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To write a chapter on the civil and
commercial life of the old settlers would be easy if it could be made
purely anecdotal; but if we are to make it more historical, the task is
not so simple. For it must be remembered that the science and art of
statecraft had made but little
progress on the banks of the Red River, and that laws and
the administration of them were primitive enough in those early days. So
far as civil government was concerned, as soon as they had secured
dominance over all rivals, the Hudson’s Bay Company was the local
representative and embodiment of British law in the colony. The local
governor of that company, assisted by a council of representative men from
the English and French speaking residents (the full title of
the conclave being "The Council of
Assiniboia"), enacted such laws as the circumstances demanded, and cases
left unprovided for in these local enactments were covered by the common
law as embodied in British jurisprudence.
The criminal law, of course, was that of
England, and in all respects as soon as sufficient machinery was
available, the practice and procedure would be that of the courts in the
old land. Most of the real property laws were of local enactment to suit
the peculiar circumstances. A great deal of the legislation reads
strangely enough now, as it was specially applicable to the surroundings
of the time. For instance, when horses by the hundred were feeding on the
prairie, it was quite a common thing for any one to catch one and ride him
or drive him till he found his own, or till he reached his destination, if
not too far away. At first, on
the principle of mutual helpfulness, this practice was little resented by
the owner unless the horse was abused; but when the practice became too
general, and as some not of the colonist class began to have altogether
too loose an idea about meum and tuum in the horse line,
stringent laws were enacted.
For a time it was a settled
decision of the courts that the owner of a horse, finding him in the hands
of another, could not only have such a one proceeded against, but could
seize and hold the saddle or harness, etc., that was upon the horse at the
time. The administration of law, when once a real system of administration
was established, rested with a judge or recorder, assisted frequently by
associated magistrates, and sometimes these magistrates (appointed from
amongst the settlers) held court themselves. Serious offences were not
frequent, and those that did come before the magistrates were disposed of
in a summary way. In the quarrels that sometimes broke out I have seen my
father, who was one of the magistrates, holding court in the house, and
when he concluded that the parties were about equally to blame, he
compelled them to advance from the sides of the room to the centre and
shake hands in the presence of the court, as a declaration of their
intention to live peaceably from that time forward.
I suppose that any
breach of the peace afterwards would have been looked on as contempt of
court and punished accordingly; hence the people who had a high veneration
for authority generally kept the compact. In cases where threats had been
made one against the other, the general practice was to cause the offender
"to bind himself over to keep the peace," on the severest pains and
penalties if he broke it. I remember the case of a merchant in whose
employ, while on a freighting trip to St. Cloud, a young half-breed died
of fever. The father of the lad held that the merchant was responsible for
the death, and after partaking freely of stimulant visited the merchant’s
store with a hay-fork, determined to put the slayer of his son to death.
The merchant felt decidedly uncomfortable at being hunted around the
country by a half-drunken man with a weapon of that kind, and escaping
through the back door fled to my father’s house and invoked the protection
of law against the man-slayer. Not long afterwards the half-breed arrived
on horseback with his hay-fork. He was given a bed in the kitchen, while
the merchant passed a perhaps somewhat anxious night in another part of
the house; but in the morning, when the half-breed was sober, court was
held, and after being shown how groundless his view was, he was bound over
to keep the peace under severe penalties, and that settled it. Nowadays,
or then, if enforced strictly, the criminal law would not deal so gently
with a man who was disposed to prowl after innocent parties with murderous
intent and a fork; but a wholesome dread of the court, if any breach of
the law were committed, made the plan effective. Cases did sometimes occur
in which the officers of the law found themselves comparatively helpless
against crowds, but these were of rare occurrence and were mostly the
result of some combination for popular rights, as, for instance, where it
was demanded that trade be free to all, instead of being monopolized by
companies.
When we turn to the commercial life of the settlers an
equally primitive state of things meets us. For many years, of course, the
Hudson’s Bay Company controlled the trade of the region, they alone having
the right to traffic in furs, skins, etc., and they also supplying the
settlers with such articles as they needed, in return for such produce as
they could raise. So far as their treatment of the settlers in this regard
is concerned and we may say in all other ways—nothing could have been
fairer or more liberal. Instead of taking a great quantity of produce from
one, and none from another, the company apportioned out what they needed
amongst the settlers, and thus gave all a fighting chance for life. The
prices paid for produce were good, as high as eight shillings a bushel
being sometimes paid for wheat. In regard to the fur and other trade all
efforts to preserve a monopoly proved unavailing, and after several
hard-fought legal cases, and after several popular demonstrations against
monopoly, the principle of trade free to all was generally admitted and
acted upon. Importations of goods were made chiefly from England via the
Hudson’s Bay, thence by water to the colony, and from the United States by
means of cart trains. Goods from England were landed
at York Factory, and were brought thence by row-boats,
manned by from eight to fourteen men, who sat on benches and pulled with
great long oars, more like beams than modern sculls. No one who knew
anything about the extreme toil of that weary life can fail in seeing the
marvellous beauty of Whittier’s "Red River Voyageur," and feeling how true
it is to real life. We can see the bent form, the bronzed face and
calloused hand of the boatman as we read the lines:
"Drearily blows the north-wind
From the land of ice and snow;
The eyes that look are weary,
And heavy the hands that row."
We can see the tired face light up as he hears the
sound of the bell from the cathedral opposite the fort to which he is
coming:
"The voyageur smiles as he listens
To the sound that grows apace,
Well he knows the vesper ringing
Of the bells of St. Boniface.
The bells of the Roman mission,
That call from their turrets twain
To the boatman on the river,
To the hunter on the plain."
And we can all, amidst the tug and strain of life, join
in the noble allegory at the close:
"Even so in our mortal journey
The bitter north winds blow,
And thus upon life’s Red River
Our hearth as oarsmen row,
"And when the Angel of Shadow
Rests his feet on wave and shore,
And our eyes grow dim with watching,
And our hearts faint at the oar,
"Happy is he who heareth
The signal of his release,
In the bells of the Holy City,
The chimes of eternal peace."
Not all the voyageurs could have understood the lofty
strain of the poet, though they all knew the toil of the life and the joy
of arriving home. Burly and able-bodied fellows were these oarsmen of the
half-blood, capable of enduring almost any amount of labor and fatigue.
Lighthearted and playful as kittens were they also, and at night, despite
the labors of the day, they often indulged in their wild dances by the
weird camp-fires along the shore to the music of the ever-ready violin.
Before they started for York, and after they came back, these boatmen had
special festivities. My father had a considerable number of boats on the
line, and amongst the scenes of childhood photographed on my mind I can
see the huge campfires on the river bank, and I can hear the wild
shouts of these semi-savage men as they celebrated their outgoing or their
incoming.
The other outlet for the development of commercial
enterprise amongst these early settlers was trade with the United States
to the south. Either to bring goods for themselves or for the Hudson’s Bay
Company, or other merchants, the settlers went every summer with trains of
oxen and carts to St. Paul or St. Cloud, Minnesota, and at so much a
hundred-weight freighted the merchandise thence to Fort Qarry. It was a
long and toilsome trip, and at times when the warlike Sioux, red-handed
from Minnesota massacres, were hanging on their trail, it was a dangerous
one as well. At such times only the fact of their being well armed and
strong in numbers, prevented the extinction of the freighters at the hands
of the Indians. Commerce of the kind described called for more physical
endurance and skill in crossing swamps and rivers than for the keen,
aggressive education now required, and hence many who had but little
learning in letters came to considerable wealth and prominence as
freighters. Many of the half-blood were amongst the latter, and out of
their prominence as freighters, together with their dearth of education,
some amusing incidents took place. On one occasion a number of these
freighters were staying (as the wealthier of them did) at a first-class
hotel in St. Paul, and of course availed themselves of all the advantages
of the reading-room, etc. One of them, quite a well-to-do man, but unable
to read, was not to be outdone in the presence of strangers, and following
the example of others picked up a newspaper, but unfortunately got it
upside down. With the paper in this position his eye caught the
advertisement of some steamship company, and of course got the cut of the
vessel inverted. Here was something he thought he was quite safe in
discussing, for he made sure he could understand a picture, and so he held
it up and boldly announced to those around him that the column contained
the account of "a dreadful shipwreck." The rest may be imagined.
Another, who kept a kind of refitting emporium on the
way, was accustomed, in the absence of ability to read or write, to keep
his accounts in a book by rough pictures, drawing a horse, or harness, or
cart-axle, etc., as required by the transaction, and also some distinctive
feature of the man to whom he sold them. On one occasion he was closing
accounts with a settler after the season’s work, and gave a cheese amongst
the things he had furnished to the settler. The settler denied having
received a cheese, but the "merchant" produced his book showing the
drawing. The settler still denied, but looking up some memoranda he had
kept, told the "merchant" that he had not received a cheese, but had
purchased a grindstone with which he was not charged. The "merchant" at
once remembered the transaction, and coolly remarked that he had intended
the drawing for a grindstone, but "had forgotten to put the hole in it."
The delightfully accommodating procedure that could change a cheese into a
grindstone by the addition of a pencil-mark is worthy of a destructive
Biblical critic who can make a Hebrew letter mean anything his hypothesis
demands by changing its vowel point.
And thus in a primitive manner of civil and commercial
life did the early settlers live, near the spot where the "bull’s-eye"
city of Canada now stands, with all the equipment of civic organization,
and with such a trade as belongs to a place midway along the greatest
railway on the round globe. |
