The Great Company Part 7

NATIONS VISITING HUDSON'S BAY.

Bailey, 1673: Lyddal, 1678:

Esquemos, Askimows, Nodwayes, Odwayes, Twegwayes, Twagions, Pankeshones, Paggarshows, Noridgewelks, Narchuels, Abenekays, Penkayes, Micmacks, Micmackes, Kilistinons, Crilistinons, a.s.sinapoils, Ossa-poets, Cuchneways, Kitchenayes, Algonkins, Algonkings, Outaways, Otawayes, Outagamis. Wattagamais.

No wonder, therefore, that the Adventurers in England were puzzled, and that at one of their later meetings Prince Rupert was forced to exclaim:

"Gentlemen, these Indians" (each member had been supplied with Governor Nixon's list) "are not our Indians. 'Fore G.o.d, out of the nineteen I see only five we have dealt with before."

Another worthy member declared, on a similar occasion that the tribes frequenting the Bay were more volatile than the Bedouins. "These are not men, but chameleons"--was the remark of another adventurer.

[Sidenote: Confusion of tribes.]

The chief cause of the confusion lay in the variations of spelling.

More than a century was to elapse before a common orthography was adopted, and in the interval it was impossible to fix the tribes by name with certainty. The name of no tribe perhaps underwent such vicissitudes of spelling and p.r.o.nunciation as that described by the earliest Jesuit pioneers as the Ossa-poiles, which in our own day are known as the a.s.siniboines. They were in process of time the Poeles, Poets, the Pedlas, the Semplars, Oss-Semplars, Essapoils and the Simpoils.[17]

At a general court held to consider the action of Governor Bailey, the majority of the adventurers professed themselves rejoiced at having been quit of the services of the Sieurs Groseilliers and Radisson; yet there were not wanting others to openly regret the treatment these two men had received. As may be supposed, the most fervent of their advocates and defenders was Sir John Kirke, whose daughter had married Radisson, and who himself had lately been knighted by the king. He predicted some disaster to the Company from having dismissed these two faithful servants, and he was loud and persistent in a.s.serting the bad faith and unjust suspicions of Bailey.

While the affairs of the Company were proceeding tranquilly at home, the conduct and employment of one of these two bushrangers was more enlivening. Chouart was pa.s.sing his time in inactivity at Three Rivers. But his brother-in-law, after several ineffectual endeavours to establish a northern rivalry to the Company, had offered his services to the French Navy. This career, which at that period must have been, even for him, sufficiently eventful and exciting, was cut short by s.h.i.+p-wreck in 1679. Losing all his property, even to his clothing, Radisson made his way first to Brest and then to Paris. The Vice-Admiral and Intendant of the Fleet having written in his favour, the Court was pleased to grant him a sum of one hundred crowns, and hope was also held out to him that he would be honoured by the command of a frigate. In the meantime he was accorded leave to go to England to fetch his wife.

[Sidenote: Radisson in France.]

Madame Radisson, otherwise Mistress Mary Kirke, appears to have caused her husband a great deal of mortification and numerous disappointments.

There is no doubt that her continued residence in England, in spite of her husband's return to the French service, made him an object of suspicion to the French Court. Once when he endeavoured, in a memorable interview with Colbert, to press upon that Minister his scheme for ousting the English from Hudson's Bay, the Minister responded coldly:

"M. Radisson, you are suspected of being in league with the English, your father-in-law is one of the members of the English Company; and your wife resides under his roof."

"I made him understand," declared Radisson long afterwards, "that, though married, I was not master of my wife. Her father would by no means consent to my bringing her to France with me."

These rebuffs determined him to make an attempt to better his worldly condition elsewhere. A true soldier of fortune, patriotism appears to have had little weight with him; he was as ready to serve under the English as the French. He returned to find his father-in-law more placable. Sir John had at this time certain claims against the French; and he doubtless fancied that Radisson might a.s.sist him in preferring these at the French Court. He took occasion to ask his father-in-law what chance there remained to him of again securing employment under the Company. "None, sir," replied Kirke, "both Bailey, Lyddal and others are against you and have poisoned the minds of their employers.

Prince Rupert is, however, your friend, and also Captain Gillam; but one dislikes to speak openly, and the other dare not."

Acting on this intelligence, Radisson resolved to see Rupert. The prince received him kindly enough; he took pains to show him his collection of mezzotints, and to explain some of his scientific curiosities. He even went so far as to condole with Radisson on the treatment he had received. But he had to point out that the temper of the Company was such that he feared it would be in vain for him to exercise his interest for his visitor's reinstatement.

[Sidenote: Plan to dislodge the Company.]

Radisson, disappointed of his hopes, and frustrated in his desire to return with his wife, did not meet with a warm welcome on the other side of the Channel. Colbert received him with black looks; and the suspicions which gathered about him were now strengthened rather than dissipated. In this extremity he repaired to the Marquis de Seignely, to whom he set forth substantially the same plan which he had cherished for years, of opening out the trade of the North, with the additional attraction now of dislodging the English from a commerce which had already proved vastly profitable. Seignely listened with interest, and requested time to reflect on the matter. At the second interview Radisson was not overwhelmed with disappointment, for he had expected no other issue; he was told flatly that he was regarded by the king as little better than a traitor; and that his Canadian project met with universal distrust.

The outlook seemed discouraging indeed, when happily at this juncture there arrived in Paris M. de la Chesnaye, who was in charge of the fur-trade in Canada, as the head of the Compagnie du Nord. This event proved Radisson's salvation. He learned with great rejoicing that La Chesnaye's visit to France was actuated by a desire to report upon the intrusion of the English Company. La Chesnaye proved a true friend; he evinced himself most heartily in favour of the Government securing the services of Radisson in establis.h.i.+ng a rival establishment, on the principle of those of the Company to which he had formerly been attached.

Many consultations took place, both Seignely and Chesnaye listening with great interest while Radisson explained the equipment and merchandise of the Hudson's Bay Company, which he strongly advised should be taken as a pattern in all practical extensions of the French fur-trade in those regions.

[Sidenote: Radisson a.s.sisted by the Jesuits.]

The only difficulty now presenting itself was to find money for the enterprise. The exchequer of the Court was at a low ebb; and it had a thousand calls upon its charity and liberality. Radisson must wait even for the few hundred crowns he so sadly needed for his pa.s.sage to New France and his personal needs. There was, however, one force in France which could always be approached with a good courage when any enterprise in a new country required support, and always with success.

It was the power which, though it had endured a thousand disappointments and sacrificed a thousand lives, and as many fortunes, in the attempt to teach the Gospel of Jesus in the wilderness, had adhered without wavering to its faith in the ultimate victory of the Cross over the savage nature of the Indians. No adventurer, if he had but a sufficiently plausible story, need turn away empty-handed from the door of the Jesuits. To the Jesuits of Paris Radisson presented himself as a good Catholic seeking to subvert the designs of the heretic English. He applied for a.s.sistance, and he was at length rewarded for his pains by a sum of five hundred crowns.

But nearly two years had pa.s.sed before this a.s.sistance was procured.

Radisson's debts had acc.u.mulated; his creditors were clamouring about him, threatening him with the sponging-house; no effort to elude them met with success, and at length he found himself at Roch.e.l.le, with scarce twenty crowns in his pocket over and above the cost of his pa.s.sage. It was then that he made the resolve to reimburse the Jesuits, "if he should live to be worth so great a sum," and it is interesting to discover that two years later he kept his word. At present he could only trust to La Chesnaye, who was anxiously awaiting his arrival in Quebec. Thither Radisson arrived on the 25th of September, 1681.

La Chesnaye showed much joy at seeing his friend; for in truth his own plans for seeking to share the northern trade of the English were nearly ripe. He declared that there was no time to be lost; but that in spite of the urgency of the matter the greatest circ.u.mspection would have to be observed, as Frontenac by no means desired to compromise the king without first seeing his way clear.

But if the Governor whose career was about to close was punctilious, the Intendant d.u.c.h.esneau was not. He had already dispatched a memoir to his superior relating to Hudson's Bay, and to what he believed to be the French rights there.

[Sidenote: d.u.c.h.esneau protests against English encroachments.]

"They" (the English) he wrote, "are still on Hudson's Bay on the north and do great damage to our fur-trade. The farmers [of the revenue]

suffer in consequence by this diminution of the trade at Tadoussac, and throughout the entire country, because the English drive off the Outaoua nations. For the one and the other design they have two forts on the said Bay--the one towards Tadoussac and the other at Cape Henrietta Marie, on the side of the a.s.sinibonetz. The sole means to prevent them succeeding in what is prejudicial to us in this regard would be to drive them by main force from that Bay, which belongs to us. Or, if there would be an objection in coming to that extremity, to construct forts on the rivers falling into the lakes, in order to stop the Indians at these points."

The zealous Intendant declared that should King Lewis adopt the resolution to arrange with the Duke of York for his possessions in that quarter, "in which case Boston could not resist," Canada would be ruined, "the French being naturally inconsistent and fond of novelty."

Finding, however, that they could obtain no official recognition of the enterprise, La Chesnaye at length resorted to a transparent fiction in order to account for Radisson's departure--a subterfuge which was the more necessary since many had begun to suspect his destination and urged the Governor to do nothing which would bring down on them the enmity of the English and their allies, the Iroquois.

He requested the Governor, if he would not countenance an expedition with license to trade on the sh.o.r.es of the Bay, to grant Radisson formal permission to return to France by way of New England in a vessel belonging to the Government of Acadia, which at that moment lay in the St. Lawrence ready to sail.

It was arranged privately that after his departure Radisson should proceed in this vessel only as far as Isle Percee in the Gulf, near the mouth of the river, and there await his kinsmen Groseilliers, his nephew Chouart, and the two s.h.i.+ps which La Chesnaye was even then busily fitting out. Thus all official cognizance of the expedition would be avoided.

[Sidenote: Company's enemies leave Quebec.]

The terms agreed upon were, that in return for La Chesnaye's equipment, Radisson and Groseilliers were, provided certain conditions were carried out, to receive jointly half the profits of the venture, and La Chesnaye the other half. What these conditions were can only be guessed; but beyond all question, they concerned the capture or spoliation of the English trading posts on the Bay. Radisson took with him his nephew, Jean Baptiste, who had pa.s.sed nearly the whole of his life among the Indians as a _coureur de bois_; the pilot, Pierre Allemand, and an old bushranger named G.o.defrey, who was well acquainted with the Indians of the northern regions. Groseilliers was to remain behind until the spring, when he was to have the command of the smaller of the two vessels. On the 4th of November the advance guard of the expedition directed against the Company's establishment in Hudson's Bay left Quebec.

In the following spring the rendezvous was kept at the island named.

Radisson is found complaining bitterly of the character of the vessels _St. Pierre_ and _St. Anne_. The former he describes as an old craft of 50 tons only, "with twelve men of a crew, including those with me.

There were goods enough for the trade aboard her," he adds, "but so scanty a supply of provisions that if I had not been so deeply engaged I should not venture on the enterprise."

[Sidenote: Rejected advice of Radisson and Groseilliers.]

If his case was scarcely hopeful, that of his brother-in-law was far worse. The latter's vessel could boast but little more than half the tonnage, and while her crew was larger by three men, she carried even fewer supplies. But Radisson and Groseilliers were not men to shrink from any enterprise because it seemed hazardous. They had led bold, reckless lives, and their spirits rose at the prospect of danger. It was afterwards alleged of this pair that one great cause of their disagreement with the Company was their absolute inability to remain quiet and content in the enjoyment of a regular traffic. Such a career seemed to their bold, energetic dispositions worthier of drapers'

apprentices. It is said they counselled the Company not to think of establis.h.i.+ng one or two trading posts and expect the Indians to come to them for trade, but to push on in the wilderness to the north and west, building new depots and stirring up the hunters to greater activity and more profitable results. Had this advice been followed, the exploration of the great North-West would not only have been antic.i.p.ated by almost a century; but by the occupation of its territory, the great evils of a later day would have been averted; nor would anyone in England have challenged the Company's right to an exclusive trade in the regions granted by its charter.

But the Company was soon to learn that its earliest pioneers and forerunners were not to be cast off with impunity. The two bushrangers experienced considerable difficulty at the outset in propitiating and calming the fears of their crews, who were terrified, and not without reason, at the prospect of a voyage of 900 leagues in such craft as the _St. Pierre_ and the _St. Anne_, and amidst rough water and ice.

But they at length succeeded and effected a start.

After nineteen days the crew of Groseilliers' s.h.i.+p mutinied.

Groseilliers' attempts to appease them seemed about to end in signal failure when the man on watch cried out that a vessel was in sight to windward. Groseilliers seized his opportunity; "See!" he cried, pointing to the distant barque, "yonder is one of the English Company, laden with the profits of their trade in the Bay. Every man has his pocket full of gold and his stomach full of rum; and we shall have the same if we are not cowards enough to abandon our voyage."

After innumerable episodes, some of which almost ended in tragic consequences, Radisson at last, on the 26th of August, arrived on the west coast of Hudson's Bay. On the following day he was joined by his brother-in-law in the _St. Anne_ at the mouth of a river named by the Indians Ka-kirka-kiouay, translated by Radisson as "who goes, who comes."

Twelve days before their arrival another s.h.i.+p had entered this same river, commanded by none other than Captain Gillam, and having on board John Bridgar, commissioned as Governor of the new settlement at Port Nelson.

Having thus entered the river, they advanced fifteen miles up stream, and Radisson then left Groseilliers to build a fort, while he himself departed in search of savages with whom to trade. With him he took his nephew and G.o.defrey, all three being well armed with muskets and pistols. In the course of eight days they accomplished forty leagues and attained the upper part of the river, though without meeting a single savage. On the eighth day, however, their eyes were rejoiced by the sight of a large encampment of Indians, who, while not especially rich in furs, were eager to conclude a treaty with the French, and to encourage their settlement in the country. Radisson now decided to return, accompanied by some of the savages, and on the 12th day of September rejoined his brother-in-law, whose fort he found pretty well advanced.

[Sidenote: The younger Gillam discovered.]

Hardly had he returned when the sudden booming of a cannon startled the settlement. It was the first time the Indians had ever heard the sound, and they expressed much astonishment and apprehension. While the two adventurers hastened to re-a.s.sure their allies, they were themselves hardly less disturbed. Radisson made up his mind to immediately ascertain whence the firing came and with this intention he embarked in a canoe and went to the mouth of the river. In pa.s.sing to the opposite bank of the stream, and while in the vicinity of a small island, they perceived signs of European habitation. A tent had been erected, and at that moment a log house was being built. After a stealthy reconnoitre, lasting the whole night, Radisson and his companions advanced boldly in the morning from the opposite sh.o.r.e in their canoe. The islanders were engaged in making a repast when Radisson attracted their attention. Speaking first to them in French, and finding that none of them understood, he thereupon addressed them in English. He asked them what was their business in those parts.

Their leader quickly responded: "We are English, and come for the beaver trade."

"By whose authority," asked Radisson; "do you possess a commission?"