1662-1674
RADISSON, THE PATHFINDER, DISCOVERS HUDSON BAY AND FOUNDS THE COMPANY
OF GENTLEMEN ADVENTURERS
For fifty years the great inland sea, which Hudson had discovered,
lay in a silence as of death. To the east of it lay a vast peninsular
territory—crumpled rocks scored and seamed by rolling rivers,
cataracts, upland tarns—Labrador, in area the size of half a dozen
European kingdoms. To the south, the Great Clay Belt of untracked,
impenetrable forests stretched to the watershed of the St. Lawrence,
in area twice the size of modern Germany. West of Hudson Bay lay what
is now known as the Great Northwest—Keewatin, Manitoba, Saskatchewan,
Alberta, Mackenzie River and British Columbia—in area, a second Russia;
but the primeval world lay in undisturbed silence as of death. Fox
and James had come to the bay ten years after Jens Munck, the Dane;
and the record of their sufferings has been compared to the Book of
Lamentations; but the sea gave up no secret of its dead, no secret
of open passage way to the Orient, no inkling of the immeasurable
treasures hidden in the forest and mine and soil of the vast territory
bordering its coasts.
A new era was now to open on the bay—an era of wildwood runners
tracking the snow-padded silences; of dare-devil gamesters of the
wilderness sweeping down the forested waterways to midnight raid and
ambuscade and massacre on the bay; of two great powers—first France and
England, then the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company and the Nor’Westers—locked
in death-grapple during a century for the prize of dominion over the
immense unknown territory inland from the bay. Hudson and Jens Munck,
Vikings of the sea, were to be succeeded by those intrepid knights of
the wilderness, Radisson the pathfinder, and d’Iberville, the wildwood
rover. The third era on Hudson Bay comes down to our own day. It marks
the transition from savagery with semi-barbaric splendor, with all
its virtues of outdoor life and dashing bravery, and all its vices of
unbridled freedom in a no-man’s land with law of neither God nor man—to
modern commerce; the transition from the Eskimo’s kyack and voyageur’s
canoe over trackless waters to latter-day Atlantic liners plowing
furrows over the main to the marts of commerce, and this period, too,
is best typified in two commanding figures that stand out colossally
from other actors on the bay—Lord Selkirk, the young philanthropist,
and Lord Strathcona, whose activities only began at an age when other
men have either made or marred their careers. For three hundred years,
the history of Hudson Bay and of all that region for which the name
stands is really the history of these four men—Radisson, d’Iberville,
Selkirk and Strathcona.
* * * * *
While Hudson Bay lay in its winter sleep, the world had gone on. The
fur traders of New France had pushed westward from the St. Lawrence to
the Great Lakes and Mississippi. In fact, France was making a bold bid
for the possession of all America except New Spain, and if her kings
had paid more attention to her colonies and less to the fripperies of
the fool-men and fool-women in her courts, the French flag might be
waving over the most of America to-day. In New England, things had also
gone apace. New York had gone over from Dutch to English rule, and the
commissioners of His Majesty, King Charles II, were just returning
from revising the affairs of the American plantations consequent upon
the change from Cromwell’s Commonwealth to the Stuart’s Restoration.
In England, at Oxford, was Charles himself, fled from the plague
of London. Majesty was very jaded. Success had lost its relish and
pleasure had begun to pall from too much surfeit. It was a welcome
spur to the monarch’s idle languor when word came posthaste that the
royal commissioner, Sir George Carterett, had just arrived from America
accompanied by two famous Frenchmen with a most astonishing story.
They had set sail from America on August 1, 1665, Carterett bearing
a full report of conditions in the American plantations. When off
Spain, their boat had been sighted, pursued, captured and boarded
by a Dutch privateer—_The Caper_. For two hours, hull to hull, rail
to rail, hand to hand, they had fought, the men behind the guns at
the portholes of one ship looking into the smoke-grimed faces of the
men behind the guns on the other ship till a roaring broadside from
_The Caper_ tore the entrails out of Carterett’s ship. Carterett just
had time to fling his secret dispatches overboard when a bayonet was
leveled at his breast and he surrendered his sword a captive. Likewise
did two French companions. Taken on board _The Caper_, all three were
severely questioned—especially the Frenchmen. Why were they with
Carterett? Where were they going? Where had they come from? Could they
not be persuaded to go to Holland with their extraordinary story.
One—Medard Chouart de Groseillers—was a middle-aged man, heavily
bearded, swarthy, weather-worn from a life in the wilderness. The
other—his brother-in-law—Pierre Esprit Radisson, was not yet thirty
years of age. He was clean-shaved, thin, lithe, nervous with the
restlessness of bottled-up energies, with a dash in his manners that
was a cut between the courtier and the wilderness runner. These were
the two men of whom such famous stories had been told these ten years
back—the most renowned and far traveled wood-runners that New France
had yet produced. It was they, who had brought 600,000 beaver skins to
Quebec on a single trip from the North. How they had been robbed by the
governor of New France and driven from Quebec to Cape Breton, where,
out of jealousy, they were set upon and mobbed, escaping only with the
clothes on their backs to Port Royal, Nova Scotia—was known to all men.
In vain, they had appealed to France for justice. The robber governor
was all powerful at the French court and the two explorers—penniless
nobodies pitting their power against the influence of wealth and
nobility—were dismissed from the court as a joke. They had been
promised a vessel to make farther explorations in the North, but when
they came to Isle Percé, south of Anticosti, to await the vessel, a
Jesuit was sent to them with word that the promise had been a put-off
to rid the court of troublesome suitors—in a word, a perfidious joke.
There had followed the flight to Cape Breton, the setting to work
of secret influence against them, the mob, the attempted murder,
the flight to Port Royal, Nova Scotia. Port Royal was at this time
under English rule, and an English captain, Zachariah Gillam, offered
his ship for their trip North, but when up opposite Hudson Straits,
the captain had been terrified by the ice and lost heart. He turned
back. The season was wasted. The two Frenchmen had then clubbed their
dwindling fortunes together and had engaged two vessels on their own
account, but fishing to lay up supplies at Sable Island, one of the
vessels had been wrecked. For four years they had been hounded by a
persistent ill-luck: First, when robbed by the French governor on
pretense of a fine for going to the North without his permission;
second, when befooled by the false promises of the French court; third,
when Captain Gillam refused to proceed farther amid the Northern ice;
and now, when the wreck of the vessel involved them in a lawsuit.
In Boston, they had won their lawsuit, but the ill-luck left them
destitute. Carterett, the Royal Commissioner, had met them in Boston
and had persuaded them to come to England with him.
The commander of the Dutch ship listened to their story and took down
a report of it in writing. Could they not be persuaded to come on
with him to Holland? The two Frenchmen refused to leave Carterett.
Groseillers, Radisson and Carterett were then landed in Spain. From
Spain, they begged and borrowed and pawned their way to France, and
from France got passage to Dover. Here, then, they had come to the king
at Oxford with their amazing story.
The stirring adventures of these two explorers, I have told in
another volume, and an exact transcript of their journals I am giving
elsewhere, but their story was one to make King Charles marvel. How
Radisson as a boy had been captured by the Mohawks and escaped through
the Dutch settlement of New York; how, as a youth, he had helped the
Jesuits to flee from a beleaguered fort at Onondaga; how before he was
twenty-five years old, he had gone overland to the Mississippi where
he heard from Cree and Sioux of the Sea of the North; and how before
he was thirty, he had found that sea where Hudson had perished—all
those adventures King Charles heard. The King listened and pondered,
and pondered and listened, and especially did he listen to that story
of the Sea of the North, which Henry Hudson had found in 1610 and from
which Radisson sixty years later had brought 600,000 beaver. Beaver at
that time was worth much more than it is to-day. That cargo of beaver,
which Radisson had brought down from Hudson Bay to Quebec would be
worth more than a million dollars in modern money.
“We were in danger to perish a thousand times from the ice runs,”
related Radisson, telling how they had passed up the Ottawa to Lake
Superior and from Lake Superior by canoe seven hundred miles north to
Hudson Bay. “We had thwarted (portaged) a place forty-five miles. We
came to the far end at night. It was thick forest, and dark, and we
knew not where to go. We launched our canoes on the current and came
full sail on a deep bay, where we perceived smoke and tents. Many boats
rush to meet us. We are received with joy by the Crees. They suffer us
not to tread the ground but carry us like cocks in a basket to their
tents. We left them with all possible haste to follow the great river
and came to the seaside, where we found an old house all demolished
and battered with bullets. The Indians tell us peculiarities of the
Europeans, whom they have seen there. We went from isle to isle all
summer. We went along the bay to see the place the Indians pass the
summer. This river comes from the lake that empties in the Saguenay
at Tadoussac, a hundred leagues from where we were in the Bay of
the North. We left in the place our mark and rendezvous. We passed
the summer coasting the sea. This is a vast country. The people are
friendly to the Sioux and the Cree. We followed another river back to
the Upper Lake (Lake Superior) and it was midwinter before we joined
the company at our fort” (north of Lake Superior).
When King Charles moved from Oxford to Windsor, Radisson and
Groseillers were ordered to accompany him, and when the monarch
returned to London, the two Frenchmen were commanded to take chambers
in town within reach of the court, and what was more to the point, the
King assigned them £2 a week maintenance, for they were both destitute,
as penniless soldiers of fortune as ever graced the throne room of a
Stuart. At Oxford, too, they had met Prince Rupert, and Prince Rupert
espoused their cause with the enthusiasm of an adventurer, whose
fortunes needed mending. The plague, the great fire in London, and
the Dutch war—all prevented King Charles according the adventurers
immediate help, but within a year from their landing, he writes to
James, Duke of York, as chief of the navy, ordering the Admiralty
department to loan the two Frenchmen the ship _Eaglet_ of the South
Sea fleet for a voyage to Hudson Bay, for the purpose of prosecuting
trade and extending their explorations toward the South Sea. I have
his letter issuing the instructions, and it is interesting as proving
that the initiative came from King Charles, as Prince Rupert has
hitherto received all the credit for organizing the Adventurers of
England trading to Hudson Bay. Prince Rupert and half a dozen friends
were to bear the expense of wages to the seamen and victualling the
ships. During the long period of waiting, Charles presented Radisson
with a gold medal and chain. To Groseillers—if French tradition is to
be accepted—he gave some slight title of nobility. During this time,
too, Radisson and Groseillers heard from the captain of the Dutch ship,
who had questioned them. There came a spy from Amsterdam—Eli Godefroy
Touret, who first tried to bribe the Frenchmen to come to Holland,
and failing that, openly accused them of counterfeiting money. The
accusation could not be proved, and the spy was imprisoned.
[Illustration: Bienville, founder of Louisiana, who took part with his
brother Le Moyne d’Iberville, in the famous naval battle for possession
of Hudson Bay.]
The year 1667-8 was spent in preparations for the voyage. In addition
to _The Eaglet_ under Captain Stannard, the ship _Nonsuch_ under
Captain Gillam, who had failed to reach the bay from Nova Scotia—was
chartered. As far as I could gather from the old documents in Hudson’s
Bay House, London, the ships were supplied with provisions and goods
for trade by leading merchants, who were given a share in the
venture. The cash required was for the seamen’s wages, running from
£20 to £30 a year, and for the officer’s pay, £3 a month to the
surgeons, £50 a trip to the captains, with a bounty if the venture
succeeded. With the bounty, Gillam received £160 for this trip,
Stannard, £280. Thomas Gorst, who went as accountant, and Mr. Sheppard
as chief mate, were to assume command if anything happened to Radisson
and Groseillers. All, who advanced either cash, or goods, or credit
for goods, were entered in a stock book as Adventurers for so many
pounds. There was as yet no company organized. It was a pure gamble—a
speculation based on the word of two penniless French adventurers, and
in the spirit of the true gambler, gay were the doings. Captain Gillam
facetiously presents the Adventurers with a bill for five shilling
for a rat catcher. The gentlemen honor the bill with a smile, order a
pipe of canary, three tuns of wine, “a dinner with pullets,” dinners,
indeed, galore, at the Three Tunns and the Exchange Tavern and the Sun,
at which Prince Rupert and Albermarle and perhaps the King, himself,
“make merry like right worthy gentlemen.” Everybody is in rare, good
humor, for you must remember Mr. Radisson brought back 600,000 beaver
from that Sea of the North, and the value of 600,000 beaver divided
among less than a dozen Adventurers would mean a tidy $100,000 of
modern money to each man. Then, the gentlemen go down to Gravesend
Docks to see the ships off. Each seaman shakes hands heartily with his
patron. Then the written commission is delivered to the captains:
“You are to saile with the first wind that presents, keeping company
with each other to your place of rendezvous (the old mark set up by
Radisson when he went overland to the bay.) You are to saile to such
place as Mr. Gooseberry (Groseillers) and Mr. Radisson shall direct to
trade with the Indians there, delivering the goods you carry in small
parcells no more than fifty pounds worth at a time out of each shipp,
the furs in exchange to stowe in each shipp before delivering out
any more goods, according to the particular advice of Mr. Gooseberry
(Groseillers) and Mr. Radisson.”
Then follows a cryptogramatic order, which would have done credit to
the mysterious cipher of pirates on the high seas.
“You are to take notice that the _Nampumpeage_ which you carry with you
is part of our joynt cargoes wee having bought it for money for Mr.
Gooseberry and Mr. Radisson to be delivered by small quantities with
like caution as the other goods.”
No more drinking of high wines, my gentlemen! Strict business now,
for it need scarcely be explained the mysterious _Nampumpeage_ was a
euphemism for liquor. Fortifications are to be built, minerals sought,
the cargo is to be brought home by Groseillers, while Radisson remains
to conduct trade, and
“You are to have in your thought the discovery of the passage into
the South Sea and to attempt it with the advice and direction of Mr.
Gooseberry and Mr. Radisson, they having told us that it is only seven
daies paddling or sailing from the River where they intend to trade
unto the Stinking Lake (the Great Lakes) and not above seven daies more
to the straight wch. leads into that Sea they call the South Sea, and
from thence but forty or fifty leagues to the Sea itselfe.”
Exact journals and maps are to be kept. In case the goods cannot be
traded, the ships are to carry their cargoes to Newfoundland and the
New England plantations, where Mr. Philip Carterett, who is governor of
New Jersey, will assist in disposing of the goods.
“Lastly we advise and require you to use the said Mr. Gooseberry and
Mr. Radisson with all manner of civility and courtesy and to take care
that all your company doe bear a particular respect unto them, they
being the persons upon whose credit wee have undertaken this expedition,
Which we beseech Almighty God to prosper.”
RUPERT ALBERMARLE (signed) CRAVEN G. CARTERETT J. HAYES P. COLLETON.
A last shout, the tramp of sailors running round the capstans, and the
ships of the Gentlemen Adventurers of England trading to Hudson’s Bay
are off; off to find and found a bigger empire for England than Russia
and Germany, and France, and Spain, and Austria combined.
_Notes on Chapter VI._—Full details of Radisson’s life prior to his
coming to England, when he was an active explorer of New France, are
to be found in the previous volume, _Pathfinders of the West_. The
data for that volume came almost exclusively from the Marine Archives
of Paris. The facts of this chapter are drawn from the Archives of
Hudson’s Bay House, London, England, which I personally searched with
the result of almost three hundred foolscap folio pages of matter
pertaining to Radisson, and from the Public Records Office of London,
which I had searched, by a competent person, on the Stuart Period.
It is extraordinary how the Archives of France and the Archives of
England dove-tail and corroborate each other in every detail regarding
Radisson. King Charles’ letter in his favor is to be found in the
Public Records Office, State Papers, Domestic Series, Entry Book 26.
The Admiralty Board Books, No. 15, contain the correspondence regarding
the voyage. The instructions to the captains—five foolscap pages—are in
the S. P. Dom. Carl. II. No. 180. The exact data regarding Radisson’s
movements, given in this chapter, are from his Manuscript Journal in
the Bodleian and from the two petitions which he filed, one to the
Company, one to Parliament, copies of which are in Hudson’s Bay House,
London. It is necessary to give the authorities somewhat explicitly
because in the case of _Pathfinders of the West_, the _New York Evening
Post_ begged readers to consult original sources regarding Radisson. As
original sources are not open to the public, the advice was worth just
exactly the spirit that animated it. However, transcripts of all data
bearing on Radisson will be given to the public with his journals, in
the near future.