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On the second of May,
1670, King Charles II. granted a charter to his "trusty and
well-beloved cousin," the renowned Prince Rupert, son of the
King’s aunt, Elizabeth and Frederick of Bohemia, the Duke of
Albermarle, Arlington, Ashley and others, under the name of "The
Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading in Hudson
Bay." This famous and long-lived corporation was ostensibly
established, in the words of the Charter, "for the discovery of a
new passage into the South Sea, for the finding some trade for furs,
minerals and other considerable commodities," and also for the
Christianization of the Indians. Concerning the last of these objects,
perhaps the less said the better; it was, however, a habit in those days
to cover the selfishness of trading schemes with a thin veneering of
religion, and perhaps no one was either deceived or sought to be
deceived thereby. A large portion of the continent was certainly
explored by the agents of this and other companies, "but this new
passage to the South Sea" was not discovered by them. On the other
hand, the fur-trade proved lucrative beyond the most sanguine
expectations of these "adventurers." The charter had granted
them a monopoly of trade, with plenary powers, executive and judicial,
in and over all seas, straits, lands, &c., lying within the entrance
of Hudson’s Straits, and the rivers entering them, "not already
occupied by any other English subject or other Christian Power or State.
In return they were to yield and pay therefor two elks and two black
beavers, whenever his Majesty or his heirs should set foot in the
territory.
It is more than probable
that neither the King nor the Company had any idea of the extent of
territory thus handed over to the latter. The two branches of the
Saskatchewan cover all the fertile belt from the Rocky Mountains, and
their waters reach Hudson Bay by Lake Winnipeg and the Nelson River.
Towards the United States the Assiniboine, with its tributaries, the Qu’Appelle
and the Souris unite at Winnipeg or Fort Garry with the Red River which
rises far south of the boundary line, and all these waters flow also
into Lake Winnipeg. The early operations of this great monopoly were
confined to the vicinity of Hudson Bay and the pear-shaped inlet known
as James Bay which forms its apex. The profits of the fur-trade were
enormous. "During the first twenty years of its existence, the
profits of the Company were so great that, notwithstanding considerable
losses sustained by the capture of their establishments by the French,
amounting in value to £118,014, they were enabled to make a payment to
the proprietors, in 1684, of fifty per cent., and a further payment in,
1689 of twenty-five per cent. In 1690, the stock was trebled without any
call being made, besides affording a payment to the proprietors of
twenty-five per cent on the increased or newly created stock. From 1692
to 1697 the Company incurred loss and damage to the amount of £97,500
from the French. In 1720 their circumstances were so far improved that
they again trebled their capital stock, with only a call of ten per
cent. from the proprietors, on which they paid dividends averaging nine
per cent, for many years, showing profits on the originally subscribed
capital stock actually paid up, of between sixty and seventy per cent,
per annum, from the, year 1690 to 1800." [Eighty Years Progress
in British North America. By various authors: - "Commerce and
Trade," by H.Y. Hind, F.R.G.S., p. 279.]
Meanwhile the authorities
of New France could hardly be expected to look with patience upon this
invasion of their domain from the back door. Towards the "close of
the seventeenth century they were threatened by Britain and her
colonies, on every side. The New England fishermen menaced Acadia and
the Gulf; the Dutch and English of New York disputed French supremacy on
the great lakes and the Ohio River; and the Hudson Bay Company was
gradually, but surely infringing upon French territory from the north
and north-west. It was not unnatural that the pioneers and missionaries
of New France who had made the North-West their own by exploration
should resent the intrusion of the British by sea. Both by the Ottawa
and the great lakes they had established routes for trade and travel
into "the great lone land." Moreover, the French laid claim to
all the territory to the Arctic Ocean as their own, and contended that
it had been granted, as a portion of New France to the company of
merchants in 1603, to the Company of One Hundred Associates or Partners,
under Richelieu, in 1627, and finally to the West India Company; in
1664. Their rulers argued that as the King of France had claimed this
vast domain in these several charters, there was no room for the Hudson
Bay Company in 1670, seeing that Charles II. had estopped them from
occupying "any territory already occupied by any other Christian
Prince or State." In addition to all this, Charles I. had by the
treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, distinctly confirmed the French claim to
the Hudson Bay Territory in 1632; and many years after, two Canadians,
De Groselliers and Radisson, made their way thither to establish trade.
Failing to enlist the French court in their enterprise, these
adventurers assisted the young English company, which, towards the close
of the century, possessed four forts, one near the mouth of the Nelson,
and three others, Forts Albany, Hayes and Rupert, at the southern end of
the Bay.
Denonville, the Governor
of New France, whose piety and patriotism were in wondrous
accord, resolved, in 1686, to try conclusions with these intruders. The
two countries were at peace, it is true, but that was not a
consideration of much weight in the wilds of North America; and besides,
the French rule was sorely tried by the masked warfare of Dongan and his
Iroquois allies. Early in the spring he accordingly despatched the
Chevalier de Troyes with four or five score of Canadians, from
Montreal, to strike a blow at the English trading-posts. Working their
way up the Ottawa, by river and lake, they at last arrived at Fort
Hayes, the nearest of the English depots. "It was a stockade, with
four bastions, mounted with cannon. There was a strong block house
within, in which the sixteen occupants of the place were lodged,
unsuspicious of danger." [See Parkman: Frontenac, pp.
132-135.] The surprise was complete, and the inmates of the fort were
captured in their shirts. Fort Rupert, forty leagues along the shore,
was also taken after a slight resistance, and Troyes then turned his
attention to Fort Albany on the other side of Fort Hayes, at the
south-west angle of James’ Bay. Here there was no surprise, for the
French doings at Fort Hayes were known at the mouth of the Albany River.
Henry Sargent and his thirty men made an attempt to defend the place,
but they were attacked both from the land and water sides. The French
had ten captured pieces of ordnance with them, and soon succeeded in
making the place untenable. Satisfied with these triumphs, Troyes, after
razing the forts to the ground, sent his prisoners home in an English
vessel, and returned to Montreal with his booty. Of course Louis XIV.
and James II. engaged in some controversy, and finally agreed to enjoin
strict neutrality upon their colonial representatives.
Amongst those who were
engaged in the raid upon the Hudson Bay forts were the two brothers
Iberville and St. Hélène, and they were destined to reap still further
glory in the struggle of France for supremacy. ["No Canadian, under
the French rule, stands in a more conspicuous or more deserved eminence
than Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville. In the seventeenth century, most of
those who acted a prominent part in the colony were born in Old France;
but Iberville was a true son of this soil. He and his brothers,
Longueuil, Serigny, Assigny, Maricourt, Sainte-Helene, and two
Chatenugays, and the two Bienvilles, were, one and all, children worthy
of their father, Charles Le Moyne, of Montreal, and favourable types of
that noblesse, to whom adventurous hardihood half the continent
bears witness." Frontenac, p. 388. See also an interesting
account of the several members of this illustrious family in Le Moine: Maple
Leaves, 1st series, chap. viii.] Iberville had been
engaged in the conquest of Newfoundland in 1697, when he received
peremptory orders from France, through his brother Serigny, to attack
the English in Hudson Bay. The two brothers had captured Fort Nelson, or
Fort Bourbon as they called it, three years before, but it had been
retaken during the summer of 1696. In July, 1697, Iberville and his
brother left Placentia with four vessels of war and one store-ship,
bound for the Arctic Seas. When the little fleet entered the Bay it was
at once entangled in the ice. The store-ship was crushed and lost, and
Iberville, who was on the Pelican, lost sight of his three
consorts. He had nearly reached Fort Nelson, when three sail appeared,
and the gallant Frenchman prepared to welcome his missing comrades. They
turned out to be armed English merchantmen mounting altogether one
hundred and twenty guns. A furious battle ensued, from which Iberville
finally emerged victorious, through his superior seamanship. The Pelican,
however, was badly damaged, and she finally stranded, parted
amidships, and was a total loss. Notwithstanding all his misfortunes,
however, the brave Iberville captured Fort Nelson, and returned homeward
in triumph. ["Iberville had triumphed over the storms, the
icebergs, and the English. The North had seen his prowess, and another
fame awaited him in the regions of the sun; for he became the father of
Louisiana, and his brother Bienville founded New Orleans." Frontenac,
p. 393.]
The interval between the
close of the seventeenth century and the treaty of cession in 1763, may
be passed over without remark. The French continued their explorations
in the North-West to the Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains; but they
never again attempted to dispossess the Hudson Bay Company by force of
arms. New France had fallen upon evil days, and was compelled to
contract her lines and concentrate her strength for the deadly struggle
in which she was foredoomed to be the loser. A few years after Canada
passed into British hands a number of Montreal merchants, chiefly Scots,
conceived the idea of re-opening the North-Western fur-trade on the old
French routes. It was in 1766, according to Sir Alex. Mackenzie, [Voyage
– General History of the Fur Trade, p. viii.] that the trade was
recommenced from Michillimackinac (Mackinac) at the junction of Lakes
Huron and Michigan. At first, the adventurers only travelled to the
mouth of the Kaministiquia on Lake Superior, and to the Grand Portage
thirty miles further down. The pioneer who first resolved to penetrate
to the furthest limits of the French discoveries was Thomas Curry, a
Scottish merchant. With guides and interpreters, and four canoes, he
made his way to Fort Bourbon, an old French post at Cedar Lake, on the
Saskatchewan. Mackenzie observes that "his risk and toil were well
recompensed, for he came back the following spring with his canoes
filled with fine furs, with which he proceeded to Canada, and was
satisfied never again to return to the Indian country." [Ibid.]
The first who followed Curry’s example was James Finlay, another Scot,
who made his way to Nipawee, the last French settlement on the
Saskatchewan (lat. 53 1/2, long. 103 W.). His success was equal to that
of Curry, and from that time the fur-traders gradually spread themselves
over that vast and almost unknown region. Meanwhile the Hudson Bay
Company had not advanced far from the waters to which they owed their
name. It was in the year 1774, "and not till then," writes
Mackenzie, that the Company thought proper to move from home to the east
bank of Sturgeon Lake, in latitude 53° 56" North, and longitude
102° 15’ West, and became more jealous of their fellow-subjects, and
perhaps with more cause, than they had been of those of France." [Ibid.
p. ix. – misprinted xi.] Our author has a strong feeling against
the Hudson Bay Company and complains bitterly that they followed the
Canadians from settlement to settlement, annoying and obstructing them.
It may be well to note here a fact which will appear more clearly
hereafter, that not only the Canadian traders, but most of the Hudson
Bay Company’s servants, were from an early period Scots, and have
always remained so up to the present time. ["It is a strange fact
that three-fourths of the Company’s servants are Scotch Highlanders
and Orkney men. There are very few Irishmen and still fewer Englishmen.
A great number, however, are half-breeds and French Canadians,
especially among the labourers and voyageurs." Hudson’s
Bay. By R. M. Ballantyne: London, 1857, p. 42. Mr. Ballentyne is a
Scotsman, who spent six years in the H.B. Co.’s service.]
The half-breeds are
scattered over most of the North-West, from Hudson Bay and Algoma to the
Rocky Mountains. Principal Grant in his entertaining volume, "Ocean
to Ocean" (p. 157), remarks of this class: "They are farmers,
hunters, fishermen, voyageurs, all in one; the soil is scratched, three
inches deep, early in May, some seed is thrown in, and then the whole
household go off to hunt the buffalo. They get back about the first of
August, spend the month in haying and harvesting, and are off to the
fall hunt early in September. Some are now so devoted to farming that
they only go to one hunt in the year. It is astonishing that, though
knowing so well ‘how not to do it,’ they raise some wheat, a good
deal of barley, oats and potatoes." It is necessary here to notice
the marked distinction between the Scottish and French half-breeds or Metis,
as they are called. The contrast, which has been often noticed by
travellers, is so marked as to merit particular attention, since it
serves to illustrate what has been said of the sterling worth and
persistency of the Scottish character, even under the most trying of all
tests—contact and admixture with an inferior race. The Frenchman, like
the Spaniard, of more southern latitudes, always sinks in the scale of
civilization by intermarriage with the Indians. "His
children," says Dr. Grant, "have all the Indian
characteristics, and habits, weaknesses, and ill-regulated passions of
nomads." When a Frenchman weds a squaw, "her people become his
people but his God her God," and he gradually sinks to her level.
When a Scotchman married a squaw, her position, on the contrary, was
frequently not much higher than a servant’s. He was ‘the superior
person’ of the house. He continued Christian after his fashion, she
continued a pagan. The granite of his nature resisted fusion, in spite
of family and tribal influences, the attrition of all surrounding
circumstances, and the total absence of civilization; and the wife was
too completely separated from him to raise herself to his level. The
children of such a couple take more after the father than the mother. As
a rule, they are shrewd, steady and industrious. A Scotch half-breed has
generally a field of wheat before or behind his house, stacks, barn, and
provisions for a year ahead in his granary. The Metis has a patch of
potatoes or a little barley, and in a year of scarcity draws his belt
tighter or starves. It is interesting, as one travels in the great
North-West, to note how the two old allies of the middle ages have left
their marks on the whole of this great country. The name of almost every
river, creek, mountain or district is either French or Scotch." [Ocean
to Ocean, pp. 175, 176.] It is the intelligence, industry, and
perseverance born with the Scot, often the only, and yet the noblest,
heritage bequeathed him by his forbears, that makes him the most
valuable settler in any land where his lot is cast. That even when far
removed from the refining influences which encompass him in his native
land, and thrown into intimate relations with inferior and uncivilized
tribes, both he and his children of a mixed race should still exhibit
the providence, dignity and self-respect which seem innate in the
Scottish people, is surely a crucial instance of "the survival of
the fittest."
During the later years of
the eighteenth century, the prospect of serious rivalry from Canada
stimulated the Hudson Bay Company, as already observed, to renewed
exertions. The irregular way in which the fur-trade was carried on by
the Canadians led to many abuses, and after a few years, it became
unprofitable and almost ruinous to the adventurers. They had the great
Company well-organized, and possessing ample governmental powers to
contend with; the Indians were, for the most part, hostile and always
untrustworthy, and the time had obviously arrived for a co-operative
efforts by the Montreal traders. Accordingly, in the winter of 1783-4,
the Canadian merchants united together in a body corporate, known as the
North-West Company, and the battle between it and the Hudson Bay people
began, which continued for thirty-eight years. At its head as managers
were placed Messrs. Benjamin and Joseph Frobisher, partners in one
house, and Mr. Simon McTavish, a name, which occupies a conspicuous
place in the subsequent history of the North-West. Unfortunately, there
was considerable disagreement over the shares allotted to some of the
partners in the new company, and one of them, for a time, succeeded in
detaching Messrs. Gregory and Macleod from their fellow adventurers. In
the counting-house of the former, a clerk had served for five years, and
was in 1784 seeking his own fortune at Detroit. This young settler was
Alexander (afterwards Sir Alexander) Mackenzie, the explorer of the
North and West of British North America. Mackenzie was a native of
Inverness, born about 1760, who early emigrated to America, and found
employment at Montreal with Mr. Gregory. He was now asked to become a
partner in the trading venture, and, having made his arrangements, set
out for the Grand Portage in the spring of 1785. The dissensions amongst
the partners, the superior organization of the new company, and its
determined hostility to the recalcitrants, proved serious obstacles in
Mackenzie’s way; but in 1787, the differences were healed, and a union
effected, much to the satisfaction of all parties.
The North-West chiefly
followed upon the tracks of the old French traders. These, as the reader
will remember, traversed two routes, the one by the lakes, by Fort
Frontenac (Kingston), Niagara, Detroit, Mackinac and the Grand Portage;
and the other by the Ottawa, the French River, St. Mary’s (the Sault
Ste Marie), and so westward to the same point on Lake Superior. Sir
Alex. Mackenzie boasts that, after the union in 1787, the
"commercial establishment was founded on a more solid basis than
any hitherto known in the country; and it not only continued in full
force, vigour and prosperity, in spite of all interference from Canada,
but maintained at least an equal share of advantage with the Hudson Bay
Company, notwithstanding the superiority of their local situation"
(p. xx). "In 1788, the gross amount of the adventure for the year
did not exceed forty thousand pounds; but, by the exertion, enterprise,
and industry of the proprietors, it was brought in eleven years to
triple that amount and upwards; yielding proportionate profits and
surpassing, in short, anything known in America" (p. xxii). It has
been estimated that in 1815 this company had four thousand servants in
its employment, and occupied sixty trading posts. A new route was opened
on an old Indian trail from Penetanguishene and Lake Simcoe to Lake
Ontario at first to the Humber Bay, and subsequently down Yonge Street,
the military road constructed by Col. Simcoe to York (now Toronto) the
Capital of Upper Canada. Westward the Company’s operations extended to
and beyond the old French establishments on the Saskatchewan. Sir
Alexander Mackenzie names five chief factories on that river—Nepawi
House, South-branch House, Fort George House, Fort Augustus House, and
Upper Establishment (p. lxix).
But trading was not the
only occupation of these adventurous Scots. They were the great
explorers of Western North America to the Pacific and Arctic Oceans.
Mackenzie himself was engaged in two great expeditions, during the years
1789 and 1793. In the former year he started from Fort Chipewyan at the
western extremity of Lake Athabasca or the Lake of the Hills, as he
terms it in his "Voyages" with a little band of retainers,
Canadian and Indian. Travelling in a generally north-western direction
by the Slave River, the party entered the Great Slave Lake. Thence with
some vicissitudes of fortune, Mackenzie traversed the chain of lakelets
and streams to the Great Bear Lake, an so to the great river which bears
his name to the Arctic Sea. In October, 1792, from the same
starting-point, the explorer ascended the Unjigah or Peace River which
he explored to its source, crossed the Rocky Mountains, and made his way
to the Pacific Ocean. The journey was full of perils and perplexities,
and at times even the brave Highland heart of Mackenzie seems to have
sunk within him. The story, as told by himself, in the simple and
unaffected language of his "journal" is full of information
regarding the country, as it was when visited by him and his friend
Mackay. At the end of his weary journey of nine months, he erected a
simple memorial of his achievement. "I now mixed up some vermillion
in melted grease," he says, and inscribed, in large characters, on
the south-east of the rock on which we had slept last night, this brief
memorial: ‘Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty
second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety- three.’"
He reached Fort Chipewayan, and safely relieved Roderick Mackenzie, whom
he had left in charge, and "resumed," as he modestly observes,
"the character of a trader," "after an absence of eleven
months."
The character of the
class which achieved so much for British progress in the North-West
could hardly be better given than in the words of Mr. S. J. Dawson, then
M. P. P. for Algoma, uttered in the Ontario Legislature in 1876.
"At the formation of this (the North-West) Company, there were in
Canada a number of men remarkable for their energy and
enterprise. Many of those whose fortunes had been lost at Culloden, and
even some of the Scottish chiefs who had been present at that memorable
conflict, were then in the country. They were men accustomed to
adventure, and had been trained in the stern school of adversity. They
joined the North-West Company, and soon gave a different complexion to
the affairs of the North-West. Under their management, order succeeded
to the anarchy which prevailed under the French régime. Warring
tribes and rival traders were reconciled. Trading posts sprang up on the
Saskatchewan and Unjiga; every post became a centre of civilization, and
explorations were extended to the shores of the Arctic Sea, and the
coasts of the Pacific Ocean. It has been the custom to ascribe to the
Hudson Bay Company the admirable system of management which brought
peace and good government to the then distracted regions of the
North-West; but it was due to these adventurous Scotchmen. Sir Alexander
Mackenzie traced out the great river which now bears his name, and was
the first to cross the Rocky Mountains and reach the Pacific Ocean.
Fraser followed the river now called after him, and a little later,
Thompson crossed further to the south, and reached Oregon by the
Columbia." It may be added that Vancouver explored the British
Columbian archipeligo, and gave his name to its largest island in 1797;
four years after Mackenzie’s overland journey. Simon Fraser—a name
illustrious in war as well as discovery — sailed down his river
in the year 1808. Thompson, who discovered the Columbia, which rises in
British territory, gave his name to the Thompson River in British
Columbia.
All would have gone well
with British trade and exploration, if the jealousies of the two rival
companies and of a third, the X. Y. which split off from the North-West
Company had not caused incessant turmoil and some blood shed throughout
the territory. The Hudson Bay Company had the prior claim in point of
time, and were not prepared to tolerate competitors in the fur-trade,
even in regions where their employees had never set foot. Still less
could they brook the presence of intruders, on the Assiniboine and Red
Rivers or Lake Winnipeg. The results of the jealousies and animosities
of these competing corporations were eminently disastrous in every
aspect. The fur-trade was almost ruined, the Indians bought over and
coaxed into alliance by both parties and thoroughly demoralized. Mr.
Hind, in the work already cited (p. 280) observes that "the
interests of the Hudson Bay Company suffered to such an extent that
between 1800 and 1821, a period of twenty-two years, their dividends
were, for the first eight years, reduced to four per cent. During the
next six years they could pay no dividend at all, and for the remaining
eight they could only pay four per cent." It will now be necessary
to give some account of these unhappy feuds, and also of the
establishment of the Red River settlement by Lord Selkirk and the
troubles which arose in consequence.
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