On Canada's Frontier Part 6

"The Natives are so discouraged in their Trade with the Company that no Peltry is worth the Carriage; and the finest Furs are sold for very little. They gave but a Pound of Gunpowder for 4 Beavers, a Fathom of Tobacco for 7 Beavers, a Pound of Shot for 1, an Ell of coa.r.s.e Cloth for 15, a Blanket for 12, Two Fish-hooks or Three Flints for 1; a Gun for 25, a Pistol for 10, a common Hat with white Lace, 7; an Ax, 4; a Billhook, 1; a Gallon of Brandy, 4; a chequer'd Shirt, 7; all of which are sold at a monstrous Profit, even to 2000 _per Cent_. Notwithstanding this discouragement, he computed that there were brought to the Factory in 1742, in all, 50,000 Beavers and above 9000 Martens.

"The smaller Game, got by Traps or Snares, are generally the Employment of the Women and Children; such as the Martens, Squirrels, Cats, Ermines, &c. The Elks, Stags, Rein-Deer, Bears, Tygers, wild Beeves, Wolves, Foxes, Beavers, Otters, Corcajeu, &c., are the employment of the Men. The _Indians_, when they kill any Game for Food, leave it where they kill it, and send their wives next Day to carry it home. They go home in a direct Line, never missing their way, by observations they make of the Course they take upon their going out. The Trees all bend towards the South, and the Branches on that Side are larger and stronger than on the North Side; as also the Moss upon the Trees. To let their Wives know how to come at the killed Game, they from Place to Place break off Branches and lay them in the Road, pointing them the Way they should go, and sometimes Moss; so that they never miss finding it.

"In Winter, when they go abroad, which they must do in all Weathers, before they dress, they rub themselves all over with Bears Greaze or Oil of Beavers, which does not freeze; and also rub all the Fur of their Beaver Coats, and then put them on; they have also a kind of Boots or Stockings of Beaver's Skin, well oiled, with the Fur inwards; and above them they have an oiled Skin laced about their Feet, which keeps out the Cold, and also Water; and by this means they never freeze, nor suffer anything by Cold. In Summer, also, when they go naked, they rub themselves with these Oils or Grease, and expose themselves to the Sun without being scorched, their Skins always being kept soft and supple by it; nor do any Flies, Bugs, or Musketoes, or any noxious Insect, ever molest them. When they want to get rid of it, they go into the Water, and rub themselves all over with Mud or Clay, and let it dry upon them, and then rub it off; but whenever they are free from the Oil, the Flies and Musketoes immediately attack them, and oblige them again to anoint themselves. They are much afraid of the wild Humble Bee, they going naked in Summer, that they avoid them as much as they can.

They use no Milk from the time they are weaned, and they all hate to taste Cheese, having taken up an Opinion that it is made of Dead Men's Fat. They love Prunes and Raisins, and will give a Beaver-skin for Twelve of them, to carry to their Children; and also for a Trump or Jew's Harp. The Women have all fine Voices, but have never heard any Musical Instrument. They are very fond of all Kinds of Pictures or Prints, giving a Beaver for the least Print; and all Toys are like Jewels to them."

He reported that "the _Indians_ west of Hudson's Bay live an erratic Life, and can have no Benefit by tame Fowl or Cattle. They seldom stay above a Fortnight in a Place, unless they find Plenty of Game. After having built their Hut, they disperse to get Game for their Food, and meet again at Night after having killed enough to maintain them for that Day. When they find Scarcity of Game, they remove a League or Two farther; and thus they traverse through woody Countries and Bogs, scarce missing One Day, Winter or Summer, fair or foul, in the greatest Storms of Snow."

It has been often said that the great Peace River, which rises in British Columbia and flows through a pa.s.s in the Rocky Mountains into the northern plains, was named "the Unchaga," or Peace, "because" (to quote Captain W. F. Butler) "of the stubborn resistance offered by the all-conquering Crees, which induced that warlike tribe to make peace on the banks of the river, and leave at rest the beaver-hunters"--that is, the Beaver tribe--upon the river's banks. There is a sentence in La France's story that intimates a more probable and lasting reason for the name. He says that some Indians in the southern centre of Canada sent frequently to the Indians along some river near the mountains "with presents, to confirm the peace with them." The story is shadowy, of course, and yet La France, in the same narrative, gave other information which proved to be correct, and none which proved ridiculous. We know that there were "all-conquering" Crees, but there were also inferior ones called the Swampies, and there were others of only intermediate valor. As for the Beavers, Captain Butler himself offers other proof of their mettle besides their "stubborn resistance." He says that on one occasion a young Beaver chief shot the dog of another brave in the Beaver camp. A hundred bows were instantly drawn, and ere night eighty of the best men of the tribe lay dead. There was a parley, and it was resolved that the chief who slew the dog should leave the tribe, and take his friends with him. A century later a Beaver Indian, travelling with a white man, heard his own tongue spoken by men among the Blackfeet near our border. They were the Sarcis, descendants of the exiled band of Beavers. They had become the must reckless and valorous members of the warlike Blackfeet confederacy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COUREUR DU BOIS]

La France said that the nations who "go up the river" with presents, to confirm the peace with certain Indians, were three months in going, and that the Indians in question live beyond a range of mountains beyond the a.s.siniboins (a plains tribe). Then he goes on to say that still farther beyond those Indians "are nations who have not the use of firearms, by which many of them are made slaves and sold"--to the a.s.siniboins and others. These are plainly the Pacific coast Indians. And even so long ago as that (about 1740), half a century before Mackenzie and Vancouver met on the Pacific coast, La France had told the story of an Indian who had gone at the head of a band of thirty braves and their families to make war on the Flatheads "on the Western Ocean of America."

They were from autumn until the next April in making the journey, and they "saw many Black Fish spouting up in the sea." It was a case of what the Irish call "spoiling for a fight," for they had to journey 1500 miles to meet "enemies" whom they never had seen, and who were peaceful, and inhabited more or less permanent villages. The plainsmen got more than they sought. They attacked a village, were outnumbered, and lost half their force, besides having several of their men wounded. On the way back all except the man who told the story died of fatigue and famine.

The journeys which Indians made in their wildest period were tremendous.

Far up in the wilderness of British America there are legends of visits by the Iroquois. The Blackfeet believe that their progenitors roamed as far south as Mexico for horses, and the Crees of the plains evinced a correct knowledge of the country that lay beyond the Rocky Mountains in their conversations with the first whites who traded with them. Yet those white men, the founders of an organized fur trade, clung to the scene of their first operations for more than one hundred years, while the bravest of their more enterprising rivals in the Northwest Company only reached the Pacific, with the aid of eight Iroquois braves, 120 years after the English king chartered the senior company! The French were the true Yankees of that country. They and their half-breeds were always in the van as explorers and traders, and as early as 1731 M.

Varennes de la Verandrye, licensed by the Canadian Government as a trader, penetrated the West as far as the Rockies, leading Sir Alexander Mackenzie to that extent by more than sixty years.

But to return to the first serious trouble the Hudson Bay Company met.

The investigation of its affairs by Parliament produced nothing more than the picture I have presented. The committee reported that if the original charter bred a monopoly, it would not help matters to give the same privileges to others. As the questioned legality of the charter was not competently adjudicated upon, they would not allow another company to invade the premises of the older one.

At this time the great company still hugged the sh.o.r.es of the bay, fearing the Indians, the half-breeds, and the French. Their posts were only six in all, and were mainly fortified with palisaded enclosures, with howitzers and swivels, and with men trained to the use of guns.

Moose Fort and the East Main factory were on either side of James Bay, Forts Albany, York, and Prince of Wales followed up the west coast, and Henley was the southernmost and most inland of all, being on Moose River, a tributary of James Bay. The French at first traded beyond the field of Hudson Bay operations, and their castles were their canoes. But when their great profits and familiarity with the trade tempted the thrifty French capitalists and enterprising Scotch merchants of Montreal into the formation of the rival Northwest Trading Company in 1783, fixed trading-posts began to be established all over the Prince Rupert's Land, and even beyond the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia. By 1818 there were about forty Northwest posts as against about two dozen Hudson Bay factories. The new company not only disputed but ignored the chartered rights of the old company, holding that the charter had not been sanctioned by Parliament, and was in every way unconst.i.tutional as creative of a monopoly. Their French partners and _engages_ shared this feeling, especially as the French crown had been first in the field with a royal charter. Growing bolder and bolder, the Northwest Company resolved to drive the Hudson Bay Company to a legal test of their rights, and so in 1803-4 they established a Northwest fort under the eyes of the old company on the sh.o.r.es of Hudson Bay, and fitted out ships to trade with the natives in the strait. But the Englishmen did not accept the challenge; for the truth was they had their own doubts of the strength of their charter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FUR-TRADER IN THE COUNCIL TEPEE]

They pursued a different and for them an equally bold course. That hard-headed old n.o.bleman the fifth Earl of Selkirk came uppermost in the company as the engineer of a plan of colonization. There was plenty of land, and some wholesale evictions of Highlanders in Sutherlandshire, Scotland, had rendered a great force of hardy men homeless. Selkirk saw in this situation a chance to play a long but certainly triumphant game with his rivals. His plan was to plant a colony which should produce grain and horses and men for the old company, saving the importation of all three, and building up not only a nursery for men to match the _coureurs du bois_, but a stronghold and a seat of a future government in the Hudson Bay interest. Thus was ushered in a new and important era in Canadian history. It was the opening of that part of Canada; by a loop-hole rather than a door, to be sure.

Lord Selkirk's was a practical soul. On one occasion in animadverting against the Northwest Company he spoke of them contemptuously as fur-traders, yet he was the chief of all fur-traders, and had been known to barter with an Indian himself at one of the forts for a fur. He held up the opposition to the scorn of the world as profiting upon the weakness of the Indians by giving them alcohol, yet he ordered distilleries set up in his colony afterwards, saying, "We grant the trade is iniquitous, but if we don't carry it on others will; so we may as well put the guineas in our own pockets." But he was the man of the moment, if not for it. His scheme of colonization was born of desperation on one side and distress on the other. It was pursued amid terrible hardship, and against incessant violence. It was consummated through bloodshed. The story is as interesting as it is important. The facts are obtained mainly from "Papers relating to the Red River Settlement, ordered to be printed by the House of Commons, July 12, 1819." Lord Selkirk owned 40,000 of the 105,000 (or shares) of the Hudson Bay Company; therefore, since 25,000 were held by women and children, he held half of all that carried votes. He got from the company a grant of a large tract around what is now Winnipeg, to form an agricultural settlement for supplying the company's posts with provisions. We have seen how little disposed its officers were to open the land to settlers, or to test its agricultural capacities. No one, therefore, will wonder that when this grant was made several members of the governing committee resigned. But a queer development of the moment was a strong opposition from holders of Hudson Bay stock who were also owners in that company's great rival, the Northwest Company. Since the enemy persisted in prospering at the expense of the old company, the moneyed men of the senior corporation had taken stock of their rivals.

These doubly interested persons were also in London, so that the Northwest Company was no longer purely Canadian. The opponents within the Hudson Bay Company declared civilization to be at all times unfavorable to the fur trade, and the Northwest people argued that the colony would form a nursery for servants of the Bay Company, enabling them to oppose the Northwest Company more effectually, as well as affording such facilities for new-comers as must destroy their own monopoly. The Northwest Company denied the legality of the charter rights of the Hudson Bay Company because Parliament had not confirmed Charles II.'s charter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BUFFALO MEAT FOR THE POST]

The colonists came, and were met by Miles McDonnell, an ex-captain of Canadian volunteers, as Lord Selkirk's agent. The immigrants landed on the sh.o.r.e of Hudson Bay, and pa.s.sed a forlorn winter. They met some of the Northwest Company's people under Alexander McDonnell, a cousin and brother-in-law to Miles McDonnell. Although Captain Miles read the grant to Selkirk in token of his sole right to the land, the settlers were hospitably received and well treated by the Northwest people. The settlers reached the place of colonization in August, 1812. This place is what was known as Fort Garry until Winnipeg was built. It was at first called "the Forks of the Red River," because the a.s.siniboin there joined the Red. Lord Selkirk outlined his policy at the time in a letter in which he bade Miles McDonnell give the Northwest people solemn warning that the lands were Hudson Bay property, and they must remove from them; that they must not fish, and that if they did their nets were to be seized, their buildings were to be destroyed, and they were to be treated "as you would poachers in England."

The trouble began at once. Miles accused Alexander of trying to inveigle colonists away from him. He trained his men in the use of guns, and uniformed a number of them. He forbade the exportation of any supplies from the country, and when some Northwest men came to get buffalo meat they had hung on racks in the open air, according to the custom of the country, he sent armed men to send the others away. He intercepted a band of Northwest canoe-men, stationing men with guns and with two field-pieces on the river; and he sent to a Northwest post lower down the river demanding the provisions stored there, which, when they were refused, were taken by force, the door being smashed in. For this a Hudson Bay clerk was arrested, and Captain Miles's men went to the rescue. Two armed forces met, but happily slaughter was averted. Miles McDonnell justified his course on the ground that the colonists were distressed by need of food. It transpired at the time that one of his men while making cartridges for a cannon remarked that he was making them "for those ---- Northwest rascals. They have run too long, and shall run no longer." After this Captain Miles ordered the stoppage of all buffalo-hunting on horseback, as the practice kept the buffalo at a distance, and drove them into the Sioux country, where the local Indians dared not go.

But though Captain McDonnell was aggressive and vexatious, the Northwest Company's people, who had begun the mischief, even in London, were not now pa.s.sive. They relied on setting the half-breeds and Indians against the colonists. They urged that the colonists had stolen Indian real estate in settling on the land, and that in time every Indian would starve as a consequence. At the forty-fifth annual meeting of the Northwest Company's officers, August, 1814, Alexander McDonnell said, "Nothing but the complete downfall of the colony will satisfy some, by fair or foul means--a most desirable object, if it can be accomplished; so here is at it with all my heart and energy." In October, 1814, Captain McDonnell ordered the Northwest Company to remove from the territory within six months.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE INDIAN HUNTER OF 1750]

The Indians, first and last, were the friends of the colonists. They were befriended by the whites, and in turn they gave them succor when famine fell upon them. Many of Captain Miles McDonnell's orders were in their interest, and they knew it. Katawabetay, a chief, was tempted with a big prize to destroy the settlement. He refused. On the opening of navigation in 1815 chiefs were bidden from the country around to visit the Northwest factors, and were by them asked to destroy the colony. Not only did they decline, but they hastened to Captain Miles McDonnell to acquaint him with the plot. Duncan Cameron now appears foremost among the Northwest Company's agents, being in charge of that company's post on the Red River, in the Selkirk grant. He told the chiefs that if they took the part of the colonists "their camp-fires should be totally extinguished." When Cameron caught one of his own servants doing a trifling service for Captain Miles McDonnell, he sent him upon a journey for which every _engage_ of the Northwest Company bound himself liable in joining the company; that was to make the trip to Montreal, a voyage held _in terrorem_ over every servant of the corporation. More than that, he confiscated four horses and a wagon belonging to this man, and charged him on the company's books with the sum of 800 livres for an Indian squaw, whom the man had been told he was to have as his slave for a present.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIAN HUNTER HANGING DEER OUT OF THE REACH OF WOLVES]

But though the Indians held aloof from the great and cruel conspiracy, the half-breeds readily joined in it. They treated Captain McDonnell's orders with contempt, and arrested one of the Hudson Bay men as a spy upon their hunting with horses. There lived along the Red River, near the colony, about thirty Canadians and seventy half-breeds, born of Indian squaws and the servants or officers of the Northwest Company.

One-quarter of the number of "breeds" could read and write, and were fit to serve as clerks; the rest were literally half savage, and were employed as hunters, canoe-men, "packers" (freighters), and guides. They were naturally inclined to side with the Northwest Company, and in time that corporation sowed dissension among the colonists themselves, picturing to them exaggerated danger from the Indians, and offering them free pa.s.sage to Canada. They paid at least one of the leading colonists 100 for furthering discontent in the settlement, and four deserters from the colony stole all the Hudson Bay field-pieces, iron swivels, and the howitzer. There was constant irritation and friction between the factions. In an affray far up at Isle-a-la-Crosse a man was killed on either side. Half-breeds came past the colony singing war-songs, and notices were posted around Fort Garry reading, "Peace with all the world except in Red River." The Northwest people demanded the surrender of Captain McDonnell that he might be tried on their charges, and on June 11, 1815, a band of men fired on the colonial buildings. The captain afterwards surrendered himself, and the remnant of the colony, thirteen families, went to the head of Lake Winnipeg. The half-breeds burned the buildings, and divided the horses and effects.

But in the autumn all came back with Colin Robertson, of the Bay Company, and twenty clerks and servants. These were joined by Governor Robert Semple, who brought 160 settlers from Scotland. Semple was a man of consequence at home, a great traveller, and the author of a book on travels in Spain.[2] But he came in no conciliatory mood, and the foment was kept up. The Northwest Company tried to starve the colonists, and Governor Semple destroyed the enemy's fort below Fort Garry. Then came the end--a decisive battle and ma.s.sacre.

Sixty-five men on horses, and with some carts, were sent by Alexander McDonnell, of the Northwest Company, up the river towards the colony.

They were led by Cuthbert Grant, and included six Canadians, four Indians, and fifty-four half-breeds. It was afterwards said they went on innocent business, but every man was armed, and the "breeds" were naked, and painted all over to look like Indians. They got their paint of the Northwest officers. Moreover, there had been rumors that the colonists were to be driven away, and that "the land was to be drenched with blood." It was on June 19, 1816, that runners notified the colony that the others were coming. Semple was at Fort Douglas, near Fort Garry.

When apprised of the close approach of his a.s.sailants, the Governor seems not to have appreciated his danger, for he said, "We must go and meet those people; let twenty men follow me." He put on his c.o.c.ked hat and sash, his pistols, and shouldered his double-barrelled fowling-piece. The others carried a wretched lot of guns--some with the locks gone, and many that were useless. It was marshy ground, and they straggled on in loose order. They met an old soldier who had served in the army at home, and who said the enemy was very numerous, and that the Governor had better bring along his two field-pieces.

"No, no," said the Governor; "there is no occasion. I am only going to speak to them."

Nevertheless, after a moment's reflection, he did send back for one of the great guns, saying it was well to have it in case of need. They halted a short time for the cannon, and then perceived the Northwest party pressing towards them on their horses. By a common impulse the Governor and his followers began a retreat, walking backwards, and at the same time spreading out a single line to present a longer front. The enemy continued to advance at a hand-gallop. From out among them rode a Canadian named Boucher, the rest forming a half-moon behind him. Waving his hand in an insolent way to the Governor, Boucher called out, "What do you want?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAKING THE SNOW-SHOE]

"What do _you_ want?" said Governor Semple.

"We want our fort," said Boucher, meaning the fort Semple had destroyed.

"Go to your fort," said the Governor.

"Why did you destroy our fort, you rascal?" Boucher demanded.

"Scoundrel, do you tell me so?" the Governor replied, and ordered the man's arrest.

Some say he caught at Boucher's gun. But Boucher slipped off his horse, and on the instant a gun was fired, and a Hudson Bay clerk fell dead.

Another shot wounded Governor Semple, and he called to his followers.

"Do what you can to take care of yourselves."

Then there was a volley from the Northwest force, and with the clearing of the smoke it looked as though all the Governor's party were killed or wounded. Instead of taking care of themselves, they had rallied around their wounded leader. Captain Rogers, of the Governor's party, who had fallen, rose to his feet, and ran towards the enemy crying for mercy in English and broken French, when Thomas McKay, a "breed" and Northwest clerk, shot him through the head, another cutting his body open with a knife.

Cuthbert Grant (who, it was charged, had shot Governor Semple) now went to the Governor, while the others despatched the wounded.

Semple said, "Are you not Mr. Grant?"

"Yes," said the other.

"I am not mortally wounded," said the Governor, "and if you could get me conveyed to the fort, I think I should live."

But when Grant left his side an Indian named Ma-chi-ca-taou shot him, some say through the breast, and some have it that he put a pistol to the Governor's head. Grant could not stop the savages. The bloodshed had crazed them. They slaughtered all the wounded, and, worse yet, they terribly maltreated the bodies. Twenty-two Hudson Bay men were killed, and one on the other side was wounded.

There is a story that Alexander McDonnell shouted for joy when he heard the news of the ma.s.sacre. One witness, who did not hear him shout, reports that he exclaimed to his friends: "_Sacre nom de Dieu! Bonnes nouvelles; vingt-deux Anglais tues!_" (----! Good news; twenty-two English slain!) It was afterwards alleged that the slaughter was approved by every officer of the Northwest Company whose comments were recorded.

It is a saying up in that country that twenty-six out of the sixty-five in the attacking party died violent deaths. The record is only valuable as indicating the nature and perils of the lives the hunters and half-breeds led. First, a Frenchman dropped dead while crossing the ice on the river, his son was stabbed by a comrade, his wife was shot, and his children were burned; "Big Head," his brother, was shot by an Indian; Coutonohais dropped dead at a dance; Battosh was mysteriously shot; Lavigne was drowned; Fraser was run through the body by a Frenchman in Paris; Baptiste Moralle, while drunk, was thrown into a fire by inebriated companions and burned to death; another died drunk on a roadway; another was wounded by the bursting of his gun; small-pox took the eleventh; Duplicis was empaled upon a hay-fork, on which he jumped from a hay-stack; Parisien was shot, by a person unknown, in a buffalo-hunt; another lost his arm by carelessness; Gardapie, "the brave," was scalped and shot by the Sioux; so was Vallee; Ka-te-tee-goose was scalped and cut in pieces by the Gros-Ventres; Pe-me-can-toss was thrown in a hole by his people; and another Indian and his wife and children were killed by lightning. Yet another was gored to death by a buffalo. The rest of the twenty-six died by being frozen, by drowning, by drunkenness, or by shameful disease.

It is when things are at their worst that they begin to mend, says a silly old proverb; but when history is studied these desperate situations often seem part of the mending, not of themselves, but of the broken cause of progress. There was a little halt here in Canada, as we shall see, but the seed of settlement had been planted, and thenceforth continued to grow. Lord Selkirk came with all speed, reaching Canada in 1817. It was now an English colony, and when he asked for a body-guard, the Government gave him two sergeants and twelve soldiers of the Regiment de Meuron. He made these the nucleus of a considerable force of Swiss and Germans who had formerly served in that regiment, and he pursued a triumphal progress to what he called his territory of a.s.siniboin, capturing all the Northwest Company's forts on the route, imprisoning the officers, and sending to jail in Canada all the accessaries to the ma.s.sacre, on charges of arson, murder, robbery, and "high misdemeanors." Such was the prejudice against the Hudson Bay Company and the regard for the home corporation that nearly all were acquitted, and suits for very heavy damages were lodged against him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A HUDSON BAY MAN (QUARTER-BREED)]

Selkirk sought to treat with the Indians for his land, which they said belonged to the Chippeways and the Crees. Five chiefs were found whose right to treat was acknowledged by all. On July 18, 1817, they deeded the territory to the King, "for the benefit of Lord Selkirk," giving him a strip two miles wide on either side of the Red River from Lake Winnipeg to Red Lake, north of the United States boundary, and along the a.s.siniboin from Fort Garry to the Muskrat River, as well as within two circles of six miles radius around Fort Garry and Pembina, now in Dakota. Indians do not know what miles are; they measure distance by the movement of the sun while on a journey. They determined two miles in this case to be "as far as you can see daylight under a horse's belly on the level prairie." On account of Selkirk's liberality they dubbed him "the silver chief." He agreed to give them for the land 200 pounds of tobacco a year. He named his settlement Kildonan, after that place in Helmsdale, Sutherlandshire, Scotland. He died in 1821, and in 1836 the Hudson Bay Company bought the land back from his heirs for 84,000. The Swiss and Germans of his regiment remained, and many retired servants of the company bought and settled there, forming the aristocracy of the place--a queer aristocracy to our minds, for many of the women were Indian squaws, and the children were "breeds."

Through the perseverance and tact of the Right Hon. Edward Ellice, to whom the Government had appealed, all differences between the two great fur-trading companies were adjusted, and in 1821 a coalition was formed.