CHAPTER XXXIV
1857-1870
THE PASSING OF THE COMPANY
Thetide of American colonization rolling westward to Minnesota, to Dakota, to Oregon, was not without effect on the little isolated settlement of Red River. Oregon had been wrested from the fur trader, not by diplomacy, but by the rough-handed toiler coming in and taking possession. The same thing happened in British Columbia when the miner came. What was Red River—the pioneer of all the Western colonies—doing?
The union of Nor’Wester and Hudson’s Bay had thrown many old employés out of work. These now retired to Red River, where they were granted one hundred acres of land and paid a few shillings an acre for another twenty-eight acres, making up farms of one hundred and twenty-eight acres, all facing the river and running back in long, narrow lots to the highway now known asSt.John’s Road.St.John’s and Kildonan expanded toSt.Paul’s andSt.Andrew’ssettlements northward. Across the river were three sets of settlers—the French Plain Rangers, descendants of the old Nor’Westers, the De Meuron soldiers, and the Swiss. These gradually clustered round the settlement just opposite the Assiniboine, where the Catholic missionaries were building chapel and school, and the place became known asSt.Boniface, after the patron saint of the Germans. In the old buildings of Fort Douglas lived the colony governor distinct from the Company governor, Sir George Simpson, whose habitat was Fort Garry, near the site of old Fort Gibraltar, when he was in the West, and Lachine, at Montreal, when he was in the East.
The colonists continued to hunt buffalo in Minnesota during the winter and to cultivate their farms in the summer; but what to do for a market? Colonists in Oregon could sell their produce to the Spaniards, or the Russians, or the Yankee skippers passing up and down the coast. Colonists in British Columbia found a market with the miners, but to whom could the Red River farmer sell but to the fur company? For his provisions from England, he paid a freight of 33 per cent. ocean rate, 58 per cent. profit to the Company, and another 20 per cent. land rate from Hudson Bay to Red River—a total of over 110 per cent. advance on all purchases. For what he sold to the Company, he received only the lowestprice, and he might on no account sell furs. Furs were the exclusive prerogative of the Company. For his produce, he was credited on the books, but the credit side seldom balanced the debit side; and on the difference the Red River settler was charged 5 per cent.—not a high debtors’ rate when it is considered that it was levied by a monopoly, that had absolute power over the debtor; and that the modern debtors’ rate is legalized at 6 and 8 percent. It was not the rate charged that discouraged the Red River settler; but the fact that paying an advance of 110 per cent. on all purchases and receiving only the lowest market price for all farm produce—two shillings-six pence for wheat a bushel—he could never hope by any possibility to make his earnings and his spendings balance. Mr. Halkett, a relative of Selkirk’s, came out in 1822, to settle up the affairs of the dead nobleman. The Company generously wrote off all debt, which was accumulated interest, and remitted one-fifth of the principal to all settlers.
Mr. Halkett and Sir George Simpson then talked over plans to create a market for the colonist. These successive plans and their successive failures belong to the history of the colony rather than the history of the Company, and cannot be fully given here.
There was the Buffalo Wool Company of 1822, under Pritchard’s management, which set all thefarmers scouring the plains as buffalo hunters with schemes as roseate as the South Sea Bubble; and like the South Sea Bubble the roseate scheme came to grief. It cost $12.50 a yard to manufacture cloth that sold for only $1.10; and the Hudson’s Bay Company wrote a loss of $12,000 off their books for this experiment.
Alex MacDonell, a bottle-loving Scotchman, who had acted as governor of the colony after Semple’s death, and who became notorious as “the grasshopper governor” because his régime caused the colonists as great grief as the grasshopper plague—now gave place to Governor Bulger. Over at the Company fort, John Clarke of Athabasca fame, now returned from Montreal with an aristocratic Swiss lady as his bride—acts as Chief Factor under Governor Simpson.
The next essay is to send Laidlaw down to Prairie du Chien on the Mississippi to buy a stock of seed wheat to be rafted up the Mississippi across a portage and down the Red River. He buys two hundred and fifty bushels at $2.40 a bushel, but what with rafting and incidentals before it reaches the colonist, it has cost the Hudson’s Bay Company £1,040. Next, an experimental farm must be tried to teach these new colonists how to farm in the new country. The same Mr. Laidlaw with the samegrand ideas is put in charge of the Hayfield Farm. It is launched with the style of a baronial estate—fine houses, fine stables, a multitude of servants, a liberal tap in the wine cellar; and a total loss to the Hudson’s Bay Company of £2,000. There follow experiments of driving sheep to Red River all the way from Missouri, and of a Wool Company that ends as the Buffalo Company had, and of flax growing, the flax rotting in the fields for lack of a purchaser. What with disastrous experiments and a grasshopper plague and a flood that floats the houses of half the population down the ice-jammed current of the raging Red, the De Meurons and Swiss become discouraged. It was noticed during the flood that the De Meurons had an unusual quantity of hides and beef to sell; and that the settlers had extraordinary difficulty finding their scattered herds. What little reputation the De Meurons had, they now lost; and many of them with their Swiss neighbors deserted Red River for the new settlements of Minnesota. From ranging the plains with the buffalo hunters of Pembina, the Swiss came on south to Fort Snelling, near modernSt.Paul, and so formed the nucleus of the first settlements in Minnesota. It has been charged that the Hudson’s Bay Company never meant any of these experiments to succeed; that it designed them so they would fail and proveto the world the country was unfit for settlement. Such a charge is far-fetched with just enough truth to give the falsity semblance. The Company were not farmers. They were traders, and it is not surprising that fur men’s experiments at farming should be a failure; but that the Hudson’s Bay Company deliberately went to work to throw away sums of money ranging from $5,000 to $17,000 will hardly be credited with those who know the inner working of an organization whose economy was so strict it saved nails when it could use wooden pegs.
Interior of Fort Garry or Winnipeg in 1870. The figure standing with arm extended a little to the left of the flag is Donald Smith, now Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, then but newly come from the wilds of Labrador and commissioned by the Canadian Government to try and pacify the Half-breed Rebels led by Riel.
Interior of Fort Garry or Winnipeg in 1870. The figure standing with arm extended a little to the left of the flag is Donald Smith, now Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, then but newly come from the wilds of Labrador and commissioned by the Canadian Government to try and pacify the Half-breed Rebels led by Riel.
American herdsmen as an experiment had driven up herds of cattle to sell to the Red River colonists. This was the beginning of trade withSt.Paul. Henceforward, what produce Red River people could not sell to the Hudson’s Bay Company, was sent toSt.Paul. Then theSt.Paul traders paid higher prices than the Hudson’s Bay Company. Twice a year the long lines of Red River ox carts, like Eastern caravans, creaked over the looping prairie trail of Red River southward toSt.Paul with buffalo hides and farm products. These carts were famous in their day. They were built entirely of wood, hub, spokes, rim and tire of wheel, pegs even taking the place of nails. Hence, if a cart broke down on the way, it could be mended by recourse to the nearest clump of brushwood. The Sioux were at this timethe greatest danger to the cart brigades, and the settlers always traveled together for protection; but the Indians wished to stay on good terms with the Hudson’s Bay Company, and had the settlers carry an H. B. C. flag as a signal of friendship with the fur traders. Within a few years, twelve hundred Red River carts rumbled and creaked their way toSt.Paul in June and September. Simpson had issued Hudson’s Bay Company notes of £1, 5 shillings and 1 shilling, to avoid the account system, and these notes were always redeemable at any fur post for Company goods, but inSt.Paul, the settlers for the first time began using currency that was coin.
Early in the thirties, possibly owing to the dangers from the Sioux, Governor Simpson ordered the building of the stone forts—Upper Fort Garry as a stronghold for the Company, Lower Fort Garry nearSt.Andrew’s Rapids twenty miles north, as a residence for himself and trading post for the lake Indians. These were the last stone forts built by the fur trader in America. Of Upper Fort Garry there remains to-day only the old gray stone gate, to be seen at the south end of Main Street in Winnipeg. Lower Fort Garry yet stands as Simpson had it built—the last relic of feudalism in America—high massive stone walls with stores and residence in the court yard.
Other operations Simpson pushed for the Company.McLean is sent in ’37 to explore the interior of Labrador. John Clarke is dispatched to establish forts down MacKenzie River almost to the Arctic. Bell goes overland, in 1846, to the Yukon. Murray, later of Pembina, builds Fort Yukon, and Campbell between 1840 and 1848 explores both the Pelly and the Yukon, building Fort Selkirk.
The explorations that had begun when Radisson came to Hudson Bay in his canoe from Lake Superior, were now completed by the Company’s boats going down the MacKenzie to the Arctic and down the Yukon to Bering Sea. How big was the empire won from savagery by fur trader? Within a few thousand miles of the same size as Europe. Spain won a Mexico and a Peru from savagery; but her soldiers’ cruelty outdid the worst horrors of Indian warfare, steeped every mile of the forward march with the blood of the innocent natives, and reduced those natives to a state of slavery that was a hell upon earth. The United States won an empire from savagery, but she did it by an ever-shifting frontier, that was invariably known from Tennessee to Oregon, as “the Bloody Ground.” Behind that shifting frontier was the American pioneer with his sharp-shooter. In front of that frontier was the Indian with his tomahawk. Between them was the Bloody Ground. In the sixteen-hundreds, that BloodyGround was west of the Alleghanies in Ohio and Tennessee and Kentucky. In the seventeen-hundreds, it had shifted forward to the Mississippi. In the eighteen-hundreds, it was on the plains and in the mountains and in Oregon. Always, the forward step of white man, the backward step of red man—had meant a battle, bloodshed; now the colonists wiped out by the Sioux in Minnesota; or the missionaries massacred by the Cayuse in Oregon; or the Indians shot down and fleeing to the caves of the mountains like hunted animals.
How many massacres marked the forward march of the Hudson’s Bay Company from Atlantic to Pacific? Not one. The only massacre, that of Seven Oaks, was a fight of fur trader against fur trader. The raids such as Hearne saw on the Coppermine were raids of tribe on tribe, not white man on Indian, nor Indian on white man. “Smug old lady,” enemies designated the Hudson’s Bay Company. “Oppressor, monopoly, intriguing aristocrats,” the early settlers of Oregon called her. Grant all the sins of omission common to smug, conservative old ladies! Grant all the sins of commission—greed, secrecy, craft, subterfuge—common the world over to monopolies!Of these things and more was the Hudson’s Bay Company guilty in its long despotic reign of two hundred years. But set over against its sins,this other fact, a record which no other organization in the world may boast—the bloodless conquest of an empire from savagery!
Apart from Selkirk’s friends, the Hudson’s Bay Company had never been favorable to the idea of colonizing Red River. Now that the colonists had opened connections with American traders ofSt.Paul, it became evident that the Hudson’s Bay must relinquish sovereignty over Red River Colony, or buy out Selkirk’s interests and own the colony, lock, stock and barrel. In 1835, the heirs of Lord Selkirk sold back to the Hudson’s Bay Company the vast grant of Red River for some £84,000. The sum seems large, but I doubt if it covered a tenth of what Selkirk had spent, for it will be recalled, though he intended in the first placeto sellthe land, he ended by giving it to the settlers scot free. To-day, the sum for which Selkirk’s heirs sold back Red River, would hardly buy a corner lot on Main Street, Winnipeg. Selkirk’s heirs retained their shares in Hudson’s Bay stock, which ultimately paid them back many times over what Selkirk had lost.
Why did the Company buy back Red River? Behold the sequence! Settlers are crowding into Minnesota. The settlers of Red River are beginning to ask for a form of government. They want torule themselves as the Americans do south of the boundary. Good! The Company will take care there is no independent government such as was set up in Oregon and ended by ousting the fur trader. The Company will give the settlers a form of government. The Council of Assiniboia is organized. President of the Council is Sir George Simpson, governor of the Company. Vice-president is Alex Christie, governor of the colony; and the other thirteen members are old Hudson’s Bay officers. The government of Assiniboia is nothing more or less than a Company oligarchy; but that serves the Hudson’s Bay better than an independent government, or a government friendly to the American traders. But deeper and more practical reason lies beneath this move. Selkirk’s colony was not to interfere with the fur trade. Before the Red River carts set out forSt.Paul it is customary for the Hudson’s Bay officers to search the cargoes. More! They search the settlers’ houses, poking long sticks up the deep set chimney places for hidden furs; and sometimes the chimney casts out cached furs, which are confiscated. Old French Nor’Westers begin to ask themselves—is this a free country? The Company responds by burning down the shanties of two hunters on Lake Manitoba in 1826, who had dared to trade furs from the Indians. These furs, the two Frenchmen nodoubt meant to sell toSt.Paul traders who paid just four times higher than the Hudson’s Bay. Altogether, it is safer for the Company to buy out Selkirk’s colony themselves and organize laws and police to enforce the laws—especially the supremest law—against illicit fur trading.
First test of the new government comes in 1836, when oneSt.Dennis is sentenced to be flogged for theft. A huge De Meuron is to wield the lash, but this spectacle of jury law in a land that has been ruled by paternalism for two hundred years, ruled by despot’s strong right arm—is something so repugnant to the Plain Rangers, they stone the executioner and chase him till he jumps into a well. In 1844 is issued proclamation that all business letters sent through the Company must be left open for perusal, and that land will be deeded to settlers only on condition of forfeiture if illicit trade in furs be discovered. In fact, as that intercourse with the American traders of the Mississippi increases, it is as difficult for the Company to stop illicit fur trading as for customs officers to stop smuggling.
That provisional government in Oregon had caught the Company napping. Not so shall it be in Red River. If the despot must have a standing army to enforce his laws, an army he shall have. The experience in Oregon furnishes a good excuse.The Company asks and the British Government sends out the Sixth Royal Regiment of five hundred men under Colonel Crofton. Now laws shall be enforced and provisional governments kept loyal, and when Colonel Crofton leaves, there comes in 1848, Colonel Caldwell with one hundred old pensioners, who may act as an army if need be, but settle down as colonists and impart to Red River somewhat of the gayety and pomp and pleasure seeking, leisurely good fellowship of English garrison life. Year after year for twenty years, crops have been bounteous. Flocks have multiplied. Granaries are bursting with fullness of stores. Though there is no market, there is plenty in the land. Though there is little coin current of the realm, there is no want; and the people stuck off here at the back of beyond take time to enjoy life. Thatched shanties have given place to big, spacious, comfortable houses; dog sleighs to gay carioles with horses decked in ribbons. Horse racing is the passion and the pastime. Schools and embryo colleges and churches have been established by the missionaries of the different denominations, whose pioneer labors are a book in themselves. It is a happy primitive life, with neither wealth nor poverty, of almostArcadiansimplicity, and cloudless but for that shadow—illicit trade, monopoly. Could the life but have lasted, Idoubt if American history could show its parallel for quiet, care-free, happy-go-lucky, thoughtless-of-the-morrow contentment. The French ofAcadia, perhaps somewhat resembled Red River colony, but we have grown to view Acadia through Longfellow’s eyes. Beneath the calm surface there was international intrigue. Military life gave a dash of color to Red River that Longfellow’s Acadians never possessed; but beneath the calm of Red River, too, was intrigue.
Rough Map of North America, showing Areas explored by Fur Trades, (1) Alaska by Russians, (2) Canada and U. S. by H. B. Co. & North-Western from 1670 to 1846.Clickherefor larger map
Rough Map of North America, showing Areas explored by Fur Trades, (1) Alaska by Russians, (2) Canada and U. S. by H. B. Co. & North-Western from 1670 to 1846.
Resentment against search for furs grew to anger. The explosion came over a poor French Plain Ranger, William Sayer, and three friends, arrested for accepting furs from Indians in May, 1849. Judge Thom, the Company’s recorder, was to preside in court. Thom was noted for hatred for the French in his old journalistic days in Montreal. The arrest suddenly became a social question—the French Plain Rangers of the old Nor’Westers against the English Company, with the Scotch settlers looking on only too glad of a test case against the Company. Louis Riel, an old miller of the Seine nearSt.Boniface, father of the Riel to become notorious later, harangued the Plain Rangers and French settlers like a French revolutionist discoursing freedom. The day of the trial, May 17th, Plain Rangers were seen riding from all directions to the Fort Garry Court House. At 10A. M.they had stacked four hundred guns against the outer wall and entered the court in a body. Not till 1P. M.did the court dare to call for the prisoner, William Sayer. As he walked to the bar of justice, the Plain Rangers took up their guns and followed him in. Boldly, Sayer pleaded guilty to the charge of trading furs. It was to be a test case, but test cases are the one thing on earth the Hudson’s Bay Company avoided. The excuse was instantly unearthed or invented that a man connected with the Hudson’s Bay Company had given Sayer permission; perhaps, verbal license to trade. So the case was compromised—a verdict of guilty, but the prisoner honorably discharged by the court. The Plain Rangers took no heed of legal quibbles. To them, the trial meant that henceforth trade was free. With howls of jubilation, they dashed from the court carrying Sayer and shouting, “Vive la liberté—commerce is free—trade is free”; and spent the night discharging volleys of triumph and celebrating victory.
Isbister, the young lawyer, forwards to the Secretary of State for the Colonies petition after petition against the Company’s monopoly. The settlers, who now number five thousand, demanded liberty of commerce and British laws. The petitions are ignored. Isbister vows they are shelved through theintrigue of the Hudson’s Bay Company in London. Then five hundred settlers petition the Legislature of Canada. The Toronto Board of Trade takes the matter up in 1857, and Canadian surveyors are sent west to open roads to Red River. “It is plain,” aver the various petitions and memorials of 1857-59, “that Red River settlement is being driven to one of two destinies. Either she must be permitted to join the other Canadian colonies, or she will be absorbed by a provisional American government such as captured Oregon.” Sir George Simpson, prince of tacticians, dies. Both the British Government and the Hudson’s Bay Company are at sea. There is no denying what happened to Oregon when the Company held on too long. They drove Oregon into Congress. May not the same thing happen in Red River—in which case the Company’s compensation will benil. Then—there is untold history here—a story that must be carried on where I leave off and which will probably never be fully told till the leading actors in it have passed away. There are ugly rumors of a big fund among the Minnesota traders, as much as a million dollars, to be used for secret service money to swing Red River Settlement into the American Union. Was it a Fenian fund? Who held the fund? Who set the scheme going?
The Hudson’s Bay Company knows nothing. It only fears. The British Government knows nothing; except that in such a way did it lose Oregon; and the United States is now buying Alaska from Russia. With its policy of matchless foresight, the Hudson’s Bay Company realizes it is wiser to retire early with the laurels and rewards than to retreat too late stripped. The question of renewing the license on Vancouver Island is on the carpet. The Hudson’s Bay Company welcomes a Parliamentary Enquiry into every branch of its operations. “We would be glad to get rid of the enormous burden of governing these territories,if it can be done equitably as to our possessory rights,” the Company informs the astonished Parliamentary Committee.
How stand those possessory rights under the terms of union in 1821? It will be remembered the charter rights were not then tested. They were merged with the Northwest Company rights, and without any test a license of exclusive trade granted for twenty-one years. That license was renewed in 1838 for another twenty-one years. This term is just expiring when the Company declares it would be glad to be rid of its burden, and welcomes a Parliamentary Enquiry. At that inquiry, friends and foes alike testify. Old officers like Ellice give evidence. So do Sir George Simpson, and Blanchard of VancouverIsland, and Isbister as representative of the Red River colonists, and Chief Justice Draper as representative of Canada. It is brought out the Company rules under three distinct licenses:
(1) Over Rupert’s Land or the territory of the bay proper by right of its first charter.
(2) Over Vancouver Island by special grant of 1849.
(3) Over all the Indian Territory between the bay and Vancouver Island by the license of 1821 since renewed.
The Parliamentary committee recommend on July 31, 1857, that Vancouver Island be given up; that just as soon as Canada is ready to take over the government of the Indian Territory this, too, shall be ceded; but that for the present in order to avoid the demoralization of Indians by rival traders, Rupert’s Land be left in the exclusive control of the Hudson’s Bay Company. This is the condition of affairs when unrest arises in Red River.
The committee also bring out the fact that the capital has been increased since the union of 1821 to £500,000. Of the one hundred shares into which this is divided, forty have been set aside for the wintering partners or chief factors and chief traders. These forty shares are again subdivided into eighty-five parts. Two eighty-fifths of the profits equal to$3,000 a year and a retiring fund of $20,000 are the share of a chief factor; one eighty-fifth, the share of a chief trader. This is what is known as “the deed poll.”
Meanwhile, out in Red River, gold seekers bound for Cariboo, prospectors for the bad lands of Montana, settlers for the farms of Minnesota—roll past in a tide. Trade increases in jumps. A steamer runs on Red River connecting by stage forSt.Paul. Among the hosts of new comers to Red River is one Doctor Schultz, who helps to establish the newspaper,Nor’Wester, which paper has the amazing temerity, in 1867, to advocate that in the Council of Assiniboia there should be some representative of the people independent of the Hudson’s Bay Company. A vacancy occurs in the council.The Nor’Westeradvocates that Dr. John Schultz would be an excellent representative to fill that vacancy. A great many of the settlers think so, too; for among other newcomers to the colony is one Thomas Spence, of Portage la Prairie, who is for setting up a provisional government of Manitoba. A government independent of British connection means only one thing—annexation. The settlers want to see Schultz on the Council of Assiniboia to counteract domination by the Hudson’s Bay and to steer away from annexation.Not so the Hudson’s Bay Company. Schultz’s paper has attacked them from the first, and the little store of which he is part proprietor, has been defiant opposition under their very noses. But this council business is too much. They will squelch Schultz, and do it legally, too. In all new countries, the majority of pioneers are at some stage of the game in debt. Against Schultz’s firm stood a debt of a few hundred dollars. Schultz swore he had discharged the debt by paying the money to his partner. Owing to his partner’s absence in England, his evidence could neither be proved nor disproved. The Company did not wait. Judgment was entered against Schultz and the sheriff sent to seize his goods. Moral resistance failing, Schultz resisted somewhat vigorously with the poker. This was misdemeanor with a vengeance—probably the very thing his enemies hoped, for he was quickly overpowered, tied round the arms with ropes, and whisked off in a cariole to prison. But his opponents had not counted on his wife—the future Lady Schultz, life partner of the man who was governor of Manitoba for eight years. That very night the wife of the future Sir John led fifteen men across to the prison, ordered the guides knocked aside, the doors battered open, and her husband liberated. His arrest was not again attempted, and at a later trial for the debt,Schultz was vindicated. His party emerged from the fracas ten times stronger.
Here, then, were three parties all at daggers drawn—the Hudson’s Bay Company standing stiffly for the old order of things and marking time till the negotiations in England gave some cue for a new policy; the colonists asking for a representative government, which meant union with Canada, waiting till negotiations for Confederation gave them some cue; the independents, furtive, almost nameless, working in the dark, hand in hand with that million dollar fund, watching for their opportunity. And there was a fourth party more inflammable than these—the descendants of the old Nor’Westers—the Plain Rangers, French Metis all of them, led by Louis Riel, son of the old miller, wondering restlessly what their part was to be in the reorganization. Were their lands to be taken away by these surveyors coming from Canada? Were they to be whistled by the independents under the Stars and Stripes? They and their fathers had found this land and explored it and ranged its prairies from time immemorial. Who had better right than the French Half-breeds to this country. Compared to them, the Scotch settlers were as newcomers. Of them, the other three parties were taking small thought. The Metis rallied to Louis Riel’sstandard to protect their rights, whichever of the other three parties came uppermost in the struggle. Poor children of the wilds, of a free wilderness life forever past! Their leader was unworthy, and their stand a vain breakwater against the inward rolling tide of events resistless as destiny!
The Company had told the Parliamentary Committee of ’57 that it would willingly remit the burden of governing its enormous territory if adequate returns were made for its possessory rights. Without going into the question of these rights, a syndicate of capitalists, called the International Financial Association, jumped at the chance to buy out the old Hudson’s Bay. Chief negotiator was Edward Watkins, who was planning telegraph and railroad schemes for British America. “About what would the price be?” he had casually asked Ellice, now an old man—the same Ellice who had negotiated the union of Hudson’s Bay and Nor’Westers in ’21. “Oh, perhaps a million-and-a-half,” ruminated Ellice; but Berens, whose family had held Hudson’s Bay stock for generations, was of a different mind. “What?” he roared in a manner the quintessence of insult, “sequester our lands? Let settlers go in on our hunting ground?” But the cooler heads proved the wiser heads. It was “take what you can getnow, or risk losing all later! Whether you will or not, charter or no charter, settlers are coming and can’t be stopped. Canadian politicians are talking of your charter as an outrage, asspoliation! Their surveyors are already on the ground! Judge for yourselves whether it is worth while to risk the repetition of Oregon; or attempt resisting settlement.”
Members of the International Financial Association met Berens, Colville—representative of the Selkirk interests—and two other Hudson’s Bay directors in the dark old office of the Board Room, Fenchurch Street, on the 1st of February, in 1862. Watkins describes the room as dingy with faded green cover on the long table and worn dust-grimed chairs. Berens continued to storm like a fishwife; but it was probably part of the game. On June 1, 1863, the International Association bought out the Hudson’s Bay Company for £1,500,000. The Company that had begun in Radisson’s day, two hundred years before, with a capital of $50,000 (£10,000) now sold to the syndicate for $7,500,000, and the stock was resold to new shareholders in a new Hudson’s Bay Company at a still larger capital. The question was what to do about the forty shares belonging to the chief factors and traders. When word of the sale came to them in Canada, they naturally felt as the minority shareholder always feels—that theyhad been sold out without any compensation, and the indignation in the service was universal. But this injustice was avoided by another unexpected move in the game.
While financiers were dickering for Hudson’s Bay stock, Canadian politicians brought about confederation of all the Canadian colonies in 1867, and a clause had been introduced in the British North America Act that it should “be lawful to admit Rupert’s Land and the Northwest Territories into the Union.” The Hon. William McDougall had introduced resolutions in the Canadian House praying that Rupert’s Land be united in the Confederation. With this end in view, Sir George Cartier and Mr. McDougall proceeded to England to negotiate with the Company. In October, 1869, the new Hudson’s Bay Company relinquished all charter and exclusive rights to the Dominion. The Dominion in turn paid over to the Company £300,000; granted it one-twentieth of the arable land in its territory, and ceded to it rights to the land on which its forts were built. From the £300,000, paid by Canada, £157,055 were set aside to buy out the rights of the wintering partners. How valuable one-twentieth of the arable land was to prove, the Company, itself, did not realize till recent days, and what wealth it gained from the cession of land where its forts stood, may beguessed from the fact that at Fort Garry (Winnipeg) this land comprised five hundred acres of what are now city lots at metropolitan values. Where its forts stood, it had surely won its laurels, for the ground was literally baptized with the blood of its early traders; just as the tax-free sites of rich religious orders in Quebec were long ago won by the blood of Catholic martyrs of whom newcomers knew nothing. Whether the rest of the bargain—the payment of £300,000 for charter rights, which Canadians repudiated, and the cession of one-twentieth of the country’s arable land—were as good a bargain for Canada as for the Hudson’s Bay Company, I must leave to be discussed by the writer who takes up the story where I leave off. Certainly both sides have made tremendous gains from the bargain.
A year later, Red River Settlement came into Confederation under the name which Spence had given the country of his Provisional Government—Manitoba, “the country of the people of the lakes.”
So passed the Company as an empire builder. In Oregon, its passing was marked by the terrible conflagration of Indian massacres. In British Columbia, the old order gave place to the new in a wild gold stampede. In Manitoba, the monopoly had not been surrendered before Riel put a match to theinflammable passions of his wild Plain Rangers, that set the country in a flame.
As for the Company, it had played its part, and its day was done. On that part, I have no verdict. Its history is its verdict, and it is only fair to judge it by the codes of feudalism rather than democracy. Judging by the codes of feudalism, there are few baronial or royal houses of two hundred years’ reign with as little to blush for or hide away among family skeletons as the “Gentlemen Adventurers Trading to Hudson’s Bay.” Trickery? To be sure; but then, it was an old order fighting a new, an old fencer trying to parry the fancy thrusts of an enemy with a new style of sword play. The old order was Feudalism. The new was Democracy.
The Company’s ships still ply the waters of the North. Its canoe brigades still bring in the furs to the far fur posts. Its mid-winter dog trains still set the bells tinkling over the lonely wastes of Northern snows and it still sells as much fur at its great annual sales as in its palmiest days. But the Hudson’s Bay Company is no longer a gay Adventurer setting sail over the seas of the Unknown. It is no longer a Soldier of Fortune, with laugh for life or death carving a path through the wilderness. It is now but a commercial organization with methods similar to other money-getting companies. Free traders over-runits hunting grounds. Rivals as powerful as itself are now on the field fighting the battle of competition according to modern methods of business rivalry. Three-quarters of its old hunting fields are already carved up in the checker-board squares of new provinces and fenced farm patches. The glories of the days of its empire as Adventurer, as Soldier of Fortune, as Pathfinder, as Fighter, as Gamester of the Wilderness—have gone forever to that mellow Golden Age of the Heroic Past.
Notes to Chapter XXXIV.—The authorities for this chapter are H. B. C. Archives; the Parl. Report of 1857; Canadian Hansard, and local data gathered on the spot when I lived in Winnipeg. Dr. George Bryce is the only writer who has ever attempted to tell the true inward story of the first Riel Rebellion. I do not refer to his hints of “priestly plots.” These had best been given in full or left unsaid, but I do refer to his reference to the danger of Red River going as Oregon had gone—over to a Provisional Government, which would have meant war; and I cannot sufficiently regret that this story is not given in full. In another generation, there will be no one living who can tell that story; and yet one can understand why it may have to remain untold as long as the leading actors are alive.I do not touch on the Riel Rebellion in this chapter, as it belongs to the history of the colony rather than the company; and if I gave it, I should also have to give the Whitman Massacres of Oregon and the Gold Stampede of B. C., which I do not consider inside the scope of the history of the company as empire builder. Much of thrilling interest in the lives of the colonists I have been compelled to omit for the same reason; for instance, the Sioux massacres in Minnesota, the adventures of the buffalo hunters, such heroism as that of Hesse, the flood in Red River, the splendid work of the different missionaries as they came, the comical half garrison life of the old pensioners, including the terrible suicide of an officer at Fort Douglas over a love affair. Whoever tells the story where I have left off will have these pegs to hang his chapters on; and I envy him the pleasure of his work, whether the story be swung along as arecord of the pioneer, or of Lord Strathcona —the Frontenac of the West—or of the great Western missionaries.Two or three discrepancies bother me in this chapter, which the wise may worry over, and the innocent leave alone. In Parl. Inquiry, 1857, Ellice gives the united capital of H. B. C. and N. W. C. in 1821, as £400,000. As I made transcripts of the minutes in H. B. C. House, London, I made it £250,000. In any case, it was increased to five before the Int. Fin. Association took hold.Another point, the new company paid £1,500,000 for the stock. The stock sold to the public totalled a larger capital—much larger. I do not give this total, though I have it, because at a subsequent period the company retired part of its capital by returning it to the shareholders, if you like to put it that way; or paying a dividend which practically amounted to a retirement. That comes so late in the Company’s history, I feel it has no place here. Therefore, to name the former large capital would probably only mislead the reader.It was in the days of Alex MacDonell, the grasshopper governor, that the traders used to turn a whiskey bottle upside down filled with sand, neck to neck on another whiskey bottle, making an hour-glass, and drink till all the sand ran from the upper bottle, when if the thirst was not quenched, both bottles were reversed to begin the revels over again. If tradition is to be trusted, the same hour bottle was much to blame for the failures of the experimental farms.The widow of John Clarke, who came a bride to the West in 1822, and lived in the palmy Arcadian days of Red River, is still living in Montreal, aged 105, and has just at this date (1907) had her daughter issue a little booklet of the most charmingly quaint reminiscences I have enjoyed in many a day.Ross and Hargrave and Gunn are the great authorities for the days between 1820 and 1870, with other special papers to be found in the Manitoba Hist. Soc. Series.In several places I use dollar terms. Down to 1870 all H. B. C. calculations were in £, s., d.One there is who owes the world her reminiscences of this fascinating era; and that is Lady Schultz, but the people who have lived adventure are not keen for the limelight of telling it, and I fear this story will not be given to the world.It may be interesting to admirers of that campaigner of the Conservative Party, Sir John MacDonald, to know that the terms “spoliation and outrage” as applied to the H. B. C. charters originated in a speech of Sir John’s.The adventures of the Swiss, who moved from Red River down to Fort Snelling, at St. Paul, will be found very fully given in the Minnesota Hist. Society’s Collections and in the Macalester College Collections ofSt.Paul. Mrs. Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve’s Memoirs of Fort Snelling tell the tragic tale of the Tully murder in 1823, when the little boy, John, of Red River, was brought into Port Snelling half scalped, and Andrew was adopted into her own family.
Notes to Chapter XXXIV.—The authorities for this chapter are H. B. C. Archives; the Parl. Report of 1857; Canadian Hansard, and local data gathered on the spot when I lived in Winnipeg. Dr. George Bryce is the only writer who has ever attempted to tell the true inward story of the first Riel Rebellion. I do not refer to his hints of “priestly plots.” These had best been given in full or left unsaid, but I do refer to his reference to the danger of Red River going as Oregon had gone—over to a Provisional Government, which would have meant war; and I cannot sufficiently regret that this story is not given in full. In another generation, there will be no one living who can tell that story; and yet one can understand why it may have to remain untold as long as the leading actors are alive.
I do not touch on the Riel Rebellion in this chapter, as it belongs to the history of the colony rather than the company; and if I gave it, I should also have to give the Whitman Massacres of Oregon and the Gold Stampede of B. C., which I do not consider inside the scope of the history of the company as empire builder. Much of thrilling interest in the lives of the colonists I have been compelled to omit for the same reason; for instance, the Sioux massacres in Minnesota, the adventures of the buffalo hunters, such heroism as that of Hesse, the flood in Red River, the splendid work of the different missionaries as they came, the comical half garrison life of the old pensioners, including the terrible suicide of an officer at Fort Douglas over a love affair. Whoever tells the story where I have left off will have these pegs to hang his chapters on; and I envy him the pleasure of his work, whether the story be swung along as arecord of the pioneer, or of Lord Strathcona —the Frontenac of the West—or of the great Western missionaries.
Two or three discrepancies bother me in this chapter, which the wise may worry over, and the innocent leave alone. In Parl. Inquiry, 1857, Ellice gives the united capital of H. B. C. and N. W. C. in 1821, as £400,000. As I made transcripts of the minutes in H. B. C. House, London, I made it £250,000. In any case, it was increased to five before the Int. Fin. Association took hold.
Another point, the new company paid £1,500,000 for the stock. The stock sold to the public totalled a larger capital—much larger. I do not give this total, though I have it, because at a subsequent period the company retired part of its capital by returning it to the shareholders, if you like to put it that way; or paying a dividend which practically amounted to a retirement. That comes so late in the Company’s history, I feel it has no place here. Therefore, to name the former large capital would probably only mislead the reader.
It was in the days of Alex MacDonell, the grasshopper governor, that the traders used to turn a whiskey bottle upside down filled with sand, neck to neck on another whiskey bottle, making an hour-glass, and drink till all the sand ran from the upper bottle, when if the thirst was not quenched, both bottles were reversed to begin the revels over again. If tradition is to be trusted, the same hour bottle was much to blame for the failures of the experimental farms.
The widow of John Clarke, who came a bride to the West in 1822, and lived in the palmy Arcadian days of Red River, is still living in Montreal, aged 105, and has just at this date (1907) had her daughter issue a little booklet of the most charmingly quaint reminiscences I have enjoyed in many a day.
Ross and Hargrave and Gunn are the great authorities for the days between 1820 and 1870, with other special papers to be found in the Manitoba Hist. Soc. Series.
In several places I use dollar terms. Down to 1870 all H. B. C. calculations were in £, s., d.
One there is who owes the world her reminiscences of this fascinating era; and that is Lady Schultz, but the people who have lived adventure are not keen for the limelight of telling it, and I fear this story will not be given to the world.
It may be interesting to admirers of that campaigner of the Conservative Party, Sir John MacDonald, to know that the terms “spoliation and outrage” as applied to the H. B. C. charters originated in a speech of Sir John’s.
The adventures of the Swiss, who moved from Red River down to Fort Snelling, at St. Paul, will be found very fully given in the Minnesota Hist. Society’s Collections and in the Macalester College Collections ofSt.Paul. Mrs. Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve’s Memoirs of Fort Snelling tell the tragic tale of the Tully murder in 1823, when the little boy, John, of Red River, was brought into Port Snelling half scalped, and Andrew was adopted into her own family.
THE END
Set up, electrotyped, printed and bound atTHE OUTING PRESSDeposit, New York
Transcriber’s NotesPage 135—changed choses tochoosesPage 244—changed cypher tocipherPage 253—changed labryinth tolabyrinthPage 283—changed permited topermittedPage 321—changed persue topursue
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