CHAPTER VII

1668-1674

THE ADVENTURES OF THE FIRST VOYAGE—RADISSON DRIVEN BACK ORGANIZES THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY AND WRITES HIS JOURNALS OF FOUR VOYAGES—THE CHARTER AND THE FIRST SHAREHOLDERS—ADVENTURES OF RADISSON ON THE BAY—THE COMING OF THE FRENCH AND THE QUARREL

At last, then, five years from the time they had discovered the Sea of the North, after baffling disappointments, fruitless efforts and the despair known only to those who have stood face to face with the Grim Specter, Ruin, Radisson and Groseillers set sail for Hudson Bay from Gravesend on June 3, 1668. Radisson was on the big shipEagletwith Captain Stannard, Groseillers onThe Nonsuchof Boston, with Captain Gillam.

Countless hopes and fears must have animated the breasts of the Frenchmen. It is so with every venture that is based on the unknown. The very fact that possibilitiesareunknown gives scope to unbridled fancy and the wildest hopes; gives scope,too, when the pendulum swings the other way, to deepest distrust. The country boy trudging along the road with a carpetbag to seek his fortunes in the city, dreams of the day when he may be a millionaire. By nightfall, he longs for the monotonous drudgery and homely content and quiet poverty of the plow.

So with Radisson and Groseillers. They had brought back 600,000 beaver pelts overland from Hudson Bay five years before. If they could repeat the feat, it meant bigger booty than Drake had raided from the Spanish of the South Seas, for the price of beaver at that time fluctuated wildly from eight shillings to thirty-five. And who could tell that they might not find a passage to the South Seas from Hudson Bay? That old legend of a tide like the ocean on Lake Winnipeg, Radisson had heard from the Indians, as every explorer was to hear it for a hundred years. The explanation is very simple to anyone who has sailed on Lake Winnipeg. The lake is so shallow that an inshore wind lashes the waters up like a tide. Then sudden calm, or an outshore breeze, leaves the muddy flats almost bare. I remember being stranded on that lake by such a shift of wind for twenty-four hours. To the Indians who had never seen the ocean, the phenomenon seemed like the tide of which the white man told,so Radisson had reported to the Adventurers that the Indians said the South Sea was only a few weeks’ journey from Hudson Bay.

Radisson, whose highest hope from boyhood was to be a great explorer, must have dreamed his dreams as the ships slid along the glassy waters of the Atlantic westward. Six weeks, ordinarily, it took sailing vessels to go from the Thames to the mouth of Hudson Straits, but furious storms—as if the very elements themselves were bent on the defeat of these two indomitable men—drove their ships apart half way across the Atlantic. As is often the case, the little ship—Gillam’sNonsuch—weathered the hurricane. Now buried under billows mountain-high, with the yardarms drenched by each wash of the pounding breakers, now plowing through the cataract of waters, the littleNonsuchkept her head to the wind, and if a sea swept from stem to stern, battened hatches and masts naked of sails took no harm. The staunch craft kept on her sea feet, and was not knocked keel up.

ButThe Eaglet, with Radisson, was in bad way. Larger and ponderous in motion, she could not shift quick to the raging gale. Blast after blast caught her broadsides. The masts snapped off like saplings uprooted by storm. A tornado of waters threw the ship on her side “till we had like to have swamped”—relate the old Company records—and when the storm cleared and the ship righted, behold, ofThe Eagletthere is left only the bare hull, with deck boards and cabin floors sprung in a dozen places. The other ship was out of sight. Carpenters were set at work to rig the lame vessel up. It was almost October before the battered hull came crawling limply to her dock on the Thames. There, Sir James Hayes, Rupert’s secretary, turned her over to the Admiralty.

Photograph of the copy of Radisson’s Voyages, end of the third trip on which he discovered Mississippi River, beginning of the fourth trip on which he discovered the overland route to the Sea of the North, or Hudson’s Bay. The original of Radisson’s first four voyages is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, part of the famous Pepys Collection. The question has been raised is this Radisson’s handwriting, or that of a copyist, like Rodd and others who did professional work for Shaftesbury and others of Radisson’s associates? Specialists on the handwriting and idioms of the period say this is undoubtedly the work of a foreigner not familiar with the idioms of the English.

Adversity is a great tester of a man’s mettle. When some men fall they tumbledownstairs. Other men, when they fall, make a point of fallingupstairs. Radisson was of the latter class. His activity redoubled. The design in the first place had been for one of the two ships to winter on the bay; the other ship to come back to England in order to return to the bay with more provisions. Radisson urged his associates not to leaveThe Nonsuchin the lurch. Application was made to the Admiralty for another ship.The Waveroof the West Indies was granted. Radisson spent the winter of 1668-69 fitting up this ship and writing the account of his first four voyages through the wilds of America, “and I hope”—he concludes the fourth voyage—“to embarke myselfe by ye helpe of God this fourth year” of coming to England. ButThe Waveroon whichRadisson sailed in March, 1669, proved unseaworthy. She had to turn back. What was Radisson’s delight to find anchored in the Thames,The Nonsuch, with his brother-in-law, Groseillers.

After parting from the disabledEaglet,The Nonsuchhad driven ahead for Hudson Straits, which she missed by going too far north to Baffin’s Land, but came to the entrance on the 4th of August. Owing to the lateness of the season, the straits were free of ice andThe Nonsuchmade a quick passage for those days, reaching Digges’ Island, at the west end of the straits on the 19th of August. Groseillers and Gillam then headed south for that rendezvous at the lower end of the bay, where the two Frenchmen had found “a house all battered with bullets,” five years before, and had set up their own marks. Slow and careful search of the east coast must have been made, forThe Nonsuchwas seven weeks cruising the seven hundred miles from Digges’ Island to that River Nemisco, which had seemed to flow from the country of the St. Lawrence or New France. Here they cast anchor on September 25, naming the river Rupert in honor of their patron. Beaching the ship on the sand-bars at high tide, the crew threw logs about her to fend off ice jams and erected slab palisades round two or three log huts for the winter—a fort named after King Charles.

Weather favoredThe Nonsuch’screw. The south end of Hudson Bay often has snow in October, and nearly always ice is formed by November. This year, the harbor did not freeze till the 9th of December, but when the frost did come it was a thing to paralyze these Englishmen used to a climate where a pocketful of coal heats a house. The silent pine forests, snow-padded and snow-wreathed; the snow-cones and snow-mushrooms and snow-plumes bending the great branches with weight of snow like feathers; the icy particles that floated in the air; ice fog, diamond-sharp in sunshine and starlight but ethereal as mist, morning and evening; the whooping and romping and stamping and cannon-shot reports of the frost at night when the biggest trees snapped brittle and the earth seemed to groan with pain; the mystic mock-suns that shone in the heavens foreboding storm, and the hoot and shout and rush of the storm itself through the forests like the Indians’ Thunder Bird on the wings of the wind; the silences, the awful silences, that seemed to engulf human presence as the frost-fog closed mistily through the aisled forests—all these things were new and wondrous to the English crew. It was—as Gillam’s journal records—as if all life “had been frozen to death.” And then the marvel of the frost world, frost that fringed your eyelashes and hairwith breath as you spoke, and drew ferns on the glazed parchment of the port windows, and created two inches of snow on the walls inside the ship! Snow fell—fell—fell, day after day, week after week, muffling, dreamy, hypnotic as the frost sleep.

But these things were no new marvels to Groseillers. The busy Frenchman was off to the woods on snowshoes in search of the Indians—a search in which a twig snapped off short, old tepee poles standing bare, a bit of moose skin blowing from a branch, deadfall traps, rabbit snares of willow twigs—were his sole guides. True wood-loper, he found the Ojibways’ camps and they brought down their furs to trade with him in spring. I don’t know what ground there is for it, but Groseillers had the reputation for being a very hard trader. Perhaps it was that the cargo of 600,000 pelts had been brought back when he had gone North with only two canoe loads of goods. As far as I could ascertain from the old records, the scale of trade at the time was half a pound of beads, one beaver; one kettle, one beaver; one pound shot, one beaver; five pounds sugar, one beaver; one pound tobacco, one beaver; one gallon brandy (diluted?), four beaver; one blanket, six beaver; two awls, one beaver; twelve buttons, one beaver; twenty fishhooks, one beaver; twenty flints, one beaver; one gun, twelve beaver; onepistol, four beaver; eight bells, one beaver. At this stage, trade as barter was not known. The white man dressed in gold lace and red velvets pompously presented his goods to the Indian. The Indian had previously, with great palaver, presented his furs to the trader. Any little difference of opinion as to values might be settled later by a present from the trader of drugged liquor to put the malcontent to sleep, or a scalping raid on the part of the Indian.

As spring came, life awakened on the bay. Wild geese darkened the sky, the shrill honk, honk, calling the sailors’ notice to the long curved lines marshaled like armies with leaders and scouts, circling, maneuvering, filing north. Whiskey jays became noisier and bolder than in winter. Red bills alighted in flocks at the crew’s camp fires, and a constant drumming told of partridge hiding in underbrush the color of his own plumage. There was no lack of sport to Gillam’s crew. The ice went out with the rush of a cataract in May, and by June it was blistering hot, with the canaries and warblers and blue jays of Southern climes nesting in the forests of this far Northern bay. By June,The Nonsuchwas ship-shape for homeward voyage, and the adventurers sailed for England, coming into the Thames about the time Radisson was driven back onThe Wavero.

There is no record of what furs Groseillers and Gillam brought back, doubtless for the reason that the proceeds of their sale had to satisfy those creditors, who had outfitted the ships and to purchase new ships for future voyages. But the next move was significant. With great secrecy, application was made to King Charles II for a royal charter granting “the Gentlemen Adventurers Trading to Hudson’s Bay” monopoly of trade and profits for all time to come.

In itself, the charter is the purest piece of feudalism ever perpetrated on America, a thing so alien to the thought of modern democracy and withal destined to play such a necessary part in the development of northern empire that it is worth examining. In the first place, though it was practically deeding away half America—namely all of modern Canada except New France, and the most of the Western States beyond the Mississippi—practically, I say, in its workings; the charter was purely a royal favor, depending on that idea of the Stuarts that the earth was not the Lord’s, but the Stuarts, to be disposed of as they wished.

The applicants for the charter were Prince Rupert, the Duke of Albermarle, the Earl of Craven, Lord Arlington, Lord Ashley, Sir John Robinson, Sir Robert Viner, Sir Peter Colleton, Sir EdwardHungerford, Sir Paul Neele, Sir John Griffith, Sir Philip Carterett, Sir James Hayes, John Kirke, Frances Millington, William Prettyman, John Fenn and John Portman. “Whereas,” runs the charter, “these have at their own great cost and charges undertaken an expedition for Hudson’s Bay for the discovery of a new passage to the South Sea and for trade, and have humbly besought us to incorporate them and grant unto them and their successors the whole trade and commerce of all those seas, straits, bays, rivers, creeks and sounds in whatsoever latitude that lie within the entrance of the straits called Hudson’s Straits together with all the lands, countries and territories upon the coasts and confines of the seas, straits, bays, lakes, rivers, creeks and sounds not now actually possessed by the subjects of any other Christian State, know ye that we have given, granted, ratified and confirmed” the said grant. There follow the official name of the company, “the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading with Hudson’s Bay,” directions for the appointment of a governor and a governing committee—Prince Rupert to be the first governor—Robinson, Viner, Colleton, Hayes, Kirke, Millington and Portman to be the first committee, to which elections are to be made each November. Their territory is to be known as Rupert’s Land.Of this territory, they are to be “true and absolute lords” paying as token of allegiance to the King when he shall happen to enter these dominions “two elks and two black beaver.”

Permission is given to build forts, employ mariners, use firearms, pass laws and impose punishments. Balboa has been laughed at ever since he crossed Panama to the Pacific for claiming Heaven and earth, air and water, “from the Pole Arctic to the Pole Antarctic” for Spain; but what shall we say of a charter that goes on royally to add, “and furthermore of our own ample and abundant grace we have granted not only the whole, entire and only liberty of trade to and from the territories aforesaid; but also the whole and entire trade to and from all Havens, Bays, Creeks, Rivers, Lakes, and Seas unto which they shall find entrance by water or land out of the territories aforesaid ... and to, and with, all other nations adjacent to the said territories, which is not granted to any other of our subjects?”

In other words, if trade should lead these Adventurers far afield from Hudson Bay where no other discoverers had been—the territory was to be theirs. For years, it was contended that the charter covered only the streams tributary to Hudson Bay, that is to the headwaters of Churchill and Saskatchewan and Moose and Rupert Rivers, but if the charterwas to be valid at all, it was to be valid in all its provision and the company might extend its possessions indefinitely. And that is what it did—from Hudson Bay to Alaska, and from Alaska to California. The debonair King had presented his friends with three-quarters of America.

All other traders are forbidden by the charter to frequent the territory on pain of forfeiture of goods and ships. All other persons are forbidden to inhabit the territory without the consent of the Company. Adventurers at the General Court in November for elections are to have votes according to their stock, for every hundred pounds one vote. The Company is to appoint local governors for the territory with all the despotic power of little kings. In case of misdemeanors, law-breakers may be brought before this local governor or home to England for trial, sentence, and punishment. The Shah of Persia had not more despotic power in his lands than these local governors. Most amazing of all, the Company is to have power to make war against other “Prince or People whatsoever that are not Christians,” “for the benefit of the said company and their trade.” Should other English intrude on the territory, the Company is explicitly granted the right to seize and expel them and impose such punishment as the offense may warrant. If delinquents appealagainst such sentence, the Company may send them home to England for trial. Admirals, judges, sheriffs, all officers of the law in England are charged by the charter to “aid, favor, help and assist” the Company by “land and sea....” signed at Westminster, May 2, 1670.

We of to-day may well smile at such a charter; but we must remember that the stones which lie buried in the clay below the wall are just as essential to the superstructure as the visible foundation. Let us grant that the charter was an absurd fiat creating a tyranny. It was an essential first step on the trail that was to blaze a way through the wilderness to democracy.

In the charter lay the secret of all the petty pomp—little kings in tinsel—with which the Company’s underling officers ruled their domain for two hundred years. In the charter lay the secret of all the Company’s success and all its failure; of its almost paternal care of the Indians and of its outrageous, unblushing, banditti warfare against rivals; of its one-sidedness in driving a bargain—the true caste idea that the many are created for exploitation by the few—of its almost royal generosity when a dependent fell by the way—the old monarchical idea that a king is responsible for the well-being of his subjects, when other great commercial monopolistscast their useless dependents off like old clothes, or let them rot in poverty. Given all the facts of the case, any man can play the prophet. With such a charter, believing in its validity as they did in their own existence, it is not surprising the Adventurers of Hudson Bay ran the magnificent career the Company has had, and finally—ran their privileges aground.

Thus, then, was the Hudson’s Bay Company incorporated. Its first stock book of 1667 before incorporation, shows the Duke of York to have £300 of stock; Prince Rupert, £470; Carterett, £770 in all; Albermarle, £500; Craven, £300; Arlington, £200; Shaftsbury, £600; Viner, £300; Colleton, £300; Hungerford, £300; Sir James Hayes, £1800; Sir John Kirke, £300; Lady Margaret Drax, £300—with others, in all a capital of £10,500. The most of these shares were not subscribed in cash. It may be inferred that the Duke of York and Prince Rupert and Carterett and Sir James Hayes received their shares for obtaining the ships from the Admiralty. Indeed, it is more than probable that very little actual cash was subscribed for the first voyages. The seamen were impressed and not usually paid, as the account books show, until after the sale of the furs, and the provisions were probably supplied on credit by those merchants who are credited withshares. At least, the absence of any cash account or strong box for the first years, gives that impression. Mr. Portman, the merchant, it is, or Mr. Young, or Mr. Kirke, or Robinson, or Colleton who advance money to Radisson and Groseillers as they need it, and the stock accounts of these shareholders are credited with the amounts so advanced. Gillam and Stannard, the captains, are credited with £160 and £280 in the venture, as if they, too, accepted their remuneration in stock.

The charter was granted in May. June saw Radisson and Groseillers off for the bay with three ships,The Waverounder Captain Newland,The Shaftsburyunder Captain Shepperd,The Prince Rupertunder Gillam, in all some forty men. The vessels were loaned from the Admiralty. Bayly went as governor to Rupert River, Gorst as secretary; Peter Romulus, the French apothecary, as surgeon at £20 a year. While the two big ships spent the summer at Charles Fort, Radisson took the small boatWaveroalong the south shore westward, apparently seeking passage to the South Sea. Monsibi flats, now known as Moose, and Schatawan, now known as Albany, and Cape Henrietta Maria named after royalty, were passed on the cruise up west and north to Nelson, where Radisson himself erectedthe English King’s Arms. Only a boat of shallow draft could coast these regions of salt swamps, muddy flats and bowlder-strewn rocky waters. Moose River with its enormous drive of ice stranded on the flats for miles each spring was found by Radisson to have three channels. Ninety-six miles northwest from Moose was Albany River with an island just at its outlet suitable for the building of a fort. Cape Henrietta Maria, three hundred miles from Moose, marked where James Bay widened out to the main waters of Hudson Bay. All this coast was so shallow and cut by gravel bars that it could be explored only by anchoringThe Waverooff shore and approaching the tamarack swamps of the land by canoe, but the whole region was an ideal game preserve that has never failed of its supply of furs from the day that Radisson first examined it in 1670 to the present. Black ducks, pintail, teal, partridge, promised abundance of food to hunters here, and Radisson must have noticed the walrus, porpoise and seal floundering about in the bay promising another source of profit to the Company. North of Henrietta Cape, Radisson was on known ground. Button and Fox and James had explored this coast, Port Nelson with its two magnificent harbors—Nelson and Hayes River—taking its name from Button’s seaman, Nelson, who was buried here.Groseillers wintered on the bay but Radisson came home to England onThe Prince Rupertwith Gillam and passed the winter in London as advisor to the company. This year, the Company held its meetings at Prince Rupert’s lodgings in Whitehall.

In the summer of 71, Radisson was again on the bay cruising as before, to Moose, and Albany, and Nelson with a cargo of some two hundred muskets, four hundred powderhorns and five hundred hatchets for trade. Though Radisson as well as Groseillers spent the years of 1771-72 on the bay, there was no mistaking the fact—not so many Indians were bringing furs to Rupert River for trade. Radisson reported conditions when he returned to London in the fall of ’72, and he linked himself more closely to the interests of the Company by marrying Mary, the daughter of Sir John Kirke.

“It is ordered,” read the minutes of the Company, Oct. 23, 1673, “thatThe Prince Rupertarriving at Portsmouth, Captain Gillam do not stire from the shippe till Mr. Radisson take post to London with the report.” The report was not a good one. The French coming overland from Canada were intercepting the Indians on the way down to the bay. The Company decided to appoint another governor, William Lyddell, for the west coast, and when Radisson went back to the bay in ’74, a councilwas held to consider how to oppose the French. The captains of the ships were against moving west. Groseillers and Radisson urged Governor Bayly to build new forts at Moose and Albany and Nelson. Resentful of divided authority, Bayly hung between two opinions, but at length consented to leave Rupert River for the summer and cruise westward. When he came back to Fort Charles in August, he found it occupied by an emissary from New France, Father Albanel, an English Jesuit, with a passport from Frontenac recommending him to the English Governor, and with personal letters for the two Frenchmen.

Bayly’s rage knew no bounds. He received the priest as the passports from a friendly nation compelled him to do, but he flared out in open accusations against Radisson and Groseillers for being in collusion with rivals to the Company’s trade. A thousand fictions cling round this part of Radisson’s career. It is said that the two Frenchmen knocked down and were knocked down by the English Governor, that spies were set upon them to dog their steps when they went to the woods, that Bayly threatened to run them through, and that the two finally escaped through the forests overland back to New France with Albanel, the Jesuit.

All these are childish fictions directly contradictedby the facts of the case as stated in the official minutes of the Company. No doubt the little fort was a tempest in a teapot till the Jesuit departed, but quietus was given to the quarrels by the arrival, on September 17, of William Lyddell onThe Prince Rupert, governor-elect for the west coast. Radisson decided to go home to England and lay the whole case before the Company. There is not the slightest doubt that he was desperately dissatisfied with his status among the Adventurers. He had found the territory. He had founded the Company. He had given the best years of his life to its advancement, and they had not even credited him as a shareholder. When he returned to England, they accepted proof of his loyalty, asking only that he take oath of fidelity, but financially, his case had already been prejudged. He was not to be a partner. At a meeting in June, it was ordered that he be allowed £100 a year for his services. That is, he was to be their servant. As a matter of fact, he was already in debt for living expenses. In his pocket were the letters Albanel had brought overland to the bay and offers direct from Mons. Colbert, himself, of a position in the French navy, payment of all debts and a gratuity of some £400 to begin life anew if he would go over to Paris. Six weeks from the time he had left the bay, Radisson quit the Company’s services in disgust. Itwas the old story of the injustice he had suffered in Quebec—he, the creator of the wealth, was to have a mere pittance from the monopolists. Radisson could not induce his English wife to go with him, but he sailed for France at the end of October in 1674.

As the operations of the Adventurers were now to become an international struggle for two hundred years, it is well to pause from the narrative of stirring events on the bay to take a glance forward on the scope and influence and power of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the history of America.

Notes on Chapter VII.—For authorities on this chapter see Chapters VIII and IX. To those familiar with the subject, this chapter will clear up a great many discrepancies. In the life of Radisson inPathfinders of the West, it was necessary to state frankly that his movements could not be traced definitely at this period both as to locale and time. The facts of this chapter are taken solely from the official Stock Books, Minute Books, Sailing Directions and Journals of Hudson’s Bay House, London. Extracts from these minutes will be found after Chapter VIII and IX. One point inPathfinders of the West, all authorities differ as to the time when Radisson left the company, Albanel’s Journal in the Jesuit Relations being of 1672, Gorst’s record of the quarrel in 1674, and other accounts placing the date as late as 1676. My examinations of the Hudson’s Bay records show that the rupture occurred in London in October, 1674. How, then, is Albanel’s Relation 1672? The passport from Frontenac, which Albanel delivered to Bayly—now on record in Hudson’s Bay Company papers—is dated, Quebec, Oct. 7, 1673. If the passport only left Quebec in October, 1673, and Albanel reached the bay in August, 1674—there is only one conclusion: the date of his journal, 1672, is wrong by two years. One can easily understand how this would occur in a journal made up of scraps of writing jotted down in canoes, in tepees, everywhere and anywhere, and then passed by couriers from hand to hand till it reached the Cramoisy printers of Paris.Rupert House, Rupert River, James Bay, as it is To-day.A letter to the Secretary of State, dated Sept. 25, 1675, relates: “This day cameThe Shaftsbury Pinkffrom HudsonBaye. Capt. Shopard, ye capt. tiles me thay found a franch Jesuit thare that did endeavor to convert ye Indians & persuad them not to trade with ye English, for wh. reason they have brought him away with them.... Capt. Gillam we expect to-morrow.”Later: “This day is arrived Capt. Gillam. I was on board of him and he tells me they were forced to winter there and spend all their Provisions. They have left only four men to keep possession of the place. I see the French Jesuit is a little ould man.”

Rupert House, Rupert River, James Bay, as it is To-day.

A letter to the Secretary of State, dated Sept. 25, 1675, relates: “This day cameThe Shaftsbury Pinkffrom HudsonBaye. Capt. Shopard, ye capt. tiles me thay found a franch Jesuit thare that did endeavor to convert ye Indians & persuad them not to trade with ye English, for wh. reason they have brought him away with them.... Capt. Gillam we expect to-morrow.”

Later: “This day is arrived Capt. Gillam. I was on board of him and he tells me they were forced to winter there and spend all their Provisions. They have left only four men to keep possession of the place. I see the French Jesuit is a little ould man.”

Back to Index Next