1668-1674
THE ADVENTURES OF THE FIRST VOYAGE—RADISSON DRIVEN BACK ORGANIZES
THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY AND WRITES HIS JOURNALS OF FOUR VOYAGES—THE
CHARTER AND THE FIRST SHAREHOLDERS—ADVENTURES OF RADISSON ON THE
BAY—THE COMING OF THE FRENCH AND THE QUARREL
At last, then, five years from the time they had discovered the Sea of
the North, after baffling disappointments, fruitless efforts and the
despair known only to those who have stood face to face with the Grim
Specter, Ruin, Radisson and Groseillers set sail for Hudson Bay from
Gravesend on June 3, 1668. Radisson was on the big ship _Eaglet_ with
Captain Stannard, Groseillers on _The Nonsuch_ of Boston, with Captain
Gillam.
Countless hopes and fears must have animated the breasts of the
Frenchmen. It is so with every venture that is based on the unknown.
The very fact that possibilities _are_ unknown gives scope to unbridled
fancy and the wildest hopes; gives scope, too, when the pendulum
swings the other way, to deepest distrust. The country boy trudging
along the road with a carpetbag to seek his fortunes in the city,
dreams of the day when he may be a millionaire. By nightfall, he longs
for the monotonous drudgery and homely content and quiet poverty of the
plow.
So with Radisson and Groseillers. They had brought back 600,000 beaver
pelts overland from Hudson Bay five years before. If they could repeat
the feat, it meant bigger booty than Drake had raided from the Spanish
of the South Seas, for the price of beaver at that time fluctuated
wildly from eight shillings to thirty-five. And who could tell that
they might not find a passage to the South Seas from Hudson Bay? That
old legend of a tide like the ocean on Lake Winnipeg, Radisson had
heard from the Indians, as every explorer was to hear it for a hundred
years. The explanation is very simple to anyone who has sailed on Lake
Winnipeg. The lake is so shallow that an inshore wind lashes the waters
up like a tide. Then sudden calm, or an outshore breeze, leaves the
muddy flats almost bare. I remember being stranded on that lake by such
a shift of wind for twenty-four hours. To the Indians who had never
seen the ocean, the phenomenon seemed like the tide of which the white
man told, so Radisson had reported to the Adventurers that the Indians
said the South Sea was only a few weeks’ journey from Hudson Bay.
Radisson, whose highest hope from boyhood was to be a great explorer,
must have dreamed his dreams as the ships slid along the glassy waters
of the Atlantic westward. Six weeks, ordinarily, it took sailing
vessels to go from the Thames to the mouth of Hudson Straits, but
furious storms—as if the very elements themselves were bent on the
defeat of these two indomitable men—drove their ships apart half way
across the Atlantic. As is often the case, the little ship—Gillam’s
_Nonsuch_—weathered the hurricane. Now buried under billows
mountain-high, with the yardarms drenched by each wash of the pounding
breakers, now plowing through the cataract of waters, the little
_Nonsuch_ kept her head to the wind, and if a sea swept from stem to
stern, battened hatches and masts naked of sails took no harm. The
staunch craft kept on her sea feet, and was not knocked keel up.
But _The Eaglet_, with Radisson, was in bad way. Larger and ponderous
in motion, she could not shift quick to the raging gale. Blast after
blast caught her broadsides. The masts snapped off like saplings
uprooted by storm. A tornado of waters threw the ship on her side
“_till we had like to have swamped_”—relate the old Company
records—and when the storm cleared and the ship righted, behold, of
_The Eaglet_ there is left only the bare hull, with deck boards and
cabin floors sprung in a dozen places. The other ship was out of sight.
Carpenters were set at work to rig the lame vessel up. It was almost
October before the battered hull came crawling limply to her dock on
the Thames. There, Sir James Hayes, Rupert’s secretary, turned her over
to the Admiralty.
[Illustration: Photograph of the copy of Radisson’s Voyages, end of
the third trip on which he discovered Mississippi River, beginning
of the fourth trip on which he discovered the overland route to the
Sea of the North, or Hudson’s Bay. The original of Radisson’s first
four voyages is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, part of the famous
Pepys Collection. The question has been raised is this Radisson’s
handwriting, or that of a copyist, like Rodd and others who did
professional work for Shaftesbury and others of Radisson’s associates?
Specialists on the handwriting and idioms of the period say this is
undoubtedly the work of a foreigner not familiar with the idioms of the
English.]
Adversity is a great tester of a man’s mettle. When some men fall
they tumble _down_ stairs. Other men, when they fall, make a point of
falling _up_ stairs. Radisson was of the latter class. His activity
redoubled. The design in the first place had been for one of the two
ships to winter on the bay; the other ship to come back to England in
order to return to the bay with more provisions. Radisson urged his
associates not to leave _The Nonsuch_ in the lurch. Application was
made to the Admiralty for another ship. _The Wavero_ of the West Indies
was granted. Radisson spent the winter of 1668-69 fitting up this ship
and writing the account of his first four voyages through the wilds of
America, “_and I hope_”—he concludes the fourth voyage—“_to embarke
myselfe by ye helpe of God this fourth year_” of coming to England.
But _The Wavero_ on which Radisson sailed in March, 1669, proved
unseaworthy. She had to turn back. What was Radisson’s delight to
find anchored in the Thames, _The Nonsuch_, with his brother-in-law,
Groseillers.
After parting from the disabled _Eaglet_, _The Nonsuch_ had driven
ahead for Hudson Straits, which she missed by going too far north to
Baffin’s Land, but came to the entrance on the 4th of August. Owing
to the lateness of the season, the straits were free of ice and _The
Nonsuch_ made a quick passage for those days, reaching Digges’ Island,
at the west end of the straits on the 19th of August. Groseillers and
Gillam then headed south for that rendezvous at the lower end of the
bay, where the two Frenchmen had found “a house all battered with
bullets,” five years before, and had set up their own marks. Slow and
careful search of the east coast must have been made, for _The Nonsuch_
was seven weeks cruising the seven hundred miles from Digges’ Island
to that River Nemisco, which had seemed to flow from the country of
the St. Lawrence or New France. Here they cast anchor on September 25,
naming the river Rupert in honor of their patron. Beaching the ship on
the sand-bars at high tide, the crew threw logs about her to fend off
ice jams and erected slab palisades round two or three log huts for the
winter—a fort named after King Charles.
Weather favored _The Nonsuch’s_ crew. The south end of Hudson Bay often
has snow in October, and nearly always ice is formed by November.
This year, the harbor did not freeze till the 9th of December, but
when the frost did come it was a thing to paralyze these Englishmen
used to a climate where a pocketful of coal heats a house. The
silent pine forests, snow-padded and snow-wreathed; the snow-cones
and snow-mushrooms and snow-plumes bending the great branches with
weight of snow like feathers; the icy particles that floated in the
air; ice fog, diamond-sharp in sunshine and starlight but ethereal
as mist, morning and evening; the whooping and romping and stamping
and cannon-shot reports of the frost at night when the biggest trees
snapped brittle and the earth seemed to groan with pain; the mystic
mock-suns that shone in the heavens foreboding storm, and the hoot
and shout and rush of the storm itself through the forests like the
Indians’ Thunder Bird on the wings of the wind; the silences, the
awful silences, that seemed to engulf human presence as the frost-fog
closed mistily through the aisled forests—all these things were new and
wondrous to the English crew. It was—as Gillam’s journal records—as
if all life “had been frozen to death.” And then the marvel of the
frost world, frost that fringed your eyelashes and hair with breath
as you spoke, and drew ferns on the glazed parchment of the port
windows, and created two inches of snow on the walls inside the ship!
Snow fell—fell—fell, day after day, week after week, muffling, dreamy,
hypnotic as the frost sleep.
But these things were no new marvels to Groseillers. The busy Frenchman
was off to the woods on snowshoes in search of the Indians—a search
in which a twig snapped off short, old tepee poles standing bare, a
bit of moose skin blowing from a branch, deadfall traps, rabbit snares
of willow twigs—were his sole guides. True wood-loper, he found the
Ojibways’ camps and they brought down their furs to trade with him in
spring. I don’t know what ground there is for it, but Groseillers had
the reputation for being a very hard trader. Perhaps it was that the
cargo of 600,000 pelts had been brought back when he had gone North
with only two canoe loads of goods. As far as I could ascertain from
the old records, the scale of trade at the time was half a pound of
beads, one beaver; one kettle, one beaver; one pound shot, one beaver;
five pounds sugar, one beaver; one pound tobacco, one beaver; one
gallon brandy (diluted?), four beaver; one blanket, six beaver; two
awls, one beaver; twelve buttons, one beaver; twenty fishhooks, one
beaver; twenty flints, one beaver; one gun, twelve beaver; one pistol,
four beaver; eight bells, one beaver. At this stage, trade as barter
was not known. The white man dressed in gold lace and red velvets
pompously presented his goods to the Indian. The Indian had previously,
with great palaver, presented his furs to the trader. Any little
difference of opinion as to values might be settled later by a present
from the trader of drugged liquor to put the malcontent to sleep, or a
scalping raid on the part of the Indian.
As spring came, life awakened on the bay. Wild geese darkened the
sky, the shrill honk, honk, calling the sailors’ notice to the long
curved lines marshaled like armies with leaders and scouts, circling,
maneuvering, filing north. Whiskey jays became noisier and bolder than
in winter. Red bills alighted in flocks at the crew’s camp fires, and
a constant drumming told of partridge hiding in underbrush the color
of his own plumage. There was no lack of sport to Gillam’s crew.
The ice went out with the rush of a cataract in May, and by June it
was blistering hot, with the canaries and warblers and blue jays of
Southern climes nesting in the forests of this far Northern bay.
By June, _The Nonsuch_ was ship-shape for homeward voyage, and the
adventurers sailed for England, coming into the Thames about the time
Radisson was driven back on _The Wavero_.
There is no record of what furs Groseillers and Gillam brought back,
doubtless for the reason that the proceeds of their sale had to satisfy
those creditors, who had outfitted the ships and to purchase new ships
for future voyages. But the next move was significant. With great
secrecy, application was made to King Charles II for a royal charter
granting “the Gentlemen Adventurers Trading to Hudson’s Bay” monopoly
of trade and profits for all time to come.
In itself, the charter is the purest piece of feudalism ever
perpetrated on America, a thing so alien to the thought of modern
democracy and withal destined to play such a necessary part in the
development of northern empire that it is worth examining. In the first
place, though it was practically deeding away half America—namely all
of modern Canada except New France, and the most of the Western States
beyond the Mississippi—practically, I say, in its workings; the charter
was purely a royal favor, depending on that idea of the Stuarts that
the earth was not the Lord’s, but the Stuarts, to be disposed of as
they wished.
The applicants for the charter were Prince Rupert, the Duke of
Albermarle, the Earl of Craven, Lord Arlington, Lord Ashley, Sir
John Robinson, Sir Robert Viner, Sir Peter Colleton, Sir Edward
Hungerford, Sir Paul Neele, Sir John Griffith, Sir Philip Carterett,
Sir James Hayes, John Kirke, Frances Millington, William Prettyman,
John Fenn and John Portman. “Whereas,” runs the charter, “these have
at their own great cost and charges undertaken an expedition for
Hudson’s Bay for the discovery of a new passage to the South Sea and
for trade, and have humbly besought us to incorporate them and grant
unto them and their successors the whole trade and commerce of all
those seas, straits, bays, rivers, creeks and sounds in whatsoever
latitude that lie within the entrance of the straits called Hudson’s
Straits together with all the lands, countries and territories upon
the coasts and confines of the seas, straits, bays, lakes, rivers,
creeks and sounds not now actually possessed by the subjects of any
other Christian State, know ye that we have given, granted, ratified
and confirmed” the said grant. There follow the official name of the
company, “the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading
with Hudson’s Bay,” directions for the appointment of a governor and a
governing committee—Prince Rupert to be the first governor—Robinson,
Viner, Colleton, Hayes, Kirke, Millington and Portman to be the first
committee, to which elections are to be made each November. Their
territory is to be known as Rupert’s Land. Of this territory, they are
to be “true and absolute lords” paying as token of allegiance to the
King when he shall happen to enter these dominions “two elks and two
black beaver.”
Permission is given to build forts, employ mariners, use firearms, pass
laws and impose punishments. Balboa has been laughed at ever since he
crossed Panama to the Pacific for claiming Heaven and earth, air and
water, “from the Pole Arctic to the Pole Antarctic” for Spain; but what
shall we say of a charter that goes on royally to add, “and furthermore
of our own ample and abundant grace we have granted not only the whole,
entire and only liberty of trade to and from the territories aforesaid;
but also the whole and entire trade to and from all Havens, Bays,
Creeks, Rivers, Lakes, and Seas unto which they shall find entrance
by water or land out of the territories aforesaid ... and to, and
with, all other nations adjacent to the said territories, which is not
granted to any other of our subjects?”
In other words, if trade should lead these Adventurers far afield from
Hudson Bay where no other discoverers had been—the territory was to be
theirs. For years, it was contended that the charter covered only the
streams tributary to Hudson Bay, that is to the headwaters of Churchill
and Saskatchewan and Moose and Rupert Rivers, but if the charter was
to be valid at all, it was to be valid in all its provision and the
company might extend its possessions indefinitely. And that is what
it did—from Hudson Bay to Alaska, and from Alaska to California. The
debonair King had presented his friends with three-quarters of America.
All other traders are forbidden by the charter to frequent the
territory on pain of forfeiture of goods and ships. All other persons
are forbidden to inhabit the territory without the consent of the
Company. Adventurers at the General Court in November for elections
are to have votes according to their stock, for every hundred pounds
one vote. The Company is to appoint local governors for the territory
with all the despotic power of little kings. In case of misdemeanors,
law-breakers may be brought before this local governor or home to
England for trial, sentence, and punishment. The Shah of Persia had
not more despotic power in his lands than these local governors. Most
amazing of all, the Company is to have power to make war against other
“Prince or People whatsoever that are not Christians,” “for the benefit
of the said company and their trade.” Should other English intrude on
the territory, the Company is explicitly granted the right to seize and
expel them and impose such punishment as the offense may warrant. If
delinquents appeal against such sentence, the Company may send them
home to England for trial. Admirals, judges, sheriffs, all officers of
the law in England are charged by the charter to “aid, favor, help and
assist” the Company by “land and sea....” signed at Westminster, May 2,
1670.
We of to-day may well smile at such a charter; but we must remember
that the stones which lie buried in the clay below the wall are just
as essential to the superstructure as the visible foundation. Let us
grant that the charter was an absurd fiat creating a tyranny. It was an
essential first step on the trail that was to blaze a way through the
wilderness to democracy.
In the charter lay the secret of all the petty pomp—little kings in
tinsel—with which the Company’s underling officers ruled their domain
for two hundred years. In the charter lay the secret of all the
Company’s success and all its failure; of its almost paternal care of
the Indians and of its outrageous, unblushing, banditti warfare against
rivals; of its one-sidedness in driving a bargain—the true caste idea
that the many are created for exploitation by the few—of its almost
royal generosity when a dependent fell by the way—the old monarchical
idea that a king is responsible for the well-being of his subjects,
when other great commercial monopolists cast their useless dependents
off like old clothes, or let them rot in poverty. Given all the facts
of the case, any man can play the prophet. With such a charter,
believing in its validity as they did in their own existence, it is not
surprising the Adventurers of Hudson Bay ran the magnificent career the
Company has had, and finally—ran their privileges aground.
* * * * *
Thus, then, was the Hudson’s Bay Company incorporated. Its first stock
book of 1667 before incorporation, shows the Duke of York to have £300
of stock; Prince Rupert, £470; Carterett, £770 in all; Albermarle,
£500; Craven, £300; Arlington, £200; Shaftsbury, £600; Viner, £300;
Colleton, £300; Hungerford, £300; Sir James Hayes, £1800; Sir John
Kirke, £300; Lady Margaret Drax, £300—with others, in all a capital
of £10,500. The most of these shares were not subscribed in cash. It
may be inferred that the Duke of York and Prince Rupert and Carterett
and Sir James Hayes received their shares for obtaining the ships
from the Admiralty. Indeed, it is more than probable that very little
actual cash was subscribed for the first voyages. The seamen were
impressed and not usually paid, as the account books show, until after
the sale of the furs, and the provisions were probably supplied on
credit by those merchants who are credited with shares. At least,
the absence of any cash account or strong box for the first years,
gives that impression. Mr. Portman, the merchant, it is, or Mr. Young,
or Mr. Kirke, or Robinson, or Colleton who advance money to Radisson
and Groseillers as they need it, and the stock accounts of these
shareholders are credited with the amounts so advanced. Gillam and
Stannard, the captains, are credited with £160 and £280 in the venture,
as if they, too, accepted their remuneration in stock.
* * * * *
The charter was granted in May. June saw Radisson and Groseillers off
for the bay with three ships, _The Wavero_ under Captain Newland, _The
Shaftsbury_ under Captain Shepperd, _The Prince Rupert_ under Gillam,
in all some forty men. The vessels were loaned from the Admiralty.
Bayly went as governor to Rupert River, Gorst as secretary; Peter
Romulus, the French apothecary, as surgeon at £20 a year. While
the two big ships spent the summer at Charles Fort, Radisson took
the small boat _Wavero_ along the south shore westward, apparently
seeking passage to the South Sea. Monsibi flats, now known as Moose,
and Schatawan, now known as Albany, and Cape Henrietta Maria named
after royalty, were passed on the cruise up west and north to Nelson,
where Radisson himself erected the English King’s Arms. Only a boat
of shallow draft could coast these regions of salt swamps, muddy
flats and bowlder-strewn rocky waters. Moose River with its enormous
drive of ice stranded on the flats for miles each spring was found by
Radisson to have three channels. Ninety-six miles northwest from Moose
was Albany River with an island just at its outlet suitable for the
building of a fort. Cape Henrietta Maria, three hundred miles from
Moose, marked where James Bay widened out to the main waters of Hudson
Bay. All this coast was so shallow and cut by gravel bars that it could
be explored only by anchoring _The Wavero_ off shore and approaching
the tamarack swamps of the land by canoe, but the whole region was
an ideal game preserve that has never failed of its supply of furs
from the day that Radisson first examined it in 1670 to the present.
Black ducks, pintail, teal, partridge, promised abundance of food to
hunters here, and Radisson must have noticed the walrus, porpoise and
seal floundering about in the bay promising another source of profit
to the Company. North of Henrietta Cape, Radisson was on known ground.
Button and Fox and James had explored this coast, Port Nelson with its
two magnificent harbors—Nelson and Hayes River—taking its name from
Button’s seaman, Nelson, who was buried here. Groseillers wintered on
the bay but Radisson came home to England on _The Prince Rupert_ with
Gillam and passed the winter in London as advisor to the company. This
year, the Company held its meetings at Prince Rupert’s lodgings in
Whitehall.
In the summer of 71, Radisson was again on the bay cruising as before,
to Moose, and Albany, and Nelson with a cargo of some two hundred
muskets, four hundred powderhorns and five hundred hatchets for trade.
Though Radisson as well as Groseillers spent the years of 1771-72 on
the bay, there was no mistaking the fact—not so many Indians were
bringing furs to Rupert River for trade. Radisson reported conditions
when he returned to London in the fall of ’72, and he linked himself
more closely to the interests of the Company by marrying Mary, the
daughter of Sir John Kirke.
“It is ordered,” read the minutes of the Company, Oct. 23, 1673, “that
_The Prince Rupert_ arriving at Portsmouth, Captain Gillam do not stire
from the shippe till Mr. Radisson take post to London with the report.”
The report was not a good one. The French coming overland from Canada
were intercepting the Indians on the way down to the bay. The Company
decided to appoint another governor, William Lyddell, for the west
coast, and when Radisson went back to the bay in ’74, a council was
held to consider how to oppose the French. The captains of the ships
were against moving west. Groseillers and Radisson urged Governor Bayly
to build new forts at Moose and Albany and Nelson. Resentful of divided
authority, Bayly hung between two opinions, but at length consented to
leave Rupert River for the summer and cruise westward. When he came
back to Fort Charles in August, he found it occupied by an emissary
from New France, Father Albanel, an English Jesuit, with a passport
from Frontenac recommending him to the English Governor, and with
personal letters for the two Frenchmen.
Bayly’s rage knew no bounds. He received the priest as the passports
from a friendly nation compelled him to do, but he flared out in open
accusations against Radisson and Groseillers for being in collusion
with rivals to the Company’s trade. A thousand fictions cling round
this part of Radisson’s career. It is said that the two Frenchmen
knocked down and were knocked down by the English Governor, that spies
were set upon them to dog their steps when they went to the woods, that
Bayly threatened to run them through, and that the two finally escaped
through the forests overland back to New France with Albanel, the
Jesuit.
All these are childish fictions directly contradicted by the facts of
the case as stated in the official minutes of the Company. No doubt
the little fort was a tempest in a teapot till the Jesuit departed,
but quietus was given to the quarrels by the arrival, on September
17, of William Lyddell on _The Prince Rupert_, governor-elect for the
west coast. Radisson decided to go home to England and lay the whole
case before the Company. There is not the slightest doubt that he was
desperately dissatisfied with his status among the Adventurers. He had
found the territory. He had founded the Company. He had given the best
years of his life to its advancement, and they had not even credited
him as a shareholder. When he returned to England, they accepted
proof of his loyalty, asking only that he take oath of fidelity, but
financially, his case had already been prejudged. He was not to be a
partner. At a meeting in June, it was ordered that he be allowed £100 a
year for his services. That is, he was to be their servant. As a matter
of fact, he was already in debt for living expenses. In his pocket were
the letters Albanel had brought overland to the bay and offers direct
from Mons. Colbert, himself, of a position in the French navy, payment
of all debts and a gratuity of some £400 to begin life anew if he would
go over to Paris. Six weeks from the time he had left the bay, Radisson
quit the Company’s services in disgust. It was the old story of the
injustice he had suffered in Quebec—he, the creator of the wealth, was
to have a mere pittance from the monopolists. Radisson could not induce
his English wife to go with him, but he sailed for France at the end of
October in 1674.
As the operations of the Adventurers were now to become an
international struggle for two hundred years, it is well to pause from
the narrative of stirring events on the bay to take a glance forward on
the scope and influence and power of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the
history of America.
_Notes on Chapter VII._—For authorities on this chapter see Chapters
VIII and IX. To those familiar with the subject, this chapter will
clear up a great many discrepancies. In the life of Radisson in
_Pathfinders of the West_, it was necessary to state frankly that his
movements could not be traced definitely at this period both as to
locale and time. The facts of this chapter are taken solely from the
official Stock Books, Minute Books, Sailing Directions and Journals of
Hudson’s Bay House, London. Extracts from these minutes will be found
after Chapter VIII and IX. One point in _Pathfinders of the West_,
all authorities differ as to the time when Radisson left the company,
Albanel’s Journal in the Jesuit Relations being of 1672, Gorst’s record
of the quarrel in 1674, and other accounts placing the date as late as
1676. My examinations of the Hudson’s Bay records show that the rupture
occurred in London in October, 1674. How, then, is Albanel’s Relation
1672? The passport from Frontenac, which Albanel delivered to Bayly—now
on record in Hudson’s Bay Company papers—is dated, Quebec, Oct. 7,
1673. If the passport only left Quebec in October, 1673, and Albanel
reached the bay in August, 1674—there is only one conclusion: the date
of his journal, 1672, is wrong by two years. One can easily understand
how this would occur in a journal made up of scraps of writing jotted
down in canoes, in tepees, everywhere and anywhere, and then passed by
couriers from hand to hand till it reached the Cramoisy printers of
Paris.
[Illustration: Rupert House, Rupert River, James Bay, as it is To-day.]
A letter to the Secretary of State, dated Sept. 25, 1675, relates:
“This day came _The Shaftsbury Pink_ ffrom Hudson Baye. Capt.
Shopard, ye capt. tiles me thay found a franch Jesuit thare that did
endeavor to convert ye Indians & persuad them not to trade with ye
English, for wh. reason they have brought him away with them.... Capt.
Gillam we expect to-morrow.”
Later: “This day is arrived Capt. Gillam. I was on board of him and
he tells me they were forced to winter there and spend all their
Provisions. They have left only four men to keep possession of the
place. I see the French Jesuit is a little ould man.”