CHAPTER XXIV
1780-1810
“THE COMING OF THE PEDLARS” CONTINUED—MACKENZIE AND MCTAVISH QUARREL—THE NOR’WESTERS INVADE HUDSON BAY WATERS AND CHALLENGE THE CHARTER—RUFFIANISM OF NOR’WESTERS—MURDER AND BOYCOTT OF HUDSON’S BAY MEN—UP-TO-DATE COMMERCIALISM AS CONDUCTED IN TERMS OF A CLUB AND WITHOUT LAW.
“THE COMING OF THE PEDLARS” CONTINUED—MACKENZIE AND MCTAVISH QUARREL—THE NOR’WESTERS INVADE HUDSON BAY WATERS AND CHALLENGE THE CHARTER—RUFFIANISM OF NOR’WESTERS—MURDER AND BOYCOTT OF HUDSON’S BAY MEN—UP-TO-DATE COMMERCIALISM AS CONDUCTED IN TERMS OF A CLUB AND WITHOUT LAW.
The nextspring, MacKenzie left the West forever. Again his report of discovery was coldly received by the partners on Lake Superior. The smoldering jealousy between Simon McTavish of the old Nor’Westers and Alexander MacKenzie broke out in flame. MacKenzie seceded from the Nor’Westers and with Pierre de Rocheblave and the Ogilvies of Montreal reorganized the Little Company variously known as “The Potties,” from “Les Petits,” and “the X. Y.’s” from the stamp on their pelts, X. Y., to distinguish them from the N. W. MacKenzie’s Journal was published. He was given a title in recognition of his services to the Empire. Now in possession of anindependent and growing fortune, he bought himself an estate in Scotland where the fame of his journal attracted the attention of another brilliant young Scotchman—Lord Selkirk. The two became acquainted and talked over plans of forming a vast company, that would include not only the X. Y.’s and Nor’Westers, but the Hudson’s Bay and Russian companies. Hudson’s Bay stock had fallen from £250 to £50 a share. With the aim of a union, MacKenzie and Selkirk began buying shares in the Hudson’s Bay, and Selkirk comes on a visit to Canada.
Meanwhile—out in Canada—Simon McTavish, “the Marquis,” was not idle up to the time of his death. The Hudson’s Bay had barred out other traders from Labrador. Good! Simon McTavish accepted the challenge, and from the government of Canada rented the old King’s Domain of Southern Labrador for £1000 a year. The English company had forbidden interlopers on the waters of Hudson Bay. Good! The Nor’Westers accepted that challenge. Duncan McGillivray, a nephew of McTavish, dictates a letter to the ancient English company begging them to sue him for what he is going to do, so that the case may be forever settled in the courts. Then he hires Captain Richards away from the Company and sends him on the shipEddystone, in 1803, straight into Hudson Bay, to establish atrading post at Charlton Island and another at Moose for the Nor’Westers. The Hudson’s Bay Company declines the challenge. They will not sue the Northwest Company and so revive the whole question of their charter; but they sue their old Captain, John Richards, and order Mr. Geddes to hire more men in the Orkneys, and they freeze those interlopers out of the bay by bribing the Indians so that Simon McTavish’s men retire from Charlton and Moose with loss. And the English Adventurers go one farther: they petition Parliament, in 1805, for “authority to deal with crimes committed in the Indian country.”
Simon McTavish dies in 1804. The X. Y.’s and the Nor’Westers unite, and well they do, for clashes are increasing between Hudson’s Bays and Nor’Westers, between English and French, from Lake Superior to the Rockies.
Down at Nipigon in 1800, where Duncan Cameron had attracted the Indians away from Albany, first blood is shed. Young Labau, a Frenchman, whose goods have been advanced by the Nor’Westers, deserts for the Hudson’s Bay. Schultz, the Northwest clerk, pursues and orders the young Frenchman back. Labau offers to pay for the goods, but he will not go back to the Northwest Company. Schultz draws his dagger and stabs the boy to death. Forthis, he is dismissed by the Nor’Westers, but no other punishment follows for the murder.
Albany River at this time was the trail inland from Hudson Bay to the plains, to the Red River and the Missouri and modern Edmonton. The Nor’Westers determined to block this trail. The Northwest partner, Haldane, came to Bad Lake in 1806 with five voyageurs and knocked up quarters for themselves near the Hudson’s Bay cabins. By May, William Corrigal, the Hudson’s Bay man, had four hundred and eighty packs of furs. One night, when all the English were asleep, the Nor’West bullies marched across, broke into the cabins, placed pistols at the head of Corrigal and his men, and plundered the place of furs. Never dreaming that Haldane, the Northwest partner, would countenance open robbery, Corrigal dressed and went across to the Northwest house to complain.
Haldane met the complaint with a loud guffaw. “I have come to this country for furs,” he explained, “and I have found them, and I intend to keep them.”
Red Lake in Minnesota belonged to the same Albany department. Before Corrigal could dispatch the furs to the bay, Haldane’s bullies swooped down and pillaged the cabins there, this time not only of furs, but provisions.
Up at Big Falls near Lake Winnipeg, John Crearand five men had built a fort for the English. One night toward fall a party of Northwest voyageurs, led by Alexander MacDonell, landed and camped. Next morning when all of Crear’s men had gone fishing but two, MacDonell marched to the Hudson’s Bay house, accused Crear of taking furs owed in debt to the Nor’Westers, and on that excuse broke open the warehouse. Plowman, a Hudson’s Bay hunter, sprang to prevent. Quick as flash, MacDonell’s dagger was out. Plowman fell stabbed and the voyageurs had clubbed Crear to earth with the butt ends of their rifles. Furs and provisions were carried off. As if this were not enough and ample proof that the accusation had simply been an excuse to drive the Hudson’s Bay men off the field, MacDonell came back in February of 1807, surrounded Crear’s house with bullies, robbed it of everything and had Crear beaten till he signed a paper declaring he had sold the furs and that he would never again come to the country.
This was no fur trading. It was raiding—such raiding as the Highlanders carried into the Lowlands of Scotland. It was a banditti warfare that was bound to bring its own punishment.
Besides Albany River, the two great river trails inland to the plains from Hudson’s Bay were by Churchill River to Athabasca and by Hayes River toCumberland House on the Saskatchewan. From 1805 J. D. Campbell was the Northwest partner appointed to block the advance inland to this region. John Spencer was at Reindeer Lake for the Hudson’s Bay in 1808. Knowing when the Indians from the Athabasca were due, he had sent William Linklater out to meet them, and Linklater was snowshoeing leisurely homeward drawing the furs on a toboggan, when toward nightfall he suddenly met the Northwest partner and his bullies on the trail. There was the usual pretence that the furs were a debt owed to the Nor’Westers, and the hollowness of that pretence was shown by the fact that before Linklater could answer, a Northwest bully had seized his snowshoes and sent him sprawling. Campbell and the bullies then marched off with the furs. This happened twice at Caribou Lake.
But the worst warfare waged round Isle a la Crosse, the gateway to Athabasca. Peter Fidler went there in 1806 with eighteen men for the Hudson’s Bay. Then came J. D. Campbell, the Nor’Wester, with an army of bullies, forbidding the Indians to enter Fidler’s fort or Fidler and his men to stir beyond a line drawn on the sands. On this line was built a Nor’West sentry box, where the bullies kept guard night and day. For three years, Peter Fidler stuck it out, sending men across the linesecretly at night, directing the Indians by a detour down to the other Hudson’s Bay forts and in a hundred ways circumventing his enemies. Then Campbell’s bullies became bolder. Fidler’s firewood was stolen, his fish nets cut, his canoes hacked to pieces. He was literally starved off the field and compelled to retire in 1809.
Down in Albany, things were going from bad to worse with Corrigal. The contest concentrated at Eagle Lake, half way between Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg just where Wabigoon River intersects with the modern Canadian Pacific Railroad. The English company had strengthened Corrigal with more Orkneymen, and he had a strongly palisaded fort. But the Nor’Westers set the MacDonell clan with their French bullies on his trail.
An Indian had come to the post in September. Corrigal outfitted him with merchandise for the winter’s hunt, and three English servants accompanied the Saulteur down to the shore. Out rushed the Nor’Wester, MacDonell, flourishing his sword accompanied by a bully, Adhemer, raging aloud that the Indian had owed furs to the Nor’Westers and should not be allowed to hunt for the Hudson’s Bay. The two Corrigal brothers and one Tait ran from the post to the rescue. With one sweep of his sword Eneas MacDonell cut Tait’s wrist off and with anotherhack on his neck felled him to the ground. The French bully had aimed a loaded pistol at the Corrigals daring them to take one step forward. John Corrigal dodged into the lake. MacDonell then rushed at the Englishmen like a mad man, cutting off the arm of one, sending a hat flying from another whose head he missed, hacking the shoulder of a third. Unarmed, the Hudson’s Bay men fled for the fort gates. The Nor’Westers pursued. Coming from the house door, John Mowat, a Hudson’s Bay man, drew his pistol and shot Eneas MacDonell dead. Coureurs went flying to Northwest camps for reinforcements. Haldane and McLellan, two partners, came with a rowdy crew and threatened if Mowat were not surrendered they would have the Indians butcher every soul in the fort if it cost a keg of rum for every scalp. Mowat promptly surrendered and declared he would shoot any Nor’ Wester on the same provocation.
For this crime and before the Company in England could be notified, Mowat was carried away in irons. Two servants—McNab and Russell—and one of the Corrigals volunteered to accompany him as witnesses for the defense. For a winter Mowat was imprisoned in the miserable butter vat of a jail at Fort William, and when it was found that every indignity and insult would not drive the three witnessesaway, they were arrested as abettors of the so-called crime. At Mowat’s trial in Montreal, of the four judges who presided, one was notoriously corrupt and two, the fathers of Northwest partners. Of the jury, half the number were Nor’Westers. Naturally, Mowat was pronounced guilty. He was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and branding. When he was discharged penniless, he set out through the United States to take ship for England. It is supposed that he was lost in a storm, or drowned crossing some of the New England rivers.
The rivalry between Hudson’s Bay and Nor’Westers had become lawless outrage. The Company in England is meantime having troubles of its own. The English government desires them in 1807 to state what “the boundaries of Louisiana ought to be” in the impending treaty with the United States, which is to give access for American traders to the country north of Louisiana in return for similar free access for British traders to American territory. The English traders state what the boundaries of Louisiana ought to be, and to the ignorance of the English shareholders do we owe in this case, as in a hundred others, the fifty years’ boundary dispute as to limits from the Lake of the Woods to Oregon.
As for reciprocity of access to each other’s hunting field, the Hudson’s Bay Company opposes it furiously.Access to American territory they already have without the asking and are likely to have for another fifty years, as there is no inhabitant to prevent them, but to grant the Americans access to Hudson’s Bay territory is another matter; so in the treaty of reciprocal favors across each other’s territory, My Lord Holland provides “always the actual settlements of the Hudson’s Bay Company excepted.”
If the Hudson’s Bay Company is to hold its monopoly by virtue of settlements, it must see to the welfare of those settlements, so in June, 1808, the first schoolmasters of the Northwest are sent out at salaries of £30 a year—James Clouston, and Peter Sinclair, and George Geddes. There is no dividend, owing to the embargo of war, and the Company is driven, in 1809, to petition the Lords of Trade for help. They aver there are six hundred families at their settlements, that the yearly outfits cost the Company £40,000; that the sales never exceed £30,000 and this year are only £3,000; they apply for remission of duty on furs and a loan of £60,000 from the imperial treasury. The duty is remitted but the loan is not granted, and My Lord Selkirk becomes, by virtue of having purchased nearly £40,000 of stock, a leading director in the Hudson’s Bay Company. My Lord Selkirk has been out toMontreal. He has been fêted and feasted and dined and wined by the Beaver Club of the Nor’Westers, whom he pumps to a detail about the fur trade. Also he meets John Jacob Astor and learns what he can from him. Also he meets that Northwest clerk who had been dismissed up the Saskatchewan and came over to the Hudson’s Bay Company—Colin Robertson. He brings Colin Robertson back with him to England, and the aforetime Northwest clerk is called on January 3, 1810, to give advice to the Hudson’s Bay directors on the state of the fur trade in Canada.
But to return to that Louisiana Boundary—it is as great a shock to the Nor’Westers as to the Hudson’s Bay. In the first place, as told elsewhere, the boundary treaty of 1798 has compelled them to move headquarters from Grand Portage to Fort William. The Nor’Westers suddenly awaken to the value of Alexander MacKenzie’s voyage to the Pacific. Supposing he had followed that great river on down to the sea, would it have led him where the American, Robert Gray, found the Columbia, and where the explorers, Lewis and Clarke, later coming overland from the Missouri, wintered? It was determined to follow MacKenzie’s explorations up with all speed. It became a race to the Pacific. Which fur tradersshould pre-empt the vast domain first—Hudson’s Bay, Astor’s Americans, or Nor’Westers?
It is barely twenty years since Peter Pond came to Athabasca and Peace River region, but already there are six forts between Athabasca Lake and the Rockies—Vermilion and Encampment Island under the management of the half-breed son of Sir Alexander MacKenzie, then Dunvegan andSt.John’s and Rocky Mountain House managed by the McGillivrays and Archibald Norman McLeod. By 1797, James Finlay had followed MacKenzie’s trail across the Divide, then struck up the north branch of Peace River, now known as Finlay River; but it was not till 1805 that the fur traders, who made flying trips across the mountains, remained to build forts. In 1793, when MacKenzie crossed the mountain, there had joined the Northwest Company as clerk, a lad of nineteen, the son of a ruined loyalist in New York State, whose widow came to live in Cornwall, Ontario. This boy was Simon Fraser. Two years later, in 1795, there had come to the Northwest Company from Hudson Bay that English surveyor, David Thompson, whom the MacKenzies had met in Athabasca working for the Hudson’s Bay traders. David Thompson had been born in 1770 and was educated in the Blue Coat School, London. In 1789 he had come as surveyor to Churchill and York, penetratinginland as far as Athabasca; but Colen, chief factor of York, did not encourage purely scientific explorations. Thompson quit the English service in disgust, coming down to the Nor’Westers on Lake Superior.
These were the two young men—Fraser, son of the New York loyalist; Thompson, the English surveyor—that the Northwest Company appointed in 1805 to explore the wilderness beyond the Rockies.
Northwest TerritoriesClickherefor larger map
Northwest Territories