The Great Company Part 36

[Sidenote: Collision at Big Fall.]

In autumn, 1806, John Crear, a trader in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company (also on the establishment of Albany Factory), occupied a post at a place called Big Fall, near Lake Winipic. One evening a party of Canadians in two canoes, commanded by Mr. Alexander MacDonnell, then a clerk of the North-West Company, arrived, and encamped at a short distance. On the following morning four of Crear's men set out for their fis.h.i.+ng grounds, about a mile off, immediately after which Mr. MacDonnell came to the house with his men, and charging Crear with having traded furs with an Indian who was indebted to the North-West concern, insisted on these furs being given up to him. On Crear's refusal, MacDonnell's men broke open the warehouse door. William Plowman, the only servant that remained with Crear, attempted to prevent them from entering; but one of the Canadians knocked him down, while another presented a gun at Crear himself.

Although MacDonnell prevented him from firing, the Canadian struck Crear in the eye with the b.u.t.t end of his gun, which covered his face with blood and felled him to the ground. Mr. MacDonnell himself stabbed Plowman in the arm with a dagger, and gave him a dangerous wound. The Canadians then rifled the warehouse; the furs, being taken in summer, were of little value; but they carried off two bags of flour, a quant.i.ty of salt pork and beef, and some dried venison, and also took away a new canoe belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company. In the following February MacDonnell sent one of his junior clerks with a party of men, who again attacked Crear's house, overpowered him, beat him and his men in the most brutal manner, and carried away a great number of valuable furs. They also obliged Crear to sign a paper acknowledging that he had given up the furs voluntarily, which they extorted with threats of instant death if he should refuse. Mr.

Alexander MacDonnell had lately been promoted to the station of a partner in the North-West concern.

In the year 1806, Mr. Fidler was sent with a party of eighteen men from Churchill Factory, to establish a trading post at Isle a la Crosse, near the borders of the Athabasca country, but within the territories of the Hudson's Bay Company. He remained there for two years, sending a detachment of his people to Green Lake and Beaver River. During the first winter he had some success, but afterwards he was effectually obstructed. On many former occasions the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company had attempted to establish a trade in this place, which is in the centre of a country abounding in beaver, but they had always been obliged to renounce the attempt. The methods used with Mr. Fidler may explain the causes of this failure.

Mr. John MacDonnell had been Mr. Fidler's compet.i.tor during the early part of the winter, but (not being inclined to set all principles of law and justice at defiance) was removed and relieved, first by Mr.

Robert Henry, and then by Mr. John Duncan Campbell. The North-West concern having been established for many years at Isle a la Crosse without any compet.i.tion, had obtained what they call the attachment of the Indians, that is to say, they had reduced them to such abject submission that the very sight of a Canadian was sufficient to inspire them with terror. In order that this salutary awe might suffer no diminution, the post at Isle a la Crosse was reinforced with an extra number of Canadians, so that the natives might be effectually prevented from holding any intercourse with the traders of the Hudson's Bay Company, and that the appearance of so very superior a force, ready to overwhelm and destroy him, might deter Mr. Fidler from any attempt to protect his customers. A watch-house was built close to his door, so that no Indian could enter un.o.bserved; a party of professed batteilleurs were stationed here, and employed not only to watch the natives, but to give every possible annoyance, night and day, to the servants of the Hudson's Bay Company. Their fire-wood was stolen, they were perpetually obstructed in hunting for provisions, the produce of their garden was destroyed, their fis.h.i.+ng lines taken away in the night time, and their nets, on which they chiefly relied for subsistence, cut to pieces. The ruffians who were posted to watch Mr. Fidler, proceeded from one act of violence to another, and in proportion as they found themselves feebly resisted, they grew bolder, and at length issued a formal mandate that not one of the servants of the Hudson's Bay Company should stir out of their house, and followed up this with such examples of severity that Mr. Fidler's men refused to remain at the post. They were compelled to leave it, and the Canadians immediately burnt his house to the ground.

[Sidenote: The robbery at Bad Lake.]

A trader, William Corrigal, in the service of the Company, was stationed, in May, 1806, with a few men at a place called Bad Lake, not far from Albany Factory. Near this post was another occupied by a much larger number of men in charge of a partner in the North-West concern named Haldane. Five of the Canadians in his service watching their opportunity broke into Corrigal's house about midnight when he and his men were in bed. The ruffians immediately secured all the loaded guns and pistols they could find, and one of them seizing the Company's trader and presenting a pistol at his breast swore to shoot him if he made any resistance. In the meantime the others rifled the storehouse and took away furs to the number of 480 beaver. On their departure Corrigal dressed himself and went immediately to Haldane, whom he found up, and fully attired, to complain of the conduct of his servants and to demand that the stolen property be restored. The answer of the Northman was that "He had come to that country for furs, and furs he was determined to have." The robbers were permitted to carry away the stolen peltries to the Grand Portage where they were sold, and formed part of the returns of the North-West concern that year. A robbery of the same character took place at Red Lake a little later in the year. This trading house was also under the charge of Corrigal, and was forcibly entered by eight of the Northmen, armed with pistols and knives; under threats to murder the servants of the Hudson's Bay Company they carried off furs to the amount of fifty beaver. Not long after this they forcibly broke open the same warehouse and robbed it of a large quant.i.ty of cloth, brandy, tobacco and ammunition.

[Sidenote: Violence and robbery by the North-West Company.]

In the year 1808 Mr. John Spence, of the Hudson's Bay Company, commanded a post fitted out from Churchill's Factory at Reindeer Lake, in the neighbourhood of which there was a station of the North-West Company commanded by Mr. John Duncan Campbell, one of the partners. In the course of the spring, William Linklater, in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, was sent out to meet some Indians, from whom he traded a parcel of valuable furs. He was bringing them home on a hand sleigh, and was at no great distance from the house, when Campbell came out with a number of men, stopped him, demanded the furs, and on being refused drew a dagger, with which he cut the traces of the sledge, while at the same time one of his men took hold of Linklater's shoes, tripped him up, and made him fall on the ice. The sledge of furs was then hauled away to the North-West concern's house. Campbell offered to Mr. Spence to send other furs in exchange for those which he had thus robbed him of; but they were of very inferior value, and the latter refused the compromise. The furs were carried away, and no compensation was ever made.

On a previous occasion, at Isle a la Crosse Lake (in the year 1805), the same Campbell had attacked two of the servants of the Hudson's Bay Company, and took a parcel of furs from them in the same way. Some of the men from the Hudson's Bay House came out to a.s.sist their fellow-servants, but were attacked by superior numbers of the Canadians, and beaten off, with violence and bloodshed.

FOOTNOTES:

[84] See map, page 246.

[85] To exhibit anew the exaggeration common to the acquisition of new possessions, I may observe that Shelekoff reported that he had subjected to the crown of Russia, "fifty thousand men in the Island of Kodiak alone." But Lisiansky, who took a prominent part in the Russian Company, remarks, in 1805, that "the population of the island, when compared with its size, is very small." After the "minutest research"

at that time he found it amounted to only four thousand souls.

[86] Canadian archives.

[87] The tables enclosed in the dispatch show, first, the names and numbers of the posts occupied in the Indian country (exclusive of the King's posts), the number of partners, clerks and men employed, the lat.i.tude and longitude of each post being also given. The grand total shows that there were 117 posts, 20 partners, 161 clerks and interpreters, 877 common men, in all of a permanent staff 1,058 men, thus divided: Ninety-five in the territory of the United States from the south side of Lake Superior to the division of the waters falling into the Mississippi on the one side and Hudson's Bay on the other; seventy-six on the waters falling into the St. Lawrence from the Kaministiquia, and also from the St. Maurice; six hundred and thirty on the waters falling into Hudson's Bay, and two hundred and fifty-seven on the waters falling into the North Sea by the Mackenzie River. Besides these there were eighty or one hundred Canadians and Iroquois hunters, not servants, ranging free over the country and about five hundred and forty men employed in canoes on the Ottawa River. The average duties paid annually on landing in Britain amounted to upwards of 22,000 sterling and the price paid for the furs exported from Quebec in 1801, at the London sales, was 371,139 11s.

4d.

CHAPTER XXIX.

1808-1812.

Crisis in the Company's Affairs -- No Dividend Paid -- Pet.i.tion to Lords of the Treasury -- Factors Allowed a Share in the Trade -- Canada Jurisdiction Act -- The Killing of MacDonnell -- Mowat's Ill-treatment -- Lord Selkirk -- His Scheme laid before the Company -- A Protest by Thwaytes and others -- The Project Carried -- Emigrants sent out to Red River -- Northmen Stirred to Reprisal.

England was again at war with France. Napoleon had placed an embargo on English commerce, and to the uttermost corner of Europe was this measure felt. Tons of the most costly furs, for which there was no market, lay heaped in the Company's warehouse. The greatest difficulty was experienced in procuring servants, especially seamen, and when these were procured, they were often seized by a press-gang; shares began to decline in value; numerous partners were selling out their interests, and no strong man appeared at the head of affairs.

In 1808 no dividend was paid, chiefly the result of the non-exportation of the Company's furs to the Continent of Europe.

There were the acc.u.mulations of furs imported during 1806, 1807 and 1808 lying in the warehouse without prospect of sale.

The pressure still continued and at last, in 1809, the Company was driven to pet.i.tion the Chancellor of the Exchequer for transmission to Lords of the Treasury, setting forth the Company's position and its claims on the nation.

[Sidenote: The Company in difficulties.]

"Acc.u.mulated difficulties," it said, "have pressed hardly on the Company and we ask a.s.sistance to maintain a colony that till now has found within itself resources to withstand the pressure of all former wars and to continue those outfits on which six hundred Europeans and their families and some thousands of native Indians depend for their very existence.

"We a.s.sure your wors.h.i.+ps that it was not until all those resources were exhausted that we came to the resolution of making the present application."

The pet.i.tion recited that after having received their charter the Company had colonized such parts of newly granted territories as appeared most convenient for carrying on their commerce with the natives. This commerce "consisted in the barter of British manufactures for the furs of animals killed by the different tribes of Indians who were within reach of factories and gradually extended itself till, as at the present moment, the manufactures of Great Britain are borne by the traders of Hudson's Bay over the face of the whole country from Lake Superior to the Athabasca.

"The trade is at present pursued by the export of furs, gunpowder, shot, woollens, hardware and other articles, which together with large supplies of provisions for the factories, const.i.tute an annual outfit consisting wholly of British manufactures and British produce of from 40,000 to 50,000, in return for which we receive the furs of bears, wolves, foxes, otters, martens, beaver and other animals, together with some oil and articles of inferior value. The cargoes are sold at public sale. The beaver and some few inferior furs, together with the oil, are bought for home consumption and sell for about 30,000, but the fine furs were, till after the sale of 1806, bought by the fur merchants for the fairs of Frankfort and of Leipsic for Petersburg, and before the present war, for France. Since that year there has not been a fur sold for exportation, and as a proof to your wors.h.i.+ps that the deficiency of buyers did not arise from our holding back for a higher market, we sold in 1806 for seven s.h.i.+llings per skin furs that in the more quiet state of Europe in 1804 had brought us 20s. 3d., and which for years previous to that time had sold for a similar price; and other depreciation pervaded in about the same proportion the whole of those furs calculated only for the foreign market, and in some instances furs were sold for a less price than the duties we had paid for them.

"Since that period no orders have been received from abroad, and our warehouses are filled with the most valuable productions of three years' import that if sold at the prices of those years before the closing of the ports on the Continent would have produced us at least 150,000.

"It may be objected to us, that we were improvident in pursuing under such circ.u.mstances a trade which must so inevitably tend to ruin. But a certainty that a considerable quant.i.ty of furs found their way to New York, and an earnest zeal for the preservation of trade which by the conduct of the Hudson's Bay Company had been secured to this country for a century and a half, prompted us to every exertion to maintain the footing we had established, and the annually increasing amount of our trade gave us just grounds to look forward with confidence to the opening of the northern ports of Europe as the period when all our difficulties would cease; an event which, anterior to the battles of Austerlitz or of Jena, was looked for with the most sanguine expectation.

"Above all were we impelled by the strongest motives to continue these supplies which were necessary for the subsistence of six hundred European servants, their wives and children, dispersed over a vast and extended field of the North American Continent, and who would not be brought to Europe under a period of three years as well as those upon whom the many Indian nations now depend for their very existence.

"The nations of hunters taught for one hundred and fifty years the use of fire-arms could no more resort, with certainty, to the bow or the javelin for their daily subsistence. Accustomed to the hatchet of Great Britain, they could ill adopt the rude sharpened stone to the purposes of building, and until years of misery and of famine had extirpated the present race, they could not recur to the simple arts by which they supported themselves before the introduction of British manufactures. As the outfits of the Hudson's Bay Company consist princ.i.p.ally of articles which long habit have taught them now to consider of first necessity, if we withhold these outfits, we leave them dest.i.tute of their only means of support. The truth of this observation had a melancholy proof in the year 1782, when from the attack made upon the settlements by La Perouse, and the consequent failure of our supplies, many of the Indians were found starved to death.

[Sidenote: Pet.i.tion of the Company.]

"It was not only from the firm conviction that we felt of the necessity of European manufactures to the present existence of whole nations of North American Indians that we considered ourselves bound by the most powerful ties to exert every effort in their favour; but also that we might continue to them those advantages which would result to their religious as well as civil welfare from the progressive improvements, and a gradual system of civilisation and education which we have introduced throughout the country; improvements which are now diffusing the comforts of civilized life, as well as the blessings of the Christian faith to thousands of uninstructed Indians, and would in their completion, we can confidently a.s.sert, have tended to the future cultivation of lands, which from experiments we found capable of growing most of the grains of Northern Europe, and from their climate adapted to the culture of hemp and flax, and from the labour of those families who would have been induced to settle at our factories, might soon have brought to this country the produce of the boundless forests of pine that spread themselves over almost the southern parts of our possessions.

"To realize these not visionary schemes, but sure and certain plans, founded upon the progressive civilization of the natives, were objects not to be given up without the most urgent necessity, and the hope that the ruler of the French Empire could not forever shut out our trade from Europe, induced us to resort to every means within our power to preserve the advantages resulting to ourselves and to the Indians, and to the British nation.

"We have exhausted those funds which we set apart for their completion; we have pledged our credit till we feel, as honest men, that upon the present uncertainty we can pledge it no farther, and we throw ourselves upon your Wors.h.i.+p's wisdom to afford us that temporary a.s.sistance which we cannot ask at any other hands.

"Were we to resort to the early history of our settlements, we might lay the foundations of just claims upon the public to a.s.sist our present wants. We could show instances of most destructive attacks by the French upon our factories. Our forts and military works, mounted with a numerous and expensive artillery for the defence of the colony against their future operations, were destroyed and the guns ruined.

And particularly was a most grievous loss occasioned to us by the predatory attack of La Perouse about the conclusion of the American War, which caused the distress to which we have above alluded.

"Against these pressures when our trade flourished we were able to hold up, and we found within ourselves those resources which defeated the enemy's views and continued to Great Britain the trade we had established.

"And it is not until pressed to our last resort that we ask of your Lords.h.i.+ps that a.s.sistance with which we may confidently hope to preserve our trade until the continent may be again opened, when we shall be delivered from those difficulties under which we are now sinking."

The pet.i.tion was signed by Wm. Mainwaring, Governor; Joseph Berens, Deputy Governor; George Hyde Wollaston, Thomas Neave, Job Mathew Raikes, Thomas Langley, John Henry Pelly, Benjamin Harrison, John Webb.

In April the Adventurers pet.i.tioned the King in Council to reduce duties on furs to one-half, or trade must suffer extinction. No profit was derivable, it said, on marten, wolf, bear, wolverine and fisher-skins.

To this pet.i.tion the Office of Committee of Privy Council for Trade, Whitehall, replied in the following February, that the memorial of the Hudson's Bay Company contained no proposition on which the Lords of this Council could "offer any opinion to the Lords of Treasury."

[Sidenote: Small Government a.s.sistance.]

As their pet.i.tion was denied, the Company now boldly prepared a request and asked for a loan of 60,000, and that time be extended for paying the duties on furs imported until the continental market re-opened. To this request an answer was returned, allowing twelve months storage of furs free of duty and promising drawbacks as if storage had only been for one year, but stating that there were no funds out of which a loan could be made without special authority of Parliament.

It was clear that the Company was in very low water, and that some new salutary policy was demanded. By way of a beginning, barter was abolished as a basis of trade, and money payments ordered. At the same time the Adventurers stole a leaf out of the book of the North-West company, and new regulations, comprising thirty-five articles, were made in the early months of 1810, for carrying on the business in Hudson's Bay.

The principle of allowing to their chief officers a considerable partic.i.p.ation in the profits of their trade was admitted. It was found absolutely necessary to adopt some step of this sort, as nothing of such a measure could be sufficient to stem the torrent of aggression with which they had been a.s.sailed by the North-West company; and their absolute ruin must have ensued if some effectual means had not been taken, not only to rectify some of the abuses which had crept in under the former system, but also to rouse their officers to a more effectual resistance of the lawless violence practised against them.

The total lack of jurisdiction in the Indian country, as the territory which was the scene of the operations of the fur-traders was called, permitted crime to go unpunished, and numerous representations were made in respect to the evils of this practical immunity from punishment. In Sir Alexander Mackenzie's letter of the 25th of October, 1802, he says that, in view of the improbability of the two companies amalgamating, a jurisdiction should be established as speedily as possible, to prevent the contending fur companies from abusing the power either might possess, so as to secure to each the fruits of fair, honest and industrious exertion; it would also, he believed, tend to put a stop to the increasing animosity between the two companies. Mr. Richardson, of the other company, also pressed for the establishment of a competent jurisdiction and instanced the case of one of the clerks in his company who had killed a clerk of the other in defending the property in his care. The young man had come to Montreal to be tried, but there being no jurisdiction there for such trial, "he remains in the deplorable predicament that neither his innocence nor his guilt can be legally ascertained." He also proposed that a military post should be established at Thunder Bay, on Lake Superior, as an additional means of securing peace.