Canada: the Empire of the North Part 28

When Sir Alexander MacKenzie, the discoverer, went home to retire on an estate in Scotland, he found the young n.o.bleman and philanthropist, Lord Selkirk, keenly interested in accounts of vast, new, unpeopled lands, which lay beyond the Great Lakes. A change in the system of farming, which dispossessed small farmers to turn the tenantries into sheep runs, had caused terrible poverty in Scotland at this period. Here in Scotland were people starving for want of land. There in America were lands idle for lack of people. Selkirk had already sent out some colonists to the Lake St. Clair region of Ontario and to Prince Edward Island, but what he heard from MacKenzie turned his attention to the new empire of the prairie. Then in Montreal, where he had been dined and wined by the Northwest Company's "Beaver Club," he had heard still more of this vast new land, of its wealth of furs, of its untimbered fields, where man had but to put in the plowshare to sow his crop. The one great obstruction to settlement there would be the claims of the Hudson's Bay Company to exclusive monopoly of the country; but as Selkirk listened to the descriptions of the Red River Valley given by Colin Robertson, who had been dismissed by the Nor'westers, he thought he saw a way of overcoming all difficulties which the fur traders could put in the way of settlement.

Owing to compet.i.tion Hudson's Bay stock had fallen from two hundred and fifty to fifty pounds sterling a share. On returning to Scotland Lord Selkirk had begun buying up Hudson's Bay stock in the market, along with Sir Alexander MacKenzie; but when MacKenzie learned that Selkirk's object was colonization first, profits second, he broke in violent anger from the partnership in speculation, and besought William MacGillivray to go on {381} the open market and buy against Selkirk to defeat the plans for settlement. What with shares owned by his wife's family of Colville-Wedderburns, and those he had himself purchased, Selkirk now owned a controlling interest in the Hudson's Bay Company.

Early in 1811 the Company deeds to Lord Selkirk the country of Red River Valley, exceeding in area the British Isles and extending, through the ignorance of its donors, far south into American territory. Colin Robertson, the former Nor'wester, who first interested Selkirk in Red River, has meanwhile been gathering together a party of colonists. Miles MacDonell, retired from the Glengarry Regiment, has been appointed by Selkirk governor of the new colony.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SELKIRK]

What of the Nor'westers while these projects went forward? Writes MacGillivray from London, where he has been stirring up enmity to Selkirk's project, "_Selkirk must be driven to abandon his project at any cost, for his colony would prove utterly destructive of our fur trade_."

How he purposed doing this will be seen. Writes Selkirk to the governor of his colony, Miles MacDonell: "_The Northwest Company must be compelled to quit my lands. If they refuse, they must be treated as poachers_."

Selkirk believed that the Hudson's Bay Company charter to the Great Northwest was legal and valid. He believed that the vast territory granted to him was legally his own as much as his parks in Scotland. He believed that he possessed the same right to expel intruders on this territory as to drive poachers from his own Scotch parks. It was the spirit of feudalism. As for the Nor'westers, let us look at their rights. They disputed that the charter of the Hudson's Bay Company applied beyond the bounds {382} of Hudson Bay. Even if it did so apply, they pointed out that by the terms of the charter it applied only to lands not possessed by any other Christian power; and who would dispute that French fur traders and Nor'westers, as their successors, had ascended the streams of the interior long before the Hudson's Bay men?

It was the spirit of democracy. It needed no prophet to foresee when these two sets of claims came together there would be a violent clash.

It is evening in the little harbor of Stornoway, off the Hebrides, north of Scotland, July 25, 1811. Waning midsummer has begun to shorten the long days; and lying at anchor in the twilight a few yards offsh.o.r.e are the three Hudson's Bay Company boats, outward bound. For a week the quiet little fishing hamlet has been in a turmoil, for Governor Miles MacDonell and Colin Robertson have ordered the Selkirk settlers here--129 of them, 70 farmers, 59 clerks--to join the Hudson's Bay boats as they swing out westward on their far cruise to the north, and the atmosphere has literally been on fire with vexations created by spies of the Northwest Company. In the first place, as the settlers wait for the ships coming up from London, trouble makers pa.s.s from group to group scattering a miserable little sheet called "The Highlander," warning "the deluded people" against going to "a polar land of Indian hostiles."

Besides, dark hints are uttered that the settlers are not wanted for colonists at all, but for armed battalions to fight the Nor'westers for the Hudson's Bay Company, in proof whereof the prophets of evil point ominously to the cannon and munitions of war on board the three old fur boats. Then there is too much whisky afloat in Stornoway that week.

Settlers are taken ash.o.r.e and farewelled and farewelled and farewelled till unable to find their way down to the rowboats, and then they are easily frightened into abandoning the risky venture altogether. On the settlers who have come as clerks to the Company Governor MacDonell can keep a strong hand, for they have been paid their wages in advance and are seized if they attempt to desert. Then the excise officer here is a friend of the Nor'westers, and he creates {383} endless trouble rowing round and round the boats, bawling . . . bawling out . . . to know "if all who are embarking are going of their own free will," till the ship's hands, looking over decks, become so exasperated they heave a cannon ball over rails, which goes splash through the bottom of the harbor officer's rowboat and sends him cursing ash.o.r.e to dispatch a challenge for a duel to Governor MacDonell. MacDonell sees plainly that if he is to have any colonists left, he must sail at once. Anchors up and sails out at eleven that night, the ships glide from sh.o.r.e so unexpectedly that one faint-heart, desperately resolved on flight, has to jump overboard and swim ash.o.r.e, while two other settlers, who have been lingering over farewells, must be rowed across harbor by Colin Robertson to catch the departing ships. Then Robertson is back on the wharf trumpeting a last cheer through his funneled hands. The Highlanders on decks lean over the vessel railings waving their bonnets. The Glasgow and Dublin lads indentured as clerks give a last huzza, and the Selkirk settlers are off for their Promised Land.

As long ago Cartier's first colonists to the St. Lawrence had their mettle tested by tempestuous weather and pioneer hardships, so now the first colonists to the Great Northwest must meet the challenge that fate throws down to all who leave the beaten path. Though the season was late, the weather was extraordinarily stormy. Sixty-one days the pa.s.sage lasted, the tubby old fur ships lying water-logged, rolling to the angry sea. MacDonell was furious that colonists had been risked on such unseaworthy craft, but those old fur-ship captains, with fifty years ice battling to their credit, probably knew their business better than MacDonell. The fur ships had not been built for speed and comfort, but for cargoes and safety, and when storms came they simply lowered sails, turned tails to the wind, and rolled till the gale had pa.s.sed, to the prolonged woe of the Highland landsmen, who for the first time suffered seasick pangs. Then, when Governor MacDonell attempted drills to pa.s.s the time, he made the discovery that seditious talk had gone the rounds of the deck. "The Hudson's Bay had no right to this {384} country."

"The Nor'westers owned that country." "The Hudson's Bay could n't compel any man to drill and fight." Selkirk could not give clear deed to their "lands," and much more to the same effect, all of which proved that some Nor'wester agent in disguise had been busy on board.

September 24, amid falling snow and biting frost, the ships anch.o.r.ed at Five Fathom Hole off York Factory, Port Nelson.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NELSON AND HAYES RIVERS (From Robson)]

The Selkirk settlers had been sixty-one days on board, and they were still a year away from their Promised Land. Champlain's colonists of Acadia and Quebec had come to anchorage on a land set like a jewel amid silver waters and green hills, but the Selkirk settlers have as yet seen only rocks barren of verdure as a billiard ball, vales amidst the domed hills of Hudson Straits, dank with muskeg, and silent as the very realms of death itself, but for the flacker of wild fowl, the roaring of the floundering {385} walrus herds, or the lonely tinkling of mountain streams running from the ice fields to the mossy valleys bordering the northern sea. It needed a robust hope, or the blind faith of an almost religious zeal, to penetrate the future and see beyond these sterile sh.o.r.es the Promised Land, where homes were to be built, and plenty to abound. If pioneer struggles leave a something in the blood of the race that makes for national strength and permanency, the difference between the home finding of the West and the home finding of the East is worth noting.

There were, of course, no preparations for the colonists at York Fort, for the factor could not know they were coming, or anything of Selkirk's plans, till the annual ships arrived. On the chance of finding better hunting farther from the fort, MacDonell withdrew his people from Hayes River, north across the marsh to a sheltered bank of the River Nelson.

Winter had set in early. A whooping blizzard met the pilgrims as they marched along an Indian trail through the brushwood. There is a legend of Miles MacDonell, the governor, becoming benighted between York Fort and Nelson River, and losing his way in the storm. According to the story, he beat about the brushwood for twenty-four hours before he regained his bearings. Rude huts of rough timber and thatch roof with logs extemporized for berths and benches were knocked up for wintering quarters on Nelson River, and the next nine months were pa.s.sed hunting deer for store of provisions, and building flatboats to ascend the interior. All winter a mutinous spirit was at work among the young clerks, which MacDonell, no doubt, ascribed to the machinations of Nor'westers; but the chief factor quickly quelled mutiny by cutting off supplies, and all hands were ready to proceed when the fur brigades set out for the interior on the 21st of June, 1812.

Up Hayes River, up the whole length of Winnipeg Lake, then in August the flatboats are ascending the muddy current of Red River, through what is now Manitoba, and for the first time the people see their Promised Land.

High banks fringed with maple and oak line the river at what is now Selkirk. Then the cliffs lower, and through the woods are broken gleams {386} of the rolling prairie intersected by ravines, stretching far as eye can see, where sky and earth meet. From the lateness of the season one can guess that the river was low at the bowlder reach known as St.

Andrew's Rapids, and that while the boats were tracked upstream the people would disembark and walk along the Indian trails of the west bank.

There was no Fort Garry near the rapids, as a few years later.

Buffalo-skin tepees alone broke the endless sweep of russet prairie and sky, clear swimming blue as the purest lake. Then the people are back aboard, laboring hard at the oar now, for they know they are nearing the end of their long pilgrimage. The river banks rise higher. Then they drop gradually to the flats now known as Point Douglas. Another bend in the sinuous red current, looping and curving and circling fantastically through the prairie, and the Selkirk settlers are in full view of the old Cree graveyard,--bodies swathed in skins on scaffolding,--down at the junction of the a.s.siniboine. Hard by they see the towered bastions of the Northwest Company's post, Fort Gibraltar. Somewhere between what are known to-day as Broadway Bridge and Point Douglas, the Selkirk settlers land on the west side. Chief Peguis and his Cree warriors ride wonderingly among the white-faced newcomers, marveling at men who have crossed the Great Waters "to dig gardens and work land." The barracks knocked up hastily is known after Selkirk's family name as Fort Douglas; but the store of deer meat has been exhausted, and the colonists are on the verge of a second winter. They at once join the Plain Rangers, or Bois Brules (Burnt Wood Runners), half-breed descendants of French and Nor'west fur traders, who have become retainers of the Montreal Company.

With them the Selkirk settlers proceed south to Pembina and the Boundary to hunt buffalo. No instructions had yet come to Red River of the Northwest Company's hostility to the colony, and the lonely Scotch clerks of Fort Gibraltar were glad to welcome men who spoke their own Highland tongue. Volumes might be written of this, the colonists' first year in their Promised Land: how the rude Plain Rangers conveyed them to the buffalo hunt in their {387} creaking Red River carts,--carts made entirely of wood, hub, tire, axle, and all, or else on loaned ponies; how when storm came the white settlers were welcomed to the huts and skin tents of the French half-breeds, given food and buffalo blankets; how many a young Highlander came to grief in the wild stampede of his first buffalo hunt; how when the hunters returned to Fort Gibraltar (Winnipeg), on Red River, with store enough of pemmican for all the fur posts of the Nor'westers, many a wild happy winter night was pa.s.sed dancing mad Indian jigs to the piping of the Highland piper and the crazy sc.r.a.ping of some Frenchman's fiddle; how when morning came, in a gray dawn of smoking frost mist, a long line of the colonists could be seen winding along the ice of Red River home to Fort Douglas, Piper Green or Hector McLean leading the way, still prancing and blowing a proud national air; how when spring opened, ten-acre plots were a.s.signed to each settler, close to the fort at what were known as the Colony Buildings, and one hundred-acre farms farther down the river. All this and more are part of the story of the coming of the first colonists to the Great Northwest.

The very autumn that the first settlers had reached Red River in 1812 more colonists had arrived on the boats at {388} Hudson Bay. These did not reach Red River till October of 1812 and the spring of 1813. By 1813, and on till 1817, more colonists yearly came. The story of each year, with its plot and counterplot, I have told elsewhere. Spite of Nor'westers' threats, spite of the fact there would be no market for the colonists when they had succeeded in transforming wilderness prairie into farms, Selkirk's mad dream of empire seemed to be succeeding.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FORT GARRY, RED RIVER SETTLEMENT]

The cardinal mistake in the contest between Hudson's Bay Company and Nor'westers, between feudalism and democracy, was now committed by the governor of the colony, Miles MacDonell. The year 1813 had proved poor for the buffalo hunters. Large numbers of colonists were coming, and provisions were likely to be scarce. Also, note it well, while the War of 1812 did not cut off supplies through Hudson Bay to the English Company, it did threaten access to the West by the Great Lakes, and cut off all supplies by way of Detroit and Lake Huron for the Nor'westers.

Was MacDonell scoring a point against the Nor'westers, when they were at a disadvantage? Who can answer? Selkirk had ordered him to expel the {389} Nor'westers from his lands, and if the violent contest had not begun in this way, it was bound to come in another. What MacDonell did was issue a proclamation in January of 1814, forbidding taking provisions from Selkirk's territory of a.s.siniboia. It practically meant that the Plain Rangers must not hunt buffalo in the limits of modern Manitoba, and must not sell supplies to the Nor'westers. It also meant that all the upper posts of the Nor'westers--the fur posts of Athabasca and British Columbia, which depended on pemmican for food--would be without adequate provisions. The Plain Rangers were enraged beyond words, and doubly outraged when some Hudson's Bay men began seizing buffalo meat at Pembina River, which was beyond the limits of Selkirk's territory. Writes Peter Fidler, one of the Hudson's Bay factors, "_If MacDonell only perseveres, he will starve the Nor westers out_."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FORT DOUGLAS]

One can guess the anger in the annual meeting of the Nor'westers at Fort William in July of 1814. Like generals on field of war they laid out their campaign. Duncan Cameron, a United Empire Loyalist officer of the 1812 War, is to don his red regimentals and proceed to Red River, where his knowledge of the Gaelic tongue may be trusted to win over Selkirk settlers. "_Nothing but the complete downfall of the colony will satisfy some_," wrote one of the fiery Nor'westers to a brother officer. Such was the mood of the Nor'westers when they came back from their annual meeting on Lake Superior to Red River, and MacDonell fanned this mood to dangerous fury by threatening to burn the Nor'westers' forts to the ground unless they moved from Selkirk's territory. For the present Duncan Cameron contents himself with striking up a warm friendship with the Highlanders of the settlement and offering to transport two hundred of them free of cost to Eastern Canada. MacDonell seizes still more provisions from northwest forts. Cameron, the Nor'wester, comes back from the annual meeting of 1815 still more bellicose. He carries the warrant to arrest Governor Miles MacDonell for the seizure of those provisions. MacDonell, safe behind the palisades of Fort Douglas, laughs {390} the warrant to scorn; but it is another matter when the Plain Rangers ride across the prairie from Fort Gibraltar armed, and pour such hot shot into Fort Douglas that the colonists, frenzied with fear, huddle to the fort for shelter. To insure the safety of his colonists, MacDonell surrenders to the Nor'westers and is sent to Eastern Canada for a trial which never takes place. No sooner has Governor MacDonell been expelled than Cuthbert Grant, warden of the Plain Rangers, rides over to the colony and warns the colonists to flee for their lives, from Indians enraged at "these land workers spoiling the hunting fields." What the Indians thought of this defense of their rights is not stated. They were silent and unacting witnesses of the unedifying spectacle of white men ready to fly at each other's throats. It was too late for the colonists to reach Hudson Bay in time for the annual ships of 1815, so the houseless people dispersed amid the forests of Lake Winnipeg, where they could be certain of at least fish for food.

Word of the two hundred settlers having been moved from Red River by the Nor'westers, of MacDonell's forcible expulsion, and of the dispersion of the rest of the colony had, of course, been sent to Selkirk and his agents in both Montreal and London. Swift retaliation is prepared.

Colin Robertson, who speaks French like a Canadian and knows all the Nor'west voyageurs of the St. Lawrence, is sent to gather up two hundred French boatmen under the very noses of the Nor'westers at Montreal. With these Robertson is to invade the far-famed Athabasca, whence come the best furs, the very heart of the Nor'westers' stamping ground. Robert Semple is appointed governor of the colony on Red River, with instructions to resist the aggressions of the Nor'westers even to the point of "_a shock that may be felt from Montreal to Athabasca_."

Selkirk himself comes to Canada to interview the Governor General about military forces to protect his colony.

Robertson, with his two hundred voyageurs for Athabasca, follows the old Ottawa trail of the French explorers, from the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes, and from the Great Lakes to {391} Red River by way of Winnipeg Lake. Whom does he find on the sh.o.r.es of the lake but Selkirk's dispersed colonists! Ordering John Clarke, an old campaigner of Astor's company on the Columbia, to lead the two hundred French voyageurs on up to Athabasca, Colin Robertson rallies the colonists together and leads them back to Red River for the winter of 1815-1816. Feeling sure that he had destroyed Selkirk's scheme root and branch, Cameron has remained at Fort Gibraltar with only a few men, when back to the field comes Robertson, stormy, capable, robust, red-blooded, fearless, breathing vengeance on Selkirk's foes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SKETCH OF THE CITY OF WINNIPEG, SHOWING THE SITES OF THE EARLY FORTS]

By the spring of 1816 the tables have been turned with a vengeance.

Cameron, the Nor'wester, has been seized and sent to Hudson Bay to be expelled from the country. Fort Gibraltar has been pulled down and the timbers used to strengthen Fort Douglas, whose pointed cannon command all pa.s.sage up and down Red River. It was hardly to be supposed that the haughty Nor'westers would submit to expulsion without a blow. From Athabasca, from New Caledonia, from Qu'Appelle . . . they rally their doughtiest fighters under Cuthbert Grant, the {392} half-breed Plain Ranger. From Montreal and Fort William come spurring the leading partners, with one hundred and seventy French-Canadian bullies, and a bra.s.s cannon concealed under oilcloth in a long boat. The object of the Plain Rangers is to meet the up-coming partners with supplies for the year; but is that any reason for the riders who are striking eastward from a.s.siniboine to Red River, decking themselves out in war paint and stripping like savages before battle? The object of the partners is to meet the Plain Rangers on Red River; but is that any reason for bringing a cannon concealed under oilcloth all the way from Lake Superior? Or do men fighting a life-and-death struggle for the thing the world calls success ever acknowledge plain motives within themselves at all? Is it not rather the blind brute instinct of self-protection, forfend what may?

[Ill.u.s.tration: RED RIVER SETTLEMENT, 1816-1820]

"Listen, white men! Beware! Beware!" the Cree chief Peguis warns Governor Semple. What means the spectacle of white brothers, who preach peace, preparing for war over a few beaver pelts? Chief Peguis cannot understand, except this is the way of white men.

{393} And now, unluckily for Governor Semple, he quarrels with his adviser, Colin Robertson. Robertson, from his early training in Northwest ranks, reads the signs, and is for striking a blow before the enemy can strike him. Semple is still talking peace. Robertson leaves Red River in disgust, and departs for Hudson Bay to take ship for England. The Plain Rangers, it may be explained, have uttered the wild threat that if they "can catch Robertson," they will avenge the destruction of Fort Gibraltar "by skinning him alive and feeding him to the dogs." Also it is well known, Nor'westers of Qu'Appelle have muttered angry prophecies about "the ground being drenched with the blood of the colonists."

Still Semple talks peace, which is a good thing in its place; but this is n't the place.

"My Governor! My Governor!" pleads an old hunter of the Hudson's Bay with Semple; "are you not afraid? The half-breeds are gathering to kill you!"

Semple laughs. Pshaw! _He_ has law on _his_ side. Law! What is law?

The old hunter of the lawless wilds does n't know that word. That word does n't come as far west as the _Pays d'en Haut_.

It is sunset of June 18, 1816. Old chief Peguis comes again to the Hudson's Bay fort on Red River.

"Governor of the gard'ners!" he solemnly warns; "governor of the land workers and gard'ners, listen! . . ." Not much does he add, after the fashion of his race. Only this, "_Let me bring my warriors to protect you_!"

Semple laughs at such fears.

It is sunset of June 19. A soft west wind has set the prairie gra.s.s rippling like a green sea between the fort and the sun hanging low at the western sky line. A boy on the lookout above one of the bastion towers of Fort Douglas suddenly shouts, "The half-breeds are coming!"

Semple ascends the tower and looks through a field gla.s.s. There is a line of sixty or seventy hors.e.m.e.n, all armed, not coming to the fort, but moving diagonally across from the a.s.siniboine to the Red towards the colony. And then, north {394} towards the colony, is wildest clamor,--people in ox carts, people on horseback, people on foot, stampeding for the shelter of the fort. And up to this moment absolutely nothing has occurred to create this terror.

"Let twenty men follow me," orders Semple; and he marches out, followed by twenty-seven armed men.

As they wade through the waist-high hay fields they meet the fleeing colonists.

"Keep your back to the river!" shouts one colonist, convoying his family.

"They are painted, Governor! Don't let them surround you."

Semple sends back to the fort for a cannon to be trundled out.

Young Lieutenant Holte's gun goes off by mistake. Semple turns on him with fury and bids him have a care: there is to be no firing.

The half-breeds have turned from their trail and are coming forward at a gallop.

"There 's Grant, the Plain Ranger, Governor! Let me shoot him," pleads one Hudson's Bay man.

"G.o.d have mercy on our souls!" mutters one of the colonists, counting the foe; "but we are all dead men."

All the world knows the rest. At a knoll where grew some trees, a spot now known in Winnipeg on North Main Street as Seven Oaks, Grant, the Ranger, sent a half-breed, Boucher, forward to parley.