"No commission--New Englanders," answered the others.
"Contrabands," thought Radisson to himself. Then he announced that he
had taken possession of all that country for France, had built a strong
fort, and expected more ships. In a word, he advised the New
Englanders to save themselves by instant flight; but his canoe had
glided nearer. To Radisson's surprise, he discovered that the leader
of the New England poachers was Ben Gillam of Boston, son of Captain
Gillam, the trusted servant of the Hudson's Bay Company, who had
opposed Radisson and Groseillers on Rupert's River. It looked as if
the contraband might be a venture of the father as well as the son.[9]
Radisson and young Gillam recognized each other with a show of
friendliness, Gillam inviting Radisson to inspect the ship with much
the same motive that the fabled spider invited the fly. Radisson took
tactful precaution for his own liberty by graciously asking that two of
the New England servants go down to the canoe with the three Frenchmen.
No sooner had Radisson gone on the New England ship than young Gillam
ordered cannon fired and English flags run up. Having made that brave
show of strength, the young man proposed that the French and the New
Englanders should divide the traffic between them for the winter.
Radisson diplomatically suggested that such an important proposal be
laid before his colleagues. In leaving, he advised Gillam to keep his
men from wandering beyond the island, lest they suffer wrong at the
hands of the French soldiers. Incidentally, that advice would also
keep the New Englanders from learning how desperately weak the French
really were. Neither leader was in the slightest deceived by the
other; each played for time to take the other unawares, and each knew
the game that was being played.
[Illustration: Hudson's Bay Company Coins, made of Lead melted from Tea
Chests at York Factory, each Coin representing so many Beaver Skins.]
Instead of returning by the creek that cut athwart the neck of land
between the two rivers, Radisson decided to go down Nelson River to the
bay, round the point, and ascend Hayes River to the French quarters.
Cogitating how to frighten young Gillam out of the country or else to
seize him, Radisson glided down the swift current of Nelson River
toward salt water. He had not gone nine miles from the New Englanders
when he was astounded by the spectacle of a ship breasting with
full-blown sails up the tide of the Nelson directly in front of the
French canoe. The French dashed for the hiding of the brushwood on
shore. From their concealment they saw that the ship was a Hudson's
Bay Company vessel, armed with cannon and commission for lawful trade.
If once the Hudson's Bay Company ship and the New Englanders united,
the English would be strong enough to overpower the French.
The majority of leaders would have escaped the impending disaster by
taking ingloriously to their heels. Radisson, with that adroit
presence of mind which characterized his entire life, had provided for
his followers' safety by landing them on the south shore, where the
French could flee across the marsh to the ships if pursued. Then his
only thought was how to keep the rivals apart. Instantly he had an
enormous bonfire kindled. Then he posted his followers in ambush. The
ship mistook the fire for an Indian signal, reefed its sails, and
anchored. Usually natives paddled out to the traders' ships to barter.
These Indians kept in hiding. The ship waited for them to come; and
Radisson waited for the ship's hands to land. In the morning a gig
boat was lowered to row ashore. In it were Captain Gillam, Radisson's
personal enemy, John Bridgar,[10] the new governor of the Hudson's Bay
Company for Nelson River, and six sailors. All were heavily armed, yet
Radisson stood alone to receive them, with his three companions posted
on the outskirts of the woods as if in command of ambushed forces.
Fortune is said to favor the dauntless, and just as the boat came
within gunshot of the shore, it ran aground. A sailor jumped out to
drag the craft up the bank. They were all at Radisson's mercy--without
cover. He at once levelled his gun with a shout of "Halt!" At the
same moment his own men made as if to sally from the woods. The
English imagined themselves ambushed, and called out that they were the
officers of the Hudson's Bay Company. Radisson declared who he was and
that he had taken possession of the country for France. His musket was
still levelled. His men were ready to dash forward. The English put
their heads together and decided that discretion was the better part of
valor. Governor Bridgar meekly requested permission to land and salute
the commander of the French. Then followed a pompous melodrama of
bravado, each side affecting sham strength. Radisson told the English
all that he had told the New Englanders, going on board the Company's
ship to dine, while English hostages remained with his French
followers. For reasons which he did not reveal, he strongly advised
Governor Bridgar not to go farther up Nelson River. Above all, he
warned Captain Gillam not to permit the English sailors to wander
inland. Having exchanged compliments, Radisson took gracious leave of
his hosts, and with his three men slipped down the Nelson in their
canoe. Past a bend in the river, he ordered the canoe ashore. The
French then skirted back through the woods and lay watching the English
till satisfied that the Hudson's Bay Company ship would go no nearer
the island where Ben Gillam lay hidden.
Groseillers and his son looked after the trade that winter. Radisson
had his hands full keeping the two English crews apart. Ten days after
his return, he again left Hayes River to see what his rivals were
doing. The Hudson's Bay Company ship had gone aground in the ooze a
mile from the fort where Governor Bridgar had taken up quarters. That
division of forces weakened the English fort. Introducing his man as
captain of a French ship, Radisson entered the governor's house. The
visitors drained a health to their host and fired off muskets to learn
whether sentinels were on guard. No attention was paid to the unwonted
noise. "I judged," writes Radisson, "that they were careless, and
might easily be surprised." He then went across to the river flats,
where the tide had left the vessel, and, calmly mounting the ladder,
took a survey of Gillam's ship. When the irate old captain rushed up
to know the meaning of the intrusion Radisson suavely proffered
provisions, of which they were plainly in need.
The New Englanders had been more industrious. A stoutly palisaded fort
had been completed on young Gillam's island, and cannon commanded all
approach. Radisson fired a musket to notify the sentry, and took care
to beach his canoe below the range of the guns. Young Gillam showed a
less civil front than before. His lieutenant ironically congratulated
Radisson on his "safe" return, and invited him to visit the fort if he
would enter _alone_. When Radisson would have introduced his four
followers, the lieutenant swore "if the four French were forty devils,
they could not take the New Englanders' fort." The safety of the
French habitation now hung by a hair. Everything depended on keeping
the two English companies apart, and they were distant only nine miles.
The scheme must have flashed on Radisson in an intuition; for he laid
his plans as he listened to the boastings of the New Englanders. If
father and son could be brought together through Radisson's favor,
Captain Gillam would keep the English from coming to the New England
fort lest his son should be seized for poaching on the trade of the
Company; and Ben Gillam would keep his men from going near the English
fort lest Governor Bridgar should learn of the contraband ship from
Boston. Incidentally, both sides would be prevented from knowing the
weakness of the French at Fort Bourbon. At once Radisson told young
Gillam of his father's presence. Ben was eager to see his father and,
as he thought, secure himself from detection in illegal trade.
Radisson was to return to the old captain with the promised provisions.
He offered to take young Gillam, disguised as a bush-ranger. In
return, he demanded (1) that the New Englanders should not leave their
fort; (2) that they should not betray themselves by discharging cannon;
(3) that they shoot any Hudson's Bay Company people who tried to enter
the New England fort. To young Gillam these terms seemed designed for
his own protection. What they really accomplished was the complete
protection of the French from united attack. Father and son would have
put themselves in Radisson's power. A word of betrayal to Bridgar, the
Hudson's Bay governor, and both the Gillams would be arrested for
illegal trade. Ben Gillam's visit to his father was fraught with all
the danger that Radisson's daring could have desired. A seaman half
suspected the identity of the bush-ranger, and Governor Bridgar wanted
to know how Radisson had returned so soon when the French fort was far
away. "I told him, smiling," writes Radisson, "that I could fly when
there was need to serve my friends."
Young Gillam had begun to suspect the weakness of the French. When the
two were safely out of the Hudson's Bay Company fort, he offered to go
home part of the way with Radisson. This was to learn where the French
fort lay. Radisson declined the kindly service and deliberately set
out from the New Englanders' island in the wrong direction, coming down
the Nelson past young Gillam's fort at night. The delay of the trick
nearly cost Radisson his life. Fall rains had set in, and the river
was running a mill-race. Great floes of ice from the North were
tossing on the bay at the mouth of the Nelson River in a maelstrom of
tide and wind. In the dark Radisson did not see how swiftly his canoe
had been carried down-stream. Before he knew it his boat shot out of
the river among the tossing ice-floes of the bay. Surrounded by ice in
a wild sea, he could not get back to land. The spray drove over the
canoe till the Frenchman's clothes were stiff with ice. For four hours
they lay jammed in the ice-drift till a sudden upheaval crushed the
canoe to kindling wood and left the men stranded on the ice. Running
from floe to floe, they gained the shore and beat their way for three
days through a raging hurricane of sleet and snow toward the French
habitation. They were on the side of the Hayes opposite the French
fort. Four _voyageurs_ crossed for them, and the little company at
last gained the shelter of a roof.
Radisson now knew that young Gillam intended to spy upon the French; so
he sent scouts to watch the New Englanders' fort. The scouts reported
that the young captain had sent messengers to obtain additional men
from his father; but the New England soldiers, remembering Radisson's
orders to shoot any one approaching, had levelled muskets to fire at
the reënforcements. The rebuffed men had gone back to Governor Bridgar
with word of a fort and ship only nine miles up Nelson River. Bridgar
thought this was the French establishment, and old Captain Gillam could
not undeceive him. The Hudson's Bay Company governor had sent the two
men back to spy on what he thought was a French fort. At once Radisson
sent out men to capture Bridgar's scouts, who were found half dead with
cold and hunger. The captives reported to Radisson that the English
ship had been totally wrecked in the ice jam. Bridgar's people were
starving. Many traders would have left their rivals to perish.
Radisson supplied them with food for the winter. They were no longer
to be feared; but there was still danger from young Gillam. He had
wished to visit the French fort. Radisson decided to give him an
opportunity. Ben Gillam was escorted down to Hayes River. A month
passed quietly. The young captain had learned that the boasted forces
of the French consisted of less than thirty men. His insolence knew no
bounds. He struck a French servant, called Radisson a pirate, and
gathering up his belongings prepared to go home. Radisson quietly
barred the young man's way.
"You pitiful dog!" said the Frenchman, coolly. "You poor young fool!
Why do you suppose you were brought to this fort? We brought you here
because it suited us! We keep you here as long as it suits us! We
take you back when it suits us!"
Ben Gillam was dumfounded to find that he had been trapped, when he had
all the while thought that he was acting the part of a clever spy. He
broke out in a storm of abuse. Radisson remanded the foolish young man
to a French guard. At the mess-room table Radisson addressed his
prisoner:--
"Gillam, to-day I set out to capture your fort."
At the table sat less than thirty men. Young Gillam gave one scornful
glance at the French faces and laughed.
"If you had a hundred men instead of twenty," he jeered.
"How many have you, Ben?"
"Nine; and they'll kill you before you reach the palisades."
Radisson was not talking of killing.
"Gillam," he returned imperturbably, "pick out nine of my men, and I
have your fort within forty-eight hours."
Gillam chose the company, and Radisson took one of the Hudson Bay
captives as a witness. The thing was done as easily as a piece of
farcical comedy. French hostages had been left among the New
Englanders as guarantee of Gillam's safety in Radisson's fort. These
hostages had been instructed to drop, as if by chance, blocks of wood
across the doors of the guard-room and powder house and barracks. Even
these precautions proved unnecessary. Two of Radisson's advance guard,
who were met by the lieutenant of the New England fort, reported that
"Gillam had remained behind." The lieutenant led the two Frenchmen
into the fort. These two kept the gates open for Radisson, who marched
in with his band, unopposed. The keys were delivered and Radisson was
in possession. At midnight the watch-dogs raised an alarm, and the
French sallied out to find that a New Englander had run to the Hudson's
Bay Company for aid, and Governor Bridgar's men were attacking the
ships. All of the assailants fled but four, whom Radisson caught
ransacking the ship's cabin. Radisson now had more captives than he
could guard, so he loaded the Hudson's Bay Company men with provisions
and sent them back to their own starving fort.
Radisson left the New England fort in charge of his Frenchmen and
returned to the French quarters. Strange news was carried to him
there. Bridgar had forgotten all benefits, waited until Radisson's
back was turned, and, with one last desperate cast of the die to
retrieve all by capturing the New England fort and ship for the fur
company, had marched against young Gillam's island. The French threw
open the gates for the Hudson's Bay governor to enter. Then they
turned the key and told Governor Bridgar that he was a prisoner. Their
_coup_ was a complete triumph for Radisson. Both of his rivals were
prisoners, and the French flag flew undisputed over Port Nelson.
Spring brought the Indians down to the bay with the winter's hunt. The
sight of threescore Englishmen captured by twenty Frenchmen roused the
war spirit of the young braves. They offered Radisson two hundred
beaver skins to be allowed to massacre the English. Radisson thanked
the savages for their good will, but declined their offer. Floods had
damaged the water-rotted timbers of the two old hulls in which the
explorers voyaged north. It was agreed to return to Quebec in Ben
Gillam's boat. A vessel was constructed on one of the hulls to send
the English prisoners to the Hudson's Bay Company forts at the south
end of the bay.[11] Young Jean Groseillers was left, with seven men,
to hold the French post till boats came in the following year. On the
27th of July the ships weighed anchor for the homeward voyage. Young
Gillam was given a free passage by way of Quebec. Bridgar was to have
gone with his men to the Hudson's Bay Company forts at the south of the
bay, but at the last moment a friendly Englishman warned Radisson that
the governor's design was to wait till the large ship had left, head
the bark back for Hayes River, capture the fort, and put the Frenchmen
to the sword. To prevent this Bridgar, too, was carried to Quebec.
Twenty miles out the ship was caught in ice-floes that held her for a
month, and Bridgar again conspired to cut the throats of the Frenchmen.
Henceforth young Gillam and Bridgar were out on parole during the day
and kept under lock at night.
The same jealousy as of old awaited Radisson at Quebec. The Company of
the North was furious that La Chesnaye had sent ships to Hudson Bay,
which the shareholders considered to be their territory by license.[12]
Farmers of the Revenue beset the ship to seize the cargo, because the
explorers had gone North without a permit. La Chesnaye saved some of
the furs by transshipping them for France before the vessel reached
Quebec. Then followed an interminable lawsuit, that exhausted the
profits of the voyage. La Barre had succeeded Frontenac as governor.
The best friends of La Barre would scarcely deny that his sole ambition
as governor was to amass a fortune from the fur trade of Canada.
Inspired by the jealous Company of the North, he refused to grant
Radisson prize money for the capture of the contraband ship, restored
the vessel to Gillam, and gave him clearance to sail for Boston.[13]
For this La Barre was sharply reprimanded from France; but the
reprimand did not mend the broken fortunes of the two explorers, who
had given their lives for the extension of the French domain.[14] M.
Colbert summoned Radisson and Groseillers to return to France and give
an account of all they had done; but when they arrived in Paris, on
January 15, 1684, they learned that the great statesman had died. Lord
Preston, the English envoy, had lodged such complaints against them for
the defeat of the Englishmen in Hudson Bay, that France hesitated to
extend public recognition of their services.
[1] Within ten years so many different regulations were promulgated on
the fur trade that it is almost impossible to keep track of them. In
1673 orders came from Paris forbidding French settlers of New France
from wandering in the woods for longer than twenty-four hours. In 1672
M. Frontenac forbade the selling of merchandise to _coureurs du bois_,
or the purchase of furs from them. In 1675 a decree of the Council of
State awarded to M. Jean Oudiette one-fourth of all beaver, with the
exclusive right of buying and selling in Canada. In 1676 Frontenac
withdrew from the _Cie Indes Occidentales_ all the rights it had over
Canada and other places. An ordinance of October 1, 1682, forbade all
trade except under license. An ordinance in 1684 ordered all fur
traders trading in Hudson Bay to pay one-fourth to Farmers of the
Revenue.
[2] It is hard to tell who this Godefroy was. Of all the famous
Godefroys of Three Rivers (according to Abbé Tanguay) there was only
one, Jean Batiste, born 1658, who might have gone with Radisson; but I
hardly think so. The Godefroys descended from the French nobility and
themselves bore titles from the king, but in spite of this, were the
best canoemen of New France, as ready--according to Mr. Sulte--to
_faire la cuisine_ as to command a fort. Radisson's Godefroy evidently
went in the capacity of a servant, for his name is not mentioned in the
official list of promoters. On the other hand, parish records do not
give the date of Jean Batiste Godefroy's death; so that he may have
gone as a servant and died in the North.
[3] State Papers, 1683, state that Dame Sorel, La Chesnaye, Chaujon,
Gitton, Foret, and others advanced money for the goods.
[4] In 1898, when up the coast of Labrador, I was told by the
superintendent of a northern whaling station--a man who has received
royal decorations for his scientific research of ocean phenomena--that
he has frequently seen icebergs off Labrador that were nine miles long.
[5] Jean was born in 1654 and was, therefore, twenty-eight.
[6] I have written both addresses as the Indians would chant them. To
be sure, they will not scan according to the elephantine grace of the
pedant's iambics; but then, neither will the Indian songs scan, though
I know of nothing more subtly rhythmical. Rhythm is so much a part of
the Indian that it is in his walk, in the intonation of his words, in
the gesture of his hands. I think most Westerners will bear me out in
saying that it is the exquisitely musical intonation of words that
betrays Indian blood to the third and fourth generation.
[7] See Robson's map.
[8] State Papers: "The Governor of New England is ordered to seize all
vessels trading in Hudson Bay contrary to charter--"
[9] _Radisson's Journal_, p. 277.
[10] Robson gives the commission to this governor.
[11] Later in Hudson Bay history, when another commander captured the
forts, the prisoners were sold into slavery. Radisson's treatment of
his rivals hardly substantiates all the accusations of rascality
trumped up against him. Just how many prisoners he took in this
_coup_, no two records agree.
[12] Archives, September 24, 1683: Ordinance of M. de Meulles regarding
the claims of persons interested in the expedition to Hudson Bay,
organized by M. de la Chesnaye, Gitton, Bruneau, Mme. Sorel. . . . In
order to avoid difficulties with the Company of the North, they had
placed a vessel at Isle Percée to receive the furs brought back . . .
and convey them to Holland and Spain. . . . Joachims de Chalons, agent
of the Company of the North, sent a _bateau_ to Percée to defeat the
project. De la Chesnaye, summoned to appear before the intendant,
maintained that the company had no right to this trade, . . . that the
enterprise involved so many risks that he could not consent to divide
the profits, if he had any. The partners having been heard, M. de
Meulles orders that the boats from Hudson Bay be anchored at Quebec.
[13] Archives, October 25, 1683: M. de la Barre grants Benjamin Gillam
of Boston clearance for the ship _Le Garçon_, now in port at Quebec,
although he had no license from his Britannic Majesty permitting him to
enter Hudson Bay.
[14] Such foundationless accusations have been written against Radisson
by historians who ought to have known better, about these furs, that I
quote the final orders of the government on the subject: November 5,
1683, M. de la Barre forbids Chalons, agent of La Ferme du Canada,
confiscating the furs brought from Hudson Bay; November 8 M. de la
Chesnaye is to be paid for the furs seized.
CHAPTER VII
1684-1710
THE LAST VOYAGE OF RADISSON TO HUDSON BAY
France refuses to restore the Confiscated Furs and Radisson tries to
redeem his Fortune--Reëngaged by England, he captures back Fort Nelson,
but comes to Want in his Old Age--his Character
Radisson was now near his fiftieth year. He had spent his entire life
exploring the wilds. He had saved New France from bankruptcy with
cargoes of furs that in four years amounted to half a million of modern
money. In ten years he had brought half a million dollars worth of
furs to the English company.[1] Yet he was a poor man, threatened with
the sponging-house by clamorous creditors and in the power of
avaricious statesmen, who used him as a tool for their own schemes. La
Chesnaye had saved his furs; but the half of the cargo that was the
share of Radisson and Groseillers had been seized at Quebec.[2] On
arriving in France, Groseillers presented a memorial of their wrong to
the court.[3] Probably because England and France were allied by
treaty at that time, the petition for redress was ignored. Groseillers
was now an old man. He left the struggle to Radisson and retired to
spend his days in quietness.[4] Radisson did not cease to press his
claim for the return of confiscated furs. He had a wife and four
children to support; but, in spite of all his services to England and
France, he did not own a shilling's worth of property in the whole
world. From January to May he waited for the tardy justice of the
French court. When his suit became too urgent, he was told that he had
offended the Most Christian King by attacking the fur posts under the
protection of a friendly monarch, King Charles. The hollowness of that
excuse became apparent when the French government sanctioned the
fitting out of two vessels for Radisson to go to Hudson Bay in the
spring. Lord Preston, the English ambassador, was also playing a
double game. He never ceased to reproach the French for the
destruction of the fur posts on Hudson Bay. At the same time he
besieged Radisson with offers to return to the service of the Hudson's
Bay Company.
Radisson was deadly tired of the farce. From first to last France had
treated him with the blackest injustice. If he had wished to be rich,
he could long ago have accumulated wealth by casting in his lot with
the dishonest rulers of Quebec. In England a strong clique, headed by
Bridgar, Gillam, and Bering opposed him; but King Charles and the Duke
of York, Prince Rupert, when he was alive, Sir William Young, Sir James
Hayes, and Sir John Kirke were in his favor. His heart yearned for his
wife and children. Just then letters came from England urging him to
return to the Hudson's Bay Company. Lord Preston plied the explorer
with fair promises. Under threat of punishment for molesting the
English of Hudson Bay, the French government tried to force him into a
contract to sail on a second voyage to the North on the same terms as
in 1682-1683--not to share the profits. England and France were both
playing double. Radisson smiled a grim smile and took his resolution.
Daily he conferred with the French Marine on details of the voyage. He
permitted the date of sailing to be set for April 24. Sailors were
enlisted, stores put on board, everything was in readiness. At the
last moment, Radisson asked leave of absence to say good-by to his
family. The request was granted. Without losing a moment, he sailed
for England, where he arrived on the 10th of May and was at once taken
in hand by Sir William Young and Sir James Hayes. He was honored as
his explorations entitled him to be. King Charles and the Duke of York
received him. Both royal brothers gave him gifts in token of
appreciation. He took the oath of fealty and cast in his lot with the
English for good. It was characteristic of the enthusiast that he was,
when Radisson did not sign a strictly business contract with the
Hudson's Bay Company. "I accepted their commission with the greatest
pleasure in the world," he writes; ". . . without any precautions on my
part for my own interests . . . since they had confidence in me, I
wished to be generous towards them . . . in the hope they would render
me all the justice due from gentlemen of honor and probity."
But to the troubles of the future Radisson always paid small heed.
Glad to be off once more to the adventurous freedom of the wilds, he
set sail from England on May 17, 1684, in the _Happy Return_,
accompanied by two other vessels. No incident marked the voyage till
the ships had passed through the straits and were driven apart by the
ice-drift of the bay. About sixty miles out from Port Nelson, the
_Happy Return_ was held back by ice. Fearing trouble between young
Jean Groseillers' men and the English of the other ships, Radisson
embarked in a shallop with seven men in order to arrive at Hayes River
before the other boats came. Rowing with might and main for
forty-eight hours, they came to the site of the French fort.
The fort had been removed. Jean Groseillers had his own troubles
during Radisson's absence. A few days after Radisson's departure in
July, 1683, cannon announced the arrival of the annual English ships on
Nelson River. Jean at once sent out scouts, who found a tribe of
Indians on the way home from trading with the ships that had fired the
cannon. The scouts brought the Indians back to the French fort. Young
Groseillers admitted the savages only one at a time; but the cunning
braves pretended to run back for things they had forgotten in the
French house. Suspecting nothing, Jean had permitted his own men to
leave the fort. On different pretexts, a dozen warriors had surrounded
the young trader. Suddenly the mask was thrown off. Springing up,
treacherous as a tiger cat, the chief of the band struck at Groseillers
with a dagger. Jean parried the blow, grabbed the redskin by his
collar of bears' claws strung on thongs, threw the assassin to the
ground almost strangling him, and with one foot on the villain's throat
and the sword point at his chest, demanded of the Indians what they
meant. The savages would have fled, but French soldiers who had heard
the noise dashed to Groseillers' aid. The Indians threw down their
weapons and confessed all: the Englishmen of the ship had promised the
band a barrel of powder to massacre the French. Jean took his foot
from the Indian's throat and kicked him out of the fort. The English
outnumbered the French; so Jean removed his fort farther from the bay,
among the Indians, where the English could not follow. To keep the
warriors about him, he offered to house and feed them for the winter.
This protected him from the attacks of the English. In the spring
Indians came to the French with pelts. Jean was short of firearms; so
he bribed the Indians to trade their peltries to the English for guns,
and to retrade the guns to him for other goods. It was a stroke worthy
of Radisson himself, and saved the little French fort. The English
must have suspected the young trader's straits, for they again paid
warriors to attack the French; but Jean had forestalled assault by
forming an alliance with the Assiniboines, who came down Hayes River
from Lake Winnipeg four hundred strong, and encamped a body-guard
around the fort. Affairs were at this stage when Radisson arrived with
news that he had transferred his services to the English.
Young Groseillers was amazed.[5] Letters to his mother show that he
surrendered his charge with a very ill grace. "Do not forget,"
Radisson urged him, "the injuries that France has inflicted on your
father." Young Groseillers' mother, Marguerite Hayet, was in want at
Three Rivers.[6] It was memory of her that now turned the scales with
the young man. He would turn over the furs to Radisson for the English
Company, if Radisson would take care of the far-away mother at Three
Rivers. The bargain was made, and the two embraced. The surrender of
the French furs to the English Company has been represented as
Radisson's crowning treachery. Under that odium the great discoverer's
name has rested for nearly three centuries; yet the accusation of theft
is without a grain of truth. Radisson and Groseillers were to obtain
half the proceeds of the voyage in 1682-1683. Neither the explorers
nor Jean Groseillers, who had privately invested 500 pounds in the
venture, ever received one sou. The furs at Port Nelson--or Fort
Bourbon--belonged to the Frenchmen, to do what they pleased with them.
The act of the enthusiast is often tainted with folly. That Radisson
turned over twenty thousand beaver pelts to the English, without the
slightest assurance that he would be given adequate return, was surely
folly; but it was not theft.
The transfer of all possessions to the English was promptly made.
Radisson then arranged a peace treaty between the Indians and the
English. That peace treaty has endured between the Indians and the
Hudson's Bay Company to this day. A new fort was built, the furs
stored in the hold of the vessels, and the crews mustered for the
return voyage. Radisson had been given a solemn promise by the
Hudson's Bay Company that Jean Groseillers and his comrades should be
well treated and reëngaged for the English at 100 pounds a year. Now
he learned that the English intended to ship all the French out of
Hudson Bay and to keep them out. The enthusiast had played his game
with more zeal than discretion. The English had what they wanted--furs
and fort. In return, Radisson had what had misled him like a
will-o'-the-wisp all his life--vague promises. In vain Radisson
protested that he had given his promise to the French before they
surrendered the fort. The English distrusted foreigners. The
Frenchmen had been mustered on the ships to receive last instructions.
They were told that they were to be taken to England. No chance was
given them to escape. Some of the French had gone inland with the
Indians. Of Jean's colony, these alone remained. When Radisson
realized the conspiracy, he advised his fellow-countrymen to make no
resistance; for he feared that some of the English bitter against him
might seize on the pretext of a scuffle to murder the French. His
advice proved wise. He had strong friends at the English court, and
atonement was made for the breach of faith to the French.
The ships set sail on the 4th of September and arrived in England on
the 23d of October. Without waiting for the coach, Radisson hired a
horse and spurred to London in order to give his version first of the
quarrel on the bay. The Hudson's Bay Company was delighted with the
success of Radisson. He was taken before the directors, given a
present of a hundred guineas, and thanked for his services. He was
once more presented to the King and the Duke of York. The company
redeemed its promise to Radisson by employing the Frenchmen of the
surrendered fort and offering to engage young Groseillers at 100 pounds
a year.[7]
[Illustration: Hudson Bay Dog Trains laden with Furs arriving at Lower
Fort Garry, Red River. (Courtesy of C. C. Chipman, Commissioner H. B.
Company.)]
For five years the English kept faith with Radisson, and he made annual
voyages to the bay; but war broke out with France. New France entered
on a brilliant campaign against the English of Hudson Bay. The
company's profits fell. Radisson, the Frenchman, was distrusted.
France had set a price on his head, and one Martinière went to Port
Nelson to seize him, but was unable to cope with the English. At no
time did Radisson's salary with the company exceed 100 pounds; and now,
when war stopped dividends on the small amount of stock which had been
given to him, he fell into poverty and debt. In 1692 Sir William Young
petitioned the company in his favor; but a man with a price on his head
for treason could plainly not return to France.[8] The French were in
possession of the bay. Radisson could do no harm to the English.
Therefore the company ignored him till he sued them and received
payment in full for arrears of salary and dividends on stock which he
was not permitted to sell; but 50 pounds a year would not support a man
who paid half that amount for rent, and had a wife, four children, and
servants to support. In 1700 Radisson applied for the position of
warehouse keeper for the company at London. Even this was denied.
The dauntless pathfinder was growing old; and the old cannot fight and
lose and begin again as Radisson had done all his life. State Papers
of Paris contain records of a Radisson with Tonty at Detroit![9] Was
this his nephew, François Radisson's son, who took the name of the
explorer, or Radisson's own son, or the game old warrior himself, come
out to die on the frontier as he had lived?
History is silent. Until the year 1710 Radisson drew his allowance of
50 pounds a year from the English Company, then the payments stopped.
Did the dauntless life stop too? Oblivion hides all record of his
death, as it obscured the brilliant achievements of his life.
There is no need to point out Radisson's faults. They are written on
his life without extenuation or excuse, so that all may read. There is
less need to eulogize his virtues. They declare themselves in every
act of his life. This, only, should be remembered. Like all
enthusiasts, Radisson could not have been a hero, if he had not been a
bit of a fool. If he had not had his faults, if he had not been as
impulsive, as daring, as reckless, as inconstant, as improvident of the
morrow, as a savage or a child, he would not have accomplished the
exploration of half a continent. Men who weigh consequences are not of
the stuff to win empires. Had Radisson haggled as to the means, he
would have missed or muddled the end. He went ahead; and when the way
did not open, he went round, or crawled over, or carved his way through.
There was an old saying among retired hunters of Three Rivers that "one
learned more in the woods than was ever found in l' petee
cat-ee-cheesm." Radisson's training was of the woods, rather than the
curé's catechism; yet who that has been trained to the strictest code
may boast of as dauntless faults and noble virtues? He was not
faithful to any country, but he was faithful to his wife and children;
and he was "faithful to his highest hope,"--that of becoming a
discoverer,--which is more than common mortals are to their meanest
aspirations. When statesmen played him a double game, he paid them
back in their own coin with compound interest. Perhaps that is why
they hated him so heartily and blackened his memory. But amid all the
mad license of savage life, Radisson remained untainted. Other
explorers and statesmen, too, have left a trail of blood to perpetuate
their memory; Radisson never once spilled human blood needlessly, and
was beloved by the savages.
Memorial tablets commemorate other discoverers. Radisson needs none.
The Great Northwest is his monument for all time.
[1] Radisson's petition to the Hudson's Bay Company gives these amounts.
[2] See State Papers quoted in Chapter VI. I need scarcely add that
Radisson did not steal a march on his patrons by secretly shipping furs
to Europe. This is only another of the innumerable slanders against
Radisson which State Papers disprove.
[3] It seems impossible that historians with the slightest regard for
truth should have branded this part of _Radisson's Relation_ as a
fabrication, too. Yet such is the case, and of writers whose books are
supposed to be reputable. Since parts of Radisson's life appeared in
the magazines, among many letters I received one from a well-known
historian which to put it mildly was furious at the acceptance of
_Radisson's Journal_ as authentic. In reply, I asked that historian
how many documents contemporaneous with Radisson's life he had
consulted before he branded so great an explorer as Radisson as a liar.
Needless to say, that question was not answered. In corroboration of
this part of Radisson's life, I have lying before me: (1) Chouart's
letters--see Appendix. (2) A letter of Frontenac recording Radisson's
first trip by boat for De la Chesnaye and the complications it would be
likely to cause. (3) A complete official account sent from Quebec to
France of Radisson's doings in the bay, which tallies in every respect
with _Radisson's Journal_. (4) Report of M. de Meulles to the Minister
on the whole affair with the English and New Englanders. (5) An
official report on the release of Gillam's boat at Quebec. (6) The
memorial presented by Groseillers to the French minister. (7) An
official statement of the first discovery of the bay overland. (8) A
complete statement (official) of the complications created by
Radisson's wife being English. (9) A statement through a third
party--presumably an official--by Radisson himself of these
complications dated 1683. (10) A letter from the king to the governor
at Quebec retailing the English complaints of Radisson at Nelson River.
In the face of this, what is to be said of the historian who calls
Radisson's adventures "a fabrication"? Such misrepresentation betrays
about equal amounts of impudence and ignorance.
[4] From Charlevoix to modern writers mention is made of the death of
these two explorers. Different names are given as the places where
they died. This is all pure supposition. Therefore I do not quote.
No records exist to prove where Radisson and Groseillers died.
[5] See Appendix.
[6] State Papers record payment of money to her because she was in want.
[7] Dr. George Bryce, who is really the only scholar who has tried to
unravel the mystery of Radisson's last days, supplies new facts about
his dealings with the Company to 1710.
[8] Marquis de Denonville ordered the arrest of Radisson wherever he
might be found.
[9] Appendix; see State Papers.
PART II
THE SEARCH FOR THE WESTERN SEA: BEING AN
ACCOUNT OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE ROCKY
MOUNTAINS, THE MISSOURI UPLANDS, AND THE
VALLEY OF THE SASKATCHEWAN
CHAPTER VIII
1730-1750
THE SEARCH FOR THE WESTERN SEA[1]
M. de la Vérendrye continues the Exploration of the Great Northwest by
establishing a Chain of Fur Posts across the Continent--Privations of
the Explorers and the Massacre of Twenty Followers--His Sons visit the
Mandans and discover the Rockies--The Valley of the Saskatchewan is
next explored, but Jealousy thwarts the Explorer, and he dies in Poverty
I
1731-1736
A curious paradox is that the men who have done the most for North
America did not intend to do so. They set out on the far quest of a
crack-brained idealist's dream. They pulled up at a foreshortened
purpose; but the unaccomplished aim did more for humanity than the
idealist's dream.
Columbus set out to find Asia. He discovered America. Jacques Cartier
sought a mythical passage to the Orient. He found a northern empire.
La Salle thought to reach China. He succeeded only in exploring the
valley of the Mississippi, but the new continent so explored has done
more for humanity than Asia from time immemorial. Of all crack-brained
dreams that led to far-reaching results, none was wilder than the
search for the Western Sea. Marquette, Jolliet, and La Salle had
followed the trail that Radisson had blazed and explored the valley of
the Mississippi; but like a will-o'-the-wisp beckoning ever westward
was that undiscovered myth, the Western Sea, thought to lie like a
narrow strait between America and Japan.
The search began in earnest one sweltering afternoon on June 8, 1731,
at the little stockaded fort on the banks of the St. Lawrence, where
Montreal stands to-day. Fifty grizzled adventurers--wood runners,
voyageurs, Indian interpreters--bareheaded, except for the colored
handkerchief binding back the lank hair, dressed in fringed buckskin,
and chattering with the exuberant nonchalance of boys out of school,
had finished gumming the splits of their ninety-foot birch canoes, and
now stood in line awaiting the coming of their captain, Sieur Pierre
Gaultier de Varennes de la Vérendrye. The French soldier with his
three sons, aged respectively eighteen, seventeen, and sixteen, now
essayed to discover the fabled Western Sea, whose narrow waters were
supposed to be between the valley of the "Great Forked River" and the
Empire of China.
[Illustration: Indians and Hunters spurring to the Fight.]
Certainly, if it were worth while for Peter the Great of Russia to send
Vitus Bering coasting the bleak headlands of ice-blocked, misty shores
to find the Western Sea, it would--as one of the French governors
reported--"be nobler than open war" for the little colony of New France
to discover this "sea of the setting sun." The quest was invested with
all the rainbow tints of "_la gloire_"; but the rainbow hopes were
founded on the practical basis of profits. Leading merchants of
Montreal had advanced goods for trade with the Indians on the way to
the Western Sea. Their expectations of profits were probably the same
as the man's who buys a mining share for ten cents and looks for
dividends of several thousand per cent. And the fur trade at that time
was capable of yielding such profits. Traders had gone West with less
than $2000 worth of goods in modern money, and returned three years
later with a sheer profit of a quarter of a million. Hope of such
returns added zest to De la Vérendrye's venture for the discovery of
the Western Sea.
Goods done up in packets of a hundred pounds lay at the feet of the
_voyageurs_ awaiting De la Vérendrye's command. A dozen soldiers in
the plumed hats, slashed buskins, the brightly colored doublets of the
period, joined the motley company. Priests came out to bless the
departing _voyageurs_. Chapel bells rang out their God-speed. To the
booming of cannon, and at a word from De la Vérendrye, the gates
opened. Falling in line with measured tread, the soldiers marched out
from Mount Royal. Behind, in the ambling gait of the moccasined
woodsman, came the _voyageurs_ and _coureurs_ and interpreters,
pack-straps across their foreheads, packets on the bent backs, the long
birch canoes hoisted to the shoulders of four men, two abreast at each
end, heads hidden in the inverted keel.
The path led between the white fret of Lachine Rapids and the dense
forests that shrouded the base of Mount Royal. Checkerboard squares of
farm patches had been cleared in the woods. La Salle's old
thatch-roofed seigniory lay not far back from the water. St. Anne's
was the launching place for fleets of canoes that were to ascend the
Ottawa. Here, a last look was taken of splits and seams in the birch
keels. With invocations of St. Anne in one breath, and invocations of
a personage not mentioned in the curé's "petee cat-ee-cheesm" in the
next breath, and imprecations that their "souls might be smashed on the
end of a picket fence,"--the _voyageur's_ common oath even to this
day,--the boatmen stored goods fore, aft, and athwart till each long
canoe sank to the gunwale as it was gently pushed out on the water. A
last sign of the cross, and the lithe figures leap light as a mountain
cat to their place in the canoes. There are four benches of paddlers,
two abreast, with bowman and steersman, to each canoe. One can guess
that the explorer and his sons and his nephew, Sieur de la Jemmeraie,
who was to be second in command, all unhatted as they heard the long
last farewell of the bells. Every eye is fastened on the chief
bowman's steel-shod pole, held high--there is silence but for the
bells--the bowman's pole is lowered--as with one stroke out sweep the
paddles in a poetry of motion. The chimes die away over the water, the
chapel spire gleams--it, too, is gone. Some one strikes up a plaintive
ditty,--the _voyageur's_ song of the lost lady and the faded roses, or
the dying farewell of Cadieux, the hunter, to his comrades,--and the
adventurers are launched for the Western Sea.
[Illustration: Fight at the Foot-hills of the Rockies between Crows and
Snakes.]
II
1731-1736
Every mile westward was consecrated by heroism. There was the place
where Cadieux, the white hunter, went ashore single-handed to hold the
Iroquois at bay, while his comrades escaped by running the rapids; but
Cadieux was assailed by a subtler foe than the Iroquois, _la folie des
bois_,--the folly of the woods,--that sends the hunter wandering in
endless circles till he dies from hunger; and when his companions
returned, Cadieux lay in eternal sleep with a death chant scribbled on
bark across his breast. There were the Rapids of the Long Sault where
Dollard and seventeen Frenchmen fought seven hundred Iroquois till
every white man fell. Not one of all De la Vérendrye's fifty followers
but knew that perils as great awaited him.
Streaked foam told the voyageurs where they were approaching rapids.
Alert as a hawk, the bowman stroked for the shore; and his stroke was
answered by all paddles. If the water were high enough to carry the
canoes above rocks, and the rapids were not too violent, several of the
boatmen leaped out to knees in water, and "tracked" the canoes up
stream; but this was unusual with loaded craft. The bowman steadied
the beached keel. Each man landed with pack on his back, lighted his
pipe, and trotted away over portages so dank and slippery that only a
moccasined foot could gain hold. On long portages, camp-fires were
kindled and the kettles slung on the crotched sticks for the evening
meal. At night, the voyageurs slept under the overturned canoes, or
lay on the sand with bare faces to the sky. Morning mist had not risen
till all the boats were once more breasting the flood of the Ottawa.
For a month the canoe prows met the current when a portage lifted the
fleet out of the Ottawa into a shallow stream flowing toward Lake
Nipissing, and from Lake Nipissing to Lake Huron. The change was a
welcome relief. The canoes now rode with the current; and when a wind
sprang up astern, blanket sails were hoisted that let the boatmen lie
back, paddles athwart. Going with the stream, the _voyageurs_ would
"run"--"_sauter les rapides_"--the safest of the cataracts. Bowman,
not steersman, was the pilot of such "runs." A faint, far swish as of
night wind, little forward leaps and swirls of the current, the blur of
trees on either bank, were signs to the bowman. He rose in his
place. A thrust of the steel-shod pole at a rock in mid-stream--the
rock raced past; a throb of the keel to the live waters below--the
bowman crouches back, lightening the prow just as a rider "lifts" his
horse to the leap; a sudden splash--the thing has happened--the canoe
has run the rapids or shot the falls.
[Illustration: "Each man landed with pack on his back, and trotted
away over portages."]
Pause was made at Lake Huron for favorable weather; and a rear wind
would carry the canoes at a bouncing pace clear across to
Michilimackinac, at the mouth of Lake Michigan. This was the chief fur
post of the lakes at that time. All the boats bound east or west,
Sioux and Cree and Iroquois and Fox, traders' and priests' and
outlaws'--stopped at Michilimackinac. Vice and brandy and religion
were the characteristics of the fort.
[Illustration: A Cree Indian of the Minnesota Borderlands.]
This was familiar ground to De la Vérendrye. It was at the lonely fur
post of Nepigon, north of Michilimackinac, in the midst of a wilderness
forest, that he had eaten his heart out with baffled ambition from 1728
to 1730, when he descended to Montreal to lay before M. de Beauharnois,
the governor, plans for the discovery of the Western Sea. Born at
Three Rivers in 1686, where the passion for discovery and Radisson's
fame were in the very air and traders from the wilderness of the Upper
Country wintered, young Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de la Vérendrye, at
the ambitious age of fourteen, determined that he would become a
discoverer.[2] At eighteen he was fighting in New England, at nineteen
in Newfoundland, at twenty-three in Europe at the battle of Malplaquet,
where he was carried off the field with nine wounds. Eager for more
distinguished service, he returned to Canada in his twenty-seventh
year, only to find himself relegated to an obscure trading post in far
Northern wilds. Then the boyhood ambitions reawakened. All France and
Canada, too, were ringing with projects for the discovery of the
Western Sea. Russia was acting. France knew it. The great priest
Charlevoix had been sent to Canada to investigate plans for the
venture, and had recommended an advance westward through the country of
the Sioux; but the Sioux[3] swarmed round the little fort at Lake Pepin
on the Mississippi like angry wasps. That way, exploration was plainly
barred. Nothing came of the attempt except a brisk fur trade and a
brisker warfare on the part of the Sioux. At the lonely post of
Nepigon, vague Indian tales came to De la Vérendrye of "a great river
flowing west" and "a vast, flat country devoid of timber" with "large
herds of cattle." Ochagach, an old Indian, drew maps on birch bark
showing rivers that emptied into the Western Sea. De la Vérendrye's
smouldering ambitions kindled. He hurried to Michilimackinac. There
the traders and Indians told the same story. Glory seemed suddenly
within De la Vérendrye's grasp. Carried away with the passion for
discovery that ruled his age, he took passage in the canoes bound for
Quebec. The Marquis Charles de Beauharnois had become governor. His
brother Claude had taken part in the exploration of the Mississippi.
The governor favored the project of the Western Sea. Perhaps Russia's
activity gave edge to the governor's zest; but he promised De la
Vérendrye the court's patronage and prestige. This was not money.
France would not advance the enthusiast one sou, but granted him a
monopoly of the fur trade in the countries which he might discover.
The winter of 1731-1732 was spent by De la Vérendrye as the guest of
the governor at Château St. Louis, arranging with merchants to furnish
goods for trade; and on May 19 the agreement was signed. By a lucky
coincidence, the same winter that M. de la Vérendrye had come down to
Quebec, there had arrived from the Mississippi fort, his nephew,
Christopher Dufrost, Sieur de la Jemmeraie, who had commanded the Sioux
post and been prisoner among the Indians. So M. de la Vérendrye chose
Jemmeraie for lieutenant.
And now the explorer was back at Michilimackinac, on the way to the
accomplishment of the daring ambition of his life. The trip from
Montreal had fatigued the _voyageurs_. Brandy flowed at the lake post
freely as at a modern mining camp. The explorer kept military
discipline over his men. They received no pay which could be
squandered away on liquor. Discontent grew rife. Taking Father
Messaiger, the Jesuit, as chaplain, M. de la Vérendrye ordered his
grumbling _voyageurs_ to their canoes, and, passing through the Straits
of the Sault, headed his fleet once more for the Western Sea. Other
explorers had preceded him on this part of the route. The Jesuits had
coasted the north shore of Lake Superior. So had Radisson. In 1688 De
Noyon of Three Rivers had gone as far west as the Lake of the Woods
towards what is now Minnesota and Manitoba; and in 1717 De Lanoue had
built a fur post at Kaministiquia, near what is now Fort William on
Lake Superior. The shore was always perilous to the boatman of frail
craft. The harbors were fathoms deep, and the waves thrashed by a
cross wind often proved as dangerous as the high sea. It took M. de la
Vérendrye's canoemen a month to coast from the Straits of Mackinaw to
Kaministiquia, which they reached on the 26th of August, seventy-eight
days after they had left Montreal. The same distance is now traversed
in two days.
Prospects were not encouraging. The crews were sulky. Kaministiquia
was the outermost post in the West. Within a month, the early Northern
winter would set in. One hunter can scramble for his winter's food
where fifty will certainly starve; and the Indians could not be
expected back from the chase with supplies of furs and food till
spring. The canoemen had received no pay. Free as woodland denizens,
they chafed under military command. Boats were always setting out at
this season for the homeland hamlets of the St. Lawrence; and perhaps
other hunters told De la Vérendrye's men that this Western Sea was a
will-o'-the-wisp that would lead for leagues and leagues over strange
lands, through hostile tribes, to a lonely death in the wilderness.
When the explorer ordered his men once more in line to launch for the
Western Sea, there was outright mutiny. Soldiers and boatmen refused
to go on. The Jesuit Messaiger threatened and expostulated with the
men. Jemmeraie, who had been among the Sioux, interceded with the
_voyageurs_. A compromise was effected. Half the boatmen would go
ahead with Jemmeraie if M. de la Vérendrye would remain with the other
half at Lake Superior as a rear guard for retreat and the supply of
provisions. So the explorer suffered his first check in the advance to
the Western Sea.
III
1732-1736
Equipping four canoes, Lieutenant de la Jemmeraie and young Jean
Ba'tiste de la Vérendrye set out with thirty men from Kaministiquia,
_portaged_ through dense forests over moss and dank rock past the high
cataract of the falls, and launched westward to prepare a fort for the
reception of their leader in spring. Before winter had closed
navigation, Fort St. Pierre--named in honor of the explorer--had been
erected on the left bank or Minnesota side of Rainy Lake, and the two
young men not only succeeded in holding their mutinous followers, but
drove a thriving trade in furs with the Crees. Perhaps the furs were
obtained at too great cost, for ammunition and firearms were the price
paid, but the same mistake has been made at a later day for a lesser
object than the discovery of the Western Sea. The spring of 1732 saw
the young men back at Lake Superior, going post-haste to
Michilimackinac to exchange furs for the goods from Montreal.
On the 8th of June, exactly a year from the day that he had left
Montreal, M. de la Vérendrye pushed forward with all his people for
Fort St. Pierre. Five weeks later he was welcomed inside the
stockades. Uniformed soldiers were a wonder to the awe-struck Crees,
who hung round the gateway with hands over their hushed lips. Gifts of
ammunition won the loyalty of the chiefs. Not to be lacking in
generosity, the Indians collected fifty of their gaudiest canoes and
offered to escort the explorer west to the Lake of the Woods. De la
Vérendrye could not miss such an offer. Though his _voyageurs_ were
fatigued, he set out at once. He had reached Fort St. Pierre on July
14. In August his entire fleet glided over the Lake of the Woods. The
threescore canoes manned by the Cree boatmen threaded the shadowy
defiles and labyrinthine channels of the Lake of the Woods--or Lake of
the Isles--coasting island after island along the south or Minnesota
shore westward to the opening of the river at the northwest angle.
This was the border of the Sioux territory. Before the boatmen opened
the channel of an unknown river. Around them were sheltered harbors,
good hunting, and good fishing. The Crees favored this region for
winter camping ground because they could hide their families from the
Sioux on the sheltered islands of the wooded lake. Night frosts had
painted the forests red. The flacker of wild-fowl overhead, the skim
of ice forming on the lake, the poignant sting of the north wind--all
fore-warned winter's approach. Jean de la Vérendrye had not come up
with the supplies from Michilimackinac. The explorer did not tempt
mutiny by going farther. He ordered a halt and began building a fort
that was to be the centre of operations between Montreal and the
unfound Western Sea. The fort was named St. Charles in honor of
Beauharnois. It was defended by four rows of thick palisades fifteen
feet high. In the middle of the enclosure stood the living quarters,
log cabins with thatched roofs.
[Illustration: A Group of Cree Indians.]
By October the Indians had scattered to their hunting-grounds like
leaves to the wind. The ice thickened. By November the islands were
ice-locked and snow had drifted waist-high through the forests. The
_voyageurs_ could still fish through ice holes for food; but where was
young Jean who was to bring up provisions from Michilimackinac? The
commander did not voice his fears; and his men were too deep in the
wilds for desertion. One afternoon, a shout sounded from the silent
woods, and out from the white-edged evergreens stepped a figure on
snowshoes--Jean de la Vérendrye, leading his boatmen, with the
provisions packed on their backs, from a point fifty miles away where
the ice had caught the canoes. If the supplies had not come, the
explorer could neither have advanced nor retreated in spring. It was a
risk that De la Vérendrye did not intend to have repeated. Suspecting
that his merchant partners were dissatisfied, he sent Jemmeraie down to
Montreal in 1733 to report and urge the necessity for prompt forwarding
of all supplies. With Jemmeraie went the Jesuit Messaiger; but their
combined explanations failed to satisfy the merchants of Montreal. De
la Vérendrye had now been away three years. True, he had constructed
two fur posts and sent East two cargoes of furs. His partners were
looking for enormous wealth. Disappointed and caring nothing for the
Western Sea; perhaps, too, secretly accusing De la Vérendrye of making
profits privately, as many a gentleman of fortune did,--the merchants
decided to advance provisions only in proportion to earnings. What
would become of the fifty men in the Northern wilderness the partners
neither asked nor cared.
Young Jean had meanwhile pushed on and built Fort Maurepas on Lake
Winnipeg; but his father dared not leave Fort St. Charles without
supplies. De la Vérendrye's position was now desperate. He was
hopelessly in debt to his men for wages. That did not help discipline.
His partners were not only withholding supplies, but charging up a high
rate of interest on the first equipment. To turn back meant ruin. To
go forward he was powerless. Leaving Jemmeraie in command, and
permitting his eager son to go ahead with a few picked men to Fort
Maurepas on Lake Winnipeg, De la Vérendrye took a small canoe and
descended with all swiftness to Quebec. The winter of 1634-1635 was
spent with the governor; and the partners were convinced that they must
either go on with the venture or lose all. They consented to continue
supplying goods, but also charging all outlay against the explorer.
Father Aulneau went back with De la Vérendrye as chaplain. The trip
was made at terrible speed, in the hottest season, through stifling
forest fires. Behind, at slower pace, came the provisions. De la
Vérendrye reached the Lake of the Woods in September. Fearing the
delay of the goods for trade, and dreading the danger of famine with so
many men in one place, De la Vérendrye despatched Jemmeraie to winter
with part of the forces at Lake Winnipeg, where Jean and Pierre, the
second son, had built Fort Maurepas. The worst fears were realized.
Ice had blocked the Northern rivers by the time the supplies had come
to Lake Superior. Fishing failed. The hunt was poor. During the
winter of 1736 food became scantier at the little forts of St. Pierre,
St. Charles, and Maurepas. Rations were reduced from three times to
once and twice a day. By spring De la Vérendrye was put to all the
extremities of famine-stricken traders, his men subsisting on
parchment, moccasin leather, roots, and their hunting dogs.
He was compelled to wait at St. Charles for the delayed supplies.
While he waited came blow upon blow: Jean and Pierre arrived from Fort
Maurepas with news that Jemmeraie had died three weeks before on his
way down to aid De la Vérendrye. Wrapped in a hunter's robe, his body
was buried in the sand-bank of a little Northern stream, La Fourche des
Roseaux. Over the lonely grave the two brothers had erected a cross.
Father and sons took stock of supplies. They had not enough powder to
last another month, and already the Indians were coming in with furs
and food to be traded for ammunition. If the Crees had known the
weakness of the white men, short work might have been made of Fort St.
Charles. It never entered the minds of De la Vérendrye and his sons to
give up. They decided to rush three canoes of twenty _voyageurs_ to
Michilimackinac for food and powder. Father Aulneau, the young priest,
accompanied the boatmen to attend a religious retreat at
Michilimackinac. It had been a hard year for the youthful missionary.
The ship that brought him from France had been plague-stricken. The
trip to Fort St. Charles had been arduous and swift, through stifling
heat; and the year passed in the North was one of famine.
Accompanied by the priest and led by Jean de la Vérendrye, now in his
twenty-third year, the _voyageurs_ embarked hurriedly on the 8th of
June, 1736, five years to a day from the time that they left
Montreal--and a fateful day it was--in the search for the Western Sea.
The Crees had always been friendly; and when the boatmen landed on a
sheltered island twenty miles from Fort St. Charles to camp for the
night, no sentry was stationed. The lake lay calm as glass in the hot
June night, the camp-fire casting long lines across the water that
could be seen for miles. An early start was to be made in the morning
and a furious pace to be kept all the way to Lake Superior, and the
_voyageurs_ were presently sound asleep on the sand. The keenest ears
could scarcely have distinguished the soft lapping of muffled paddles;
and no one heard the moccasined tread of ambushed Indians
reconnoitring. Seventeen Sioux stepped from their canoes, stole from
cover to cover, and looked out on the unsuspecting sleepers. Then the
Indians as noiselessly slipped back to their canoes to carry word of
the discovery to a band of marauders.
[Illustration: "The soldiers marched out from Mount Royal."]
Something had occurred at Fort St. Charles without M. de la Vérendrye's
knowledge. Hilarious with their new possessions of firearms, and
perhaps, also, mad with the brandy of which Father Aulneau had
complained, a few mischievous Crees had fired from the fort on
wandering Sioux of the prairie.
"Who--fire--on--us?" demanded the outraged Sioux.
"The French," laughed the Crees.
The Sioux at once went back to a band of one hundred and thirty
warriors. "Tigers of the plains" the Sioux were called, and now the
tigers' blood was up. They set out to slay the first white man seen.
By chance, he was one Bourassa, coasting by himself. Taking him
captive, they had tied him to burn him, when a slave squaw rushed out,
crying: "What would you do? This Frenchman is a friend of the Sioux!
He saved my life! If you desire to be avenged, go farther on! You
will find a camp of Frenchmen, among whom is the son of the white
chief!"
The _voyageur_ was at once unbound, and scouts scattered to find the
white men. Night had passed before the scouts had carried news of Jean
de la Vérendrye's men to the marauding warriors. The ghostly gray of
dawn saw the _voyageurs_ paddling swiftly through the morning mist from
island to island of the Lake of the Woods. Cleaving the mist behind,
following solely by the double foam wreaths rippling from the canoe
prows, came the silent boats of the Sioux. When sunrise lifted the
fog, the pursuers paused like stealthy cats. At sunrise Jean de la
Vérendrye landed his crews for breakfast. Camp-fires told the Indians
where to follow.
A few days later bands of Sautaux came to the camping ground of the
French. The heads of the white men lay on a beaver skin. All had been
scalped. The missionary, Aulneau, was on his knees, as if in morning
prayers. An arrow projected from his head. His left hand was on the
earth, fallen forward, his right hand uplifted, invoking Divine aid.
Young Vérendrye lay face down, his back hacked to pieces, a spear sunk
in his waist, the headless body mockingly decorated with porcupine
quills. So died one of the bravest of the young nobility in New France.
The Sautaux erected a cairn of stones over the bodies of the dead. All
that was known of the massacre was vague Indian gossip. The Sioux
reported that they had not intended to murder the priest, but a
crazy-brained fanatic had shot the fatal arrow and broken from
restraint, weapon in hand. Rain-storms had washed out all marks of the
fray.
In September the bodies of the victims were carried to Fort St.
Charles, and interred in the chapel. Eight hundred Crees besought M.
de la Vérendrye to let them avenge the murder; but the veteran of
Malplaquet exhorted them not to war. Meanwhile, Fort St. Charles
awaited the coming of supplies from Lake Superior.
IV
1736-1740
A week passed, and on the 17th of June the canoe loads of ammunition
and supplies for which the murdered _voyageurs_ had been sent arrived
at Fort St. Charles. In June the Indian hunters came in with the
winter's hunt; and on the 20th thirty Sautaux hurried to Fort St.
Charles, to report that they had found the mangled bodies of the
massacred Frenchmen on an island seven leagues from the fort. Again La
Vérendrye had to choose whether to abandon his cherished dreams, or
follow them at the risk of ruin and death. As before, when his men had
mutinied, he determined to advance.
Jean, the eldest son, was dead. Pierre and François were with their
father. Louis, the youngest, now seventeen years of age, had come up
with the supplies. Pierre at once went to Lake Winnipeg, to prepare
Fort Maurepas for the reception of all the forces. Winter set in.
Snow lay twelve feet deep in the forests now known as the Minnesota
Borderlands. On February 8, 1737, in the face of a biting north wind,
with the thermometer at forty degrees below zero, M. de la Vérendrye
left Fort St. Charles, François carrying the French flag, with ten
soldiers, wearing snow-shoes, in line behind, and two or three hundred
Crees swathed in furs bringing up a ragged rear. The bright uniforms
of the soldiers were patches of red among the snowy everglades.
Bivouac was made on beds of pine boughs,--feet to the camp-fire, the
night frost snapping like a whiplash, the stars flashing with a steely
clearness known only in northern climes. The march was at a swift
pace, for three weeks by canoe is short enough time to traverse the
Minnesota and Manitoba Borderlands northwest to Lake Winnipeg; and in
seventeen days M. de la Vérendrye was at Fort Maurepas.
Fort Maurepas (in the region of the modern Alexander) lay on a tongue
of sand extending into the lake a few miles beyond the entrance of Red
River. Tamarack and poplar fringe the shore; and in windy weather the
lake is lashed into a roughness that resembles the flux of ocean tides.
I remember once going on a steamer towards the site of Maurepas. The
ship drew lightest of draft. While we were anchored the breeze fell,
and the ship was stranded as if by ebb tide for twenty-four hours. The
action of the wind explained the Indian tales of an ocean tide, which
had misled La Vérendrye into expecting to find the Western Sea at this
point. He found a magnificent body of fresh water, but not the ocean.
The fort was the usual pioneer fur post--a barracks of unbarked logs,
chinked up with frozen clay and moss, roofed with branches and snow,
occupying the centre of a courtyard, palisaded by slabs of pine logs.
M. de la Vérendrye was now in the true realm of the explorer--in
territory where no other white man had trod. With a shout his motley
forces emerged from the snowy tamaracks, and with a shout from Pierre
de la Vérendrye and his tawny followers the explorer was welcomed
through the gateway of little Fort Maurepas.
[Illustration: Traders' Boats running the Rapids of the Athabasca
River.]
Pierre de la Vérendrye had heard of a region to the south much
frequented by the Assiniboine Indians, who had conducted Radisson to
the Sea of the North fifty years before--the Forks where the
Assiniboine River joins the Red, and the city of Winnipeg stands
to-day. It was reported that game was plentiful here. Two hundred
tepees of Assiniboines were awaiting the explorer. His forces were
worn with their marching, but in a few weeks the glaze of ice above the
fathomless drifts of snow would be too rotten for travel, and not until
June would the riverways be clear for canoes. But such a scant supply
of goods had his partners sent up that poor De la Vérendrye had nothing
to trade with the waiting Assiniboines. Sending his sons forward to
reconnoitre the Forks of the Assiniboine,--the modern Winnipeg,--he set
out for Montreal as soon as navigation opened, taking with him fourteen
great canoes of precious furs.
The fourteen canoe loads proved his salvation. As long as there were
furs and prospects of furs, his partners would back the enterprise of
finding the Western Sea. The winter of 1738 was spent as the guest of
the governor at Château St. Louis. The partners were satisfied, and
plucked up hope of their venture. They would advance provisions in
proportion to earnings. By September he was back at Fort Maurepas on
Lake Winnipeg, pushing for the undiscovered bourne of the Western Sea.
Leaving orders for trade with the chief clerk at Maurepas, De la
Vérendrye picked out his most intrepid men; and in September of 1738,
for the first time in history, white men glided up the ochre-colored,
muddy current of the Red for the Forks of the Assiniboine. Ten Cree
wigwams and two war chiefs awaited De la Vérendrye on the low flats of
what are now known as South Winnipeg. Not the fabled Western Sea, but
an illimitable ocean of rolling prairie--the long russet grass rising
and falling to the wind like waves to the run of invisible
feet--stretched out before the eager eyes of the explorer. Northward
lay the autumn-tinged brushwood of Red River. South, shimmering in the
purple mists of Indian summer, was Red River Valley. Westward the sun
hung like a red shield, close to the horizon, over vast reaches of
prairie billowing to the sky-line in the tide of a boundless ocean.
Such was the discovery of the Canadian Northwest.
Doubtless the weary gaze of the tired _voyageurs_ turned longingly
westward. Where was the Western Sea? Did it lie just beyond the
horizon where skyline and prairie met, or did the trail of their quest
run on--on--on--endlessly? The Assiniboine flows into the Red, the Red
into Lake Winnipeg, the Lake into Hudson Bay. Plainly, Assiniboine
Valley was not the way to the Western Sea. But what lay just beyond
this Assiniboine Valley? An old Cree chief warned the boatmen that the
Assiniboine River was very low and would wreck the canoes; but he also
told vague yarns of "great waters beyond the mountains of the setting
sun," where white men dwelt, and the waves came in a tide, and the
waters were salt. The Western Sea where the Spaniards dwelt had long
been known. It was a Western Sea to the north, that would connect
Louisiana and Canada, that De la Vérendrye sought. The Indian fables,
without doubt, referred to a sea beyond the Assiniboine River, and
thither would De la Vérendrye go at any cost. Some sort of barracks or
shelter was knocked up on the south side of the Assiniboine opposite
the flats. It was subsequently known as Fort Rouge, after the color of
the adjacent river, and was the foundation of Winnipeg. Leaving men to
trade at Fort Rouge, De la Vérendrye set out on September 26, 1738, for
the height of land that must lie beyond the sources of the Assiniboine.
De la Vérendrye was now like a man hounded by his own Frankenstein. A
thousand leagues--every one marked by disaster and failure and sinking
hopes--lay behind him. A thousand leagues of wilderness lay before
him. He had only a handful of men. The Assiniboine Indians were of
dubious friendliness. The white men were scarce of food. In a few
weeks they would be exposed to the terrible rigors of Northern winter.
Yet they set their faces toward the west, types of the pioneers who
have carved empire out of wilderness.
[Illustration: The Ragged Sky-line of the Mountains.]
The Assiniboine was winding and low, with many sand bars. On the
wooded banks deer and buffalo grazed in such countless multitudes that
the boatmen took them for great herds of cattle. Flocks of wild geese
darkened the sky overhead. As the boats wound up the shallows of the
river, ducks rose in myriad flocks. Prairie wolves skulked away from
the river bank, and the sand-hill cranes were so unused to human
presence that they scarcely rose as the voyageurs poled past. While
the boatmen poled, the soldiers marched in military order across
country, so avoiding the bends of the river. Daily, Crees and
Assiniboines of the plains joined the white men. A week after leaving
the Forks or Fort Rouge, De la Vérendrye came to the Portage of the
Prairie, leading north to Lake Manitoba and from the lake to Hudson
Bay. Clearly, northward was not the way to the Western Sea; but the
Assiniboines told of a people to the southwest--the Mandans--who knew a
people who lived on the Western Sea. As soon as his baggage came up,
De la Vérendrye ordered the construction of a fort--called De la
Reine--on the banks of the Assiniboine. This was to be the forwarding
post for the Western Sea. To the Mandans living on the Missouri, who
knew a people living on salt water, De la Vérendrye now directed his
course.
[Illustration: Hungry Hall, 1870; near the site of the Vérendrye Fort
in Rainy River Region.]
On the morning of October 18 drums beat to arms. Additional men had
come up from the other forts. Fifty-two soldiers and _voyageurs_ now
stood in line. Arms were inspected. To each man were given powder,
balls, axe, and kettle. Pierre and François de la Vérendrye hoisted
the French flag. For the first time a bugle call sounded over the
prairie. At the word, out stepped the little band of white men,
marking time for the Western Sea. The course lay west-southwest, up
the Souris River, through wooded ravines now stripped of foliage, past
alkali sloughs ice-edged by frost, over rolling cliffs russet and bare,
where gopher and badger and owl and roving buffalo were the only signs
of life. On the 21st of October two hundred Assiniboine warriors
joined the marching white men. In the sheltered ravines buffalo grazed
by the hundreds of thousands, and the march was delayed by frequent
buffalo hunts to gather pemmican--pounded marrow and fat of the
buffalo--which was much esteemed by the Mandans. Within a month so
many Assiniboines had joined the French that the company numbered more
than six hundred warriors, who were ample protection against the Sioux;
and the Sioux were the deadly terror of all tribes of the plains. But
M. de la Vérendrye was expected to present ammunition to his
Assiniboine friends.
Four outrunners went speeding to the Missouri to notify the Mandans of
the advancing warriors. The _coureurs_ carried presents of pemmican.
To prevent surprise, the Assiniboines marched under the sheltered
slopes of the hills and observed military order. In front rode the
warriors, dressed in garnished buckskin and armed with spears and
arrows. Behind, on foot, came the old and the lame. To the rear was
another guard of warriors. Lagging in ragged lines far back came a
ragamuffin brigade, the women, children, and dogs--squaws astride
cayuses lean as barrel hoops, children in moss bags on their mothers'
backs, and horses and dogs alike harnessed with the _travaille_--two
sticks tied into a triangle, with the shafts fastened to a cinch on
horse or dog. The joined end of the shafts dragged on the ground, and
between them hung the baggage, surmounted by papoose, or pet owl, or
the half-tamed pup of a prairie-wolf, or even a wild-eyed young squaw
with hair flying to the wind. At night camp was made in a circle
formed of the hobbled horses. Outside, the dogs scoured in pursuit of
coyotes. The women and children took refuge in the centre, and the
warriors slept near their picketed horses. By the middle of November
the motley cavalcade had crossed the height of land between the
Assiniboine River and the Missouri, and was heading for the Mandan
villages. Mandan _coureurs_ came out to welcome the visitors,
pompously presenting De la Vérendrye with corn in the ear and tobacco.
At this stage, the explorer discovered that his bag of presents for his
hosts had been stolen by the Assiniboines; but he presented the Mandans
with what ammunition he could spare, and gave them plenty of pemmican
which his hunters had cured. The two tribes drove a brisk trade in
furs, which the northern Indians offered, and painted plumes, which the
Mandans displayed to the envy of Assiniboine warriors.
On the 3d of December, De la Vérendrye's sons stepped before the ragged
host of six hundred savages with the French flag hoisted. The explorer
himself was lifted to the shoulders of the Mandan _coureurs_. A gun
was fired and the strange procession set out for the Mandan villages.
In this fashion white men first took possession of the Upper Missouri.
Some miles from the lodges a band of old chiefs met De la Vérendrye and
gravely handed him a grand calumet of pipestone ornamented with eagle
feathers. This typified peace. De la Vérendrye ordered his fifty
French followers to draw up in line. The sons placed the French flag
four paces to the fore. The Assiniboine warriors took possession in
stately Indian silence to the right and left of the whites. At a
signal three thundering volleys of musketry were fired. The Mandans
fell back, prostrated with fear and wonder. The command "forward" was
given, and the Mandan village was entered in state at four in the
afternoon of December 3, 1738.
The village was in much the same condition as a hundred years later
when visited by Prince Maximilian and by the artist Catlin. It
consisted of circular huts, with thatched roofs, on which perched the
gaping women and children. Around the village of huts ran a moat or
ditch, which was guarded in time of war with the Sioux. Flags flew
from the centre poles of each hut; but the flags were the scalps of
enemies slain. In the centre of the village was a larger hut. This
was the "medicine lodge," or council hall, of the chiefs, used only for
ceremonies of religion and war and treaties of peace. Thither De la
Vérendrye was conducted. Here the Mandan chiefs sat on buffalo robes
in a circle round the fire, smoking the calumet, which was handed to
the white man. The explorer then told the Indians of his search for
the Western Sea. Of a Western Sea they could tell him nothing
definite. They knew a people far west who grew corn and tobacco and
who lived on the shores of water that was bitter for drinking. The
people were white. They dressed in armor and lived in houses of stone.
Their country was full of mountains. More of the Western Sea, De la
Vérendrye could not learn.
Meanwhile, six hundred Assiniboine visitors were a tax on the
hospitality of the Mandans, who at once spread a rumor of a Sioux raid.
This gave speed to the Assiniboines' departure. Among the Assiniboines
who ran off in precipitate fright was De la Vérendrye's interpreter.
It was useless to wait longer. The French were short of provisions,
and the Missouri Indians could not be expected to support fifty white
men. Though it was the bitter cold of midwinter, De la Vérendrye
departed for Fort de la Reine. Two Frenchmen were left to learn the
Missouri dialects. A French flag in a leaden box with the arms of
France inscribed was presented to the Mandan chief; and De la Vérendrye
marched from the village on the 8th of December. Scarcely had he left,
when he fell terribly ill; but for the pathfinder of the wilderness
there is neither halt nor retreat. M. de la Vérendrye's ragged army
tramped wearily on, half blinded by snow glare and buffeted by prairie
blizzards, huddling in snowdrifts from the wind at night and uncertain
of their compass over the white wastes by day. There is nothing so
deadly silent and utterly destitute of life as the prairie in
midwinter. Moose and buffalo had sought the shelter of wooded ravines.
Here a fox track ran over the snow. There a coyote skulked from cover,
to lope away the next instant for brushwood or hollow, and
snow-buntings or whiskey-jacks might have followed the marchers for
pickings of waste; but east, west, north, and south was nothing but the
wide, white wastes of drifted snow. On Christmas Eve of 1738 low
curling smoke above the prairie told the wanderers that they were
nearing the Indian camps of the Assiniboines; and by nightfall of
February 10, 1739, they were under the shelter of Fort de la Reine. "I
have never been so wretched from illness and fatigue in all my life as
on that journey," reported De la Vérendrye. As usual, provisions were
scarce at the fort. Fifty people had to be fed. Buffalo and deer meat
saved the French from starvation till spring.
[Illustration: A Monarch of the Plains.]
All that De la Vérendrye had accomplished on this trip was to learn
that salt water existed west-southwest. Anxious to know more of the
Northwest, he sent his sons to the banks of a great northern river.
This was the Saskatchewan. In their search of the Northwest, they
constructed two more trading posts, Fort Dauphin near Lake Manitoba,
and Bourbon on the Saskatchewan. Winter quarters were built at the
forks of the river, which afterwards became the site of Fort Poskoyac.
This spring not a canoe load of food came up from Montreal. Papers had
been served for the seizure of all De la Vérendrye's forts, goods,
property, and chattels to meet the claims of his creditors. Desperate,
but not deterred from his quest, De la Vérendrye set out to contest the
lawsuits in Montreal.
V
1740-1750
Which way to turn now for the Western Sea that eluded their quest like
a will-o'-the-wisp was the question confronting Pierre, François, and
Louis de la Vérendrye during the explorer's absence in Montreal. They
had followed the great Saskatchewan westward to its forks. No river
was found in this region flowing in the direction of the Western Sea.
They had been in the country of the Missouri; but neither did any river
there flow to a Western Sea. Yet the Mandans told of salt water far to
the west. Thither they would turn the baffling search.
The two men left among the Mandans to learn the language had returned
to the Assiniboine River with more news of tribes from "the setting
sun" who dwelt on salt water. Pierre de la Vérendrye went down to the
Missouri with the two interpreters; but the Mandans refused to supply
guides that year, and the young Frenchman came back to winter on the
Assiniboine. Here he made every preparation for another attempt to
find the Western Sea by way of the Missouri. On April 29, 1742, the
two brothers, Pierre and François, left the Assiniboine with the two
interpreters. Their course led along the trail that for two hundred
years was to be a famous highway between the Missouri and Hudson Bay.
Heading southwest, they followed the Souris River to the watershed of
the Missouri, and in three weeks were once more the guests of the smoky
Mandan lodges. Round the inside walls of each circular hut ran berth
beds of buffalo skin with trophies of the chase,--hide-shields and
weapons of war, fastened to the posts that separated berth from berth.
A common fire, with a family meat pot hanging above, occupied the
centre of the lodge. In one of these lodges the two brothers and their
men were quartered. The summer passed feasting with the Mandans and
smoking the calumet of peace; but all was in vain. The Missouri
Indians were arrant cowards in the matter of war. The terror of their
existence was the Sioux. The Mandans would not venture through Sioux
territory to accompany the brothers in the search for the Western Sea.
At last two guides were obtained, who promised to conduct the French to
a neighboring tribe that might know of the Western Sea.
[Illustration: Fur Traders' Boats towed down the Saskatchewan in the
Summer of 1900.]
The party set out on horseback, travelling swiftly southwest and along
the valley of the Little Missouri toward the Black Hills. Here their
course turned sharply west toward the Powder River country, past the
southern bounds of the Yellowstone. For three weeks they saw no sign
of human existence. Deer and antelope bounded over the parched alkali
uplands. Prairie dogs perched on top of their earth mounds, to watch
the lonely riders pass; and all night the far howl of grayish forms on
the offing of the starlit prairie told of prowling coyotes. On the
11th of August the brothers camped on the Powder Hills. Mounting to
the crest of a cliff, they scanned far and wide for signs of the
Indians whom the Mandans knew. The valleys were desolate. Kindling a
signal-fire to attract any tribes that might be roaming, they built a
hut and waited. A month passed. There was no answering signal. One
of the Mandan guides took himself off in fright. On the fifth week a
thin line of smoke rose against the distant sky. The remaining Mandans
went to reconnoitre and found a camp of Beaux Hommes, or Crows, who
received the French well. Obtaining fresh guides from the Crows and
dismissing the Mandans, the brothers again headed westward. The Crows
guided them to the Horse Indians, who in turn took the French to their
next western neighbors, the Bows. The Bows were preparing to war on
the Snakes, a mountain tribe to the west. Tepees dotted the valley.
Women were pounding the buffalo meat into pemmican for the raiders.
The young braves spent the night with war-song and war-dance, to work
themselves into a frenzy of bravado. The Bows were to march west; so
the French joined the warriors, gradually turning northwest toward what
is now Helena.
It was winter. The hills were powdered with snow that obliterated all
traces of the fleeing Snakes. The way became more mountainous and
dangerous. Iced sloughs gave place to swift torrents and cataracts.
On New Year's day, 1743, there rose through the gray haze to the fore
the ragged sky-line of the Bighorn Mountains. Women and children were
now left in a sheltered valley, the warriors advancing unimpeded.
François de la Vérendrye remained at the camp to guard the baggage.
Pierre went on with the raiders. In two weeks they were at the foot of
the main range of the northern Rockies. Against the sky the snowy
heights rose--an impassable barrier between the plains and the Western
Sea. What lay beyond--the Beyond that had been luring them on and on,
from river to river and land to land, for more than ten years? Surely
on the other side of those lofty summits one might look down on the
long-sought Western Sea. Never suspecting that another thousand miles
of wilderness and mountain fastness lay between him and his quest,
young De la Vérendrye wanted to cross the Great Divide. Destiny
decreed otherwise. The raid of the Bows against the Snakes ended in a
fiasco. No Snakes were to be found at their usual winter hunt. Had
they decamped to massacre the Bow women and children left in the valley
to the rear? The Bows fled back to their wives in a panic; so De la
Vérendrye could not climb the mountains that barred the way to the sea.
The retreat was made in the teeth of a howling mountain blizzard, and
the warriors reached the rendezvous more dead than alive. No Snake
Indians were seen at all. The Bows marched homeward along the valley
of the Upper Missouri through the country of the Sioux, with whom they
were allied. On the banks of the river the brothers buried a leaden
plate with the royal arms of France imprinted. At the end of July,
1743, they were once more back on the Assiniboine River. For thirteen
years they had followed a hopeless quest. Instead of a Western Sea,
they had found a sea of prairie, a sea of mountains, and two great
rivers, the Saskatchewan and the Missouri.
VI
1743-1750
But the explorer, who had done so much to extend French domain in the
West, was a ruined man. To the accusations of his creditors were added
the jealous calumnies of fur traders eager to exploit the new country.
The eldest son, with tireless energy, had gone up the Saskatchewan to
Fort Poskoyac when he was recalled to take a position in the army at
Montreal. In 1746 De la Vérendrye himself was summoned to Quebec and
his command given to M. de Noyelles. The game being played by jealous
rivals was plain. De la Vérendrye was to be kept out of the West while
tools of the Quebec traders spied out the fur trade of the Assiniboine
and the Missouri. Immediately on receiving freedom from military duty,
young Chevalier de la Vérendrye set out for Manitoba. On the way he
met his father's successor, M. de Noyelles, coming home crestfallen.
The supplanter had failed to control the Indians. In one year half the
forts of the chain leading to the Western Sea had been destroyed.
These Chevalier de la Vérendrye restored as he passed westward.
Governor Beauharnois had always refused to believe the charges of
private peculation against M. de la Vérendrye. Governor de la
Galissonnière was equally favorable to the explorer; and De la
Vérendrye was decorated with the Order of the Cross of St. Louis, and
given permission to continue his explorations. The winter of 1749 was
passed preparing supplies for the posts of the West; but a life of
hardship and disappointment had undermined the constitution of the
dauntless pathfinder. On the 6th of December, while busy with plans
for his hazardous and thankless quest, he died suddenly at Montreal.
Rival fur traders scrambled for the spoils of the Manitoba and Missouri
territory like dogs for a bone. De la Jonquière had become governor.
Allied with him was the infamous Bigot, the intendant, and those two
saw in the Western fur trade an opportunity to enrich themselves. The
rights of De la Vérendrye's sons to succeed their father were entirely
disregarded. Legardeur de Saint-Pierre was appointed commander of the
Western Sea. The very goods forwarded by De la Vérendrye were
confiscated.
[Illustration: "Tepees dotted the valley."]
But Saint-Pierre had enough trouble from his appointment. His
lieutenant, M. de Niverville, almost lost his life among hostiles on
the way down the Saskatchewan after building Fort Lajonquière at the
foothills of the Rockies, where Calgary now stands. Saint-Pierre had
headquarters in Manitoba on the Assiniboine, and one afternoon in
midwinter, when his men were out hunting, he saw his fort suddenly fill
with armed Assiniboines bent on massacre. They jostled him aside,
broke into the armory, and helped themselves to weapons. Saint-Pierre
had only one recourse. Seizing a firebrand, he tore the cover off a
keg of powder and threatened to blow the Indians to perdition. The
marauders dashed from the fort, and Saint-Pierre shot the bolts of gate
and sally-port. When the white hunters returned, they quickly gathered
their possessions together and abandoned Fort de la Reine. Four days
later the fort lay in ashes. So ended the dream of enthusiasts to find
a way overland to the Western Sea.
[1] The authorities for La Vérendrye's life are, of course, his own
reports as found in the State Papers of the Canadian Archives, Pierre
Margry's compilation of these reports, and the Rev. Father Jones'
collection of the _Aulneau Letters_.
[2] The _Pays d'en Haut_ or "Up-Country" was the vague name given by
the fur traders to the region between the Missouri and the North Pole.
[3] Throughout this volume the word "Sioux" is used as applying to the
entire confederacy, and not to the Minnesota Sioux only.
PART III
1769-1782
SEARCH FOR THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE LEADS
SAMUEL HEARNE TO THE ARCTIC CIRCLE AND
ATHABASCA REGION
CHAPTER IX
1769-1782
SAMUEL HEARNE
The Adventures of Hearne in his Search for the Coppermine River and the
Northwest Passage--Hilarious Life of Wassail led by Governor
Norton--The Massacre of the Eskimo by Hearne's Indians North of the
Arctic Circle--Discovery of the Athabasca Country--Hearne becomes
Resident Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, but is captured by the
French--Frightful Death of Norton and Suicide of Matonabbee
For a hundred years after receiving its charter to exploit the furs of
the North, the Hudson's Bay Company slumbered on the edge of a frozen
sea.
Its fur posts were scattered round the desolate shores of the Northern
bay like beads on a string; but the languid Company never attempted to
penetrate the unknown lands beyond the coast. It was unnecessary. The
Indians came to the Company. The company did not need to go to the
Indians. Just as surely as spring cleared the rivers of ice and set
the unlocked torrents rushing to the sea, there floated down-stream
Indian dugout and birch canoe, loaded with wealth of peltries for the
fur posts of the English Company. So the English sat snugly secure
inside their stockades, lords of the wilderness, and drove a thriving
trade with folded hands. For a penny knife, they bought a beaver skin;
and the skin sold in Europe for two or three shillings. The trade of
the old Company was not brisk; but it paid.
[Illustration: An Eskimo Belle. Note the apron of ermine and sable].
It was the prod of keen French traders that stirred the slumbering
giant. In his search for the Western Sea, De la Vérendrye had pushed
west by way of the Great Lakes to the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains
and the Saskatchewan. Henceforth, not so many furs came down-stream to
the English Company on the bay. De la Vérendrye had been followed by
hosts of free-lances--_coureurs_ and _voyageurs_--who spread through
the wilderness from the Missouri to the Athabasca, intercepting the
fleets of furs that formerly went to Hudson Bay. The English Company
rubbed its eyes; and rivals at home began to ask what had been done in
return for the charter. France had never ceased seeking the mythical
Western Sea that was supposed to lie just beyond the Mississippi; and
when French buccaneers destroyed the English Company's forts on the
bay, the English ambassador at Paris exacted such an enormous bill of
damages that the Hudson Bay traders were enabled to build a stronger
fortress up at Prince of Wales on the mouth of Churchill River than the
French themselves possessed at Quebec on the St. Lawrence. What--asked
the rivals of the Company in London--had been done in return for such
national protection? France had discovered and explored a whole new
world north of the Missouri. What had the English done? Where did the
Western Sea of which Spain had possession in the South lie towards the
North? What lay between the Hudson Bay and that Western Sea? Was
there a Northwest passage by water through this region to Asia? If
not, was there an undiscovered world in the North, like Louisiana in
the South? There was talk of revoking the charter. Then the Company
awakened from its long sleep with a mighty stir.
The annual boats that came out to Hudson Bay in the summer of 1769
anchored on the offing, six miles from the gray walls of Fort Prince of
Wales, and roared out a salute of cannon becoming the importance of
ships that bore almost revolutionary commissions. The fort cannon on
the walls of Churchill River thundered their answer. A pinnace came
scudding over the waves from the ships. A gig boat launched out from
the fort to welcome the messengers. Where the two met halfway, packets
of letters were handed to Moses Norton, governor at Fort Prince of
Wales, commanding him to despatch his most intrepid explorers for the
discovery of unknown rivers, strange lands, rumored copper mines, and
the mythical Northwest Passage that was supposed to lead directly to
China.
The fort lay on a spit of sand running out into the bay at the mouth of
Churchill River. It was three hundred yards long by three hundred
yards wide, with four bastions, in three of which were stores and wells
of water. The fourth bastion contained the powder-magazine. The walls
were thirty feet wide at the bottom and twenty feet wide at the top, of
hammer-dressed stone, mounted with forty great cannon. A commodious
stone house, furnished with all the luxuries of the chase, stood in the
centre of the courtyard. This was the residence of the governor.
Offices, warehouses, barracks, and hunters' lodges were banked round
the inner walls of the fort. The garrison consisted of thirty-nine
common soldiers and a few officers. In addition, there hung about the
fort the usual habitués of a Northern fur post,--young clerks from
England, who had come out for a year's experience in the wilds;
underpaid artisans, striving to mend their fortunes by illicit trade;
hunters and _coureurs_ and _voyageurs_, living like Indians but with a
strain of white blood that forever distinguished them from their
comrades; stately Indian sachems, stalking about the fort with whiffs
of contempt from their long calumets for all this white-man luxury; and
a ragamuffin brigade,--squaws, youngsters, and beggars,--who subsisted
by picking up food from the waste heap of the fort.
The commission to despatch explorers to the inland country proved the
sensation of a century at the fort. Round the long mess-room table
gathered officers and traders, intent on the birch-bark maps drawn by
old Indian chiefs of an unknown interior, where a "Far-Off-Metal River"
flowed down to the Northwest Passage. Huge log fires blazed on the
stone hearths at each end of the mess room. Smoky lanterns and pine
fagots, dipped in tallow and stuck in iron clamps, shed a fitful light
from rafters that girded ceiling and walls. On the floor of flagstones
lay enormous skins of the chase--polar bear, Arctic wolf, and grizzly.
Heads of musk-ox, caribou, and deer decorated the great timber girders.
Draped across the walls were Company flags--an English ensign with the
letters "H. B. C." painted in white on a red background, or in red on a
white background.
At the head of the table sat one of the most remarkable scoundrels
known in the annals of the Company, Moses Norton, governor of Fort
Prince of Wales, a full-blooded Indian, who had been sent to England
for nine years to be educated and had returned to the fort to resume
all the vices and none of the virtues of white man and red.
Clean-skinned, copper-colored, lithe and wiry as a tiger cat, with the
long, lank, oily black hair of his race, Norton bore himself with all
the airs of a European princelet and dressed himself in the beaded
buckskins of a savage. Before him the Indians cringed as before one of
their demon gods, and on the same principle. Bad gods could do the
Indians harm. Good gods wouldn't. Therefore, the Indians propitiated
the bad gods; and of all Indian demons Norton was the worst. The black
arts of mediaeval poisoning were known to him, and he never scrupled to
use them against an enemy. The Indians thought him possessed of the
power of the evil eye; but his power was that of arsenic or laudanum
dropped in the food of an unsuspecting enemy. Two of his wives, with
all of whom he was inordinately jealous, had died of poison. Against
white men who might offend him he used more open means,--the triangle,
the whipping post, the branding iron. Needless to say that a man who
wielded such power swelled the Company's profits and stood high in
favor with the directors. At his right hand lay an enormous bunch of
keys. These he carried with him by day and kept under his pillow by
night. They were the keys to the apartments of his many wives, for
like all Indians Norton believed in a plurality of wives, and the life
of no Indian was safe who refused to contribute a daughter to the
harem. The two master passions of the governor were jealousy and
tyranny; and while he lived like a Turkish despot himself, he ruled his
fort with a rod of iron and left the brand of his wrath on the person
of soldier or officer who offered indignity to the Indian race. It was
a common thing for Norton to poison an Indian who refused to permit a
daughter to join the collection of wives; then to flog the back off a
soldier who casually spoke to one of the wives in the courtyard; and in
the evening spend the entire supper hour preaching sermons on virtue to
his men. By a curious freak, Marie, his daughter, now a child of nine,
inherited from her father the gentle qualities of the English life in
which he had passed his youth. She shunned the native women and was
often to be seen hanging on her father's arm, as officers and governor
smoked their pipes over the mess-room table.
Near Norton sat another famous Indian, Matonabbee, the son of a slave
woman at the fort, who had grown up to become a great ambassador to the
native tribes for the English traders. Measuring more than six feet,
straight as a lance, supple as a wrestler, thin, wiry, alert, restless
with the instinct of the wild creatures, Matonabbee was now in the
prime of his manhood, chief of the Chipewyans at the fort, and master
of life and death to all in his tribe. It was Matonabbee whom the
English traders sent up the Saskatchewan to invite the tribes of the
Athabasca down to the bay. The Athabascans listened to the message of
peace with a treacherous smile. At midnight assassins stole to his
tent, overpowered his slave, and dragged the captive out. Leaping to
his feet, Matonabbee shouted defiance, hurled his assailants aside like
so many straws, pursued the raiders to their tents, single-handed
released his slave, and marched out unscathed. That was the way
Matonabbee had won the Athabascans for the Hudson's Bay Company.
Officers of the garrison, bluff sea-captains, spinning yarns of iceberg
and floe, soldiers and traders, made up the rest of the company. Among
the white men was one eager face,--that of Samuel Hearne, who was to
explore the interior and now scanned the birch-bark drawings to learn
the way to the "Far-off-Metal River."
[Illustration: Samuel Hearne.]
By November 6 all was in readiness for the departure of the explorer.
Two Indian guides, who knew the way to the North, were assigned to
Hearne; two European servants went with him to look after the
provisions; and two Indian hunters joined the company. In the gray
mist of Northern dawn, with the stars still pricking through the frosty
air, seven salutes of cannon awakened the echoes of the frozen sea.
The gates of the fort flung open, creaking with the frost rust, and
Hearne came out, followed by his little company, the dog bells of the
long toboggan sleighs setting up a merry jingling as the huskies broke
from a trot to a gallop over the snow-fields for the North. Heading
west-northwest, the band travelled swiftly with all the enthusiasm of
untested courage. North winds cut their faces like whip-lashes. The
first night out there was not enough snow to make a wind-break of the
drifts; so the sleighs were piled on edge to windward, dogs and men
lying heterogeneously in their shelter. When morning came, one of the
Indian guides had deserted. The way became barer. Frozen swamps
across which the storm wind swept with hurricane force were succeeded
by high, rocky barrens devoid of game, unsheltered, with barely enough
stunted shrubbery for the whittling of chips that cooked the morning
and night meals. In a month the travellers had not accomplished ten
miles a day. Where deer were found the Indians halted to gorge
themselves with feasts. Where game was scarce they lay in camp,
depending on the white hunters. Within three weeks rations had
dwindled to one partridge a day for the entire company. The Indians
seemed to think that Hearne's white servants had secret store of food
on the sleighs. The savages refused to hunt. Then Hearne suspected
some ulterior design. It was to drive him back to the fort by famine.
Henceforth, he noticed on the march that the Indians always preceded
the whites and secured any game before his men could fire a shot. One
night toward the end of November the savages plundered the sleighs.
Hearne awakened in amazement to see the company marching off, laden
with guns, ammunition, and hatchets. He called. Their answer was
laughter that set the woods ringing. Hearne was now two hundred miles
from the fort, without either ammunition or food. There was nothing to
do but turn back. The weather was fair. By snaring partridges, the
white men obtained enough game to sustain them till they reached the
fort on the 11th of December.
[Illustration: Eskimo using Double-bladed Paddle.]
The question now was whether to wait till spring or set out in the
teeth of midwinter. If Hearne left the fort in spring, he could not
possibly reach the Arctic Circle till the following winter; and with
the North buried under drifts of snow, he could not learn where lay the
Northwest Passage. If he left the fort in winter in order to reach the
Arctic in summer, he must expose his guides to the risks of cold and
starvation. The Indians told of high, rocky barrens, across which no
canoes could be carried. They advised snow-shoe travel. Obtaining
three Chipewyans and two Crees as guides, and taking no white servants,
Hearne once more set out, on February 23, 1770, for the "Far-Away-Metal
River." This time there was no cannonading. The guns were buried
under snow-drifts twenty feet deep, and the snow-shoes of the
travellers glided over the fort walls to the echoing cheers of soldiers
and governor standing on the ramparts. The company travelled light,
depending on chance game for food. All wood that could be used for
fire lay hidden deep under snow. At wide intervals over the white
wastes mushroom cones of snow told where a stunted tree projected the
antlered branches of topmost bough through the depths of drift; but for
the most part camp was made by digging through the shallowest snow with
snow-shoes to the bottom of moss, which served the double purpose of
fuel for the night kettle and bed for travellers. In the hollow a
wigwam was erected, with the door to the south, away from the north
wind. Snared rabbits and partridges supplied the food. The way lay as
before--west-northwest--along a chain of frozen lakes and rivers
connecting Hudson Bay with the Arctic Ocean. By April the marchers
were on the margin of a desolate wilderness--the Indian region of
"Little Sticks,"--known to white men as the Barren Lands, where dwarf
trees project above the billowing wastes of snow like dismantled masts
on the far offing of a lonely sea. Game became scarcer. Neither the
round footprint of the hare nor the frost tracery of the northern
grouse marked the snowy reaches of unbroken white. Caribou had
retreated to the sheltered woods of the interior; and a cleverer hunter
than man had scoured the wide wastes of game. Only the wolf pack
roamed the Barren Lands. It was unsafe to go on without food. Hearne
kept in camp till the coming of the goose month--April--when birds of
passage wended their way north. For three days rations consisted of
snow water and pipes of tobacco. The Indians endured the privations
with stoical indifference, daily marching out on a bootless quest for
game. On the third night Hearne was alone in his tent. Twilight
deepened to night, night to morning. Still no hunters returned. Had
he been deserted? Not a sound broke the waste silence but the baying
of the wolf pack. Weak from hunger, Hearne fell asleep. Before
daylight he was awakened by a shout; and his Indians shambled over the
drifts laden with haunches of half a dozen deer. That relieved want
till the coming of the geese. In May Hearne struck across the Barren
Lands. By June the rotting snow clogged the snow-shoes. Dog trains
drew heavy, and food was again scarce. For a week the travellers found
nothing to eat but cranberries. Half the company was ill from hunger
when a mangy old musk-ox, shedding his fur and lean as barrel hoops,
came scrambling over the rocks, sure of foot as a mountain goat. A
single shot brought him down. In spite of the musky odor of which the
coarse flesh reeked, every morsel of the ox was instantly devoured.
Sometimes during their long fasts they would encounter a solitary
Indian wandering over the rocky barren. If he had arms, gun, or arrow,
and carried skins of the chase, he was welcomed to camp, no matter how
scant the fare. Otherwise he was shunned as an outcast, never to be
touched or addressed by a human being; for only one thing could have
fed an Indian on the Barren Lands who could show no trophies of the
chase, and that was the flesh of some human creature weaker than
himself. The outcast was a cannibal, condemned by an unwritten law to
wander alone through the wastes.