EXPANSION AND EXPLORATION
When the House of Orange came to the throne, it was deemed necessary
that the Company's monopoly, originally granted by the Stuarts, should
be confirmed. Nearly all the old shareholders, who had been friends of
the Stuarts, sold out, and in 1697, the year of the disaster related in
the last chapter, the Company applied for an extension of its royal
charter by act of parliament. The fur buyers of London opposed the
application on the grounds that:
(1) The charter conferred arbitrary powers to which a private company
had no right;
(2) The Company was a mere stock-jobbing concern of no benefit to the
public;
(3) Beaver was sold at an extortionate advance; bought at 6d. and sold
for 6s.
(4) The English claim to a monopoly drove the Indians to the French;
(5) Nothing was done to carry out the terms of the charter in finding a
North-West Passage.
All this, however, did not answer the great question: if the Company
retired from the Bay, who or what was to resist the encroachments of the
French? This consideration saved the situation for the adventurers.
Their charter was confirmed.
The opposition to the extension of the charter compelled the Company to
show what it had been doing in the way of exploration; and the journey
of Henry Kelsey, the London apprentice boy, to the country of the
Assiniboines, was put on file in the Company records. Kelsey had not at
first fitted in very well with the martinet rules of fort life at
Nelson, and in 1690, after a switching for some breach of discipline, he
had jumped over the walls and run away with the Indians. Where he went
on this first trip is not known. Some time before the spring of the next
year an Indian runner brought word back to the fort from Kelsey: on
condition of pardon he was willing to make a journey of exploration
inland. The pardon was readily granted and the youth was supplied with
equipment. Accordingly, on July 15, 1691, Kelsey left the camping-place
of the Assiniboines--thought to be the modern Split Lake--and with some
Indian hunters set off overland on foot. It is difficult to follow his
itinerary, for he employs only Indian names in his narrative. He
travelled five hundred miles west of Split Lake presumably without
touching on the Saskatchewan or the Churchill, for his journal gives not
the remotest hint of these rivers. We are therefore led to believe that
he must have traversed the semi-barren country west of Lac du Brochet,
or Reindeer Lake as it is called on the map. He encountered vast herds
of what he called buffalo, though his description reminds us more of the
musk ox of the barren lands than of the buffalo. He describes the summer
as very dry and game as very scarce, on the first part of the trip; and
this also applies to the half-barren lands west of Reindeer Lake.
Hairbreadth escapes were not lacking on the trip of the boy explorer.
Once, completely exhausted from a swift march, Kelsey fell asleep on the
trail. When he awoke, there was not a sign of the straggling hunters.
Kelsey waited for nightfall and by the reflection of the fires in the
sky found his way back to the camp of his companions. At another time he
awoke to find the high dry grass all about him in flames and his musket
stock blazing. Once he met two grizzly bears at close quarters. The
bears had no acquired instinct of danger from powder and stood ground.
The Indians dashed for trees. Kelsey fired twice from behind bunch
willows, wounded both brutes, and won for himself the name of
honour--Little Giant. Joining the main camp of Assiniboines at the end
of August, Kelsey presented the Indian chief with a lace coat, a cap,
guns, knives, and powder, and invited the tribe to go down to the Bay.
The expedition won Kelsey instant promotion.
Our old friend Radisson, from the time we last saw him--when 'the
Committee had discourse with him till dinner'--lived on in London,
receiving a quarterly allowance of £12 10s. from the Company; occasional
gratuities for his services, and presents of furs to Madame Radisson are
also recorded. The last entry of the payment of his quarterly allowance
is dated March 29, 1710. Then, on July 12, comes a momentous entry: 'the
Sec. is ordered to pay Mr Radisson's widow as charity the sum of £6.' At
some time between March 29 and July 12 the old pathfinder had set out on
his last journey. Small profit his heirs reaped for his labours.
Nineteen years later, September 24, 1729, the secretary was again
ordered to pay 'the widow of Peter Radisson £10 as charity, she being
very ill and in great want.'
Meanwhile hostilities had been resumed between France and England; but
the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 brought the game of war again to a pause
and restored Hudson Bay to England. The Company received back all its
forts on the Bay; but the treaty did not define the boundaries to be
observed between the fur traders of Quebec pressing north and the fur
traders of the Bay pressing south, and this unsettled point proved a
source of friction in after years.
After the treaty the adventurers deemed it wise to strengthen all their
forts. Moose, Albany, and Nelson, and two other forts recently
established--Henley House and East Main--were equipped with stone
bastions; and when Churchill was built later, where Munck the Dane had
wintered, its walls of solid stone were made stronger than Quebec's, and
it was mounted with enough large guns to withstand a siege of European
fleets of that day.
The Company now regularly sent ships to Russia; and from Russia the
adventurers must have heard of Peter the Great's plan to find the North
Passage. The finding of the Passage had been one of the reasons for the
granting of the charter, and the fur buyers' petition against the
charter had set forth that small effort had been made in that
direction. Now, at Churchill, Richard Norton and his son Moses, servants
of the Company, had heard strange rumours from the Indians of a region
of rare metals north-west inland. All these things the governor on the
Bay, James Knight, pondered, as he cruised up and down from Albany to
Churchill. Then the gold fever beset the Company. They sent for Knight.
He was commissioned on June 3, 1719, to seek the North-West Passage,
and, incidentally, to look for rare minerals.
Four ships were in the fleet that sailed for Hudson Bay this year.
Knight went on the _Albany_ with Captain Barlow and fifty men. He waited
only long enough at Churchill to leave provisions. Then, with the
_Discovery_, Captain Vaughan, as convoy, he sailed north on the
_Albany_. On his ship were iron-bound caskets to carry back the precious
metals of which he dreamed, and the framework for houses to be erected
for wintering on the South Sea. With him went iron-forgers to work in
the metals, and whalers from Dundee to chase the silver-bottoms of the
Pacific, and a surgeon, to whom was paid the extraordinary salary of £50
on account of the unusual peril of the voyage.
What became of Knight? From the time he left Churchill, his journal
ceases. Another threescore lives paid in toll to the insatiable sea! No
word came back in the summer of 1720, and the adventurers had begun to
look for him to return by way of Asia. Then three years passed, and no
word of Knight or his precious metals. Kelsey cruised north on the
_Prosperous_ in 1719, and Hancock on the _Success_ in 1720; Napper and
Scroggs and Crow on other ships on to 1736, but never a trace did they
find of the argonauts. Norton, whaling in the north in 1726, heard
disquieting rumours from the Indians, but it was not till Hearne went
among the Eskimos almost fifty years later that Knight's fate became
known. His ships had been totally wrecked on the east point of Marble
Island, that white block of granite bare as a gravestone. Out of the
wave-beaten wreckage the Eskimos saw a house arise as if by magic. The
savages fled in terror from such a mystery, and winter--the terrible,
hard, cutting cold of hyperborean storm--raged on the bare, unsheltered
island. When the Eskimos came back in the summer of 1720, a great many
graves had been scooped among the drift sand and boulders. The survivors
were plainly starving, for they fell ravenously on the Eskimos' putrid
whale meat. The next summer only two demented men were alive. They were
clad in rabbit and fox skins. Their hair and beards had grown unkempt,
and they acted like maniacs. Again the superstitious Eskimos fled in
terror. Next summer when the savages came down to the coast no white men
were alive. The wolves had scraped open a score of graves.
It may be stated here that before 1759 the books of the Hudson's Bay
Company show £100,000 spent in bootless searching and voyaging for the
mythical North-West Passage. Nevertheless study-chair explorers who
journeyed round the world on a map, continued to accuse the Company of
purposely refusing to search for the Passage, for fear of disturbing its
monopoly. So violent did the pamphleteers grow that they forced a
parliamentary inquiry in 1749 into the Company's charter and the
Company's record, and what saved the Company then, as in 1713, was the
fact that the adventurers were the great bulwark against French
aggression from Quebec.
Arthur Dobbs, a gentleman and a scholar, had roused the Admiralty to
send two expeditions to search for the North-West Passage. It is
unnecessary for history to concern itself with the 'tempest in a
teapot' that raged round these expeditions. Perhaps the Company did not
behave at all too well when their own captain, Middleton, resigned to
conduct the first one on the _Furnace Bomb_ and the _Discovery_ to the
Bay. Perhaps wrong signals in the harbours did lead the searchers' ships
to bad anchorage. At any rate Arthur Dobbs announced in hysterical fury
that the Company had bribed Middleton with £5000 not to find the
Passage. Middleton had come back in 1742 saying bluntly, in sailor
fashion, that 'there was no passage and never would be.' At once the
Dobbs faction went into a frenzy. Baseless charges were hurled about
with the freedom of bombs in a battle. Parliament was roused to offer a
reward of £20,000 for the discovery of the Passage, and the
indefatigable Dobbs organized an opposition trading company--with a
capital of £10,000--and petitioned parliament for the exclusive trade.
The _Dobbs Galley_, Captain Moon, and the _California_, Captain Smith,
with the _Shark_, under Middleton, as convoy for part of the way, went
out in 1746 with Henry Ellis, agent for Dobbs, aboard. The result of the
voyage need not be told. There was the usual struggle with the ice jam
in the north off Chesterfield Inlet, the usual suffering from scurvy.
Something was accomplished on the exploration of Fox Channel, but no
North-West Passage was found, a fact that told in favour of the Company
when the parliamentary inquiry of 1749 came on.
In the end, an influence stronger than the puerile frenzy of Arthur
Dobbs forced the Company to unwonted activity in inland exploration. La
Vérendrye, the French Canadian, and his sons had come from the St
Lawrence inland and before 1750 had established trading-posts on the Red
river, on the Assiniboine, and on the Saskatchewan. After this fewer
furs came down to the Bay. It was now clear that if the Indians would
not come to the adventurers, the adventurers must go to the Indians. As
a beginning one Anthony Hendry, a boy outlawed from the Isle of Wight
for smuggling, was permitted to go back with the Assiniboines from
Nelson in June 1754.
Hendry's itinerary is not difficult to follow. The Indian place-names
used by him are the Indian place-names used to-day by the Assiniboines.
Four hundred paddlers manned the big brigade of canoes which he
accompanied inland to the modern Oxford Lake and from Oxford to Cross
Lake. The latter name explains itself. Voyageurs could reach the
Saskatchewan by coming on down westward through Playgreen Lake to Lake
Winnipeg, or they could save the long detour round the north end of Lake
Winnipeg--a hundred miles at least, and a dangerous stretch because of
the rocky nature of the coast and the big waves of the shallow lake--by
portaging across to that chain of swamps and nameless lakes, leading
down to the expansion of the Saskatchewan, known under the modern name
of the Pas. It is quite plain from Hendry's narrative that the second
course was followed, for he came to 'the river on which the French have
two forts' without touching Lake Winnipeg; and he gave his distance as
five hundred miles from York,[4] which would bring him by way of Oxford
and Cross Lakes precisely at the Pas.
[4] Nelson. Throughout this narrative Nelson, the name of the port and
river, is generally used instead of York, the name of the fort or
factory.
The Saskatchewan is here best described as an elongated swamp three
hundred miles by seventy, for the current of the river proper loses
itself in countless channels through reed-grown swamps and turquoise
lakes, where the white pelicans stand motionless as rocks and the wild
birds gather together in flocks that darken the sky and have no fear of
man. Between Lake Winnipeg and Cumberland Lake one can literally paddle
for a week and barely find a dry spot big enough for a tent among the
myriad lakes and swamps and river channels overwashing the dank goose
grass. Through these swamps runs the limestone cliff known as the
Pasquia Hills--a blue lift of the swampy sky-line in a wooded ridge. On
this ridge is the Pas fort. All the romance of the most romantic era in
the West clings to the banks of the Saskatchewan--'Kis-sis-kat-chewan
Sepie'--swift angrily-flowing waters, as the Indians call it, with its
countless unmapped lakes and its countless unmapped islands. Up and down
its broad current from time immemorial flitted the war canoes of the
Cree, like birds of prey, to plunder the Blackfeet, or 'Horse Indians.'
Between these high, steep banks came the voyageurs of the old fur
companies--'ti-aing-ti-aing' in monotonous sing-song day and night,
tracking the clumsy York boats up-stream all the way from tide water to
within sight of the Rocky Mountains. Up these waters, with rapids so
numerous that one loses count of them, came doughty traders of the
Company with the swiftest paddlers the West has ever known. The
gentleman in cocked hat and silk-lined overcape, with knee-buckled
breeches and ruffles at wrist and throat, had a habit of tucking his
sleeves up and dipping his hand in the water over the gunnels. If the
ripple did not rise from knuckles to elbows, he forced speed with a
shout of 'Up-up, my men! Up-up!' and gave orders for the regale to go
round, or for the crews to shift, or for the Highland piper to set the
bagpipes skirling.
Hither, then, came Hendry from the Bay, the first Englishman to ascend
the Saskatchewan. 'The mosquitoes are intolerable,' he writes. 'We came
to the French house. Two Frenchmen came to the water side and invited me
into their house. One told me his master and men had gone down to
Montreal with furs and that he must detain me till his return; but
Little Bear, my Indian leader, only smiled and said, "They dare not."'
Somewhere between the north and south branches of the Saskatchewan,
Hendry's Assiniboines met Indians on horseback, the Blackfeet, or
'Archithinues,' as he calls them. The Blackfeet Indians tell us to-day
that the Assiniboines and Crees used to meet the Blackfeet to exchange
the trade of the Bay at Wetaskiwin, 'the Hills of Peace.' This exactly
agrees with the itinerary, described by Hendry, after they crossed the
south branch in September and struck up into the Eagle Hills. Winter was
passed in hunting between the points where Calgary and Edmonton now
stand. Hendry remarks on the outcropping of coal on the north branch.
The same outcroppings can be seen to-day in the high banks below
Edmonton.
It was on October 14 that Hendry was conveyed to the main Blackfeet
camp.
The leader's tent was large enough to contain fifty persons. He
received us seated on a buffalo skin, attended by twenty elderly
men. He made signs for me to sit down on his right hand, which I
did. Our leaders [the Assiniboines] set several great pipes going
the rounds and we smoked according to their custom. Not one word
was spoken. Smoking over, boiled buffalo flesh was served in
baskets of bent wood. I was presented with ten buffalo tongues. My
guide informed the leader I was sent by the grand leader who lives
on the Great Waters to invite his young men down with their furs.
They would receive in return powder, shot, guns and cloth. He made
little answer; said it was far off, and his people could not
paddle. We were then ordered to depart to our tents, which we
pitched a quarter of a mile outside their lines. The chief told me
his tribe never wanted food, as they followed the buffalo, but he
was informed the natives who frequented the settlements often
starved on their journey, which was exceedingly true.
Hendry gave his position for the winter as eight hundred and ten miles
west of York, or between the sites of modern Edmonton and Battleford.
Everywhere he presented gifts to the Indians to induce them to go down
to the Bay. On the way back to York, the explorers canoed all the way
down the Saskatchewan, and Hendry paused at Fort La Corne, half-way down
to Lake Winnipeg. The banks were high, high as the Hudson river
ramparts, and like those of the Hudson, heavily wooded. Trees and hills
were intensest green, and everywhere through the high banks for a
hundred miles below what is now Edmonton bulged great seams of coal. The
river gradually widened until it was as broad as the Hudson at New York
or the St Lawrence at Quebec. Hawks shrieked from the topmost boughs of
black poplars ashore. Whole colonies of black eagles nodded and babbled
and screamed from the long sand-bars. Wolf tracks dotted the soft mud
of the shore, and sometimes what looked like a group of dogs came down
to the bank, watched the boatmen land, and loped off. These were coyotes
of the prairie. Again and again as the brigades drew in for nooning to
the lee side of some willow-grown island, black-tailed deer leaped out
of the brush almost over their heads, and at one bound were in the midst
of a tangled thicket that opened a magic way for their flight. From
Hendry's winter camp to Lake Winnipeg, a distance of almost a thousand
miles, a good hunter could then, as now, keep himself in food summer and
winter with but small labour.
Most people have a mental picture of the plains country as flat prairie,
with sluggish, winding rivers. Such a picture would not be true of the
Saskatchewan. From end to end of the river, for only one interval is the
course straight enough and are the banks low enough to enable the
traveller to see in a line for eight miles. The river is a continual
succession of half-circles, hills to the right, with the stream curving
into a shadowy lake, or swerving out again in a bend to the low left; or
high-walled sandstone bluffs to the left sending the water wandering out
to the low silt shore on the right. Not river of the Thousand Islands,
like the St Lawrence, but river of Countless Islands, the Saskatchewan
should be called.
More ideal hunting ground could not be found. The hills here are partly
wooded and in the valleys nestle lakes literally black with
wild-fowl--bittern that rise heavy-winged and furry with a boo-m-m; grey
geese holding political caucus with raucous screeching of the honking
ganders; black duck and mallard and teal; inland gulls white as snow and
fearless of hunters; little match-legged phalaropes fishing gnats from
the wet sand.
The wildest of the buffalo hunts used to take place along this section
of the river, or between what are now known as Pitt and Battleford. It
was a common trick of the eternally warring Blackfeet and Cree to lie in
hiding among the woods here and stampede all horses, or for the
Blackfeet to set canoes adrift down the river or scuttle the teepees of
the frightened Cree squaws who waited at this point for their lords'
return from the Bay.
Round that three-hundred mile bend in the river known as 'the Elbow' the
water is wide and shallow, with such numbers of sand-bars and shallows
and islands that one is lost trying to keep the main current. Shallow
water sounds safe and easy for canoeing, but duststorms and wind make
the Elbow the most trying stretch of water in the whole length of the
river. Beyond this great bend, still called the Elbow, the Saskatchewan
takes a swing north-east through the true wilderness primeval. The rough
waters below the Elbow are the first of twenty-two rapids round the same
number of sharp turns in the river. Some are a mere rippling of the
current, more noisy than dangerous; others run swift and strong for
sixteen miles. First are the Squaw Rapids, where the Indian women used
to wait while the men went on down-stream with the furs. Next are the
Cold Rapids, and boats are barely into calm water out of these when a
roar gives warning of more to come, and a tall tree stripped of all
branches but a tufted crest on top--known among Indians as a
'lob-stick,--marks two more rippling rapids. The Crooked Rapids send
canoes twisting round point after point almost to the forks of the South
Saskatchewan. Here, five miles below the modern fur post, at a bend in
the river commanding a great sweep of approach, a gay courtier of France
built Fort La Corne. Who called the bold sand-walls to the right Heart
Hills? And how comes it that here are Cadotte Rapids, named after the
famous voyageur family of Cadottes, whose ancestor gave his life and
his name to one section of the Ottawa?
[Illustration: A CAMP IN THE SWAMP COUNTRY From a photograph]
Forty miles below La Corne is Nepawin, the 'looking-out-place' of the
Indians for the coming trader, where the French had another post. And
still the river widens and widens. Though the country is flat, the level
of the river is ten feet below a crumbling shore worn sheer as a wall,
with not the width of a hand for camping-place below. On a spit of the
north shore was the camping-place known as Devil's Point, where no
voyageur would ever stay because the long point was inhabited by demons.
The bank is steep here, flanked by a swamp of huge spruce trees
criss-crossed by the log-jam of centuries. The reason for the ill omen
of the place is plain enough--a long point running out with three sides
exposed to a bellowing wind.
East of Devil's Point, the Saskatchewan breaks from its river bed and is
lost for a hundred and fifty miles through a country of pure muskeg,
quaking silt soft as sponge, overgrown with reed and goose grass. Here
are not even low banks; there are no banks at all. Canoes are on a level
with the land, and reeds sixteen feet high line the aisled water
channels. One can stand on prow or stern and far as eye can see is
naught but reeds and waterways, waterways and reeds.
Below the muskeg country lies Cumberland Lake. At its widest the lake is
some forty miles across, but by skirting from island to island boatmen
could make a crossing of only twenty-three miles. Far to the south is
the blue rim of the Pas mountain, named from the Indian word Pasquia,
meaning open country.
Hendry's canoes were literally loaded with peltry when he drew in at the
Pas. There he learned a bitter lesson on the meaning of a rival's
suavity. The French plied his Indians with brandy, then picked out a
thousand of his best skins, a trick that cost the Hudson's Bay Company
some of its profit.
On June 1 the canoes once more set out for York. With the rain-swollen
current the paddlers easily made fast time and reached York on June 20.
James Isham, the governor of the fort, realized that his men had brought
down a good cargo of furs, but when Hendry began to talk of Indians on
horseback, he was laughed out of the service. Who had ever heard of
Indians on horseback? The Company voted Hendry £20 reward, and Isham by
discrediting Hendry's report probably thought to save himself the
trouble of going inland.
But the unseen destiny of world movement rudely disturbed the lazy
trader's indolent dream. In four years French power fell at Quebec, and
the wildwood rovers of the St Lawrence, unrestricted by the new
government and soon organized under the leadership of Scottish merchants
at Montreal, invaded the sacred precincts of the Company's inmost
preserve.
In other volumes of this Series we shall learn more of the fur lords and
explorers in the great West and North of Canada; of the fierce warfare
between the rival traders; of the opening up of great rivers to
commerce, and of the founding of colonies that were to grow into
commonwealths. We shall witness the gradual, stubborn, and unwilling
retreat of the fur trade before the onmarching settler, until at last
the Dominion government took over the vast domain known as Rupert's
Land, and the Company, founded by the courtiers of King Charles and
given absolute sway over an empire, fell to the status of an ordinary
commercial organization.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
On the era prior to the Cession (1763) very few printed records of the
Hudson's Bay Company exist. Most books on the later period--in which the
conflict with the North-West Company took place--have cursory sketches
of the early era, founded chiefly on data handed down by word of mouth
among the servants and officers of the Company. On this early period the
documents in Hudson's Bay House, London, must always be the prime
authority. These documents consist in the main of the Minute Books of
some two hundred years, the Letter Books, the Stock Books, the Memorial
Books, and the Daily Journals kept from 1670 onwards by chief traders at
every post and forwarded to London. There is also a great mass of
unpublished material bearing on the adventurers in the Public Record
Office, London. Transcripts of a few of these documents are to be found
in the Canadian Archives, Ottawa, and in the Newberry Library, Chicago.
Transcripts of four of the Radisson Journals--copied from the originals
in the Bodleian Library, Oxford--are possessed by the Prince Society,
Boston. Of modern histories dealing with the early era Beckles
Willson's _The Great Company_ (1899), George Bryce's _Remarkable History
of the Hudson's Bay Company_ (1900), and Laut's _Conquest of the Great
North-West_ (1899) are the only works to be taken seriously. Willson's
is marred by many errors due to a lack of local knowledge of the West.
Bryce's work is free of these errors, but, having been issued before the
Archives of Hudson's Bay House were open for more than a few weeks at a
time, it lacks first-hand data from headquarters; though to Bryce must
be given the honour of unearthing much of the early history of Radisson.
Laut's _Conquest of the Great North-West_ contains more of the early
period from first-hand sources than the other two works, and, indeed,
follows up Bryce as pupil to master, but the author perhaps attempted to
cover too vast a territory in too brief a space.
Data on Hudson's tragic voyages come from _Purchas His Pilgrimes_ and
the Hakluyt Society Publications for 1860 edited by Asher. Jens Munck's
voyage is best related in the Hakluyt Publications for 1897. Laut's
_Pathfinders of the West_ gives fullest details of Radisson's various
voyages. The French State Papers for 1670-1700 in the Canadian Archives
give full details of the international quarrels over Radisson's
activities. On the d'Iberville raids, the French State Papers are again
the ultimate authorities, though supplemented by the Jesuit Relations of
those years. The Colonial Documents of New York State (16 vols.),
edited by O'Callaghan, give details of French raids on Hudson Bay.
Radisson's various petitions will be found in Laut's _Conquest of the
Great North-West_. These are taken from the Public Records, London, and
from the Hudson's Bay Company's Archives. Chouart's letters are found in
the Documents de la Nouvelle France, Tome I--1492-1712. Father Sylvie, a
Jesuit who accompanied the de Troyes expedition, gives the fullest
account of the overland raids. These are supplemented by the affidavits
of the captured Englishmen (State Papers, Public Records, London), by La
Potherie's _Histoire de l'Amérique_, by Jeremie's account in the Bernard
Collection of Amsterdam, and by the Relations of Abbé Belmont and
Dollier de Casson. The reprint of the Radisson Journals by the Prince
Society of Boston deserves commendation as a first effort to draw
attention to Radisson's achievements; but the work is marred by the
errors of an English copyist, who evidently knew nothing of Western
Indian names and places, and very plainly mixed his pages so badly that
national events of 1660 are confused with events of 1664, errors
ascribed to Radisson's inaccuracy. Benjamin Sulte, the French-Canadian
historian, in a series of papers for the Royal Society of Canada has
untangled this confusion.
Robson's _Hudson's Bay_ gives details of the 1754 period; but Robson was
a dismissed employee of the Company, and his Relation is so full of
bitterness that it is not to be trusted. The events of the search for a
North-West Passage and the Middleton Controversy are to be found in
Ellis's _Voyage of the Dobbs and California_ (1748) and the
Parliamentary Report of 1749. Later works by fur traders on the spot or
descendants of fur traders--such as Gunn, Hargreaves, Ross--refer
casually to this early era and are valuable for local identification,
but quite worthless for authentic data on the period preceding their own
lives. This does not impair the value of their records of the time in
which they lived. It simply means that they had no data but hearsay on
the early period.
See also in this Series: _The Blackrobes; The Great Intendant; The
Fighting Governor; Pathfinders of the Great Plains; Pioneers of the
Pacific; Adventurers of the Far North; The Red River Colony._
INDEX
Albanel, Father, at Rupert, 51.
Albemarle, Duke of, member of Hudson's Bay Company, 36.
Allen, Captain, take Port Nelson from French, 96;
killed, 97.
Arlington, Earl of, 36.
Assiniboines, or Stone Boilers, tribe of Indians, 29, 104, 106, 112, 115.
Baffin Bay, named after mate of Bylot's ship, 21.
Bailey, Captain, sent to Nelson, 94;
defends fort, 95;
surrenders, 101-2.
Bayley, Charles, governor of Rupert, 48;
on cruise with Radisson, 51;
accuses Radisson and Groseilliers of duplicity, 52.
Blackfeet Indians, 115, 116.
Bond, Captain, 68;
sails for Hudson Bay, 73;
captured by d'Iberville, 92.
Boston, Radisson and Groseilliers at, 32.
Bridgar, John, governor of Rupert, 60;
taken prisoner by Radisson, 63;
released by La Barre, 64;
again governor, 74;
ship captured by d'Iberville, 83-4.
Button, Thomas, sent to search for Hudson, 21.
Bylot, Robert, his search for Hudson, 21.
Cadotte Rapids, 120.
Carteret, Sir George, commissioner, takes Radisson and Groseilliers
to England, 34.
Charles II receives Radisson and Groseilliers, 34, 36.
Charlton Island, where Hudson probably set adrift, 18;
Captain James winters at, 27;
spies marooned, 79.
Chateauguay, d'Iberville's brother, killed at Nelson, 95.
Chesnaye, Aubert de la, fur trader, 54;
fits out expedition, 55.
Chouart, Jean, helps La Chesnaye's expedition, 55;
tricked on board 'Happy Return,' 69;
joins Hudson's Bay Company with the intention of betraying it, 70-2.
Churchill, Lord, Duke of Marlborough, governor of Hudson's Bay Company,
42, 73, 80.
Churchill, port, discovery of, 23;
Danes winter at, 24;
fur traders at, 26;
strength of fort at, 107.
Colbert, minister of France, 53-4.
Cold Rapids, 120.
Colleton, Sir Peter, 36.
Columbia river, explorers on, 7.
Company of the North, 55-6, 72.
Craven, Earl of, 36.
Crooked Rapids, 120.
Dablon, Father, ascends the Saguenay, 28.
Danby Island, 19.
Denonville, M. de, governor of New France, 76.
Dering, Sir Edward, rewarded for pushing claim against France, 90.
Digges, English merchant adventurer, 9;
finances search for Hudson, 21, 22.
Dobbs, Arthur, and the North-West Passage, 110-12.
Drax, Lady Margaret, 36.
Drueilletes, father, ascends the Saguenay, 28.
Evance, Sir Stephen, governor of Hudson's Bay Company, 74, 81, 92.
Fletcher, Captain, 98, 100-1.
Fort Albany, 74, 75, 107;
Péré imprisoned in, 79.
Fort Charles, established by Groseilliers, 39, 49.
Fort Chipewyan, 6.
Fort Edmonton, 7.
Fort Frances, story of a resident of, 19.
Fort Garry, 1.
Fort La Corne, 120.
Fort Moose, 47, 81, 83, 107.
Fox, Captain, 26, 27.
Frontenac, governor of New France, 51;
meets Radisson and Groseilliers, 55.
Geyer, Captain, 68.
Gibbon, Captain, 21.
Gillam, Ben, 58;
arrested in Boston, 64;
becomes a pirate and is executed, 64.
Gillam Island, 58.
Gillam, Zachariah, Boston sea captain, 32;
in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, 35, 37, 39, 48;
at Fort Charles, 52;
perishes, 61.
Gorst, Thomas, secretary of the Hudson's Bay Company, 35;
sails for Hudson Bay, 48.
Grand Rapids, 3, 4;
portage, 6.
Greene, Henry, with Hudson, 10, 15;
mutiny, 17;
death, 20.
Grimmington, Mike, with Ben Gillam, 59;
with the Hudson's Bay Company, 68, 73;
taken prisoner, 78;
re-captures Albany, 93;
sent to Hudson Bay, 98, 100;
flees to Nelson, 101;
sails for England with refugees, 102.
Groseilliers, Medard Chouart des, French pathfinder, 27;
veteran of Jesuit missions, 28;
goes to Hudson Bay with Radisson, 29, 30;
goes to France for redress for seizure of furs, 31;
returns to Three Rivers, 32;
goes to Anticosti, Port Royal, and Boston, 32;
presented to Charles II, 34;
receives gold chain and medal, 36;
explores Hudson Bay country, 39;
with 1670 expedition, 48;
back in England demanding better terms, 53;
goes to New France, 54;
on fur-trading expedition, 56;
returns to Quebec and to France, 64, 65;
retires to home near Three Rivers, 66.
Hannah Bay, 12, d'Iberville crosses, 83.
Hayes river, named by Radisson, 49, 57.
Hayes, Sir James, secretary to Prince Rupert, 36, 37;
meets Radisson, 67.
Hearne, hears fate of Knight's party, 109.
Hendry, Anthony, his inland journey on behalf of the Company, 112-22.
Henley House, 107.
Hudson, Henry, his search for North-West Passage, 9-13;
shipwrecked, 13;
his hard time on shore with mutinous crew, 13-16;
cast adrift, 18;
traditions as to end, 18, 19.
Hudson's Bay Company, dog brigades of, 1-2;
extent of empire, 6-7;
origin and formation of, 34-50;
engages Radisson, 67;
dividends and vessels of, 72-5, 102;
disastrous conflicts with the French, 75-88, 92-102;
activities of in council, 89-90;
claims damages against France, 91;
their charter confirmed, 103-4;
forts restored by Treaty of Utrecht, 107;
commissions James Knight to find North-West Passage, 108-10;
parliamentary inquiry into charter and record of, 110.
Hume, Captain, 73;
taken prisoner to Quebec, 78;
ransomed, 80.
Iberville, Pierre Le Moyne d', his raids in Hudson Bay, 83-4, 92-3;
attacks and takes Port Nelson, 94-5;
in command of five French warships, 97-8;
naval battle on Hudson Bay, 99-101;
again takes Nelson, 101-2.
Isham, James, governor of York, 122.
James, Captain, 18;
searches for North-West Passage, 26;
meets Captain Fox and winters on Charlton Island, 27.
James, Duke of York (James II), 36, 42.
Jesuits, their expedition overland to Hudson Bay, 28.
Juet, mate of 'Discovery,' 10;
mutinies, 12, 17;
death, 20.
Kelsey, Henry, 68;
sent to Nelson, 94;
defends fort, 95, 101;
his journey of exploration, 104-6;
searches for Knight, 109.
Kirke, Sir John, 35, 36;
his claim against France, 54.
Knight, James, 81;
governor of Albany, 94;
commissioned to find North-West Passage, 108;
his fate, 109.
La Barre, governor of New France, 63-4.
La Chesnaye, fur trader, in attack on Hudson Bay posts, 81, 84-7.
La Forest, surrenders at Nelson, 96.
La Martinière, 75, 76, 80.
La Vérendrye, establishes fur-trading posts on Red river, 112.
Le Meux, Captain, surrenders at Fort Albany, 93.
Le Moyne brothers, adventurers of New France, 79, 81-3.
See Iberville, Serigny, and Chateauguay.
Middleton, Captain, and the North-West Passage, 111.
Moon, Captain, 93, 111.
Munck, Jens, winters with ship at Churchill, 23-4;
record of voyage, 24-6.
Nelson, Port, Button's crew encamped at, 21;
fur post, 81;
captured, 101;
restored, 107.
See York Factory.
Nepawin, 121.
New France, explorers of, 27;
Jesuits in, 28;
fur trade of, 29.
Nixon, governor at Moose, 74, 75.
Northern Lights, 14 note.
North-West Passage, 9, 22, 40, 107, 108, 110, 111.
Norton, Moses, 108.
Norton, Richard, 108.
Outlaw, Captain John, 58, 68, 73, 77.
Pepys, Samuel, 38.
Péré, Jean, taken prisoner, 78, 79, 84;
his release demanded, 86.
Phipps, William, governor of Port Nelson, 68, 74.
Portman, John, 35.
Radisson, Pierre Esprit, explorer, 8, 19;
hears of Sea of the North, 27;
refused permission to trade, 29;
leaves Three Rivers by night, 29;
goes to Hudson Bay, 29, 30;
furs seized by governor at Quebec, 31;
goes to Port Royal and Boston, 32;
presented to Charles II in England, 34;
receives gold chain and medal, 36;
and the Hudson's Bay Company, 40;
made general superintendent of trade, 48;
returns to England, 49, marries Mary Kirke, 49;
suspected of treachery at Rupert, 51-2;
returns to England, 53;
joins French Navy, 53;
goes again to New France, 54;
leads French expedition to Bay, 55-7;
explores Hayes river, 57;
captures Ben Gillam's fort, 61;
captures Bridgar, 62;
sets out for Quebec with prisoners and booty, 63;
La Barre strips him of ship and booty 64;
returns to Paris, 65;
ordered by France to return fur posts to Hudson's Bay Company, 66;
takes oath of allegiance to England, 67;
returns to the Bay, 68;
returns to England, 70;
goes again to Hudson Bay, 73;
reappointed superintendent of trade, 74;
price set on his head by France, 76;
his claims for services repudiated, 91;
assists Company in claim for damages, 91-2;
death, 106.
Randolph, Mr, of the American Plantations, 64.
Robinson, Sir John, 35, 36.
Romulus, Peter, surgeon, 35, 48.
Rupert, 81;
captured by French, 84.
Rupert, Prince, 36, 42.
Rupert's Land, taken over by Dominion Government, 123.
Ryswick, Treaty of, 91, 102.
St John, Lake, Jesuit mission near, 28.
Sandford, Red Cap, 76, 81.
Sargeant, Henry, Governor at Albany, 74, 75;
attacked by French 86;
surrenders, 87.
Saskatchewan river, 2, 7;
description, 113-15, 118-21.
Serigny, d'Iberville's brother, 96, 101.
Shaftsbury, Earl of, 36.
Smithsend, Captain, 73;
taken prisoner, 78;
from a dungeon in Quebec sends a letter of warning to England, 79;
reaches England, 81;
sails for Hudson Bay, 98, 100;
surrenders ship to d'Iberville, 101;
escapes to Nelson, 101 note;
goes to Albany, 102.
Sorrel, Dame, helps to finance French expedition to Hudson Bay, 55.
Squaw Rapids, 120.
Stannard, Captain, 37.
Strangers, River of, 26.
Three Rivers, Radisson and Groseilliers return to, 27, 28, 66.
Troyes, Chevalier de, 79, 81, 83, 85.
Utrecht, Treaty of, 107.
Vaughan, Captain, 108.
Viner, Sir Robert, 35, 36.
William of Orange, 90.
Winnipeg, 1.
Wolstenholme, English merchant, 9;
financed search for Hudson, 21, 22.
York Factory, 113 and note 117.
See Nelson.
Young, Mr, 35, 67, 91.
Footnotes:
[1] The Northern Lights.
Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
The page numbers of illustrations have been changed to reflect their
new positions following transcription, and they are now indicated
in the illustration list by 'Page' instead of 'Facing Page'.