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CANADA'S DEBT TO THE FUR
COMPANIES
THE infant life of
Canada was nourished by the fur traders. The new impulse given to
France in the last year of the sixteenth century by Chauvin's
charter to trade for furs held within it untold possibilities for
the development of Canada. French gentlemen and soldiers came forth
to the New World seeking excitement in the western wilds, and hoping
also to mend their broken fortunes. There were scores of such at
Quebec and Montreal, but especially at Three Rivers on the St.
Lawrence. Nicolet led the way to the fur country; Joliet gave up the
church for furs; Duluth was a freebooter, and the charge against him
was that he systematically broke the king's ordinance as to the fur
trade; La Salle sent the first vessel—the Griffin—laden with furs
down the lakes, where she was lost; the iron-handed Tonty deserted
the whites and threw in his lot with the Indians as a fur
trafficker; and La Verendrye, one of the greatest of the early
Frenchmen charged with making great wealth by the fur trade, says in
his heart-broken reply to his persecutors: " If more than 40,000
livres of debt which I have on my shoulders are an advantage, then I
can flatter myself that I am very rich."
Shortly after French
Canada became British, it was seen that so lucrative a traffic as
that in pelts should not be given lip. Curry, Finlay and Henry, sen.,
pluckily pushed their way beyond Lake Superior iii search of wealth,
and found it. The Montreal merchants trade the trade up the lakes
the foundation of Montreal's commercial supremacy in Canada; and the
North-West Company, which they founded, only did what the great
English company had been doing with their motto, "Pro pelle cutem "
for a hundred years on the shores of Hudson Bay.
It is evident to the
most casual observer that the fur trade was an important element in
the building up of Canada, not only in wealth but also in some of
our higher national characteristics. The coureurs de bois and the
canoemen stood for much in the days of our infancy as a new nation.
While we delight to
see the sonorous Indian words chosen as the names for our New World
rivers and lakes, counties and towns, yet we rejoice too that our
pioneers are thus commemorated. The naives of all the French
pioneers mentioned are to be found fastened on the region which they
explored. Fraser, Thompson, Stuart, Quesnel, Douglas, Finlayson, and
Dease have retained their hold even in the face of such musical
terns as Chipewyaan, Metlakalitla, Assiniboine, and Muskegon.
Winnipegosis and Manitoba forts have borne the names of our three
traders, Mackenzie, Lord Selkirk, and Simpson, and Fort Alexandria
also commemorates the first of these. Rivers and islands, counties,
towns, mountains and vast regions of territory are all known by the
names of the trio whose fortunes we have been following.
The great explorer
leads the way for the development of his country, stimulates inquiry
as to the resources of the land lie finds, and awakens the desire in
other breasts to follow if not excel him in his discoveries. The map
maker, the mineral prospector, the lumberer, and the tourist are all
dependent on him as their guide. What Columbus is to the New World
as a whole, the explorer is to the special field he discovers, and
his fame, if not so great, must yet be akin to that of the man who
ploughed the first furrow across the Atlantic.
The fur trader is
also the pioneer of settlement. It is quite true that there is an
antagonism between the fur trader and the settler. The fur trader
seeks to keep the beaver, the mink, and the fox alive that he may
take toll of them year after year; when the settler comes the beaver
dam is a thing of the past, and the fox flees far away to his forest
lair. Yet inasmuch as the settler is permanent, and the trader
transient, the meeting of the two has the inevitable result of
driving off the trader. This cannot be helped, it is the trader's
misfortune; he must find "fresh woods and pastures new," and then
when his fur-trading days are done he must resort to the life of the
settler and spend the sunset of his days in village or clearance.
It was'the old Hudson's Bay Company led by Lord Selkirk that
introduced the Highland settlers on Red River, and decreed that Fort
Garry should be the centre around which gathered the Red River
Settlement, which in time became the city of Winnipeg. Fort Victoria
on Vancouver Island, chosen by Trader James Douglas as the depot of
the fur trade, has become the capital of British Columbia and the
gem of the Pacific coast. All over Rupert's Land the places chosen
by the fur traders have become the centres where has grown tip the
trade of to-day. Portage la Prairie was a fort, so was Brandon, so
was Qu'Appelle, so was Edmonton, so was Fort William, and many
others. In hundreds of cities on the American continent the old fur
traders' fort was the first post driven down to mark the
establishment of the commerce of the future day.
Sir George Simpson
fought a losing battle when he sought to keep a Chinese wall round
his fur preserve. It was impossible to maintain this splendid
isolation. Prejudice, misrepresentation i, charter rights, and rocky
barriers could not stop the inevitable movement. The sleepy fur
trader in his dream hears approaching the sound of the bee—"a more
adventurous colonist than man"—and mutters in his sleep:—
"I listen long
To his domestic hum, and I think I hear
The sound of that advancing multitude
Which soon shall fill these deserts."
It must be so!
No country was ever
iii the position to need the fur trade in its early history as much
as old Canada. Early Canada was covered with heavy forests. The St.
Lawrence, its chief artery, was difficult to navigate. Its first
colonists were all poor—fleeing away from the despotic persecution
of victorious American revolutionists, leaving everything behind
them, or crossing the Atlantic because of hard financial conditions
in the motherland. Moreover, Canada is northern and nature is not so
prolific as she is further south. Hence long years elapsed before
poverty was driven out, and peaceful plenty came.
Now the northerly
situation of Canada was very favourable for the production of
fur-bearing animals. Furs are very valuable, and are so light and
may be contained in such small space that the trapper may carry a
fortune in one single pack upon his back. This made trade possible
over thousands of miles to the interior, through the agency of the
birch-bark canoe, which the redman so valued as to call it the gift
of the maniton. So while fifty years were passing in Little York
(Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada, with the most painful and
slow steps of improvement, Montreal was the mart of a most valuable
trade. The fur-trading merchants became nabobs. Forsyth, Richardson,
McTavish, Frobisher and many others became wealthy, bought
seigniories, became prominent figures in public life, were looked up
to as their natural leaders by their French-Canadian voyageurs, and
retired from business to live in their palatial abodes---the "lords
of the north"—or to retire as did Sir Alexander Mackenzie and others
to the motherland and spend their remaining days as country
gentlemen.
The same thing has
continued from the earliest days till now. Not only can a an of fair
education, who rises with reasonable rapidity in his forty years or
more of service for the company, have at the end of his time -say
from six to eight thousand pounds sterling, but clerks,
post-masters, and labouring-men may all leave the service with
proportionate savings. True the life may be long, hard, and
unattractive, but expenses are small and savings large. The Red
River Settlement grew to twelve thousand people in 1870, five-sixths
of its people having come through the channel of the fur trade.
No doubt in the
present condition of Canada the fur trade does not occupy so
important a place. The farmer tends to overtake the hunter in
fortune, just as the settler must in time drive out the trader. But
the very greatest service was rendered the country by the fur
traders in early Canada supplying a class of capitalists who spent
their money in giving employment to others, organized first lines of
transport by boat, filled the sea with their sailing vessels to
carry freight and passengers, and afterwards introduced steamships
to thread the rivers, cross the lakes and even the Atlantic Ocean.
Montreal became a
centre for wholesale trade. Goods could be supplied to the settlers
in Western Canada; then when transport of a better kind was needed,
the capital and energy of Montreal merchants became the basis for
building lines of railway, and for giving the farmer with his
products access to the great markets of the world. The chain of
connection is complete in Canada between the fur trader's pioneer
work and the present state of Canadian trade and commerce.
The fur trade was
also a school for the development of such high moral qualities as
courage and tact. In no other circumstances does so much depend upon
the personal qualities of the man. The fur trade is carried on in
the solitudes, far from organized society. The dealings are with
savages who are kept down by no visible authority, who are ignorant
and may be appealed to by greed, jealousy, or superstition to turn
against the trader and injure him. Thus it was often dangerous to go
far from the base of supplies and venture almost single-handed among
untutored tribes.
The experiences of
the fur companies in such circumstances have been very remarkable.
At first there may have been violence done by the natives to the
traders. The brothers Frobisher on their first visits to Rainy Lake
were robbed, the ship Tonquill on the Pacific coast was attacked and
many employes killed, massacres of the traders took place at Fort
St. .John and Kamloops in British Columbia, and Chief Factor
Campbell was attacked in his occupation of the head waters of the
Stikine and on the Upper Yukon. Yet it is marvellous that for more
than two centuries, or including the French regime, three centuries,
the traders have freely mingled with the savage tribes and have been
objects of envy from their possession of valuable goods, but have
succeeded by sturdiness and good management in getting control of
the wildest Indians.
Now this was chiefly
accomplished by the good character of the traders. The men of the
Hudson's Bay Company especially, but to a certain extent also all
the fur traders of British America have been men of probity and
fairness. Just and honest treatment of an Indian snakes him your
friend. The terrible scenes of bloodshed enacted by the Indians
among the Americans in the \'Western States can, in almost every
instance, be traced to dishonesty and wrong on the part of the
traders and Indian agents of that country. British fur companies
have been, on the whole, dominated by a wise desire to retain the
confidence of the Indian, and have proved the statement true that
Britain alone has shown an ability to deal justly with and to gain
the confidence of inferior races.
In reaching this end
great determination, watchfulness, and caution are developed in the
trader. He must be firm, must never let an Indian imagine he can
master him, and many a time must be ready to use the "knock-down"
argument in the case of the impudent or the intractable. Physically
and mentally the successful trader requires to be a man among men.
Thus the fur trade has cultivated a manliness, straightforwardness,
and decision of character which has proved a heritage of greatest
value to the Canadian people.
Wherever the Hudson's
Bay Company fort is established there flies the Union Jack. On
Sundays and holidays it was always unfurled, and the lesson that
there was something higher thane trade was thereby taught, for on
those days traffic ceased. The companies were always on the side of
law and order. The loyal sentiment was their only way of governing
the Indians, and it became a part of their settled policy to "honour
the king." In the War of the Revolution the traders along the
frontier were true to Britain, and the celebrated capture of
Michilimackinae in 1812 was accomplished by a British force of less
than two hundred men---one hundred and sixty of them Nor'-Wester
voyageurs under Captain Roberts. In the struggle of the Canadian
rebellion we have seen that from Governor Simpson down all the fur
traders were against rebellion and in favour of law.
Undoubtedly
hand-in-hand with the United Empire Loyalists, the Nor'-Wester
influence did much to keep Canada true to British institutions,
while the presence of the Hudson's Bay Company and the Selkirk
colony in Rupert's Land, and the traders led by Chief Factor James
Douglas on the coast, were the means of preserving to the British
Crown the greater Canada which was an object of desire for half a
century to the Americans. The traders did their full share in
maintaining and perpetuating the loyalty which to-day is so strong a
sentiment in the breasts of Canadians. |
