CHAPTER XIX

1770-1800

EXTENSION OF TRADE TOWARD LABRADOR, QUEBEC AND ROCKIES—HEARNE FINDS THE ATHABASCA COUNTRY AND FOUNDS CUMBERLAND HOUSE ON THE SASKATCHEWAN—COCKING PROCEEDS TO THE BLACKFEET—HOWSE FINDS THE PASS IN ROCKIES

WhileAnthony Hendry, the English smuggler, was making his way up the Saskatchewan to the land of the Blackfeet—the present province of Alberta—the English Adventurers were busy making good their claim to Labrador. Except as a summer rendezvous, Rupert, the oldest of the Company’s forts, at the southeast corner of the bay—had been abandoned, but far up the coast of Labrador on the wildest part of this desolate shore, was that fort which the Company was shortly forced to dismantle at great loss—Richmond. When Captain Coates was sent to cruise the east coast of Hudson Bay, thirty men under John Potts and Mr. Pollexfen, had been left on Richmond Gulf to build a fort. There was no more dangerous region on the bay. It was here Hudson’s crew had been attackedby the Eskimos, and here the Eskimos yearly came to winter and hunt the white whale. Between the rugged main shore and the outer line of barren islands was usually open water. Camped on the rocky islets, the timid Eskimos were secure from Indian foe, and if the white whale fisheries failed, they had only to scud across the open water or portage over the ice to the mainland and hunt partridge on Richmond Gulf. From one hundred and fifty to three hundred Eskimos yearly wintered within trading distance of Richmond.

Quickly, storehouses, barracks, wareroom and guardroom were erected just inside the narrow entrance from Hudson Bay to Richmond Gulf, and round all thrown a ten-foot palisade. This was in 1749. Coates had been attracted to Richmond Gulf—which he calls Artiwinipack—by its land-locked, sheltered position and the magnificent supply of lumber for building. The Eskimo whale fisheries were farther south at Whale River and East Main, with winter lodges subordinate to Richmond. The partridges of the wooded slopes promised abundance of food, and there was excellent fox and beaver trapping. Compared to the other rocky barrens of northern Labrador, Richmond Harbor seemed Paradise, “but oh, my conscience,” wrote Captain Coates, “there is so profound silence, such awful precipices,no life, that the world seems asleep. The land is so tremendous high that wind and water reverberate between the cliffs entering two miles to our gulf. Inside are mountains, groves, cascades and vales adorned with trees. On the Hudson Bay side nothing is seen but barren rocks. Inside, all is green with stately woods.... On the high mountains is only snow moss; lower, a sort of rye grass, some snow drops and violets without odor, then rows of evergreens down to the very sea. On the right of the gulf is Lady Lake’s Grove under a stupendous mountain, whence falls a cascade through the grove to the sea. In short, such is the elegant situation of Richmond Fort that it is not to be paralleled in the world.”

Such were the high hopes with which Richmond Fort was founded. To-day it is a howling wilderness silent as death but for the rush of waters heard when white men first entered the bay. Partridge there were in plenty among the lonely evergreens, and game for trapping; but not the warmest overtures of Chief Factor Potts and Mr. Pollexfen and Mr. Isbister, who yearly came up from Albany, could win the friendship of the treacherous Eskimos. They would not hunt, and the white men dare not penetrate far enough inland to make their trapping pay. Potts kept his men whale fishing off Whale River, but in five years the loss to the Company hadtotaled more than £24,000. The crisis came in 1754. Day and night, the stealthy shadow of Eskimo spies moved through the evergreens of the gulf. In vain Potts gave the chiefs presents of gold-laced suits, beaver hats with plumes, and swords. “Theyshakedmy hands,” he records, “and hugged and embraced and smiled”; but the very next trapper, who went alone to the woods, or attempted to drive his dog train south to Whale River, would see Eskimos ambushed behind rocks and have hiscacherifled or find himself overpowered and plundered. One day in February, Mr. Pollexfen had gone out with his men from Whale River trapping. When they returned in the afternoon they found the cook boy had been kidnapped and the house robbed of every object that could be carried away—stores of ammunition, arms, traps, food, clothes, even the door hinges and iron nails of the structure.

Waiting only till it was dark, the terrified hunters hitched their dog sleighs up, tore off all bells that would betray flight, and drove like mad for the stronger fort of Richmond. Potts hurriedly sent out orders to recall his trappers from the hills and manned Richmond for siege. It was four days before all the men came under shelter, and nightly the Eskimos could be heard trying to scale the palisades. The fort was so short of provisions, all hands werereduced to one meal a day. Potts called for volunteers, to go to the rescue of the kidnapped cook—a boy, named Matthew Warden; and thirteen men offered to go. The Eskimos had taken refuge on the islands of the outer shore. Frost-fog thick as wool lay on the bay. Eskimos were seen lurking on the hills above the fort. A council was held. It was determined to catch three Eskimos as hostages for the cook’s safety rather than risk the lives of thirteen men outside the fort. Some ten days later, when a few men ventured out for partridges, the forest again came to life with Eskimo spies. Potts recalled his hunters, sent two scouts to welcome the Eskimos to the fort and placed all hands on guard. Three Indians were conducted into the house. In a twinkling, fetters were clapped on two, and the third bade go and fetch the missing white boy on pain of death to the hostages. The stolid Eskimo affected not to understand. Potts laid a sword across the throats of the two prisoners and signaled the third to be gone. The fellow needed no urging but scampered. “I had our men,” relates Potts, “one by one pass through the guardroom changing their dresses every time to give the two prisoners the idea that I had a large garrison. They seemed surprised that I had one hundred men, but they spoke no word.” The next day, the fettered prisoners drew knives on theirguard, seized his gun and clubbed the Company men from the room. In the scuffle that followed, both Eskimos were shot. The danger was now increased a hundredfold. Friendly Montagnais Indians, especially one named Robinson Crusoe, warned Potts that if the shooting were known, nothing could save the fort. The bodies were hidden in the cellar till some Montagnais went out one dark night and weighting the feet with stones, pushed them through a hole in the ice. How quickly white men can degenerate to savagery is well illustrated by the conduct of the cooped-up, starving garrison. Before sending away the dead bodies, they cut the ears from each and preserved them in spirits of alcohol to send down by Indian scouts to Isbister at Moose with a letter imploring that the sloop come to the rescue as soon as the ice cleared. For two months the siege lasted. Nothing more was ever heard of the captured boy, but by the end of May, Isbister had sent a sloop to Richmond. As told elsewhere, Richmond was dismantled in 1778 and the stores carried down to Whale River and East Main.

Important changes had gradually grown up in the Adventurer’s methods. White servants were no longer forbidden to circulate with the Indians but encouraged to go out to the hunting field and paidbounties on their trapping. Three men had been sent out from York in January, 1772, to shoot partridges for the fort. It was a mild, open winter. The men carried provisions to last three weeks. Striking back through the marsh land, that lies between Hayes and Nelson Rivers, they camped for the first night on the banks of the Nelson. The next morning, Tuesday, the 7th of January, they were crossing the ice of the Nelson’s broad current when they suddenly felt the rocking of the tide beneath their feet, looked ahead, saw the frost-smoke of open water and to their horror realized that the tidal bore had loosened the ice and they were adrift, bearing out to sea. In vain, dogs and men dashed back for the shore. The ice floe had separated from the land and was rushing seaward like a race horse. That night it snowed. The terrified men kept watch, hoping that the high tide would carry the ice back to some of the long, low sand-bars at Port Nelson. The tide did sway back the third day but not near enough for a landing. This night, they put up their leather tents and slept drifting. When they awakened on Friday the 10th, they were driving so direct for the shore that the three men simultaneously dashed to gain the land, leaving packs, provisions, tent and sleighs; but in vain. A tidal wave swept the floe off shore, and when they set back for their camp, they were appalledto see camp kit, sleds, provisions, all—drive past afloat. The ice floe had broken. They were now adrift without food or shelter, James Ross carrying gun, powder bag and blanket over his shoulders as he had risen from sleep, Farrant wearing only the beaver coat in which he had slept, Tomson bereft of either gun or blanket.

Fort Rae, on Great Slave Lake, One of the Northernmost Posts of the Fur Trade.

This time, the ebb carried them far into the bay where they passed the fourth night adrift. The next day, wind and the crumbling of the ice added to their terrors. As the floe went to pieces, they leaped from float to float trying to keep together on the largest icepan. Farrant fell through the slush to his armpits and after being belted tightly in his beaver coat lay down behind a wind-break of ice blocks to die. Their only food since losing the tent kit had been some lumps of sugar one of them had chanced to have in his pockets. During Saturday night the 11th of January, the ice grounded and great seas began sweeping over the floe. When Ross and Tomson would have dragged Farrant to a higher hummock of the ice field, they found that he was dead. On Monday, the weather grew cold and stormy. Tomson’s hands had swollen so that he could not move a muscle and the man became delirious, raving of his Orkney home as they roamed aimlessly over the illimitable ice fields. That night, the seventh theyhad been adrift, just as the moon sank below the sea, the Orkneyman, Tomson, breathed his last.

Ross was now alone. A great ice floe borne down by a wash of the tide, swept away Tomson’s body. Ross scrambled upon the fresh drift and hoping against hope, scarcely able to believe his senses, saw that the new icepan extended to the land. Half blinded by sun glare, hands and feet frozen stiff, now laughing hysterically, now crying deliriously, the fellow managed to reach shore, but when the sun set he lost all sense of direction and could not find his way farther. That night, his hands were so stiff that he could not strike a light on his flint, but by tramping down brushwood, made himself a bed in the snow. Sunrise gave him his bearings again and through his half-delirium he realized he was only four miles from the fort. Partly walking, partly creeping, he reached York gates at seven that night. One of the dogs had followed him all the way, which probably explains how he was not frozen sleeping out uncovered for nine nights. Hands and feet had to be amputated, but his countrymen of Orkney took up a subscription for him and the Company gave him a pension of £20 a year for life. The same amount was bestowed on the widows of the two dead men. It is not surprising that Hudson Bay became ill-omened to Orkneymen who heardsuch tales of fur hunting as have been related of Richmond and York.

But the Company was now on the eve of the most momentous change in its history. Anthony Hendry had reported how the French traders had gone up the Saskatchewan to the tribes of equestrian Indians; and Hendry had been cashiered for his pains. Now a new fact influenced the Company. French power had fallen at Quebec, in 1759. Instead of a few French traders scattered through the West, were thousands of wildwood rovers, half-Indian, half-French, voyageurs and bush-lopers, fled from the new laws of the new English régime to the freedom of the wilderness. Beyond Sault Ste. Marie, the long hand of the law could not reach. Beyond the Sault, was law of neither God nor man. To make matters worse, English merchants, who had flocked to Montreal and Quebec, now outfitted these French rovers and personally led them to the far hunting field of thePays d’en Haut—a term that meant anything from Lake Superior to the Pole. The English Adventurers sent more men up stream—up the Moose toward Quebec as far as Abbittibbi, up the Albany toward what is now Manitoba past Henley House as far as Osnaburg, across what is now Keewatin toward Lake Superior as far as New Brunswick House. The catch of furs showed a decrease everyyear. Fewer Indians came to the bay, fewer hunters to the outlying fur posts. Dividends dropped from 10 to 8 and from 8 to 6 and from 6 to 5 per cent. Instead of 100,000 beaver a year there came to the London market only 40,000 and 50,000 a year.

To stand on the rights of monopoly conferred by an ancient charter while “interlopers and pedlars,” as the Company called them—ran away with the profits of that monopoly, was like standing on your dignity with a thief while he picked your pockets. The “smug ancient gentlemen,” as enemies designated the Company, bestirred themselves mightily. Moses Norton, governor of Churchill, was no more anxious to fight the French Canadians on the hunting field now than he had been in the days of Anthony Hendry, but being half-Indian he knew all the legends of the Indians—knew that even if the French already had possession of the Saskatchewan, north of the Saskatchewan was an unclaimed kingdom, whence no white man had yet set foot, as large again as the bounds of Hudson Bay.

Besides, the Company had not forgotten those legends of minerals in the North which had lured Captain Knight to his death. Chippewyan Indians still came to Churchill with huge masses of amorphous copper strung on necklaces or battered into rough pots and pans and cooking utensils. Whencecame that copper? Oddly enough, the world cannot answer that question yet. The Indians said from “a Far-Away-Metal River” that ran to a vast sea where the tide ebbed and flowed. Once more hopes of finding a Northwest Passage rose; once more hopes of those metals that had led Knight to ship-wreck. Norton suggested that this time the search should be made by land. Serving as a clerk on a brig at Churchill was a well-educated young Englishman already mentioned—Samuel Hearne.

The yearly boats that came to Churchill in 1769, commissioned Hearne for this expedition, whose ostensible object was the finding of the Metal River now known as the Coppermine but whose real object was the occupation of a vast region not yet preempted by the Canadians. The story of Hearne’s travels would fill a volume. Norton, the governor, was a curious compound of ability and sham, strength and vice. Born of an Indian mother and English father, he seemed to have inherited all the superstitions of one and vices of the other. He was educated in England and married an English woman. Yet when he came to the wilderness, he had a seraglio of native wives that would have put a Mormon to the blush. These he kept apart in rudely but gorgeously furnished apartments to which he alone possessed the keys. At the mess-room table, he weariedthe souls of his officers by long-winded and saintly sermons on virtue which were expounded as regularly as the night supper came round. Did some blackleg expiating dissipations by life in the wilds judge Norton’s sermons by his conduct and emulate his example rather than his precepts, Norton had the culprit tied to the triangle and flogged till his back was raw. An Indian is never a hypocrite. Why would he be? His code is to do as he wishes, to follow his desires, to be stronger than his enemies, to impose on the weak. He has no religion to hold a higher example up like a mirror that reflects his own face as loathsome, and he has no science to teach him that what religion calls “evil” means in the long run, wretchedness and rottenness and ruin. But the hypocrisy in Norton was the white man strain—the fig leaf peculiar to civilized man—living a lie so long that he finally believes the lie himself. Knowledge of white man’s science, Norton had; but to the Indian in him, it was still mystery; “medicine,” a secret means to kill an enemy, arsenic in medicine, laudanum in whiskey, or poison that caused convulsions to an Indian who refused either a daughter for the seraglio or beaver at Norton’s terms. A white man who could wield such power was to the Indians a god, and Norton held them in the hollow of his hand. Equally successful was the half-breedgovernor managing the governing committee of the Hudson’s Bay Company in London; for he sent them enormous returns in beaver at small outlay.

Seven great guns roared their God-speed as the fort gates opened and Hearne sped out by dog train for his inland trip north on November 6, 1769. Norton waved a farewell and Hearne disappeared over the rolling drifts with two Indians as guides, two white men as packers to look after provisions. Striking northwest, Hearne was joined by other traveling Indians. Bitterly cold weather set in. One Indian guide deserted the first night out and the other proved himself an impudent beggar, who camped when it was cold and camped when it was wet and paused to hunt when it was fair, but laid up no stock of provisions, giving Hearne plainly to understand that the whole Indian cavalcade looked to the white men’s sleighs for food. The travelers did not make ten miles a day. At the end of the month Hearne wakened one morning to find his stores plundered and gales of laughter ringing back as the Indians marched off with their booty. Not even guns were left. Rabbit and partridge-snaring saved the three white men from starving as they retreated. They were safe inside the fort once more by December 11. Hearne’s object setting out in midwinter had been to reach the North beforesummer, and nothing daunted, he again set forth with five fresh guides on February 23, 1770, again depending on snares for food. April saw the marchers halted on the borders of the Barren Lands, scouring the wide wastes of treeless swamps and rock for game. Caribou had retreated inland and not yet begun their traverse to the bay. Until wild fowls came winging north, the camp lived on snow water, tobacco and such scraps of leather and dried meat as had not already been devoured. A chance herd of wandering deer relieved the famine till June, when rations were again reduced; this time, to wild cranberries. Then the traverse of the caribou herds came—a rush of countless myriads with the tramp of an army and the clicking of a multitude of horns from west to east for weeks. Indians had gathered to the traverse in hundreds. Moss served as fuel. Provisions were abundant. Hearne had almost decided to winter with the wandering Chippewyans when they again began to plunder his store of ammunition. Wind had smashed some of the survey instruments, so he joined a band of hunters on their way to the fort, which he reached on November 25.

Hearne had not found “Far-Away-Metal-River,” nor the copper mines, nor the Northwest Passage, but he had found fresh tribes of Indians, and these were what Norton wanted. December 7, 1770, lessthan a month from his home-coming, Hearne was again dispatched by Norton. Matonabbee, a famous guide of the Chippewyans, accompanied the explorer with a retinue of the Indian’s wives to draw sleds and handle baggage. Almost as notable as Norton was Matonabbee, the Chippewyan chief—an Indian of iron constitution and iron will, pitiless to his wives, whom he used as beasts of burden; relentless in his aims, fearless of all Indians, a giant measuring more than six feet, straight as an arrow, supple as willow, hard as nails. Imperturbable and good-natured Matonabbee set the pace at winged speed, pausing for neither hunger nor cold. Christmas week was celebrated by fasting. Matonabbee uttered no complaint; and the white man could not well turn back when the Indian was as eager for the next day’s march as if he had supped sumptuously instead of going to bed on a meal of moss water. Self-pity, fear, hesitation, were emotions of which the guide knew nothing. He had undertaken to lead Hearne to “Far-Away-Metal-River,” and only death could stop him.

In the Barren Lands, caribou enough were killed to afford the whole company provisions for six months; and the marchers were joined by two hundred more Indians. Wood became scarcer and smaller as they marched north. Matonabbee haltedin April and ordered his wives to camp while the men made dugouts for the voyage down stream. The boats were heavy in front to resist the ice jams. If Hearne had marveled at the large company now following Matonabbee to a hard, dangerous hunting field he quickly guessed good reasons when wives and children were ordered to head westward and await the warrior’s return at Lake Athabasca. Women are ordered away only when there is prospect of war, and Hearne could easily surmise whence the Chippewyans annually obtained eleven thousand of their best beaver pelts. The sun no longer set. It was continual day, and on June 12, 1771, the swamps of the Barrens converged to a narrow, rocky river bed whence roared a misty cataract—“Far-Off-Metal-River”—the Coppermine River, without any sign of the ebbing tide that was to lead to the South Sea. When Hearne came back to his Indian companions from the river bed, he found them stripped and daubed in war paint, gliding as if in ambush from stone to stone down the steep declivity of the waterfall. Then far below the rapids, like the tops of big bowlders, appeared the rounded leather tent-peaks of an Eskimo camp. The Eskimos were apparently sound asleep, for it was midnight though as light as day.

Before Hearne could collect his senses or alarmthe sleeping victims, he had been left far to the rear by his villainous comrades. Then occurred one of the most deplorable tragedies in the history of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Such of the horrors as are tellable, I have told elsewhere in the account of Hearne’s travels. The raiders fell on the Eskimos like wolves on the sheepfold. Not content with plundering the camp of beaver pelts, they speared, stabbed, bludgeoned, men, women, children, old and young, till the river ran red with innocent blood. Rushing forward, Hearne implored Matonabbee to stop the slaughter. Matonabbee’s response was a shout of laughter. What were the weak for but to be the victims of the strong? What did these fool-Eskimos toil for but to render tribute of their toil to him, who had the force to take? The doctrine was not a new one. Neither is it yet old; only we moderns do our bludgeoning with financial coercion, competition, monopoly or what not, instead of the butt end of a gun, or stone spear; and it would be instructive to know if philosophers in a thousand years will consider our methods as barbarous as we consider the savages of two hundred years ago.

The tortures of that raid have no place in a history of the Hudson’s Bay Company. They are told in Hearne’s life, and they haunted the explorer like a bloody nightmare. One day later, on July 17,Hearne stood on the shores of the Arctic ocean—the first white man to witness the tossing ice floes of that green, lone, paleocrystic sea; but his vision was not the exaltation of an explorer. It was a hideous memory of young girls speared bodily through and through and left writhing pinioned to the ground; of young boys whose hearts were torn out and devoured while warm; of old men and women gouged, buffeted, beaten to death. It does not make a pretty picture, that doctrine of the supremacy of strength, the survival of the fit, the extermination of the weak—it does not make a pretty picture when you reduce it to terms of the physical. How quickly wild-beast savagery may reduce men to the level of beasts was witnessed as Hearne rested on the shores of the Arctic—a musk ox was shot. The warriors tore it to pieces and devoured it raw.

Retreating up the shelving rocks of the Coppermine twenty miles, Hearne found what he thought were the copper mines from which the Indians made their metal weapons. The company then struck westward for the famous Athabasca region where the wives were to camp for the winter. Athabasca proved a hunter’s paradise as it has been ever since Hearne discovered it. Beaver abounded in the swampy muskegs. Buffalo roamed to the south. Moose yards were found in the wooded bluffs; mink,marten, fox, every fur bearer which the English Adventurers sought. In spring, a flotilla carried the Indians down to Churchill, where Hearne arrived on June 30, 1772.

The geographical importance of Hearne’s discovery—the fact that he had found a region half the size of European Russia and proved that not a narrow strip of land lay between the Atlantic and Pacific but a vast continent—was eclipsed by the importance of his discoveries for the fur traders. The region must be occupied by the English Company before the French Canadians found it. Old Moses Norton sick unto death hastened to send word to the governing committee in London, and the governing committee voted Hearne a present of £200, £10 a year for a valet, £130 a year as a salary, and promotion as governor on Norton’s death, which occurred on December 29, 1773.

The death of Norton was of a piece with his life. The bully fell ill of some deadly intestinal trouble that caused him as excruciating tortures as ever his poisons had caused his victims. Calling the officers of the fort, he publicly made his will, leaving all his savings to his wife in England but directing that she should yearly set aside £10 for the clothing of his Indian wives at Churchill. As the Indian women stood round the dying tyrant’s bed his eye detectedan officer whispering to one of the young Indian wives. With a roar, Norton leaped to his feet in the bed.

“You —— —— ——,” he roared, “I’ll burn you alive! I’ll burn you alive——”

The effort cost the bully his life. He fell back dead—he whose hand had tyrannized over the fort for fifty years, a mass of corrupting flesh which men hurriedly put out of sight. Hearne was called from the Saskatchewan to become governor and undertake the opening of the inland trade. Hearne’s report on his trip to the Coppermine and Athabasca was received at London in November, 1772. In May of 1773, the minutes recorded “that the company having under consideration the interruptions to the trade from the Canadian Pedlars as reported by Isaac Batts at Basquia, do decide on mature deliberation to send Samuel Hearne to establish a fort at Basquia with Mr. Cocking.” They were accompanied by Louis Primo, John Cole and half a dozen French renegades, who had been bribed to desert from the Canadians—in all seventeen men. Hearne did better than he was instructed. Leaving Batts, Louis Primo and the Frenchmen at Basquia to compete against the Canadians, he established Cumberland House far above, on the Saskatchewan, at Sturgeon Lake, where the Indians could be intercepted beforethey came down to the French posts. Traders inland were paid £40 a year with a bounty of £2 when they signed their contract and a bonus of a shilling for every twenty beaver.

When Hearne was recalled to Churchill to become governor, Matthew Cocking was left superintendent of inland trade. Cocking had earned laurels for himself by a voyage almost as important as Hearne’s. The very week that Hearne came back to Churchill at the end of June, 1772, from the Athabasca, Cocking had set out from York for the South Saskatchewan. He accompanied the Assiniboines returning from their yearly trip to the bay. By the end of July he had crossed the north end of Lake Winnipeg and gone up the Saskatchewan to Basquia. Louis Primo, the renegade Frenchman, was met leading a flotilla of canoes down to Hudson Bay, and it must have afforded Cocking great satisfaction to see that the activity of the Hudson’s Bay Company had forced the French Canadians to desert both their posts on the lower Saskatchewan. He passed the empty houses on the banks of the river where the leaders of the French-Canadians had had their forts, Findlay’s and Frobisher’s and Curry’s. Leaving canoes somewhere eastward of the Forks, Cocking struck south for the country of the Blackfeet at the foothills of the Rockies, near what is now the InternationalBoundary. The South Saskatchewan was crossed at the end of August in bull-boats—tub-like craft made of parchment stretched on willows. In the Eagle Hills, Cocking met French traders, who had abandoned civilized life and joined the Indian tribes. The Eagle Hills were famous as the place where the Indians got tent poles and birch bark before crossing the plains to the east and south. Cocking spent the winter with the Blackfeet and the Bloods and the Piegans and the Sarcees, whom he names as the Confederacy of Waterfall Indians, owing to the numerous cataracts on the upper reaches of Bow River. He was amazed to find fields of cultivated tobacco among the Blackfeet and considered the tribe more like Europeans than any Indians he had ever met. The winter was spent hunting buffalo by means of the famous “pounds.” Buffalo were pursued by riders into a triangular enclosure of sticks round a large field. Behind the fences converging to a point hid the hunters, whose cries and clappings frightened the herds into rushing precipitately to the converging angle. Here was either a huge hole, or the natural drop over the bank of a ravine, where the buffalo tumbled, mass after mass of infuriated animals, literally bridging a path for the living across the bodies of the dead. The Blackfeet hunters thought nothing of riding for ahundred miles to round up the scattered herds to one of these “pounds” or “corrals.” All that Hendry had said of the Blackfeet twenty years before, Cocking found to be true. All were riders—men, women, children—the first tribes Cocking had yet met where women were not beasts of burden. The tribe had earthen pots for cooking utensils, used moss for tinder, and recorded the history of the people in rude drawings on painted buffalo robes. In fact, Cocking’s description of the tribal customs might be an account of the Iroquois. The Blackfeet’s entire lives were spent doing two things—hunting and raiding the Snakes of the South for horses. Men and women captives were tortured with shocking cruelty that made the Blackfeet a terror to all enemies; but young captives were adopted into the tribe after the custom followed by the Iroquois of the East. Of food, there was always plenty from the buffalo hunts; and game abounded from the Saskatchewan Forks to the mountains.

Traders Leaving Athabasca Landing for the North.

When Cocking tried to persuade the Blackfeet to come down to the fort with furs, they were reluctant. They did not understand canoe travel and could not take their horses, and why should they go down? The Assiniboines would trade the furs for firearms to be brought to the Blackfeet. Cocking pointed out that with more firearms, they could bemasters of the entire country and by dint of presenting cocked hats and swords and gold-laced red coats to the chiefs, induced them to promise not to trade with “the Canadian Pedlars.” “We have done all in our power to keep them from trading with François or Curry, who lie at the Portage (the Rapids) of the Saskatchewan to intercept the natives coming to us.”

On May 16, 1773, Cocking set out to return to the fort. For the first time, a few young Blackfeet joined the canoes going to York. At the Forks, two rival camps were found, that of Louis Primo who had come over to the Hudson’s Bay from the French, and old François working for the French Canadians. The English traders had no liquor. Four gallons of rum diluted with water won the Indians over to old François, the Canadian, who picked out one hundred of the rarest skins and was only hindered taking the entire hunt because he had no more goods to trade. François’ house was a long log structure divided into two sections, half for a kitchen and mess room, half for a trading room, and the furs were kept in the loft. Outside, were two or three log cabins for François’ white men, of whom he had twenty. Round all ran ten-foot stockades against which lay the great canoes twenty-four feet long, twenty-two inches deep, which carried the furs toLake Superior. Cocking, who was used to factors ruling like little kings, was shocked to find old François “an ignorant Frenchman, who did not keep his men at proper distance and had no watch at night. It surprises me,” he writes, “to observe what a warm side the natives hath to the French Canadians.”

Down at Grand Rapids near the mouth of the Saskatchewan, Cocking received another shock. Louis Primo and those Frenchmen bribed to join the Hudson’s Bay, who had gone on from the Forks ahead of Cocking, were to join him at the last portage of the Saskatchewan to go down to York. He found that they had gone back to the French bag and baggage with all their furs and goods supplied by the Hudson’s Bay and were already halfway down to Lake Superior. Spite of being only “an ignorant old Frenchman,” François had played a crafty game. By June 18, Cocking was back at York.

But the Company did not content itself with occasional expeditions inland. Henceforth “patroons of the woods,” as they were called, were engaged to live inland with the Indians and collect furs. Fifty-one men were regularly kept at Cumberland House, and a bonus of £20 a year regularly paid to the patroons. Whenever a Frenchman could be bribedto come over to the Hudson’s Bay traders, he was engaged at £100 a year. Bonuses above salaries amounted to £200 a year for the factors, to £40 for the traders, to £80 for traveling servants. The Company now had a staff of five hundred white men on the field and ten times as many Indians. In 1785, Robert Longmore is engaged to explore inland up Churchill River as far as Athabasca, where, in 1799, Malcolm Ross is permanently placed as chief trader at £80 a year. In 1795, Joseph Howse is sent inland from York to explore the Rockies, where he gives his name to a pass, and “it is resolved that forts shall be erected in this country too.” John Davidson explores the entire coast of Labrador on the east; and on the west of Hudson Bay Charles Duncan reports finally and, as far as the Company is concerned, forever—there is no navigable Northwest Passage. In all, the Company has spent £100,000 seeking that mythical passage, which is now written off as total loss. Up at Marble Island, the sea still takes toll of the brave, and James Mouat, the whaler, is buried in 1773, beside Captain Knight. At this stage too, I am sorry to say, 12,000 gallons of brandy are yearly sent into the country.

It was in 1779 thatThe King Georgeship beat about the whole summer in the ice without entering York and was compelled to unload its cargo atChurchill, for which Captain Fowler was suspended and lost his gratuity of £100.

Such strenuous efforts brought big rewards in beaver, seventy, and eighty, and ninety thousand a year to London, but the expenses of competition had increased so enormously that dividends had fallen from 10 to 5 per cent. I suppose it was to impress the native mind with the idea of pomp, but about this time I find the Company furnished all its officers with “brass-barreled pistols, swords with inlaid handles, laced suits and cocked hats.” A more perfect example of the English mind’s inability to grasp American conditions could not be found than an entry in the expense book of 1784 when the Company buys “150 tracts onthe Country Clergyman’s Advice to Parishioners” for distribution among North American Indians, who could not read any language let alone English.

It was no longer a policy of drift but drive, and in the midst of this came the shock of the French war. All hands were afield from Churchill but thirty-nine white servants one sleepy afternoon on August 8, 1782, and Governor Hearne was busy trading with some Indians whom Matonabbee had brought down, when the astounding apparition appeared of a fleet at sea. No appointed signals were displayed by the incoming ships—they werenotCompany ships,and they anchored five miles from the fort to sound. Churchill had not heard of war between France and England. No alarm was felt. The fort had been forty years in building and was one of the strongest in America, constructed of stone with forty great guns and an outer battery to prevent approach. Probably intending to send out a boat the next morning, Hearne went comfortably to bed. At three in the morning, which was as light as day, somebody noticed that four hundred armed men had landed not far from the fort and were marching in regular military order for the gates. Too late, a reveille sounded and bells rang to arms. Hearne dashed out with two men and met the invaders halfway. Then he learned that the fleet was part of the French navy and the four hundred invaders regular marines under the great officer—La Perouse. Resistance was impossible now. The guns of the fort were not even manned. The garrison was too small to permit one man to a gun. At six in the morning, the British flag was lowered and a white tablecloth of surrender run up on the pole. Hearne and the officers were taken on board prisoners of war. Then the rough soldiery ran riot. Furs, stores, documents—all were plundered, and a second day spent blowing up the fortifications. Buildings were burned but the French were unable to do serious damage tothe walls. Matonabbee the great chief looked on in horror. He had thought his English friends invincible, and now he saw his creed of brute strength turned upon them and upon himself. No longer he smiled contemptuously at the horror. It was one thing to glory in the survival of the strong—another to be the under dog. Matonabbee drew away outside the walls and killed himself. Old Norton’s widows and children were scattered. On one the hardships fell with peculiar harshness. His daughter Marie he had always nurtured as a white girl. She fled in terror of her life from the brutal soldiery and perished of starvation outside the walls.

Hearne has been blamed for two things in this surrender, for not making some show of resistance and for not sending scouts overland south to warn York. For thirty-nine men to have fought four hundred would have invited extermination, and Hearne did not know that the invaders were enemies till he himself was captured and so could not send word to York. What he might have done was earlier in the game. If he had sent out a pilot to guide the ships into Churchill Harbor, it might have led the enemy to wreck among reefs and sand-bars.

On the third day, the three French men-of-war set sail for York, leaving Churchill in flames. Outward bound, one of the Company ships was sightedcoming into Churchill. The French gave chase till seven in the evening, but the English captain led off through such shoal water the French desisted with a single chance volley in the direction of the fleeing fur ship.

On August 20, the Company ship lying at York observed a strange fleet some twenty miles off shore landing men on Nelson River behind York, which faced Hayes River. From plans taken at Churchill, La Perouse had learned that York was weakest to the rear. There were in the fort at that time sixty English and twelve Indians with some twenty-five cannon and twelve swivel guns on the galleries. There was a supply of fresh water inside the fort with thirty head of cattle; but a panic prevailed. All the guns were overset to prevent the French using them, and the English ship scudded for sea at nightfall.

The French meanwhile had marched across the land behind York and now presented themselves at the gates. The governor, Humphry Martin, welcomed them with a white flag in his hand. Umfreville, who gives the account of the surrender, was among the captured. His disgust knew no bounds. “The enemy’s ships lay at least twenty miles from the factory in a boisterous sea,” he writes, “and could not co-operate with the troops on shore. The troops had no supplies. Cold, hunger and fatiguewere hourly working in our favor. The factory was not in want of a single thing to withstand siege. The people showed no fear but the reverse. Yet the English governor surrendered without firing a gun.”

The French did not attempt to occupy the forts, which they had captured, but retired with the officers as prisoners, and with the plunder. By October the Company had received letters from the prison at Dinan Castle, France, asking for the ransom of the men. By May, the ransomed men were in London, and by June back at their posts on the bay.

Notes to Chapter XIX.—As stated elsewhere, Cocking classified the Blackfeet Confederacy as Waterfall Indians, composed of Powestic Athinuewuck, Mithco Athinuewuck, (Blood); Koskiton Wathesitock (Blackfeet); Pegonow (Piegan); Sassewuck (Sarcee). Cocking’s Journal is in the Hudson’s Bay Company House, London, and in the Canadian Archives, Ottawa.The account of Hearne’s Voyages will be found in “Pathfinders of the West,” or in the accounts by himself, (1) the report submitted to the H. B. C., (2) his published journals in French and English, of which I used the French edition of 1799, which is later and fuller than either his report to the H. B. C. or the English book.I find the beaver receipts of this period as follows:A. F. (Albany Fort)21,454M. R. (Moose)8,860E. M. (East Main)7,626YF. & SF. (York & Severn)37,861C. R. (Churchill)9,400Churchill and York, of course, included the inland trade.In 1777, the minutes record the dismissal of Thomas Kelsey for ill behavior at P. of Wales (Churchill); the last of Henry Kelsey’s line.In 1779, December, the warehouse of Lime Street was burned and all the records without which this history could not have been written—narrowly escaped destruction.In 1797, communication was opened by way of London with the Russian fur traders of the west coast. In this year, too, 95,000 beaver was the total.The sums paid to ransom the officer, ran all the way from £6,000 to £4,000, so that it is no wonder, though receipts were large, there were no dividends this year.I find in the minutes of 1777, Samuel Hearne orders £20 yearly toSarah La Petite, from which one may guess that Samuel had personal reasons for giving such a black picture of Moses Norton.In 1780, Andrew Graham, whose journals give a great picture of this period, asks that his Indian boy be sent home.In 1782, the following names, famous in Manitoba history, came into the lists of the officers of the Company: Clouston, Ballantine, Linklater, Spencer, Sutherland, Kipling, Ross, Isbister, Umfreville.It was in 1787 that the fearful ravages of smallpox reduced the Indian population. This year of plague deserves a chapter by itself, but space forbids. No “black death” of Europe ever worked more terrible woe than the contagion brought back from the Missouri by wandering Assiniboines.The account of the siege of Richmond by the Eskimos is taken from Pott’s report to the Company. A copy of this theWinnipeg Free Pressrecently published as a letter. The description of Richmond is from Captain Coates’ account. Strange that this Richmond should have gone back to the state of desolation in which Coates found it. It was Coates who named all the places of this region.Nearly every great mineral discovery of America was preceded by the predictions of the fur trader. It will be interesting to watch if Hearne’s copper mine is ever re-discovered.The story of Ross and Tomson and Farrant, I found first in the minutes of H. B. C. House and then in Umfreville’s account of life at York.I have throughout referred to Prince of Wales Fort as Churchill, as the constant changing of names confuses the reader.From the records it is impossible to tell whether the post Whale River was Little Whale, or Great Whale. Judging from the fact that the journey was performed by dog-sled in a night, to Richmond, it must have been the nearer post.I have not referred to the mistake in latitude made by Hearne in his journey North, for which so many critics censure him. It would be interesting to know how many men would have been in a condition to take any observation at all after a week’s sleepless marching and the horrors of the massacre.Hearne’s picture will be found in “Pathfinders of the West.”

The account of Hearne’s Voyages will be found in “Pathfinders of the West,” or in the accounts by himself, (1) the report submitted to the H. B. C., (2) his published journals in French and English, of which I used the French edition of 1799, which is later and fuller than either his report to the H. B. C. or the English book.

I find the beaver receipts of this period as follows:

Churchill and York, of course, included the inland trade.

In 1777, the minutes record the dismissal of Thomas Kelsey for ill behavior at P. of Wales (Churchill); the last of Henry Kelsey’s line.

In 1779, December, the warehouse of Lime Street was burned and all the records without which this history could not have been written—narrowly escaped destruction.

In 1797, communication was opened by way of London with the Russian fur traders of the west coast. In this year, too, 95,000 beaver was the total.

The sums paid to ransom the officer, ran all the way from £6,000 to £4,000, so that it is no wonder, though receipts were large, there were no dividends this year.

I find in the minutes of 1777, Samuel Hearne orders £20 yearly toSarah La Petite, from which one may guess that Samuel had personal reasons for giving such a black picture of Moses Norton.

In 1780, Andrew Graham, whose journals give a great picture of this period, asks that his Indian boy be sent home.

In 1782, the following names, famous in Manitoba history, came into the lists of the officers of the Company: Clouston, Ballantine, Linklater, Spencer, Sutherland, Kipling, Ross, Isbister, Umfreville.

It was in 1787 that the fearful ravages of smallpox reduced the Indian population. This year of plague deserves a chapter by itself, but space forbids. No “black death” of Europe ever worked more terrible woe than the contagion brought back from the Missouri by wandering Assiniboines.

The account of the siege of Richmond by the Eskimos is taken from Pott’s report to the Company. A copy of this theWinnipeg Free Pressrecently published as a letter. The description of Richmond is from Captain Coates’ account. Strange that this Richmond should have gone back to the state of desolation in which Coates found it. It was Coates who named all the places of this region.

Nearly every great mineral discovery of America was preceded by the predictions of the fur trader. It will be interesting to watch if Hearne’s copper mine is ever re-discovered.

The story of Ross and Tomson and Farrant, I found first in the minutes of H. B. C. House and then in Umfreville’s account of life at York.

I have throughout referred to Prince of Wales Fort as Churchill, as the constant changing of names confuses the reader.

From the records it is impossible to tell whether the post Whale River was Little Whale, or Great Whale. Judging from the fact that the journey was performed by dog-sled in a night, to Richmond, it must have been the nearer post.

I have not referred to the mistake in latitude made by Hearne in his journey North, for which so many critics censure him. It would be interesting to know how many men would have been in a condition to take any observation at all after a week’s sleepless marching and the horrors of the massacre.

Hearne’s picture will be found in “Pathfinders of the West.”

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