FOREWORD
ItHASbecome almost a truism to say that no complete account of the Hudson’s Bay Adventurers has yet been written. I have often wondered if the people who repeated that statement knew what they meant. The empire of the fur trade Adventurers was not confined to Rupert’s Land, as specified by their charter. Lords of the Outer Marches, these gay Gentlemen Adventurers setting sail over the seas of the Unknown, Soldiers of Fortune with a laugh for life or death carving a path through the wilderness—were not to be checked by the mere fiction of limits set by a charter. They followed the rivers of their bay south to the height of land, and looking over it saw the unoccupied territory of the Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi. It was American territory; but what did that matter? Over they marched and took possession in Minnesota and the two Dakotas and Montana. This region was reached by way of Albany River. Then they followed the Saskatchewan up and looked over its height of land. To the north were MacKenzie River and the Yukon; to the west, the Fraser andthe Columbia. By no feat of imagination could the charter be stretched to these regions. Canadian merchants were on the field in MacKenzie River. Russians claimed Alaska. Americans claimed Oregon down as far as the Spanish Settlements; but these things did not matter. The Hudson’s Bay Adventurers went over the barriers of mountains and statecraft, and founding their fur empire of wildwood rovers, took toll of the wilderness in cargoes of precious furs outvaluing all the taxes ever collected by a conqueror. All this was not enough. South of the Columbia was an unknown region the size of half Europe—California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho. The wildwood rovers of the Hudson’s Bay Adventurers swept south in pack-horse brigades of two- and three-hundreds from the Columbia to Monterey. Where Utah railroads now run, their trappers found the trail. Where gold seekers toiled to death across Nevada deserts, Hudson’s Bay trappers had long before marched in dusty caravans sweeping the wilderness of beaver. Where San Francisco stands to-day, the English Adventurers once owned a thousand-acre farm. By a bold stroke of statecraft, they had hoped to buy up Mexico’s bad debts and trade those debts for proprietary rights in California. The story of why they failed is theme for novelist or poet rather than historian. Suffice to say, their Southern Brigades,disguised as Spanish horsemen, often went south as far as Monterey.Yet more!The Hudson’s Bay Adventurers had a station half way across the Pacific in Hawaii.
In all, how large was their fur empire? Larger, by actual measurement, much larger, than Europe. Now what person would risk reputation by saying no complete account had yet been written of all Europe? The thing is so manifestly impossible, it is absurd. Not one complete account, but hundreds of volumes on different episodes will go to the making of such a complete history. So is it of the vast area ruled by the Hudson’s Bay Company. The time will come when each district will demand as separate treatment as a Germany, or a France or an Italy in its history. All that can be attempted in one volume or one series of volumes is the portrayal of a single movement, or a single episode, or a single character. In this account, I have attempted to tell the story of the Company only as adventurer, pathfinder, empire-builder, from Rupert’s Land to California—feudal lord beaten off the field by democracy. Where the empire-builder merges with the colonizer and pioneer, I have stopped in each case. In Manitoba, the passing of the Company was marked by the Riel Rebellion; in British Columbia, by the mad gold stampede; in Oregon, by the terrible Whitmanmassacres; in California, by the fall of Spanish power. All these are dramas in themselves worthy of poet or novelist; but they are not germane to the Adventurers. Therefore, they are not given here. Who takes up the story where I leave off, must hang the narrative on these pegs.
Another intentional omission. From the time the Adventurers wrote off £100,000 loss for search of the North-West Passage, Arctic Exploration has no part in this story. In itself, it is an enthralling story; but to give even the most scrappy reference to it here would necessitate crowding out essential parts of the Adventurers’ record—such as McLoughlin’s transmontane empire, or the account of the South Bound Brigades. Therefore, latter day Arctic work has no mention here. For the same reason, I have been compelled to omit the dramatic story of the early missions. These merit a book to themselves.
Throughout—with the exception of four chapters, I may say altogether—I have relied for the thread of my narrative on the documents in Hudson’s Bay House, London; the Minute Books of some two hundred years, the Letter Books, the Stock Books, the Memorial Books, the Daily Journals kept by chief factors at every post and sent to London from 1670. These documents are in tons. They are notopen to the public. They are unclassified; and in the case of Minute Books are in duplicates, “the Foule Minutes”—as the inscription on the old parchment describes them—being rough, almost unreadable, notes jotted down during proceedings with interlinings and blottings to be copied into the Minute Books marked “Faire Copie.” In some cases, the latter has been lost or destroyed; and only the uncorrected one remains. It is necessary to state this because discrepancies will be found—noted as the story proceeds—which arise from the fact that some volumes of the corrected minutes have been lost. The Minute Books consist variously from one to five hundred pages each.
Beside the documents of Hudson’s Bay House, London, there is a great mass of unpublished, unexploited material bearing on the Company in the Public Records Office, London. I had some thousands of pages of transcripts of these made which throw marvelous side light on the printed records of Radisson; of Iberville; of Parl. Report 1749; of the Coltman Report and Blue Book of 1817-22; and the Americans in Oregon.
In many episodes, the story told here will differ almost unrecognizably from accepted versions and legends of the same era. This is not by accident. Nor is it because I havenotconsulted what one writersarcastically called to my attention as “the secondary authorities”—the words are his, not mine. Nearly all these authorities from earliest to latest days are in my own library and interlined from many readings. Where I have departed from old versions of famous episodes, it has been because records left in the handwriting of the actors themselves compelled me; as in the case of Selkirk’s orders about Red River, Ogden’s discoveries in Nevada and Utah and California, Thompson’s explorations of Idaho, Howse’s explorations in the Rockies, Ogden’s robbery of the Americans, the Americans’ robbery of him.
I regret I have no clue to any Spanish version of why Glen Rae blew out his brains in San Francisco. On this episode, I have relied on the legends current among the old Hudson’s Bay officers and retold so well by Bancroft.
To Mr. C. C. Chipman, commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay Company, to Mr. William Ware, the secretary, and Lord Strathcona-and-Mount-Royal, the Governor—I owe grateful thanks for access to the H. B. C. documents.
On the whole, the record of the Adventurers, is not one to bring the blush of regret to those jealous for the Company’s honor. It is a record of daring and courage and adventuring and pomp—in the bestsense of the words—and of intrigue and statecraft and diplomacy, too, not always in the best sense of the words—which must take its place in the world’s history far above the bloody pageantry of Spanish conqueror in Mexico and Peru. It is the one case where Feudalism played an important and successful rôle in America, only in the end to be driven from the stage by Young Democracy.