River settler was charged 5 per

cent.--not a high debtors’ rate when it is considered that it was

levied by a monopoly, that had absolute power over the debtor; and that

the modern debtors’ rate is legalized at 6 and 8 percent. It was not

the rate charged that discouraged the Red River settler; but the fact

that paying an advance of 110 per cent. on all purchases and receiving

only the lowest market price for all farm produce--two shillings-six

pence for wheat a bushel--he could never hope by any possibility to

make his earnings and his spendings balance. Mr. Halkett, a relative

of Selkirk’s, came out in 1822, to settle up the affairs of the

dead nobleman. The Company generously wrote off all debt, which was

accumulated interest, and remitted one-fifth of the principal to all

settlers.

Mr. Halkett and Sir George Simpson then talked over plans to create a

market for the colonist. These successive plans and their successive

failures belong to the history of the colony rather than the history of

the Company, and cannot be fully given here.

There was the Buffalo Wool Company of 1822, under Pritchard’s

management, which set all the farmers scouring the plains as buffalo

hunters with schemes as roseate as the South Sea Bubble; and like the

South Sea Bubble the roseate scheme came to grief. It cost $12.50 a

yard to manufacture cloth that sold for only $1.10; and the Hudson’s

Bay Company wrote a loss of $12,000 off their books for this experiment.

Alex MacDonell, a bottle-loving Scotchman, who had acted as governor

of the colony after Semple’s death, and who became notorious as “the

grasshopper governor” because his régime caused the colonists as great

grief as the grasshopper plague--now gave place to Governor Bulger.

Over at the Company fort, John Clarke of Athabasca fame, now returned

from Montreal with an aristocratic Swiss lady as his bride--acts as

Chief Factor under Governor Simpson.

The next essay is to send Laidlaw down to Prairie du Chien on

the Mississippi to buy a stock of seed wheat to be rafted up the

Mississippi across a portage and down the Red River. He buys two

hundred and fifty bushels at $2.40 a bushel, but what with rafting and

incidentals before it reaches the colonist, it has cost the Hudson’s

Bay Company £1,040. Next, an experimental farm must be tried to teach

these new colonists how to farm in the new country. The same Mr.

Laidlaw with the same grand ideas is put in charge of the Hayfield

Farm. It is launched with the style of a baronial estate--fine houses,

fine stables, a multitude of servants, a liberal tap in the wine

cellar; and a total loss to the Hudson’s Bay Company of £2,000. There

follow experiments of driving sheep to Red River all the way from

Missouri, and of a Wool Company that ends as the Buffalo Company had,

and of flax growing, the flax rotting in the fields for lack of a

purchaser. What with disastrous experiments and a grasshopper plague

and a flood that floats the houses of half the population down the

ice-jammed current of the raging Red, the De Meurons and Swiss become

discouraged. It was noticed during the flood that the De Meurons had

an unusual quantity of hides and beef to sell; and that the settlers

had extraordinary difficulty finding their scattered herds. What little

reputation the De Meurons had, they now lost; and many of them with

their Swiss neighbors deserted Red River for the new settlements of

Minnesota. From ranging the plains with the buffalo hunters of Pembina,

the Swiss came on south to Fort Snelling, near modern St. Paul, and

so formed the nucleus of the first settlements in Minnesota. It has

been charged that the Hudson’s Bay Company never meant any of these

experiments to succeed; that it designed them so they would fail

and prove to the world the country was unfit for settlement. Such

a charge is far-fetched with just enough truth to give the falsity

semblance. The Company were not farmers. They were traders, and it

is not surprising that fur men’s experiments at farming should be a

failure; but that the Hudson’s Bay Company deliberately went to work to

throw away sums of money ranging from $5,000 to $17,000 will hardly be

credited with those who know the inner working of an organization whose

economy was so strict it saved nails when it could use wooden pegs.

[Illustration: Interior of Fort Garry or Winnipeg in 1870. The figure

standing with arm extended a little to the left of the flag is Donald

Smith, now Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, then but newly come from

the wilds of Labrador and commissioned by the Canadian Government to

try and pacify the Half-breed Rebels led by Riel.]

American herdsmen as an experiment had driven up herds of cattle to

sell to the Red River colonists. This was the beginning of trade with

St. Paul. Henceforward, what produce Red River people could not sell

to the Hudson’s Bay Company, was sent to St. Paul. Then the St. Paul

traders paid higher prices than the Hudson’s Bay Company. Twice a year

the long lines of Red River ox carts, like Eastern caravans, creaked

over the looping prairie trail of Red River southward to St. Paul with

buffalo hides and farm products. These carts were famous in their day.

They were built entirely of wood, hub, spokes, rim and tire of wheel,

pegs even taking the place of nails. Hence, if a cart broke down on the

way, it could be mended by recourse to the nearest clump of brushwood.

The Sioux were at this time the greatest danger to the cart brigades,

and the settlers always traveled together for protection; but the

Indians wished to stay on good terms with the Hudson’s Bay Company,

and had the settlers carry an H. B. C. flag as a signal of friendship

with the fur traders. Within a few years, twelve hundred Red River

carts rumbled and creaked their way to St. Paul in June and September.

Simpson had issued Hudson’s Bay Company notes of £1, 5 shillings and

1 shilling, to avoid the account system, and these notes were always

redeemable at any fur post for Company goods, but in St. Paul, the

settlers for the first time began using currency that was coin.

Early in the thirties, possibly owing to the dangers from the Sioux,

Governor Simpson ordered the building of the stone forts--Upper Fort

Garry as a stronghold for the Company, Lower Fort Garry near St.

Andrew’s Rapids twenty miles north, as a residence for himself and

trading post for the lake Indians. These were the last stone forts

built by the fur trader in America. Of Upper Fort Garry there remains

to-day only the old gray stone gate, to be seen at the south end of

Main Street in Winnipeg. Lower Fort Garry yet stands as Simpson had it

built--the last relic of feudalism in America--high massive stone walls

with stores and residence in the court yard.

Other operations Simpson pushed for the Company. McLean is sent in

’37 to explore the interior of Labrador. John Clarke is dispatched to

establish forts down MacKenzie River almost to the Arctic. Bell goes

overland, in 1846, to the Yukon. Murray, later of Pembina, builds Fort

Yukon, and Campbell between 1840 and 1848 explores both the Pelly and

the Yukon, building Fort Selkirk.

The explorations that had begun when Radisson came to Hudson Bay in his

canoe from Lake Superior, were now completed by the Company’s boats

going down the MacKenzie to the Arctic and down the Yukon to Bering

Sea. How big was the empire won from savagery by fur trader? Within

a few thousand miles of the same size as Europe. Spain won a Mexico

and a Peru from savagery; but her soldiers’ cruelty outdid the worst

horrors of Indian warfare, steeped every mile of the forward march

with the blood of the innocent natives, and reduced those natives to

a state of slavery that was a hell upon earth. The United States won

an empire from savagery, but she did it by an ever-shifting frontier,

that was invariably known from Tennessee to Oregon, as “the Bloody

Ground.” Behind that shifting frontier was the American pioneer with

his sharp-shooter. In front of that frontier was the Indian with his

tomahawk. Between them was the Bloody Ground. In the sixteen-hundreds,

that Bloody Ground was west of the Alleghanies in Ohio and Tennessee

and Kentucky. In the seventeen-hundreds, it had shifted forward to the

Mississippi. In the eighteen-hundreds, it was on the plains and in

the mountains and in Oregon. Always, the forward step of white man,

the backward step of red man--had meant a battle, bloodshed; now the

colonists wiped out by the Sioux in Minnesota; or the missionaries

massacred by the Cayuse in Oregon; or the Indians shot down and fleeing

to the caves of the mountains like hunted animals.

How many massacres marked the forward march of the Hudson’s Bay Company

from Atlantic to Pacific? Not one. The only massacre, that of Seven

Oaks, was a fight of fur trader against fur trader. The raids such as

Hearne saw on the Coppermine were raids of tribe on tribe, not white

man on Indian, nor Indian on white man. “Smug old lady,” enemies

designated the Hudson’s Bay Company. “Oppressor, monopoly, intriguing

aristocrats,” the early settlers of Oregon called her. Grant all the

sins of omission common to smug, conservative old ladies! Grant all

the sins of commission--greed, secrecy, craft, subterfuge--common the

world over to monopolies! _Of these things and more was the Hudson’s

Bay Company guilty in its long despotic reign of two hundred years.

But set over against its sins, this other fact, a record which no

other organization in the world may boast--the bloodless conquest of an

empire from savagery!_

* * * * *

Apart from Selkirk’s friends, the Hudson’s Bay Company had never been

favorable to the idea of colonizing Red River. Now that the colonists

had opened connections with American traders of St. Paul, it became

evident that the Hudson’s Bay must relinquish sovereignty over Red

River Colony, or buy out Selkirk’s interests and own the colony, lock,

stock and barrel. In 1835, the heirs of Lord Selkirk sold back to the

Hudson’s Bay Company the vast grant of Red River for some £84,000. The

sum seems large, but I doubt if it covered a tenth of what Selkirk had

spent, for it will be recalled, though he intended in the first place

_to sell_ the land, he ended by giving it to the settlers scot free.

To-day, the sum for which Selkirk’s heirs sold back Red River, would

hardly buy a corner lot on Main Street, Winnipeg. Selkirk’s heirs

retained their shares in Hudson’s Bay stock, which ultimately paid them

back many times over what Selkirk had lost.

Why did the Company buy back Red River? Behold the sequence! Settlers

are crowding into Minnesota. The settlers of Red River are beginning

to ask for a form of government. They want to rule themselves as the

Americans do south of the boundary. Good! The Company will take care

there is no independent government such as was set up in Oregon and

ended by ousting the fur trader. The Company will give the settlers a

form of government. The Council of Assiniboia is organized. President

of the Council is Sir George Simpson, governor of the Company.

Vice-president is Alex Christie, governor of the colony; and the

other thirteen members are old Hudson’s Bay officers. The government

of Assiniboia is nothing more or less than a Company oligarchy; but

that serves the Hudson’s Bay better than an independent government,

or a government friendly to the American traders. But deeper and more

practical reason lies beneath this move. Selkirk’s colony was not to

interfere with the fur trade. Before the Red River carts set out for

St. Paul it is customary for the Hudson’s Bay officers to search the

cargoes. More! They search the settlers’ houses, poking long sticks up

the deep set chimney places for hidden furs; and sometimes the chimney

casts out cached furs, which are confiscated. Old French Nor’Westers

begin to ask themselves--is this a free country? The Company responds

by burning down the shanties of two hunters on Lake Manitoba in 1826,

who had dared to trade furs from the Indians. These furs, the two

Frenchmen no doubt meant to sell to St. Paul traders who paid just

four times higher than the Hudson’s Bay. Altogether, it is safer for

the Company to buy out Selkirk’s colony themselves and organize laws

and police to enforce the laws--especially the supremest law--against

illicit fur trading.

First test of the new government comes in 1836, when one St. Dennis is

sentenced to be flogged for theft. A huge De Meuron is to wield the

lash, but this spectacle of jury law in a land that has been ruled

by paternalism for two hundred years, ruled by despot’s strong right

arm--is something so repugnant to the Plain Rangers, they stone the

executioner and chase him till he jumps into a well. In 1844 is issued

proclamation that all business letters sent through the Company must be

left open for perusal, and that land will be deeded to settlers only

on condition of forfeiture if illicit trade in furs be discovered. In

fact, as that intercourse with the American traders of the Mississippi

increases, it is as difficult for the Company to stop illicit fur

trading as for customs officers to stop smuggling.

That provisional government in Oregon had caught the Company napping.

Not so shall it be in Red River. If the despot must have a standing

army to enforce his laws, an army he shall have. The experience in

Oregon furnishes a good excuse. The Company asks and the British

Government sends out the Sixth Royal Regiment of five hundred men

under Colonel Crofton. Now laws shall be enforced and provisional

governments kept loyal, and when Colonel Crofton leaves, there comes

in 1848, Colonel Caldwell with one hundred old pensioners, who may act

as an army if need be, but settle down as colonists and impart to Red

River somewhat of the gayety and pomp and pleasure seeking, leisurely

good fellowship of English garrison life. Year after year for twenty

years, crops have been bounteous. Flocks have multiplied. Granaries

are bursting with fullness of stores. Though there is no market, there

is plenty in the land. Though there is little coin current of the

realm, there is no want; and the people stuck off here at the back of

beyond take time to enjoy life. Thatched shanties have given place to

big, spacious, comfortable houses; dog sleighs to gay carioles with

horses decked in ribbons. Horse racing is the passion and the pastime.

Schools and embryo colleges and churches have been established by the

missionaries of the different denominations, whose pioneer labors

are a book in themselves. It is a happy primitive life, with neither

wealth nor poverty, of almost _Arcadian_ simplicity, and cloudless

but for that shadow--illicit trade, monopoly. Could the life but have

lasted, I doubt if American history could show its parallel for quiet,

care-free, happy-go-lucky, thoughtless-of-the-morrow contentment. The

French of _Acadia_, perhaps somewhat resembled Red River colony, but we

have grown to view Acadia through Longfellow’s eyes. Beneath the calm

surface there was international intrigue. Military life gave a dash

of color to Red River that Longfellow’s Acadians never possessed; but

beneath the calm of Red River, too, was intrigue.

[Illustration: Rough Map of North America, showing Areas explored by

Fur Trades, (1) Alaska by Russians, (2) Canada and U. S. by H. B. Co. &

North-Western from 1670 to 1846.]

Resentment against search for furs grew to anger. The explosion came

over a poor French Plain Ranger, William Sayer, and three friends,

arrested for accepting furs from Indians in May, 1849. Judge Thom,

the Company’s recorder, was to preside in court. Thom was noted for

hatred for the French in his old journalistic days in Montreal. The

arrest suddenly became a social question--the French Plain Rangers

of the old Nor’Westers against the English Company, with the Scotch

settlers looking on only too glad of a test case against the Company.

Louis Riel, an old miller of the Seine near St. Boniface, father of the

Riel to become notorious later, harangued the Plain Rangers and French

settlers like a French revolutionist discoursing freedom. The day of

the trial, May 17th, Plain Rangers were seen riding from all directions

to the Fort Garry Court House. At 10 A. M. they had stacked four

hundred guns against the outer wall and entered the court in a body.

Not till 1 P. M. did the court dare to call for the prisoner, William

Sayer. As he walked to the bar of justice, the Plain Rangers took up

their guns and followed him in. Boldly, Sayer pleaded guilty to the

charge of trading furs. It was to be a test case, but test cases are

the one thing on earth the Hudson’s Bay Company avoided. The excuse was

instantly unearthed or invented that a man connected with the Hudson’s

Bay Company had given Sayer permission; perhaps, verbal license to

trade. So the case was compromised--a verdict of guilty, but the

prisoner honorably discharged by the court. The Plain Rangers took no

heed of legal quibbles. To them, the trial meant that henceforth trade

was free. With howls of jubilation, they dashed from the court carrying

Sayer and shouting, “_Vive la liberté_--commerce is free--trade

is free”; and spent the night discharging volleys of triumph and

celebrating victory.

Isbister, the young lawyer, forwards to the Secretary of State for the

Colonies petition after petition against the Company’s monopoly. The

settlers, who now number five thousand, demanded liberty of commerce

and British laws. The petitions are ignored. Isbister vows they are

shelved through the intrigue of the Hudson’s Bay Company in London.

Then five hundred settlers petition the Legislature of Canada. The

Toronto Board of Trade takes the matter up in 1857, and Canadian

surveyors are sent west to open roads to Red River. “It is plain,”

aver the various petitions and memorials of 1857-59, “that Red River

settlement is being driven to one of two destinies. Either she must be

permitted to join the other Canadian colonies, or she will be absorbed

by a provisional American government such as captured Oregon.” Sir

George Simpson, prince of tacticians, dies. Both the British Government

and the Hudson’s Bay Company are at sea. There is no denying what

happened to Oregon when the Company held on too long. They drove Oregon

into Congress. May not the same thing happen in Red River--in which

case the Company’s compensation will be _nil_. Then--there is untold

history here--a story that must be carried on where I leave off and

which will probably never be fully told till the leading actors in

it have passed away. There are ugly rumors of a big fund among the

Minnesota traders, as much as a million dollars, to be used for secret

service money to swing Red River Settlement into the American Union.

Was it a Fenian fund? Who held the fund? Who set the scheme going?

The Hudson’s Bay Company knows nothing. It only fears. The British

Government knows nothing; except that in such a way did it lose Oregon;

and the United States is now buying Alaska from Russia. With its policy

of matchless foresight, the Hudson’s Bay Company realizes it is wiser

to retire early with the laurels and rewards than to retreat too late

stripped. The question of renewing the license on Vancouver Island

is on the carpet. The Hudson’s Bay Company welcomes a Parliamentary

Enquiry into every branch of its operations. “We would be glad to get

rid of the enormous burden of governing these territories, _if it can

be done equitably as to our possessory rights_,” the Company informs

the astonished Parliamentary Committee.

How stand those possessory rights under the terms of union in 1821?

It will be remembered the charter rights were not then tested. They

were merged with the Northwest Company rights, and without any test a

license of exclusive trade granted for twenty-one years. That license

was renewed in 1838 for another twenty-one years. This term is just

expiring when the Company declares it would be glad to be rid of its

burden, and welcomes a Parliamentary Enquiry. At that inquiry, friends

and foes alike testify. Old officers like Ellice give evidence. So do

Sir George Simpson, and Blanchard of Vancouver Island, and Isbister

as representative of the Red River colonists, and Chief Justice Draper

as representative of Canada. It is brought out the Company rules under

three distinct licenses:

(1) Over Rupert’s Land or the territory of the bay proper by right of

its first charter.

(2) Over Vancouver Island by special grant of 1849.

(3) Over all the Indian Territory between the bay and Vancouver Island

by the license of 1821 since renewed.

The Parliamentary committee recommend on July 31, 1857, that Vancouver

Island be given up; that just as soon as Canada is ready to take over

the government of the Indian Territory this, too, shall be ceded; but

that for the present in order to avoid the demoralization of Indians

by rival traders, Rupert’s Land be left in the exclusive control of

the Hudson’s Bay Company. This is the condition of affairs when unrest

arises in Red River.

The committee also bring out the fact that the capital has been

increased since the union of 1821 to £500,000. Of the one hundred

shares into which this is divided, forty have been set aside for the

wintering partners or chief factors and chief traders. These forty

shares are again subdivided into eighty-five parts. Two eighty-fifths

of the profits equal to $3,000 a year and a retiring fund of $20,000

are the share of a chief factor; one eighty-fifth, the share of a chief

trader. This is what is known as “the deed poll.”

* * * * *

Meanwhile, out in Red River, gold seekers bound for Cariboo,

prospectors for the bad lands of Montana, settlers for the farms of

Minnesota--roll past in a tide. Trade increases in jumps. A steamer

runs on Red River connecting by stage for St. Paul. Among the hosts of

new comers to Red River is one Doctor Schultz, who helps to establish

the newspaper, _Nor’Wester_, which paper has the amazing temerity,

in 1867, to advocate that in the Council of Assiniboia there should

be some representative of the people independent of the Hudson’s Bay

Company. A vacancy occurs in the council. _The Nor’Wester_ advocates

that Dr. John Schultz would be an excellent representative to fill

that vacancy. A great many of the settlers think so, too; for among

other newcomers to the colony is one Thomas Spence, of Portage la

Prairie, who is for setting up a provisional government of Manitoba.

A government independent of British connection means only one

thing--annexation. The settlers want to see Schultz on the Council of

Assiniboia to counteract domination by the Hudson’s Bay and to steer

away from annexation. Not so the Hudson’s Bay Company. Schultz’s paper

has attacked them from the first, and the little store of which he is

part proprietor, has been defiant opposition under their very noses.

But this council business is too much. They will squelch Schultz, and

do it legally, too. In all new countries, the majority of pioneers

are at some stage of the game in debt. Against Schultz’s firm stood

a debt of a few hundred dollars. Schultz swore he had discharged the

debt by paying the money to his partner. Owing to his partner’s absence

in England, his evidence could neither be proved nor disproved. The

Company did not wait. Judgment was entered against Schultz and the

sheriff sent to seize his goods. Moral resistance failing, Schultz

resisted somewhat vigorously with the poker. This was misdemeanor

with a vengeance--probably the very thing his enemies hoped, for he

was quickly overpowered, tied round the arms with ropes, and whisked

off in a cariole to prison. But his opponents had not counted on his

wife--the future Lady Schultz, life partner of the man who was governor

of Manitoba for eight years. That very night the wife of the future Sir

John led fifteen men across to the prison, ordered the guides knocked

aside, the doors battered open, and her husband liberated. His arrest

was not again attempted, and at a later trial for the debt, Schultz

was vindicated. His party emerged from the fracas ten times stronger.

Here, then, were three parties all at daggers drawn--the Hudson’s

Bay Company standing stiffly for the old order of things and marking

time till the negotiations in England gave some cue for a new policy;

the colonists asking for a representative government, which meant

union with Canada, waiting till negotiations for Confederation gave

them some cue; the independents, furtive, almost nameless, working in

the dark, hand in hand with that million dollar fund, watching for

their opportunity. And there was a fourth party more inflammable than

these--the descendants of the old Nor’Westers--the Plain Rangers,

French Metis all of them, led by Louis Riel, son of the old miller,

wondering restlessly what their part was to be in the reorganization.

Were their lands to be taken away by these surveyors coming from

Canada? Were they to be whistled by the independents under the Stars

and Stripes? They and their fathers had found this land and explored

it and ranged its prairies from time immemorial. Who had better right

than the French Half-breeds to this country. Compared to them, the

Scotch settlers were as newcomers. Of them, the other three parties

were taking small thought. The Metis rallied to Louis Riel’s standard

to protect their rights, whichever of the other three parties came

uppermost in the struggle. Poor children of the wilds, of a free

wilderness life forever past! Their leader was unworthy, and their

stand a vain breakwater against the inward rolling tide of events

resistless as destiny!

* * * * *

The Company had told the Parliamentary Committee of ’57 that it would

willingly remit the burden of governing its enormous territory if

adequate returns were made for its possessory rights. Without going

into the question of these rights, a syndicate of capitalists, called

the International Financial Association, jumped at the chance to buy

out the old Hudson’s Bay. Chief negotiator was Edward Watkins, who was

planning telegraph and railroad schemes for British America. “About

what would the price be?” he had casually asked Ellice, now an old

man--the same Ellice who had negotiated the union of Hudson’s Bay and

Nor’Westers in ’21. “Oh, perhaps a million-and-a-half,” ruminated

Ellice; but Berens, whose family had held Hudson’s Bay stock for

generations, was of a different mind. “What?” he roared in a manner

the quintessence of insult, “sequester our lands? Let settlers go in

on our hunting ground?” But the cooler heads proved the wiser heads.

It was “take what you can get now, or risk losing all later! Whether

you will or not, charter or no charter, settlers are coming and can’t

be stopped. Canadian politicians are talking of your charter as an

outrage, as _spoliation_! Their surveyors are already on the ground!

Judge for yourselves whether it is worth while to risk the repetition

of Oregon; or attempt resisting settlement.”

Members of the International Financial Association met Berens,

Colville--representative of the Selkirk interests--and two other

Hudson’s Bay directors in the dark old office of the Board Room,

Fenchurch Street, on the 1st of February, in 1862. Watkins describes

the room as dingy with faded green cover on the long table and worn

dust-grimed chairs. Berens continued to storm like a fishwife; but

it was probably part of the game. On June 1, 1863, the International

Association bought out the Hudson’s Bay Company for £1,500,000. The

Company that had begun in Radisson’s day, two hundred years before,

with a capital of $50,000 (£10,000) now sold to the syndicate for

$7,500,000, and the stock was resold to new shareholders in a new

Hudson’s Bay Company at a still larger capital. The question was

what to do about the forty shares belonging to the chief factors and

traders. When word of the sale came to them in Canada, they naturally

felt as the minority shareholder always feels--that they had been sold

out without any compensation, and the indignation in the service was

universal. But this injustice was avoided by another unexpected move in

the game.

While financiers were dickering for Hudson’s Bay stock, Canadian

politicians brought about confederation of all the Canadian colonies

in 1867, and a clause had been introduced in the British North America

Act that it should “be lawful to admit Rupert’s Land and the Northwest

Territories into the Union.” The Hon. William McDougall had introduced

resolutions in the Canadian House praying that Rupert’s Land be united

in the Confederation. With this end in view, Sir George Cartier and

Mr. McDougall proceeded to England to negotiate with the Company. In

October, 1869, the new Hudson’s Bay Company relinquished all charter

and exclusive rights to the Dominion. The Dominion in turn paid over

to the Company £300,000; granted it one-twentieth of the arable land

in its territory, and ceded to it rights to the land on which its

forts were built. From the £300,000, paid by Canada, £157,055 were set

aside to buy out the rights of the wintering partners. How valuable

one-twentieth of the arable land was to prove, the Company, itself,

did not realize till recent days, and what wealth it gained from the

cession of land where its forts stood, may be guessed from the fact

that at Fort Garry (Winnipeg) this land comprised five hundred acres

of what are now city lots at metropolitan values. Where its forts

stood, it had surely won its laurels, for the ground was literally

baptized with the blood of its early traders; just as the tax-free

sites of rich religious orders in Quebec were long ago won by the

blood of Catholic martyrs of whom newcomers knew nothing. Whether the

rest of the bargain--the payment of £300,000 for charter rights, which

Canadians repudiated, and the cession of one-twentieth of the country’s

arable land--were as good a bargain for Canada as for the Hudson’s Bay

Company, I must leave to be discussed by the writer who takes up the

story where I leave off. Certainly both sides have made tremendous

gains from the bargain.

* * * * *

A year later, Red River Settlement came into Confederation under

the name which Spence had given the country of his Provisional

Government--Manitoba, “the country of the people of the lakes.”

So passed the Company as an empire builder. In Oregon, its passing was

marked by the terrible conflagration of Indian massacres. In British

Columbia, the old order gave place to the new in a wild gold stampede.

In Manitoba, the monopoly had not been surrendered before Riel put a

match to the inflammable passions of his wild Plain Rangers, that set

the country in a flame.

As for the Company, it had played its part, and its day was done. On

that part, I have no verdict. Its history is its verdict, and it is

only fair to judge it by the codes of feudalism rather than democracy.

Judging by the codes of feudalism, there are few baronial or royal

houses of two hundred years’ reign with as little to blush for or hide

away among family skeletons as the “Gentlemen Adventurers Trading to

Hudson’s Bay.” Trickery? To be sure; but then, it was an old order

fighting a new, an old fencer trying to parry the fancy thrusts of an

enemy with a new style of sword play. The old order was Feudalism. The

new was Democracy.

The Company’s ships still ply the waters of the North. Its canoe

brigades still bring in the furs to the far fur posts. Its mid-winter

dog trains still set the bells tinkling over the lonely wastes of

Northern snows and it still sells as much fur at its great annual sales

as in its palmiest days. But the Hudson’s Bay Company is no longer a

gay Adventurer setting sail over the seas of the Unknown. It is no

longer a Soldier of Fortune, with laugh for life or death carving a

path through the wilderness. It is now but a commercial organization

with methods similar to other money-getting companies. Free traders

over-run its hunting grounds. Rivals as powerful as itself are now

on the field fighting the battle of competition according to modern

methods of business rivalry. Three-quarters of its old hunting fields

are already carved up in the checker-board squares of new provinces

and fenced farm patches. The glories of the days of its empire as

Adventurer, as Soldier of Fortune, as Pathfinder, as Fighter, as

Gamester of the Wilderness--have gone forever to that mellow Golden Age

of the Heroic Past.

_Notes to Chapter XXXIV._--The authorities for this chapter are H. B.

C. Archives; the Parl. Report of 1857; Canadian Hansard, and local

data gathered on the spot when I lived in Winnipeg. Dr. George Bryce

is the only writer who has ever attempted to tell the true inward

story of the first Riel Rebellion. I do not refer to his hints of

“priestly plots.” These had best been given in full or left unsaid,

but I do refer to his reference to the danger of Red River going as

Oregon had gone--over to a Provisional Government, which would have

meant war; and I cannot sufficiently regret that this story is not

given in full. In another generation, there will be no one living who

can tell that story; and yet one can understand why it may have to

remain untold as long as the leading actors are alive.

I do not touch on the Riel Rebellion in this chapter, as it belongs to

the history of the colony rather than the company; and if I gave it, I

should also have to give the Whitman Massacres of Oregon and the Gold

Stampede of B. C., which I do not consider inside the scope of the

history of the company as empire builder. Much of thrilling interest

in the lives of the colonists I have been compelled to omit for the

same reason; for instance, the Sioux massacres in Minnesota, the

adventures of the buffalo hunters, such heroism as that of Hesse, the

flood in Red River, the splendid work of the different missionaries

as they came, the comical half garrison life of the old pensioners,

including the terrible suicide of an officer at Fort Douglas over a

love affair. Whoever tells the story where I have left off will have

these pegs to hang his chapters on; and I envy him the pleasure of his

work, whether the story be swung along as a record of the pioneer,

or of Lord Strathcona --the Frontenac of the West--or of the great

Western missionaries.

* * * * *

Two or three discrepancies bother me in this chapter, which the wise

may worry over, and the innocent leave alone. In Parl. Inquiry, 1857,

Ellice gives the united capital of H. B. C. and N. W. C. in 1821, as

£400,000. As I made transcripts of the minutes in H. B. C. House,

London, I made it £250,000. In any case, it was increased to five

before the Int. Fin. Association took hold.

* * * * *

Another point, the new company paid £1,500,000 for the stock. The

stock sold to the public totalled a larger capital--much larger. I

do not give this total, though I have it, because at a subsequent

period the company retired part of its capital by returning it to the

shareholders, if you like to put it that way; or paying a dividend

which practically amounted to a retirement. That comes so late in the

Company’s history, I feel it has no place here. Therefore, to name the

former large capital would probably only mislead the reader.

* * * * *

It was in the days of Alex MacDonell, the grasshopper governor, that

the traders used to turn a whiskey bottle upside down filled with

sand, neck to neck on another whiskey bottle, making an hour-glass,

and drink till all the sand ran from the upper bottle, when if the

thirst was not quenched, both bottles were reversed to begin the

revels over again. If tradition is to be trusted, the same hour bottle

was much to blame for the failures of the experimental farms.

* * * * *

The widow of John Clarke, who came a bride to the West in 1822, and

lived in the palmy Arcadian days of Red River, is still living in

Montreal, aged 105, and has just at this date (1907) had her daughter

issue a little booklet of the most charmingly quaint reminiscences I

have enjoyed in many a day.

* * * * *

Ross and Hargrave and Gunn are the great authorities for the days

between 1820 and 1870, with other special papers to be found in the

Manitoba Hist. Soc. Series.

* * * * *

In several places I use dollar terms. Down to 1870 all H. B. C.

calculations were in £, s., d.

* * * * *

One there is who owes the world her reminiscences of this fascinating

era; and that is Lady Schultz, but the people who have lived adventure

are not keen for the limelight of telling it, and I fear this story

will not be given to the world.

* * * * *

It may be interesting to admirers of that campaigner of the

Conservative Party, Sir John MacDonald, to know that the terms

“spoliation and outrage” as applied to the H. B. C. charters

originated in a speech of Sir John’s.

* * * * *

The adventures of the Swiss, who moved from Red River down to Fort

Snelling, at St. Paul, will be found very fully given in the Minnesota

Hist. Society’s Collections and in the Macalester College Collections

of St. Paul. Mrs. Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve’s Memoirs of Fort

Snelling tell the tragic tale of the Tully murder in 1823, when the

little boy, John, of Red River, was brought into Port Snelling half

scalped, and Andrew was adopted into her own family.

THE END

_Set up, electrotyped, printed and bound at_

_THE OUTING PRESS_

_Deposit, New York_

Transcriber’s Notes

Page 135--changed choses to chooses

Page 244--changed cypher to cipher

Page 253--changed labryinth to labyrinth

Page 283--changed permited to permitted

Page 321--changed persue to pursue