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Chapter III - Fort Chipewyan
LAKE ATHABASKA, on
account of its geographical position, was the key to the far north.
Vast regions inhabited by the best of fur-bearing animals were, and
are to the present day, tributary to it. As already stated, the
violent Peter Pond had led the way to the district, although he had
not taken possession of the lake itself. It was in 1778 that Pond
built his post on Elk River, or, as the French called it, Riviere a
la Riche, thirty miles south of Lake Athabaska. To this point
Alexander Mackenzie had come, here his broad plans were laid for the
extension of the fair trade, and here the brilliant designs were
conceived that were to make him famous as an explorer.
Masson, in his book
on the North-Wrest Company, depicts in a striking manner the
feelings of many of the more educated and enterprising fur traders,
as they contemplated the monotony and humdrum of much of a fair
trader's life. He represents Alexander Mackenzie as not entirely
above the tedium which he sought to relieve by bursts of bustling
activity. "How do you spend your time?" asked a young clerk of the
North-Wrest Company of a comrade of his own age, who, like himself,
had received a good education. "I rise with the sun; I go to see the
traps; if a number of Indians arrive I buy their furs, then I eat
tollibee (white fish) three times a day. Do you see? I find the time
very long, and I fear that my constitution will be seriously injured
by that kind of a life, but what can be done? I make a dog train; I
bend some wood for snowshoes; and with perseverance I hope to learn
the use of the crooked knife."
Such a life could not
satisfy Alexander Mackenzie ; his intelligent and open nature
revolted from the idea of passing the best years of his life in such
intellectual stagnation: now some dirty savages to receive; some
goods to exchange for furs; some voyageurs to despatch to the
interior; these for companions, men without education and sometimes
of had character! Ennui, the worst of maladies, consumed him; he
felt himself degraded and useless. His ambition demanded a wider
horizon, and for his energy wider fields, and the work of seeking
new regions; in short, the desire to travel and explore was burning
within him, and he resolved to do his share towards the discovery of
the famous north-west passage, if it existed, and to reach the
Arctic Ocean.
Various reasons,
however, led to his considering the plan very fully, before he
decided upon it. There was, as already stated, a considerable amount
of jealousy among the traders. Mackenzie had belonged to the smaller
company, he was unpopular with Le marquis, as the great McTavish,
the head of the traders in Montreal, was called, and he knew that it
would be almost impossible for him to get a commission to explore
the far distant north, and to incur the expense and danger of such a
voyage—even should he offer himself at the annual meeting of the
partners at Grand Portage.
Another difficulty
lay iii his way. The district to which lie was appointed had by the
conduct of Pond become unsettled, and there was no one of his
subordinates to whom lie could entrust the direction of affairs. The
first obstacle would be largely removed if the second were solved.
Accordingly the thought came to his mind to secure as his lieutenant
in the district his cousin, Roderick McKenzie, who was not well
satisfied with his position in the trade, and was seriously thinking
of leaving the fur country altogether, and returning to Montreal.
The vision of
expansion placed before Roderick McKenzie by his cousin proved an
attractive one, so that he decided to remain in the country, and
soon found his way to the Athabaska district. A strong friendship
was thus developed between the two cousins, though, as we shall see,
to be interrupted for a time in subsequent years by the changes in
the fur companies. The work entrusted to Roderick McKenzie, and the
way in which he did it, resulted in giving him a high place among
the traders.
Arrived at Elk or
Athabaska River, Alexander Mackenzie and his confiding kinsman laid
their plans for accomplishing what they had in view. The post was
thirty miles from Lake Athabaska, or Lake of the Hills, as it was
also called. Alexander Mackenzie addressed himself to putting the
trade of his district in thorough order, and kept his hold of Elk
River post, the old centre, but Roderick was sent to take up new
ground and build a new headquarters.
To Alexander
Mackenzie's keen eye it was plain that Lake Athabaska would be a
more central point from which to send out his messages to the
traders, and to which they could come conveniently with their furs.
It would afford a line of immediate communication with the vast lake
and river system of what we now know as Great Slave and Great Bear
Lakes and the Mackenzie River, and it would also lead the way to
passages through the Rocky Mountains, where lay great regions still
to be explored.
Roderick McKenzie has
left us in his interesting "Reminiscences" the story of how he took
up his position on Lake Athabaska, and pushed forward the work
entrusted to him. "After making every possible inquiry and taking
every necessary precaution," says the enterprising novice, "I
pitched upon a conspicuous projection which advanced about a league
into the lake, the base of which appeared in the shape of a person
sitting with arms extended, the palms forming, as it were, a point.
On this we settled and built a fort, which we called Chipewyan. It
is altogether a beautiful, healthy situation, in the centre of many
excellent and never-failing fisheries, provided they are duly
attended to at the proper season."
The matter of food is
ever an important one in these far northern regions, where nature is
not profuse in her gifts, so that the proximity of good
fishing-grounds was an important consideration for the hungry
traders.
The first Fort
Chipewyan was built on a promontory on the south side of Lake
Athabaska, a few miles east of the entrance of the Elk River into
the lake. It was regarded as a great triumph of skill when this
farthest great outpost of the fur trade was completed. Its
commanding position and its commodious and comfortable appointments
were a surprise to the Indians and old voyageurs who frequented the
region. Roderick McKenzie had an eye for the aesthetic, so he fitted
out his new fort with every luxury possible in those remote and
barren regions. His painting of the interior of the new post, and
his attention to its comforts were something unheard of in such a
region. The new fort was at once accepted, by Indians and traders
alike, as the natural centre of trade, and was at times spoken of as
the "Emporium of the North."
Roderick McKenzie
always had a taste for literature, as was seen years later when he
opened correspondence with traders all over the north and west,
asking for descriptions of scenery, of adventure, folklore and
history. On his building Fort Chipewyan we learn that he also had in
view the founding of a library at the fort, which would not be only
for the immediate residents of Fort Chipewyan, but for traders and
clerks of the whole region tributary to Lake Athabaska, so that it
would be what he called, in an imaginative and somewhat jocular
vein, "the little Athens of the Arctic regions." This library
became, perhaps, the most famous in the Whole extent of Rupert's
Land, and more than fifty years afterwards we read of Lieutenant
Henry Lefroy, on his expedition for magnetic observation, spending
the winter in Fort Chipewyan, and revelling in the treasures of its
well-selected library; therefore the library was not entirely, as
Masson contends, scattered and destroyed in the first generation
after its founding. The establishment of a library in the fir north,
and other similar incidents, are evidences of the intelligence and
even culture found in the posts of the, fur traders from the time of
Mackenzie to the present. Elsewhere time writer has amplified the
matter, and with slight modification said: 'That the officers of the
fur companies were not traders only is made abundantly evident. In
one of his letters Governor Simpson (1833) states that their great
countryman, Sir Walter Scott has just passed away; he thanks one of
his traders for sending him copies of Black-wood's Magazine; and
orders are often given for fresh and timely books. A little earlier
we find the minute interest which the fur traders took in public
events in a letter from Chief Factor John Stuart, after whom
Stuart's Lake in New Caledonia was named. Stuart speaks to another
fur trader of the continuation of Southey's " History of the War of
the Peninsula" not being published, and we know from other sources
that this history fell still-born, but Stuart goes on to say that he
had sent for Colonel Napier's "History of the Peninsular War."
"Napier's politics," says Stuart, "are different, and we shall see
whether it is the radical or a laurel [Southey was poet laureate]
that deserves the palm." These examples illustrate what all close
observers notice, that the officers of the fur companies not only
read to purpose, but maintained a keen outlook for the good, even
for the most finished contemporary literature.
Here, then, the
winter of 1788-9 was spent in the new fort by Roderick McKenzie.
Even a view of the map can hardly make vivid to us the great
distance to the far north that Fort Chipewyan is. From Montreal to
Grand Portage took the mangeurs de lard many days. After the
coureurs de Bois left Grand Portage with song and flags and mirth,
time fled quickly until the outlet to Rainy Lake was reached, which
was a stopping-place for the western expeditions. On August 1st the
canoes, manned with sturdy French-Canadians or Indians, left Rainy
Lake for the far north. As the season was fast passing the canoemen
worked with might and main in order to reach their destination. It
was the end of September before the voyageurs and their well-laden
canoes reached Athabaska.
About this time of
the year the traders from the far north of Lake Athabaska, and the
Indians of remote Arctic regions reached Fort Chipewyan, and the
whole lake was alive with canoes, urged forward by Indian men and
women coming to the trader, whom they regarded as the mightiest of
men.
This trading season
over, the early winter came in October, when officers and men had
little to do but sort their furs, and secure food for subsistence,
filling in the intervals of their time with the interests of the
library of which we have spoken. Roderick McKenzie, writing of the
winter at his new fort, says: "These men and myself, I recollect,
visited six nets three times a day from under the ice during that
fall fishery, but no mittens can be used during that serious
operation. The fingers and wrists while occupied in managing the
nets and disentangling the fish from the meshes, must be kept
constantly immerged to prevent their freezing. I had a number of
voyageurs in charge; they were divided into crews independent of
each other and in different houses, each having to provide itself at
the fisheries."
Whether it was
trading with the greasy Indians from the north, in their poverty and
misery, or fastening up and down the waterways in summer, or living
almost entirely on the fish which were caught with such difficulty
and hardship, it is plain that life at Fort Chipewyan represented,
under the most favourable circumstances, the embodiment of all that
was inhospitable, uninteresting, and laborious. And yet we are told
that Athabaska and the Mackenzie River were the greatest desire of
the hardy traders. |
