PART I
CHAPTER IINTRODUCTION
Historical : Early History of the Sub-Arctic Regions of Canada : Formation of the Hudson Bay Company : Rise of the North-West Company.
Historical : Early History of the Sub-Arctic Regions of Canada : Formation of the Hudson Bay Company : Rise of the North-West Company.
“The days were bright, and the morning light was sweet with jewelled song;We poled and lined up nameless streams, portaged o’er hill and plain;We guessed and groped, North ever North, with many a twist and turnWe saw ablaze in the deathless days, the splendid sunsets burn.”Service
“The days were bright, and the morning light was sweet with jewelled song;We poled and lined up nameless streams, portaged o’er hill and plain;We guessed and groped, North ever North, with many a twist and turnWe saw ablaze in the deathless days, the splendid sunsets burn.”Service
“The days were bright, and the morning light was sweet with jewelled song;We poled and lined up nameless streams, portaged o’er hill and plain;We guessed and groped, North ever North, with many a twist and turnWe saw ablaze in the deathless days, the splendid sunsets burn.”
“The days were bright, and the morning light was sweet with jewelled song;
We poled and lined up nameless streams, portaged o’er hill and plain;
We guessed and groped, North ever North, with many a twist and turn
We saw ablaze in the deathless days, the splendid sunsets burn.”
Service
Perhapsno portion of America has received greater attention from the explorer during the last three centuries than the Sub-Arctic regions of Canada, and yet they remain practically unknown to the present day.
As early as 1577, Martin Frobisher spent some time on the border of the Arctic.The name Frobisher in English history carries us back to the defeat of the Spanish Armada, in which he performed a distinguished part and for which he was honoured by his Queen.
Later, in 1611, Henry Hudson after sailing up the great river of the State of New York found a tragic death in that Canadian inland sea, which, along with the above river, bears his name.
Samuel Herne went down the Coppermine to the Arctic Ocean and wintered there in 1770 and 1771; and as a result of his travels wrote the first account of the North American bison and Indian methods of hunting.
Later, in 1789, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, one of the boldest and most resourceful explorers of modern times, made a journey in one short summer from Lake Athabaska, then called the Lake of the Hills, down the whole course of the Slave River, across Great Slave Lake and then all the way down the great, but then unknown river, the Mackenzie, 1000 miles to the frozen Ocean, returning the same season to Fort Chippewyan.
In the autumn of 1792 he commencedanother voyage from Chippewyan; this time with the Pacific Ocean as his objective point going westward up the Peace River; and succeeded before winter overtook him, in reaching a point 600 miles up that stream near Dunvegan, where he wintered.
The next season he continued the ascent of the Peace to its headwaters; crossed the Rocky Mountains, and, after the greatest difficulties and hardships, reached the Pacific, returning again by the same route to his post at Chippewyan where he arrived on July 24, 1793.
Another name which stands high in the annals of Arctic exploration is that of Sir John Franklin, who accompanied by Dr. Richardson, made the journey down the Mackenzie to the sea and traversed part of the Coast in 1825. Many others, whose names I need not recall, also imbued with a spirit of adventure, have from time to time journeyed along the icebound coast and through that subarctic wilderness, which to-day forms part of the Dominion of Canada. And yet, except along a few water routes, the country is still an almost unknown land—unknown to all except the agents andemployees of those pioneer trading Companies, that have for centuries blazed the path through unfrequented regions of vast extent. Any narrative concerning that portion of North America would be incomplete that did not make frequent reference to at least two of these Companies.
The first and oldest of them is the Hudson Bay Company, which under Prince Rupert received a Royal Charter from Charles the Second in 1670. This Company of adventurers obtained great privileges over the country surrounding Hudson Bay and the streams flowing into it. In 1785 a great rival corporation was formed, viz., The North-West Company. This organisation had its head-quarters in Montreal, and as one stands to-day on Beaver Hall Hill in that City, where once stood Beaver Hall—and the head-quarters of the Company—and looks down to the river, it requires no great stretch of the imagination to behold a vision of a century ago, with the hardy canoemen bearing on their backs up to the warehouse the peltries brought from the remotest parts of the far North-West and returning with merchandise to load again their canoesfor the dusky natives of the far away Saskatchewan, Peace and Mackenzie.
This latter Company, not only established posts at various points on the great lakes of the St. Lawrence basin, but extended them into territory which the Hudson Bay Company regarded as belonging exclusively to themselves on the Red River and the Saskatchewan. Not only this, but they penetrated regions far beyond those into which the emissaries of the older Company had ventured, even to the Pacific Ocean on the one hand, and the Arctic on the other. It may be stated here that Sir Alexander Mackenzie immortal in the annals of exploration was himself an officer of the North-West Company. The presence of the New Company in waters tributary to the Hudson Bay soon resulted in conflicts sometimes sanguinary, between the employees of the two corporations, and this state of affairs continued till they were amalgamated in the year 1821.