By the time of the passing away of the power of the Hudson's Bay Company, four years after the arrival of Bishop Machray, substantial stone churches and school-houses had been erectedin almost all of the parishes mentioned as organized by the Church of England. To the Church of England belonged nearly all the English-speaking half-breed population of the colony, as well as a large number of the Hudson's Bay Company officers.
Bishop Machray's diocese covered a vast area. From Hudson Bay to the Rocky Mountains was under his jurisdiction. Much work was done amongst the Indian tribes. At Moose Factory on the Bay, another devoted labourer was working diligently. It is true the missions were widely scattered, but of the twenty-four clergymen belonging to the diocese of Rupert's Land, fifteen were among the Indians at the time of the cessation of the Hudson's Bay Company's rule. The remainder were in the parishes of Red River such as St. John's, St. Andrew's, St. Paul's, Headingly, Poplar Point, and Portage la Prairie.
The assistance rendered not only by the Church Missionary Society, but also by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the Colonial and Continental Church Society, and the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, was very great, and future generations will be indebted to the benevolence and liberality of the English people in sending spiritual assistance to Rupert's Land.
A perusal of the work, "Red River Settlement," by Alexander Ross, shows that a long and somewhat disappointing struggle was maintained by the Selkirk settlers to obtain the fulfilment of Lord Selkirk's promise to send them a minister of their own faith. Scottish governors came and departed, but no Scottish minister came. Sir George Simpson arrived on his yearly visits at Fort Garry, and was often interviewed by the settlers of Kildonan, but the Governor, though pleasant and plausible enough, was impenetrable as the sphinx. Petitions were sent to the Hudson's Bay Company and to the Scottish General Assembly, but they seldom reached their destination and effected nothing.
The people conformed to the service of the Church of England in the vicinity of their parish. They were treated by the Episcopal clergy with much consideration. Their own psalter was used in their worship, the service was made assimple as they could well desire, but the people, with Highland tenacity, held to their own tenets for forty years, and maintained among themselves regular cottage meetings for prayer and praise.
At length the question arose as to the possession of the church property and the right of burial in St. John's burial-ground. The Scottish settlers maintained their right to the church and churchyard. A very acrimonious discussion arose. In the end the matter was referred to Mr. Eden Colville, a Company director, who was in the settlement on business. Mr. Colville informed the writer that he claimed the credit of settling the dispute. Another site on the river bank two or three miles to the north of St. John's, called La Grenouillère, or Frog Plain, consisting of several hundred acres, was handed over to the Scottish settlers for church, manse, and glebe. This was in 1851, and though the Kildonan people were still given the right to bury their dead in St. John's, in the future their chief interest centred in the new plot.
The presence in Red River of Mr. Ballenden, a countryman of the Kildonan people, as Hudson's Bay Company Governor of Fort Garry, led to an application being made to their friends in Scotland to send them a minister. Indeed, the call had been made again and again for a generation. This request was transmitted to Canada to Dr. Robert Burns, a man of warm missionary zeal and great wisdom. Sir George Simpson had been communicated with, and deemed it wise to reverse his former policy of inaction and promised certain aid and countenance, should a Presbyterian minister be found to care for the parish of Kildonan.
Dr. Burns had among his acquaintances a recent graduate of Knox College, Toronto, named John Black. Him the zealous doctor urged, if not commanded, to go to Red River. This trust was accepted, and after a tedious and uncertain journey Rev. John Black arrived at Red River, September, 1851. The Kildonan people immediately rallied around their new clergyman, who, though not able to speak Gaelic as they desired, yet became an idol to his people. In 1853 a church was erected, with the aid of a small grant from the Hudson's Bay Company, and the foundations of Presbyterianism were laid.
In 1865 Rev. James Nisbet, who had come a few years before to assist Mr. Black, organized a mission to the Cree Indians, and named his mission church on the banks of the Saskatchewan, Prince Albert. Growing by slow degrees, the Presbyterian interest increased and was represented at the end of the Hudson's Bay Company's rule by four or five clergymen. Schools as maintained by voluntary contributions were erected in the Presbyterian parishes of Kildonan and Little Britain.
Manitoba College was planned and arranged for in the closing year of the Hudson's Bay Company's régime.
The Methodists, with the fervour and missionary zeal which has always characterized them, determined to aid in evangelizing the Indians of Rupert's Land. It was the English Methodists who first showed a desire in this direction. They agreed to send the Indians a clergyman suited for the work, if the Canadian Methodist Church would send a few labourers trained in Indian work in Canada.
James Evans, an Englishman who had been long in Canada, and had laboured for years among the Indians of Upper Canada, consented to go to Rupert's Land and take the superintendence of the others sent out. Leaving Montreal with the three English missionaries and two educated young Ojibways, Peter Jacobs and Henry B. Steinhauser, the party went by canoes up the lakes and then along the old fur traders' route, and arrived at Norway House, at the foot of Lake Winnipeg, in 1840. Evans made Norway House his headquarters, George Barnley went to Moose Factory, William Mason to Rainy Lake and River Winnipeg, and Robert T. Rundle to Edmonton.
The missions to the Hudson Bay and Rainy Lake were soon given up, but Rossville and Oxford House, on Lake Winnipeg, and several points near Edmonton, are the evidence to-day of the faithful self-denying work done by these early Methodist pioneers. Having no whites in the country, the operations of the Methodist Church in Rupert's Land were, up to the time of the Hudson's Bay Company's transfer, confined to the Indians of Rupert's Land.
Mr. Evans, the superintendent of these missions, became very celebrated by the invention of a syllabic system of writingintroduced among the Crees. The plan is simple, and an intelligent Indian who has never seen the system[5]can in a short time learn to read and write the syllabic. The syllabic has spread widely over Rupert's Land, and the different Churches use, especially among the Crees, this ingenious invention in printing the Bible and service books. When Lord Dufferin, a number of years ago, visited the North-West as Governor-General of Canada, on hearing of Evans' invention he remarked, "The nation has given many a man a title and a pension and a resting-place in Westminster Abbey who never did half so much for his fellow-creatures."
Some claim has been made for Mason as being the inventor of this character, but there seems to be no ground for the claim.
John Ryerson, a Canadian Methodist divine, in 1854 visited Rupert's Land from Canada, and after seeing the missions on Lake Winnipeg, went from York Factory to England. The taking over of the mission by the Canadian Methodist Church resulted from this visit.
These are the main movements of a religious kind that took place within the borders of Rupert's Land and the territories east of the Rocky Mountains up to the end of the Hudson's Bay Company's régime. A great service was rendered to the whites and Indians alike, to the Hudson's Bay Company, to the Kildonan settlers, and all the native people by the patient work of the four churches named. The best feeling, and in many cases active co-operation, were given by these churches to each other. The work done by these churches laid the foundation for the general morality and advanced social life which prevailed in Red River and in the regions beyond.
On the Pacific slope the Hudson's Bay Company took an immediate control of the religious and educational instruction of the people, upon the organization of Vancouver Island as a colony (1849). The Rev. Robert Staines was sent as chaplain and teacher to Fort Victoria, and was given a salary and an allowance for carrying on a boarding-school in which he was assisted by his wife. Mr. Staines did not agree with the Company, went to Britain as a delegate from the dissatisfied employés, but died of injuries received on his homeward voyage.
Mr. Staines' successor was the Rev. Edward Cridge. The new chaplain was well provided for by the Company, being secured a parsonage and glebe of one hundred acres, and three hundred pounds a year, one hundred pounds annually being as chaplain of the Company. Mr. Cridge became a prominent clergyman of the colony, but in later years left his mother Church to become bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church. In 1859 Bishop Hills was made first bishop of the united colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. Twenty years afterward the diocese was divided into (1) Vancouver Island and the islands, asDiocese of Columbia, (2) the southern mainland asDiocese of New Westminster, and (3) the northern mainland asDiocese of New Caledonia. The Church of England in British Columbia has enjoyed large gifts from the Baroness Burdett-Coutts.
One of the most remarkable missions of modern times is that of Metlakahtla, begun under the auspices of the Church of England by William Duncan. The village he founded became an example of civilization among the Indians, as well as a handmaid to the Christian work done. Unfortunately, the model Indian village has been largely broken up by a misunderstanding between Mr. Duncan and his bishop.
The first missionary of note of the Roman Catholic Church on the coast was Father Demers, who became Bishop of Vancouver Island and New Caledonia. The Oblate Fathers were early on the ground in British Columbia, the first of the Order having baptized upwards of three thousand men, women, and children of Indian tribes, the Songhies, Saanechs, and Cowichins, near Victoria. Many churches, schools, and hospitals have been founded by the energetic and self-denying Roman Catholics who have made British Columbia their home. Bishop Seghers succeeded the venerable Bishop Demers in his diocese.
Ten years after the formation of Vancouver Island as a Crown colony, Revs. Dr. Evans, L. Robson, and two other ministers undertook work for the Methodist Church on the coast. Good foundations were laid by the clergymen named, and still better by Rev. Thomas Crosby, who joined them after a few years' service, and entered heartily into efforts to evangelizethe Indians. He had great success among the Flathead Indians.
In 1861 the first Presbyterian minister arrived—Rev. John Hall, from Ireland, and he undertook work in Victoria. In the year following, Rev. Robert Jamieson came from Canada as a representative of the Canadian Presbyterian Church and settled at New Westminster. Churches were soon built in Victoria, Nanaimo, and New Westminster, that now contain strong and vigorous congregations.
All of the churches were under deep obligations to the Hudson's Bay Company for protection, assistance, and sympathy in their undertakings on the coast. The inrush of gold seekers threw a great responsibility upon all the churches, and it was well that the Company, merely for motives of self-interest, should regard the influence of the missionaries among the fierce tribes of the mountains, of both island and mainland, as of the greatest importance. The record of self-denying missionaries of the churches has justified all the patronage and favour rendered them by the Hudson's Bay Company.
FOOTNOTE:[5]SeeAppendix F.
[5]SeeAppendix F.
THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY AND THE INDIANS.
The Company's Indian policy—Character of officers—A race of hunters—Plan of advances—Charges against the Company—Liquor restriction—Capital punishment—Starving Indians—Diseased and helpless—Education and religion—The age of missions—Sturdy Saulteaux—The Muskegons—Wood Crees—Wandering Plain Crees—The Chipewyans—Wild Assiniboines—Blackfeet Indians—Polyglot coast tribes—Eskimos—No Indian war—No police—Pliable and docile—Success of the Company.
Fromtime to time the opponents of the Company have sought to find grounds for the overthrow of the licence to trade granted by the Government of Britain over the Indian territories. One of the most frequent lines of attack was in regard to the treatment of the Indians by the fur traders. It may be readily conceded that the ideal of the Company's officials was in many cases not the highest. The aim of Governor Simpson in his long reign of forty years was that of a keen trader. A politic man, the leader of the traders when in Montreal conformed to the sentiment of the city, abroad in the wilds he did very little to encourage his subordinates to cultivate higher aims among the natives. Often the missionary was found raising questions very disturbing to the monopoly, and this brought the Company officers into a hostile attitude to him. Undoubtedly in some cases the missionaries were officious and unfair in their criticisms.
But, on the other hand, the men and officers of the Company were generally moral. Men of education and reading the officers usually were, and their sentiment was likely to be in the right direction. The spirit of the monopoly—the golden character of silence, and the need of being secretive and uncommunicative—was instilled into every clerk, trapper, and trader.
Blood IndiansBLOOD INDIANS.(Squaws and Papooses.)
BLOOD INDIANS.(Squaws and Papooses.)
AssiniboinesASSINIBOINES.(Indians and Squaws on their ponies.)
ASSINIBOINES.(Indians and Squaws on their ponies.)
INDIANS OF THE PLAINS.
But the tradition of the Company was to keep the Indian a hunter. There was no effort to encourage the native to agriculture or to any industry. To make a good collector of fur was the chief aim. For this the Indian required no education, for this the wandering habit needed to be cultivated rather than discouraged, and for this it was well to have the home ties as brittle as possible. Hence the tent and teepee were favoured for the Indian hunter more than the log cottage or village house.
It was one of the most common charges against the Company that in order to keep the Indian in subjection advances were made on the catch of furs of the coming season, in order that, being in debt, he might be less independent. The experience of the writer in Red River settlement in former days leads him to doubt this, and certainly the fur traders deny the allegation. The improvident or half-breed Indian went to the Company's store to obtain all that he could. The traders at the forts had difficulty in checking the extravagance of their wards. Frequently the storekeeper refused to make advances lest he should fail in recovering the value of the articles advanced. Fitzgerald, a writer who took part in the agitation of 1849, makes the assertion in the most flippant manner that to keep the Indians in debt was the invariable policy of the Company. No evidence is cited to support this statement, and it would seem to be very hard to prove.
The same writer undertakes, along the line of destructive criticism, to show that the Hudson's Bay Company does not deserve the credit given it of discouraging the traffic in strong drink, and asserts that "a beaver skin was never lost to the Company for want of a pint of rum." This is a very grave charge, and in the opinion of the writer cannot be substantiated. The Bishop of Montreal, R. M. Ballantyne, and the agents of the missionary societies are said either to have little experience or to be unwilling to tell on this subject what they knew. This critic then quotes various statements of writers, extending back in some cases thirty or forty years, to show that spirituous liquors were sold by the Company. It is undoubted that at times in the history of the fur trade, especially at the beginning of the century, when the three Companies were engaged ina most exacting competition, as we have fully shown, in several cases much damage was done. On the Pacific Coast, too, eight or ten years before this critic wrote, there was, as we have seen, excess. At other times, also, at points in the wide field of operations, over half a continent, intoxicating liquor was plentiful and very injurious, but no feeling was stronger in a Hudson's Bay Company trader's mind than that he was in a country without police, without military, without laws, and that his own and his people's lives were in danger should drunkenness prevail. Self-preservation inclined every trader to prevent the use of spirits among the Indians. The writer is of opinion that while there may have been many violations of sobriety, yet the record of the Hudson's Bay Company has been on the whole creditable in this matter.
The charges of executing capital punishment and of neglecting the Indians in years of starvation may be taken together. The criticism of the people of Red River was that the Company was weak in the execution of the penalties of the law. They complained that the Company was uncertain of its powers and that the hand of justice was chained. The marvel to an unprejudiced observer is that the Company succeeded in ruling so vast a territory with so few reprisals or executions. In the matter of assisting the Indians in years of scarcity, it was the interest of the fur company to save the lives of its trappers and workers. But those unacquainted with the vast wastes of Rupert's Land and the Far North little know the difficulties of at times obtaining food. The readers of Milton and Cheadle's graphic story or our account of Robert Campbell's adventures on the Stikine, know the hardships and the near approach to starvation of these travellers. Dr. Cheadle, on a visit to Winnipeg a few years ago, said to the writer that on his first visit the greatest difficulty his party had was to secure supplies. There are years in which game and fish are so scarce that in remote northern districts death is inevitable for many. The conditions make it impossible for the Company to save the lives of the natives. Relief for the diseased and aged is at times hard to obtain. Smallpox and other epidemics have the most deadly effect upon the semi-civilized people of the far-off hunter's territory.
The charge made up to 1849 that the Hudson's Bay Company had done little for the education and religious training of the Indians was probably true enough. Outside of Red River and British Columbia they did not sufficiently realize their responsibility as a company. Since that time, with the approval and co-operation in many ways of the Company, the various missionary societies have grappled with the problem. The Indians about Hudson Bay, on Lake Winnipeg, in the Mackenzie River, throughout British Columbia, and on the great prairies of Assiniboia, are to-day largely Christianized and receiving education.
The Saulteaux, or Indians who formerly lived at Sault Ste. Marie, but wandered west along the shore of Lake Superior and even up to Lake Winnipeg, are a branch of the Algonquin Ojibways. Hardy and persevering, most conservative in preserving old customs, hard to influence by religious ideas, they have been pensioners of the Hudson's Bay Company, but their country is very barren, and they have advanced but little.
Very interesting, among their relations of Algonquin origin, are the Muskegons, or Swampy Crees, who have long occupied the region around Hudson Bay and have extended inland to Lake Winnipeg. Docile and peaceful, they have been largely influenced by Christianity. Under missionary and Company guidance they have gathered around the posts, and find a living on the game of the country and in trapping the wild animals.
Related to the Muskegons are the Wood Crees, who live along the rivers and on the belts of wood which skirt lakes and hills. They cling to the birch-bark wigwam, use the bark canoe, and are nomadic in habit. They may be called the gipsies of the West, and being in scattered families have been little reached by better influences.
Another branch of the Algonquin stock is the Plain Crees. These Indians are a most adventurous and energetic people. Leaving behind their canoes and Huskie dogs, they obtained horses and cayuses and hied them over the prairies. Birch-bark being unobtainable, they made their tents, better fitted for protecting them from the searching winds of the prairiesand the cold of winter, from tanned skins of the buffalo and moose-deer. For seven hundred miles from the mouth of the Saskatchewan they extend to the foot hills of the Rocky Mountains. Meeting in their great camps, seemingly untameable as a race of plain hunters, they were, up to the time of the transfer to Canada, almost untouched by missionary influence, but in the last thirty years they have been placed on reserves by the Canadian Government and are in almost all cases yielding to Christianizing agencies.
North of the country of the Crees live tribes with very wide connections. They call themselves "Tinné" or "People," but to others they are known as Chipewyans, or Athabascans. They seem to be less copper-coloured than the other Indians, and are docile in disposition. This nation stretches from Fort Churchill, on Hudson Bay, along the English River, up to Lake Athabasca, along the Peace River into the very heart of the Rocky Mountains, and even beyond to the coast. They have proved teachable and yield to ameliorating influences.
Probably the oldest and best known name of the interior of Rupert's Land, the name after which Lord Selkirk called his Colony of Assiniboia, is that belonging to the Wild Assiniboines or Stony River Sioux. The river at the mouth of which stands the city of Winnipeg was their northern boundary, and they extended southward toward the great Indian confederacy of the Sioux natives or Dakotas, of which indeed they were at one time a branch. Tall, handsome, with firmly formed faces, agile and revengeful, they are an intelligent and capable race. These Indians, known familiarly as the "Stonies," have greatly diminished in numbers since the time of Alexander Henry, jun., who describes them fully. In later years they have been cut down with pulmonary and other diseases, and are to-day but the fragment of a great tribe. They have long been friendly with the Plain Crees, but are not very open to Christianity, though there are one or two small communities which are exceptions in this respect.
Very little under Hudson's Bay Company control were the Blackfoot nation, along the foot hills of the Rocky Mountains, near the national boundary. Ethnically they are related to the Crees, but they have always been difficult to approach.Living in large camps during Hudson's Bay Company days, they spent a wild, happy, comfortable life among the herds of wandering buffalo of their district. Since the beginning of the Canadian régime they have become more susceptible to civilizing agencies, and live in great reserves in the south-west of their old hunting grounds.
A perfect chaos of races meets us among the Indians of British Columbia and Alaska, and their language is polyglot. Seemingly the result of innumerable immigrations from Malayan and Mongolian sources in Asia, they have come at different times. One of the best known tribes of the coast is the Haidas, numbering some six thousand souls. The Nutka Indians occupy Vancouver Island, and have many tribal divisions. To the Selish or Flatheads belong many of the tribes of the Lower Fraser River, while the Shushwaps hold the country on the Columbia and Okanagan Rivers. Mention has been made already of the small but influential tribe of Chinooks near the mouth of the Columbia River.
While differing in many ways from each other, the Indians of the Pacific Coast have always been turbulent and excitable. From first to last more murders and riots have taken place among them than throughout all the vast territory held by the Hudson's Bay Company east of the Rocky Mountains. While missionary zeal has accomplished much among the Western Coast Indians, yet the "bad Indian" element has been a recognized and appreciable quantity among them so far as the Company is concerned.
Last among the natives who have been under Hudson's Bay Company influence are the Eskimos or Innuits of the Far North. They are found on the Labrador Coast, on Coppermine River, on the shore of the Arctic Sea, and on the Alaskan peninsula. Dressed in sealskin clothing and dwelling in huts of snow, hastening from place to place in their sledges drawn by wolf-like dogs called "Eskies" or "Huskies," these people have found themselves comparatively independent of Hudson's Bay Company assistance. Living largely on the products of the sea, they have shown great ingenuity in manufacturing articles and implements for themselves. The usual experience of the Company from Ungava, through the Mackenzie Riverposts, and the trading houses in Alaska has been that they were starved out and were compelled to give up their trading houses among them. Little has been done, unless in the Yukon country, to evangelize the Eskimos.
The marvel to the historian, as he surveys the two centuries and a quarter of the history of the Hudson's Bay Company, is their successful management of the Indian tribes. There has never been an Indian war in Rupert's Land or the Indian territories—nothing beyond a temporaryémeuteor incidental outbreak. Thousands of miles from the nearest British garrison or soldier, trade has been carried on in scores and scores of forts and factories with perfect confidence. The Indians have always respected the "Kingchauch man." He was to them the representative of superior ability and financial strength, but more than this, he was the embodiment of civilization and of fair and just dealing. High prices may have been imposed on the Indians, but the Company's expenses were enormous. There are points among the most remote trading posts from which the returns in money were not possible in less than nine years from the time the goods left the Fenchurch Street or Lime Street warehouses. With all his keen bargaining and his so-called exacting motto, "Pro pelle cutem," the trader was looked upon by the Indians as a benefactor, bringing into his barren, remote, inhospitable home the commodities to supply his wants and make his life happier. While the Indians came to recognize this in their docile and pliable acceptance of the trader's decisions, the trader also became fond of the Red man, and many an old fur trader freely declares his affection for his Indian ward, so faithful to his promise, unswerving in his attachment, and celebrated for never forgetting a kindness shown him.
The success of the Company was largely due to honourable, capable, and patient officers, clerks, and employés, who with tact and justice managed their Indian dependents, many of whom rejoiced in the title of "A Hudson's Bay Company Indian."
UNREST IN RUPERT'S LAND (1844-69).
Discontent on Red River—Queries to the Governor—A courageous Recorder—Free trade in furs held illegal—Imprisonment—New land deed—Enormous freights—Petty revenge—Turbulent pensioners—Heart-burnings—Heroic Isbister—Half-breed memorial—Mr. Beaver's letter—Hudson's Bay Company notified—Lord Elgin's reply—Voluminous correspondence—Company's full answer—Colonel Crofton's statement—Major Caldwell, a partisan—French petition—Nearly a thousand signatures—Love, a factor—The elder Riel—A court scene—Violence—"Vive la liberté"—The Recorder checked—A new judge—Unruly Corbett—The prison broken—Another rescue—A valiant doctor—A Red River Nestor.
Thefuller organization of Assiniboia, after its purchase by the Hudson's Bay Company from the heirs of the Earl of Selkirk, encouraged the authorities at Red River to assert the rights which the Company had always claimed—viz. the monopoly of the fur trade in Rupert's Land and the imposition of heavy freights on imports and exports by way of Hudson Bay. The privilege of exporting tallow, the product of the buffalo, had been accorded on reasonable terms to a prominent resident of the Red River, named James Sinclair. The first venture, a small one, succeeded; but a second larger consignment was refused by the Company, and, after lying nearly two years at York Factory, the cargo was sold to the Company.
Twenty leading half-breeds then petitioned the Company to be allowed to export their tallow and to be given a reasonable freight charge. No answer was returned to this letter. The half-breeds were thus rising in intelligence and means; being frequently employed as middlemen in trafficking in furs, they learned something of the trade and traffic. The half-breed settlers of the Red River settlement have always claimedspecial privileges in Rupert's Land as being descended from the aboriginal owners. It was under such circumstances that Governor Christie, following, it is supposed, legal direction, in 1844 issued two proclamations, the first, requiring that each settler, before the Company would carry any goods for him, should be required to declare that he had not been engaged in the fur trade; the second, that the writer of every letter write his name on the outside of it, in order that, should he be suspected of dealing in furs, it might be opened and examined.
This was a direct issue, and they determined to bring the matter to a crisis. Twenty leading natives (half-breeds of Red River settlement), among them a number well known, such as James Sinclair, John Dease, John Vincent, William Bird, and Peter Garrioch, in 1845 approached Alexander Christie, Governor of the settlement, requesting answers to fourteen queries. These questions required satisfaction as to whether half-breeds could hunt, buy, sell, or traffic in furs, and also what were the restrictions in this matter upon Europeans, &c. A pacific and soothing reply was made by Governor Christie, but the Company soon began to take steps to repress the free trade in furs, and the Council of Rupert's Land passed certain regulations, among others one placing a duty of twenty per cent. upon imports, but exempting from their tax settlers who were free of the charge of trading in furs. This was a vexatious regulation and roused great opposition.
All these devices had a legal smack about them, and were no doubt the suggestions of Judge Thom, the Recorder of Red River, a remarkable man, who, six years before this time, had come from Montreal to put legal matters in order in the Red River settlement. The Recorder enteredcon amoreinto the matter, and advised the assertion of claims that had fallen into disuse for many years among the different classes of residents in the settlement. The redoubtable judge, who, it will be remembered, was said to have been at the elbow of Sir George Simpson in writing his "Journey Round the World," now evolved another tyrannical expedient.
A new land deed was devised, and whosoever wished to hold land in the settlement was compelled to sign it. This indenture provided that if the land-holder should invade anyprivileges of the Company and fail to contribute to the maintenance of clergy and schools, or omit to do his work upon the public roads, or carry on trade in skins, furs, peltry, or dressed leather, such offender should forfeit his lands.
This was certainly un-British and severe, and we may look upon it as the plan of the judge, who failed to understand the spirit of his age, and would have readily fallen in with a system of feudal tenure. The writer in after years met this judge, then very old, in London, and found him a kindly man, though with Scottish determination, willing to follow out his opinions logically, however rash or out of place such a course might be. If the Hudson's Bay Company found itself in a sea of trouble, and hostile to public sentiment in the settlement, it had to blame its own creation, the valorous Recorder of Red River.
The imposition of enormous freights, adopted at this time for carrying goods by way of York Factory to England, in order to check trade, was a part of the same policy of "Thorough" recommended by this legal adviser. Sinclair, already mentioned, became the "Village Hampden" in this crisis. Taking an active part in his opposition to this policy of restriction, he found that he was to be punished, by the "Company's Ship" from England to York Factory refusing to carry for him any freight. It was partly the Oregon question and partly the unsettled state of public opinion in Red River that led to a British regiment being for a time stationed at the Red River settlement. On the removal of these troops the pensioners, a turbulent band of old discharged soldiers, came from Britain and were settled upon the Assiniboine, above Fort Garry. A writer who knew them well ventures to suggest that they were of the same troublesome disposition as the former De Meurons of Lord Selkirk. Coming ostensibly to introduce peace they brought a sword. Sooner or later the discontent and irritation produced by Judge Thorn's inspiration was sure to reach its culmination, and this it did in the Sayer affair afterwards described.
The cause of the complaints from the Red River settlement found a willing and powerful advocate in Mr. Alexander K. Isbister, a young London barrister, and afterwards a prominenteducationalist. He was a native of Rupert's Land, and had a dash of Indian blood in his veins, and so took up the brief for his compatriots in a formidable series of documents. Mr. Isbister's advocacy gave standing and weight to the contention of the Red River half-breeds, and a brave and heroic fight was made, even though the point of view was at times quite unjust to the Company.
In 1847, Isbister, with five other half-breeds of Red River, forwarded, to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, a long and able memorial, setting forth the grievances of the petitioners. The document sets forth in short that the Company had "amassed a princely revenue" at the expense of the natives, allowed their wards to pass their lives in the darkest heathenism, broke their pledges to exclude strong drink from the Indian trade, were careless of the growing evil of want and suffering in the territory, paid little for the furs, and persecuted the natives by checking them in their barter of furs, and followed a short-sighted and pernicious policy.
This was assuredly a serious list of charges. Earl Grey in due time called on Isbister and his friends for a more specific statement of the grievances, and wrote to the Governor of Assiniboia, to the London Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, and to the Governor-General of Canada, Lord Elgin, asking their attention to the allegations of the petition.
Some two months after Lord Grey's letter was received, the Hudson's Bay Company Governor, Sir J. H. Pelly, submitted a long and minute answer to the various charges of the petitioners. As is usually the case, both parties had some advantages. As to the enormous profits, the Company were able to show that they had unfortunately not been able to make "more than the ordinary rate of mercantile profit." They replied as to the religious interests of the natives, that their sole objects, as stated in the Charter, were trade and the discovery of a North-West Passage, but that they had helped at a considerable annual expense the Church Missionary Society, Wesleyan Missionary Society, and a Roman Catholic Missionary Society. The Company gives a most indignant denial to the charge that they had resumed the trade in spirituous liquors with the Indians, though admitting in theneighbourhood of Red River the use of small quantities of strong drink in meeting the American traders.
This answer did not, however, quiet the storm. Isbister returned to the attack, giving the evidence of Mr. Alexander Simpson, a trader on the Pacific Coast, and the extensive and strong letter of the Rev. Herbert Beaver, the former chaplain of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver. Isbister also raised the question of the validity of the Company's Charter. The Company again replied, and so the battle raged, reply and rejoinder, quotations and evidencead libitum. Isbister may not have proved his case, but his championship won the approbation of many independent observers.
Lord Elgin, the efficient and popular Governor-General of Canada, gave such reply as he was able. He states that the distance of Red River was so great and the intercourse so little, that taking into account the peculiar jurisdiction of the Company, he found it difficult to obtain the information sought. As to the complaints about the religious neglect of the Indians, Lord Elgin states that disappointments in this matter occur in other quarters as well as in the Hudson's Bay Company territories, but declares that the result of his inquiries in the matter "is highly favourable to the Company, and that it has left in his mind the impression that the authority which they exercise over the vast and inhospitable region subject to their jurisdiction is on the whole very advantageous to the Indians."
Lord Elgin states that he is much indebted for his information to Colonel Crofton, the commander of the 6th Royal Regiment, which we have seen was stationed for a time at Red River. Colonel Crofton afterwards gave to the Colonial Secretary what one would say was rather an unjudicial reply. He said, "I unhesitatingly assert that the government of the Hudson's Bay Company is mild and protective, and admirably adapted, in my opinion, for the state of society existing in Rupert's Land, where Indians, half-breeds, or Europeans are happily governed, and live protected by laws which I know were mercifully and impartially administered by Mr. Thom, the Recorder, and by the magistrates of the land." In regard to this opinion, while no doubt an honest expression of views, it is plain that Colonel Croftondid not understand the aspiration for self-government which prevails in Western communities. The reply of the Governor of Assiniboia, Major Caldwell, was likewise favourable to the Company. Alexander Ross, in his "Red River Settlement," criticizes the method taken by Major Caldwell to obtain information. According to Ross, the Governor sent around queries to a few select individuals, accepting no one "below what the Major considered a gentleman." This, the critic says, was the action of a man "who had never studied the art of governing a people." Ross, who did not admire the Company greatly, however, sums up the whole matter by saying, "The allegations of harsh conduct or maladministration preferred against the Hudson's Bay Company by Mr. Isbister and his party were in general totally unfounded and disproved," and therefore neither Major Caldwell's inquiries nor the inspiration of his genius were required.
Notwithstanding Major Caldwell's optimism and Lord Elgin's favourable reply, there was really a serious condition of affairs in Red River settlement. Along with the petition of Isbister and his five English half-breed compatriots, there was one far more formidable from the French half-breeds, who to the number of nine hundred and seventy-seven subscribed their names. Presented to Her Majesty the Queen, in most excellent terms, in the French language, their petition sought, decrying the monopoly as severe:—
1. That as good subjects they might be governed by the principles of the British Constitution;
2. That as British subjects they demanded their right to enjoy the liberty of commerce;
3. They requested the sale of lands to strangers, and that a portion of the proceeds should be applied to improve the means of transport.
French and English half-breeds were now united in a common purpose. A strange story is related as to the way in which the English-speaking half-breeds came to throw in their lot with their French fellow-countrymen. A Company officer had left his two daughters at Fort Garry to be educated. One of them was the object of the affection of a young Scotch half-breed, and at the same time of a young Highlander. Theyoung lady is said to have preferred the Metis, but the stern parent favoured the Highlander. The Scotchman, fortified by the father's approval, proceeded to upbraid the Metis for his temerity in aspiring to the hand of one so high in society as the lady. As love ruined Troy, so it is said this affair joined French and English half-breeds in a union to defeat the Company.
The agitation went on, as Isbister and his friends corresponded with the people of Red River and succeeded so well in gaining the ear of the British Government. Among the French people one of the fiercest and most noisy leaders was Louis Riel, the revolutionary "miller of the Seine." This man, the father of the rebel chief of later years, was a French half-breed. A tribune of the people, he had a strong ascendency over the ignorant half-breeds. He was ready for any emergency.
It is often the case that some trifling incident serves to bring on a serious crisis in affairs. A French settler, named Guillaume Sayer, half-breed son of an old bourgeois in the North-West Company, had bought a quantity of goods, intending to go on a trading expedition to Lake Manitoba. The Company proceeded to arrest him, and, after a stiff resistance, he was overcome by force and imprisoned at Fort Garry.
As the day of trial drew near the excitement grew intense. Governor Caldwell was a well-known martinet; the Recorder was regarded as the originator of the policy of restriction. He was, moreover, believed to be a Francophobe, having written a famous series of newspaper communications in Montreal, known as the "Antigallic Letters." The day of trial had been fixed for Ascension Day, May 17th, and this was taken as a religious affront by the French. The Court was to meet in the morning.
On the day of the trial hundreds of French Metis, armed, came from all the settlements to St. Boniface Church, and, leaving their guns at the church door, entered for service. At the close they gathered together, and were addressed in a fiery oration by Riel. A French Canadian admirer, writing of the matter, says, "Louis Riel obtained a veritable triumph on that occasion, and long and loud the hurrahs were repeated by the echoes of the Red River."
Crossing by way of Point Douglas, the Metis surrounded the unguarded Court House at Fort Garry. The governor, judge, and magistrate arrived, and took their seats at eleven o'clock. A curious scene now ensued: the magistrates protested against the violence; Riel in loud tones declared that they would give the tribunal one hour, and that if justice were not done them, they would do it themselves. An altercation then took place between Judge Thom and Riel, and with his loud declaration, "Et je déclare que de ce moment Sayer est libre——" drowned by the shouts of the Metis, the trial was over. Sayer and his fellow-prisoners betook themselves to freedom, while the departing Metis cried out, "Le commerce est libre! le commerce est libre! Viva la liberté!" This crisis was a serious one. Judge Thom, so instructed by Governor Simpson, never acted as Recorder again. The five years' struggle was over.
The movement for liberty continued to stimulate the people. Five years afterward the plan of the agitators was to obtain the intervention of Canada. Accordingly a petition, signed by Roderick Kennedy and five hundred and seventy-four others, was presented to the Legislative Assembly of Canada. The grievances of the people of Red River were recited. It was stated that application had been made to the Imperial Parliament without result, and this through "the chicanery of the Company and its false representations." In 1857 the Toronto Board of Trade petitioned the Canadian Assembly to open the Hudson's Bay Company territories to trade. Restlessness and uncertainty largely prevailed in Red River, though there were many of the colonists who paid little attention to what they considered the infatuated conduct of the agitators.
No truer test of the success of government can be found than the respect and obedience shown by the people for the law. Red River settlement, judged by this standard, had a woful record at this time. After the unfortunate Sayer affair, Recorder Thom was superseded, and for a time (1855 to 1858) Judge Johnson, of Montreal, came to Fort Garry to administer justice and to act as Governor.
Judge Black, a capable trader who had received a legal training, was appointed to the office of Recorder, but soonfound a case that tried his judicial ability and skill. A clergyman named Corbett, who had been bitterly hostile to the Company, testified to certain extreme statements against the Company in the great investigation of 1857. He then returned to his parish of Headingly in the settlement. A criminal charge was brought against him, for which he was found guilty in the courts and sentenced to six months' imprisonment. The opponents of the Company, seemingly without ground, but none the less fiercely, declared that the trial was a persecution by the Company and that Corbett was innocent. Strong in this belief, the mob surrounded the prison at Fort Garry, overawed the old French jailor, and, rescuing Corbett, took him home to his parish.
Among those who had been prominent in the rescue was James Stewart, long afterward a druggist and meteorological observer in Winnipeg. Stewart and some of his companions were arrested for jail-breaking and cast into prison. Some forty or fifty friends of Stewart threatened violence should he be kept a prisoner. The Governor, bishop, and three magistrates met to overawe the insurgents, but the determined rescuers tore up the pickets enclosing the prison yard, broke open the jail, and made the prisoner a free man.
Such insubordination and tumult marked the decline of the Company's power as a governing body. This lawlessness was no doubt stimulated by the establishment of a newspaper in 1859—The Nor'-Wester—which from the first was hostile to the Company. The system of government by the Council of Assiniboia had always been a vulnerable point in the management by the Company, and the newspaper constantly fanned the spirit of discontent. In the year 1868, when the Hudson Bay Company régime was approaching its end, another violent and disturbing affair took place. This was the arrest of Dr. Schultz, a Canadian leader of great bodily strength and determination, who had thrown in his lot with the Red River people. As a result of a business dispute, Schultz was proceeded against in the Court, and an order issued for seizure of his goods. On his resisting the sheriff in the execution of his duty, he was, after a severe struggle, overpowered, taken captive, and confined in Fort Garry jail.
On the following day the wife of Dr. Schultz and some fifteen men forcibly entered the prison, overpowered the guards, and, breaking open his cell, rescued the redoubtable doctor. Hargrave says, "This done, the party adjourned along with him to his house, where report says, 'They made a night of it.'"
These events represented the decadence of the Company's rule; they indicated the rise of new forces that were to compel a change; and however harmful to those immediately involved they declared unmistakably that the old order changeth, giving place to new.
Typical of his times, there sat through the court scenes of these troublous days the old "clerk of court and council," William Robert Smith. With long grey beard he held his post, and was the genius of the place. He was the Nestor of Red River. A Bluecoat boy from London, he had come from school far back in 1813, to enter on the fur trade in Rupert's Land. At Oxford House, Ile à la Crosse, Little Slave Lake, and Norway House, he served eleven faithful years as a clerk, when he retired and became a settler of Red River. He was the first to settle near Lower Fort Garry, and named the spot "Little Britain," from one of his old London localities. Farming, teaching, catechizing for the church, acting precentor, a local encyclopædia, and collector of Customs, he passed his versatile life, till, the year before the Sayerémeute, he became Clerk of Court, which place, with slight interruption, he held for twenty years. How remarkable to think of the man of all work, the Company's factotum, reaching in his experience from the beginning to well-nigh the ending of the Selkirk settlement! One who knew him says, "From his long residence in the settlement he has seen governors, judges, bishops, and clergymen, not to mention such birds of passage as the Company's local officers, who come and go, himself remaining to record their doings to their successors."