CHAPTER XXIII

1780-1810

“THE COMING OF THE PEDLARS” CONTINUED—THIRTY YEARS OF EXPLORATION—THE ADVANCE UP THE SASKATCHEWAN TO BOW RIVER AND HOWSE PASS—THE BUILDING OF EDMONTON—HOW MACKENZIE CROSSED TO THE PACIFIC.

Whilefifty or a hundred men yearly ascended Red River as far as Grand Forks, and the Assiniboine as far as Qu’ Appelle, the main forces of the Nor’Westers—the great army of wood-rovers and plain rangers and swelling, blustering bullies and crafty old wolves of the North, and quiet-spoken wintering partners of iron will, who said little and worked like demons—were destined for the valley of the Saskatchewan that led to the Rockies.

Like a great artery with branches south leading over the height of land to the Missouri and branches north giving canoe passage over the height of land to the Arctic, the Saskatchewan flowed for twelve hundred miles through the fur traders’ stamping ground, freighted with the argosies of a thousandcanoes. From the time that the ice broke up in May, canoes were going and coming; canoes with blankets hoisted on a tent pole for sail; canoes of birch bark and cedar dugouts; canoes made of dried buffalo skin stitched and oiled round willow withes the shape of a tub, and propelled across stream by lapping the hand over the side of the frail gun’els. Indians squatted flat in the bottom of the canoes, dipping paddles in short stroke with an ease born of life-long practice. White men sat erect on the thwarts with the long, vigorous paddle-sweep of the English oarsman and shot up and down the swift-flowing waters like birds on wing. The boats of the English traders from Hudson Bay were ponderously clumsy, almost as large as the Mackinaws, which the Company still uses, with a tree or rail plied as rudder to half-punt, half-scull; rows of oarsmen down each side, who stood to the oar where the current was stiff, and a big mast pole for sails when there was wind, for the tracking rope when it was necessary to pull against rapids. Where rapids were too turbulent for tracking, these boats were trundled ashore and rolled across logs. Little wonder the Nor’Westers with their light birch canoes built narrow for speed, light enough to be carried over the longest portage by two men, outraced with a whoop the Hudson’s Bay boats whenever they encountered each other on theSaskatchewan! Did the rival crews camp for the night together, French bullies would challenge the Orkneymen of the Hudson’s Bay to come out and fight. The defeated side must treat the conquerors or suffer a ducking.

Chippewyan and Mackenzie River as drawn in Mackenzie’s Voyages, 1789.Clickherefor larger map

Crossing the north end of Lake Winnipeg, canoes bound inland passed Horse Island and ascended the Saskatchewan. Only one interruption broke navigation for one thousand miles—Grand Rapids at the entrance of the river, three miles of which could be tracked, three must be portaged—in all a trail of about nine miles on the north shore where the English had laid a corduroy road of log rollers. The ruins of old Fort Bourbon and Basquia or Pas, where Hendry had seen the French in ’54, were first passed. Then boats came to the metropolis of the Saskatchewan—the gateway port of the great Up Country—Cumberland House on Sturgeon Lake. Here, Hearne had built the post for Hudson’s Bay, and Frobisher the fort for the Nor’Westers. Here, boats could go on up the Saskatchewan, or strike northwest through a chain of lakes past Portage de Traite and Isle a la Crosse to Athabasca and MacKenzie River. Fishing never failed, and when the fur traders went down to headquarters, their families remained at Cumberland House laying up a store of dried fish for the winter. Beyond CumberlandHouse came those forts famous in Northwest annals, Lower Fort des Prairies, and the old French Nipawi, and Fort a la Corne, and Pitt, and Fort George, and Vermilion, and Fort Saskatchewan and Upper Fort des Prairies or Augustus—many of which have crumbled to ruin, others merged into modern cities like Augustus into Edmonton. On the south branch of the Saskatchewan and between the two rivers were more forts—oases in a wilderness of savagery—Old Chesterfield House where Red Deer River comes in and Upper Bow Fort within a stone’s throw of the modern summer resort at Banff, where grassed mounds and old arrowheads to-day mark the place of the palisades.

More dangers surrounded the traders of the South Saskatchewan than in any part of the Up Country. The Blackfeet were hostile to the white men. With food in abundance from the buffalo hunts, they had no need of white traders and resented the coming of men who traded firearms to their enemies. There was, beside, constant danger of raiders from the Missouri—Snakes and Crows and Minnetaries. Hudson’s Bay and Nor’Westers built their forts close together for defence in South Saskatchewan, but that did not save them.

At Upper Bow Fort in Banff Valley, in 1796, Missouri raiders surrounded the English post, scaledthe palisades, stabbed all the whites to death except one clerk, who hid under a dust pile in the cellar, pillaged the stores, set fire, then rallied across to the Nor’Westers, but the Nor’Westers had had warning. Jaccot Finlay and the Cree Beau Parlez, met the assailants with a crash of musketry. Then dashing out, they rescued the Hudson’s Bay man, launched their canoes by night and were glad to escape with their lives down the Bow to Old Chesterfield House at Red Deer River.

Two years later, the wintering partners, Hughes and Shaw, with McDonald of Garth, built Fort Augustus or Edmonton. Longmore was chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay at Edmonton, with Bird as leader of the brigades down to York Fort and Howse as “patroon of the woods” west as far as the Rockies. With the Nor’Westers was a high-spirited young fire eater of a clerk—Colin Robertson, who, coming to blows with McDonald of the Crooked Arm, was promptly dismissed and as promptly stepped across to the rival fort and joined the Hudson’s Bay. Around Edmonton camped some three hundred Indians. In the crowded quarters of the courtyards, yearly thronged by the eastern brigades so that each fort housed more than one hundred men, it was impossible to keep all the horses needed for travel. These were hobbled and turned outside the palisades. Itwas easy for the Indians to cut the hobbles, mount a Company horse, and ride free of punishment as the winds. Longmore determined to put a stop to this trick. Once a Cree horse thief was brought in. He was tried by court martial and condemned to death. Gathering together fifteen of his hunters, Longmore plied them with liquor and ordered them to fire simultaneously. The horse thief fell riddled with bullets. It is not surprising that the Indians’ idea of the white man’s justice became confused. If white men shot an Indian for stealing a horse, why should not Indians shoot white men for stealing furs?

From the North Saskatchewan to the South Saskatchewan ran a trail pretty much along the same region as the Edmonton railroad runs to-day. In May the furs of both branches were rafted down the Saskatchewan to the Forks and from the Forks to Cumberland House whence Hudson’s Bay and Nor’Wester brigades separated. In 1804, McDonald of Garth had gone south from Edmonton to raft down the furs of the South Saskatchewan. Hudson’s Bay and Nor’Westers set out together down stream, scouts riding the banks on each side. Half way to the Forks, the Nor’Westers got wind of a band of Assiniboines approaching with furs to trade. This must be kept secret from the Hudson’s Bays.Calling Boucher, his guide, McDonald of Garth, bade the voyageurs camp here for three days to hunt buffalo while he would go off before daybreak to meet the Assiniboines. The day following, the buffalo hunters noticed movements as of riders or a herd on the far horizon. They urged Boucher to lead the brigade farther down the river, but Boucher knew that McDonald was ahead to get the furs of the Assiniboines and it was better to delay the Hudson’s Bay men here with Northwest hunters. All night the tom-tom pounded and the voyageurs danced and the fiddlers played. Toward daybreak during the mist between moonlight and dawn, when the tents were all silent and the voyageurs asleep beneath inverted canoes, Missouri raiders, led by Wolf Chief, stole on the camp. A volley was fired at Boucher’s tent. Every man inside perished. Outside, under cover of canoes, the voyageurs seized their guns and with a peppering shot drove the Indians back. Then they dragged the canoes to water, still keeping under cover of the keel, rolled the boats keel down on the water, tumbled the baggage in helter-skelter and fled abandoning five dead men and the tents. When the raiders carried the booty back to the Missouri they explained to Charles MacKenzie, the Nor’Wester there, that they were sorry they had shot the white traders. It was amistake. When they fired, they thought it was a Cree camp.

From Edmonton was an important trail to Athabasca, ninety miles overland to what is now known as Athabasca Landing on Athabasca River and down stream to Fort Chippewyan on Athabasca Lake. This was the region Peter Pond had found, and when he was expelled for the murder of two men, Alexander MacKenzie came to take his place. Just as the Saskatchewan River was the great artery east and west, so the fur traders of Athabasca now came to a great artery north and south—a river that was to the North what the Mississippi was to the United States. The Athabasca was the south end of this river. The river where it flowed was called the Grand or Big River.

Athabasca was seventy days’ canoe travel from the Nor’Westers’ headquarters on Lake Superior. It was Alexander MacKenzie’s duty to send his hunters out, wait for their furs, then conduct the brigades down to Rainy Lake. Laroux and Cuthbert Grant, the plains ranger, were his under officers. When he came back from Lake Superior in ’88, MacKenzie sent Grant and Laroux down to Slave Lake. Then he settled down to a winter of loneliness and began to dream dreams. Where did Big River run beyond Slave Lake? It was a riverbroader than theSt.Lawrence with ramparts like the Hudson. Dreaming of explorations that would bring him renown, he planned to accompany the hunters next year, but who would take his place to go down with the yearly brigades, and what would the other Northwest partners say to these exploring schemes? He wrote to his cousin Rory to come and take his place. As to objections from the partners, he told them nothing about it.

The first thing Rory MacKenzie does is to move Pond’s old post down stream to a rocky point on the lake, which he calls Chippewyan from the Indians there. This will enable the fort to obtain fish all the year round. May, ’89, Alexander MacKenzie sees his cousin Rory off with the brigades for Lake Superior. Then he outfits his Indian hunters for the year. Norman McLeod and five men are to build more houses in the fort. Laroux’s canoe is loaded for Slave Lake. Then MacKenzie picks out a crew of one German and four Canadians with two wives to sew moccasins and cook. “English Chief” whom Frobisher met down at Portage de Traite years ago, goes as guide, accompanied by two wives and two Indian paddlers. Tuesday, June 2nd, is spent gumming canoes and celebrating farewells. June 3rd, 1789, at nine in the morning, the canoes push out, Mr. McLeod on the shore firing a salutethat sets the echoes ringing over the Lake of the Hills (Athabasca). Twenty-one miles from Chippewyan, the boats enter Slave River on the northwest, where a lucky shot brings down a goose and a couple of ducks. It is seven in the evening when they pitch camp, but this is June of the long daylight. The sun is still shining as they sit down to the luscious meal of wild fowl. The seams of the canoes are gummed and the men “turn in” early, bed being below upturned canoes; for henceforth, MacKenzie tells them, reveille is to sound at 3A. M., canoes to be in the water by four. Peace River, a mile broad at its mouth, is passed next day, and MacKenzie wonders does this river flowing from the mountains lead to the west coast where Captain Cook found the Russians? Slave River flows swifter now. The canoes shoot the rapids, for the water is floodtide, and “English Chief” tells them the Indians of this river are called Slaves because the Crees drove them from the South. Sixty miles good they make this day before camping at half-past seven, the Indian wives sewing moccasins as hard as the men paddle, so hard indeed that when they come to a succession of dangerous rapids next day and land to unload, one canoe is caught in the swirl and carried down with the squaw, who swims ashore little the worse. This is the place—Portage des Noyes—where CuthbertGrant lost five voyageurs going to Slave Lake three years before. June 9th, mid fog and rain and floating ice and clouds of mosquitoes, they glide into the beaver swamps of Slave Lake. Wild fowl are in such flocks, the voyageurs knock geese and ducks enough on the head for dinner. Laroux drops off here at his fort. The men go hunting.

Alexander Mackenzie, who discovered Mackenzie River and was first across the Rockies to the Pacific.

The women pick berries and Alexander MacKenzie climbs a high hill to try and see a way out of this foggy swamp of a lake stretching north in two horns two hundred miles from east to west. There was ice ahead and there was fog ahead, and it was quite plain “English Chief” did not know the way. MacKenzie followed the direction of the drifting ice. Dog Rib Indians here vow there is no passage through the ice, and the cold rains slush down in torrents. It is not dark longer than four hours, but the nights are so cold the lake is edged with ice a quarter of an inch thick. MacKenzie secures a Red Knife Indian as guide and pushes on through the flag-grown swamps, now edging the ice fields, now in such rough water men must bail to keep the canoes afloat, now trying to escape from the lake east, only to be driven back by the ice, west; old “English Chief” threatening to cut the Red Knife’s throat if he fails them. Three weeks have they been fog-bound and ice-bound and lost on Slave Lake, but they find their way out bythe west channel at last, a strong current, a stiff wind and blankets up for sail. July 1st, they pass the mouth of a very large river, the Liard; July 5th, a very large camp of Dog Rib Indians, who warn them “old age will come before” MacKenzie “reaches the sea” and that the wildest monsters guard Big River. MacKenzie obtains a Dog Rib for a guide, but the Dog Rib has no relish for his part, and to keep him from running away as they sleep at night, MacKenzie takes care to lie on the edge of the filthy fellow’s vermin-infested coat. A greenish hue of the sea comes on the water as they pass Great Bear Lake to the right, but the guide has become so terrified he must now be bodily held in the canoe. The banks of the river rise to lofty ramparts of white rock. Signs of the North grow more frequent. Trees have dwindled in size to little sticks. The birds and hares shot are all whitish-gray with fur pads or down on their feet. On July 8th, the guide escapes, but a Hare Indian comes along, who, by signs, says it is only ten days to the sea. Presently, the river becomes muddy and breaks into many channels. Provisions are almost gone, and MacKenzie promises his men if he does not find the sea within a week, he will turn back. On the 11th of July, the sun did not set, and around deserted camp fires were found pieces of whalebone.MacKenzie’s hopes mounted. Only the Eskimos use whalebone for tent poles. Footprints, too, were seen in the sand, and a rare beauty of a black fox—with a pelt that was a hunter’s fortune—scurried along the sands into hiding. The Hare Indian guide began talking of “a large lake” and “an enormous fish” which the Eskimo hunted with spears. “Lake?” Had not MacKenzie promised his men it was to be the sea? The voyageurs were discouraged. They did not think of the big “fish” being a whale, or the riffle in the muddy channels the ocean tide, not though the water slopped into the tents under the baggage and “the large lake” appeared covered with ice. Then at three o’clock in the morning of July 14th, the ice began floundering in a boisterous way on calm waters. There was no mistaking. The floundering ice was a whale and thiswasthe North Sea, first reached overland by Hearne of the Hudson’s Bay, and now found by Alexander MacKenzie.

The story of MacKenzie’s voyages is told elsewhere. He was welcomed back to Chippewyan by Norman McLeod on October the 12th at 3P. M., and spent the winter there with his cousin, Rory. Hurrying to Lake Superior with his report next summer, Alexander MacKenzie suffered profound disappointment. He was received coldly. The truthis, the old guard of the original Nor’Westers—Simon McTavish and the Frobishers—were jealous of the men, who had come in as partners from the Little Company. They had no mind to see honors captured by a young fellow like MacKenzie, who had only two shares in the Company, or $8000 worth of stock, compared to their own six shares or $24,000, and found bitter fault with the returns of furs from Athabasca, and this hostility lasted till McTavish’s death in 1804. MacKenzie came back to pass a depressing winter (’90-’91) at Chippewyan when he dispatched hunters down the newly discovered river, which he ironically called “River Disappointment.” But events were occurring that spurred his thoughts. Down at the meeting of the partners he had heard how Astor was gathering the American furs west of the Great Lakes; how the Russians were gathering an equally rich harvest on the Pacific Coast. Down among the Hare Indians of MacKenzie River, he had heard of white traders on the West coast. If a boat pushed up Peace River from Athabaska Lake, could it portage across to that west coast? The question stuck and rankled in MacKenzie’s mind. “Be sure to question the Indians about Peace River,” he ordered all his winter hunters. Then came the Hudson’s Bay men to Athabasca: Turner, the astronomer, and Howse,who had been to the mountains. If the Nor’Westers were to be on the Pacific Coast first, they must bestir themselves. MacKenzie quietly asked leave of absence in the winter of ’91-’92, and went home to study in England sufficient to enable him to take more accurate astronomic observations. The summer of ’92 found him back on the field appointed to Peace River district.

The Hudson’s Bay men had failed to pass through the country beyond the mountains. Turner and Howse had gone down to Edmonton. Thompson, the surveyor, left the English Company and coming overland to Lake Superior, joined the Nor’Westers. It was still possible for MacKenzie to be first across the mountains.

The fur traders had already advanced up Peace River and half a dozen forts were strung up stream toward the Rockies. By October of ’92, MacKenzie advanced beyond them all to the Forks on the east side and there erected a fort. By May, he had dispatched the eastern brigade. Then picking out a crew of six Frenchmen and two Indians, with Alexander McKay as second in command, McKenzie launched out at seven o’clock on the evening of May 9, 1793, from the Forks of Peace River in a birch canoe of three thousand pounds capacity.

If the voyage to the Arctic had been difficult, itwas child’s play compared to this. As the canoe entered the mountains, the current became boisterously swift. It was necessary to track the boat up stream. The banks of the river grew so precipitous that the men could barely keep foothold to haul the canoe along with a one hundred and eighty-foot rope. MacKenzie led the way cutting steps in the cliff, his men following, stepping from his shoulder to the shaft of his axe and from the axe to the place he had cut, the torrent roaring and re-echoing below through the narrow gorge. Sulphur springs were passed, the out-cropping of coal seams, vistas on the frosted mountains opening to beautiful uplands, where elk and moose roamed. An old Indian had told MacKenzie that when he passed over the mountains, Peace River would divide—one stream, now known as the Finlay, coming from the north; the other fork, now known as the Parsnip, from the south. MacKenzie, the old guide said, should ascend the south; but it was no easy matter passing the mountains. The gorge finally narrowed to sheer walls with a raging maelstrom in place of a river. The canoe had to be portaged over the crest of a peak for nine miles—MacKenzie leading the way chopping a trail, the men following laying the fallen trees like the railing of a stair as an outer guard up the steep ascent. Only three miles a day were made.Clothes and moccasins were cut to shreds by brushwood, and the men were so exhausted they lay down in blanket coats to sleep at four in the afternoon, close to the edge of the upper snow fields. MacKenzie wrote letters, enclosed them in empty kegs, threw the kegs into the raging torrent and so sent back word of his progress to the fort. Constantly, on the Uplands, the men were startled by rocketing echoes like the discharge of a gun, when they would pass the night in alarm, each man sitting with his back to a tree and musket across his knees, but the rocketing echoes—so weird and soul-stirring in the loneliness of a silence that is audible—were from huge rocks splitting off some precipice. Sometimes a boom of thunder would set the mountains rolling. From a far snow field hanging in ponderous cornice over bottomless depths would puff up a thin, white line like a snow cataract, the distant avalanche of which the boom was the echo. Once across the divide, the men passed from the bare snow uplands to the cloud line, where seas of tossing mist blotted out earth, and from cloud line to the Alpine valleys with larch-grown meadows and painters’ flowers knee deep, all the colors of the rainbow. Beside a rill trickling from the ice fields pause would be made for a meal. Then came tree line, the spruce and hemlock forests—gigantic trees, branches interlaced,festooned by a mist-like moss that hung from tree to tree in loops, with the windfall of untold centuries piled criss-cross below higher than a house. The men grumbled. They had not bargained on this kind of voyaging.

Once down on the west side of the Great Divide, there were the Forks. MacKenzie’s instincts told him the north branch looked the better way, but the old guide had said only the south branch would lead to the Great River beyond the mountains, and they turned up Parsnip River through a marsh of beaver meadows, which MacKenzie noted for future trade.

From a photograph by Mathers.The Ramparts of MacKenzie River.

From a photograph by Mathers.

The Ramparts of MacKenzie River.

It was now the 3rd of June. MacKenzie ascended a mountain to look along the forward path. When he came down with McKay and the Indian Cancre, no canoe was to be found. MacKenzie sent broken branches drifting down stream as a signal and fired gunshot after gunshot, but no answer! Had the men deserted with boat and provisions? Genuinely alarmed, MacKenzie ordered McKay and Cancre back down the Parsnip, while he went on up stream. Whichever found the canoe was to fire a gun. For a day without food and in drenching rains, the three tore through the underbrush shouting, seeking, despairing till strength was exhausted and moccasins worn to tatters. Barefoot and soaked, MacKenzie was just lying down for the night when a crashingecho told him McKay had found the deserters. They had waited till he had disappeared up the mountain, then headed the canoe north and drifted down stream. The Indians were openly panic-stricken and wanted to build a raft to float home. The French voyageurs pretended they had been delayed mending the canoe. MacKenzie took no outward notice of the treachery, but henceforth never let the crew out of his own or McKay’s sight.

A week later, Indians were met who told MacKenzie of the Carrier tribes, inlanders, who bartered with the Indians on the sea. One old man drew a birch bark map of how the Parsnip led to a portage overland to another river flowing to the sea. Promising to return in two moons (months), MacKenzie embarked with an Indian for guide. On the evening of June 12th, they entered a little lake, the source of Peace River. A beaten path led over a low ridge to another little lake—the source of the river that flowed to the Pacific. This was Bad River, a branch of the Fraser, though MacKenzie thought it was a branch of the Great River—the Columbia. The little lake soon narrowed to a swift torrent, which swept the canoe along like a chip. MacKenzie wanted to walk along the shore, for some one should go ahead to look out for rapids, but the crew insisted if they were to perish, he must perish with them, andall hands embarked. The consequence was that the canoe was presently caught in a swirl. A rock banged through the bottom tearing away the keel. Round swung the tottering craft to the rush! Another smash, and out went the bow, the canoe flattening like a board, the Indians weeping aloud on top of the baggage, the voyageurs paralyzed with fear, hanging to the gun’els. On swept the wrecked canoe! The foreman frantically grabbed the branch of an overhanging tree. It jerked him bodily ashore and the canoe flat as a flap-jack came to a stop in shallow sands.

There was not much said for some minutes. Bad River won a reputation that it has ever since sustained. All the bullets were lost. Powder and baggage had to be fished up and spread out to dry in the sun. One dazed voyageur walked across the spread-out powder with a pipe between his teeth when a yell of warning that he might blow them all to eternity—brought him to his senses and relieved the terrific tension.

The men were treated to arégale, and then sent to hunt bark for a fresh canoe. There now succeeded such an impenetrable morass blocked by windfall that the voyageurs made only two miles a day. Though MacKenzie and McKay watched their guide by turns at night, he succeeded in escaping,and the white men must risk meeting the inland Carriers without an interpreter. On the 15th of June, Bad River turned westward into the Fraser. Of his parley with the Carriers, there is no space to tell. I have told the story in another volume, but somewhere between what are now known as Quesnel and Alexandria—named after him—it became apparent that the river was leading too far south. Besides, the passage was utterly impassable. MacKenzie headed his canoe back up the western fork of the Fraser—the Blackwater River, and thence on July 4th, leaving the canoe and caching provisions, struck overland and westward. The Pacific was reached on the 22nd of July, 1793, in the vicinity of Bella Coola. By the end of August he was back at the Forks on Peace River, and at once proceeded to Chippewyan on Athabasca Lake, where he passed the winter.

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