The Coureur des Bois.—The Voyageur.—The Birch-bark Canoe.—The Canadian Fur-trade in the last Century.—The Hudson’s Bay Company.—Bloody Feuds between the North-west Company of Canada and the Hudson’s Bay Company.—Their Amalgamation into a new Company in 1821.—Reconstruction of the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1863.—Forts or Houses.—The Attihawmeg.—Influence of the Company on its savage Dependents.—The Black Bear, or Baribal.—The Brown Bear.—The Grizzly Bear.—The Raccoon.—The American Glutton.—The Pine Marten.—The Pekan, or Woodshock.—The Chinga.—The Mink.—The Canadian Fish-otter.—The Crossed Fox.—The Black or Silvery Fox.—The Canadian Lynx, or Pishu.—The Ice-hare.—The Beaver.—The Musquash.
As the desire to reach India by the shortest road first made the civilized world acquainted with the eastern coast of North America, so the extension of the fur-trade has been the chief, or rather the only, motive which originally led the footsteps of the white man from the Canadian Lakes and the borders of Hudson’s Bay into the remote interior of that vast continent.
The first European fur-traders in North America were French Canadians—coureurs des bois—a fitting surname for men habituated to an Indian forest-life. Three or four of these “irregular spirits” agreeing to make an expedition into the backwoods would set out in their birch-bark canoe, laden with goods received on trust from a merchant, for a voyage of great danger and hardship, it might be of several years, into the wilderness.
On their return the merchant who had given them credit of course received the lion’s share of the skins gathered among the Hurons or the Iroquois; the small portion left as a recompense for their own labor was soon spent, as sailors spend their hard-earned wages on their arrival in port; and then they started on some new adventure, until finally old age, infirmities, or death prevented their revisiting the forest.
The modern “voyageur,” who has usurped the place of the old “coureurs,” is so like them in manners and mode of life, that to know the one is to become acquainted with the other. In short, the voyageur is merely a coureur subject to strict law and serving for a fixed pay; while the coureur was a voyageur trading at his own risk and peril, and acknowledging no control when once beyond the pale of European colonization.
The camel is frequently called the “ship of the desert,” and with equal justice the birch-bark canoe might be named the “camel of the North American wilds.” For if we consider the rivers which, covering the land like a net-work, are the only arteries of communication; the frequent rapids and cataracts; the shallow waters flowing over a stony ground whose sharp angles would infallibly cut to pieces any boat made of wood; and finally the surrounding deserts, where, in case of an accident, the traveller is left to his own resources, we must come to the conclusion that in such a country no intercourse could possibly be305 carried on without a boat made of materials at once flexible and tough, and capable moreover of being easily repaired without the aid of hammer and nails, of saw and plane. This invaluable material is supplied by the rind of the paper-birch, a tree whose uses in the Hudson’s Bay territories are almost as manifold as those of the palm-trees of the tropical zone. Where the skins of animals are rare, the pliant bark, peeled off in large pieces, serves to cover the Indian’s tent. Carefully sewn together, and ornamented with the quills of the porcupine, it is made into baskets, sacks, dishes, plates, and drinking-cups, and in fact is, in one word, the chief material of which the household articles of the Crees are formed. The wood serves for the manufacture of oars, snow-shoes, and sledges; and in spring the sap of the tree furnishes an agreeable beverage, which, by boiling, may be inspissated into a sweet syrup. Beyond the Arctic Circle the paper-birch is a rare and crooked tree, but it is met with as a shrub as far as 69° N. lat. It grows to perfection on the northern shores of Lake Superior, near Fort William, where the canoes of the Hudson’s Bay Company are chiefly manufactured.
A birch-bark canoe is between thirty and forty feet long, and the rinds of which it is built are sewn together with filaments of the root of the Canadian fir. In case of a hole being knocked into it during the journey, it can be patched like an old coat, and is then as good as new. As it has a flat bottom, it does not sink deep into the water; and the river must be almost dried up which could not carry such a boat. The cargo is divided into bales or parcels of from 90 to 100 pounds; and although it frequently amounts to more than four tons, yet the canoe itself is so light that the crew can easily transport it upon their shoulders. This crew generally consists of eight or ten men, two of whom must be experienced boatmen, who receive double pay, and are placed one at the helm, the other at the poop. When the wind is fair, a sail is unfurled, and serves to lighten the toil.
The Canadian voyageur combines the light-heartedness of the Frenchman with the apathy of the Indian, and his dress is also a mixture of that of the Red-skins and of the European colonists. Frequently he is himself a mixture of Gallic and Indian blood—a so-called “bois-brûlé,” and in this case doubly light-hearted and unruly. With his woollen blanket as a surcoat, his shirt of striped cotton, his pantaloons of cloth, or his Indian stockings of leather, his moccasins of deer-skin, and his sash of gaudily-dyed wool, in which his knife, his tobacco-bag, and various other utensils are stuck, he stands high in his own esteem. His language is a French jargon, richly interlarded with Indian and English words—a jumble fit to drive a grammarian mad, but which he thinks so euphonious that his tongue is scarcely ever at rest. His supply of songs and anecdotes is inexhaustible, and he is always ready for a dance. His politeness is exemplary: he never calls his comrades otherwise than “mon frère,” and “mon cousin.” It is hardly necessary to remark that he is able to handle his boat with the same ease as an expert rider manages his horse.
When after a hard day’s work they rest for the night, the axe is immediately at work in the nearest forest, and in less than ten minutes the tent is erected306 and the kettle simmering on the fire. “While the passengers—perhaps some chief trader on a voyage to some distant fort, or a Back or a Richardson on his way to the Polar Ocean—are warming or drying themselves, the indefatigable “voyageurs” drag the unloaded canoe ashore, turn it over, and examine it carefully, either to fasten again some loose stitches, or to paint over some damaged part with fresh resin. Under the cover of their boat, which they turn against the wind, and with a flaming fire in the foreground, they then bid defiance to the weather. At one o’clock in the morning “Lève! lève! lève!” is called; in half an hour the encampment is broken up, and the boat reladen and launched. At eight in the morning a halt is made for breakfast, for which three-quarters of an hour are allowed. About two in the afternoon half an hour’s rest suffices for a cold dinner. Eighteen hours’ work and six hours’ rest make out the day. The labor is incredible; yet the “voyageur” not only supports it without a murmur, but with the utmost cheerfulness. Such a life requires, of course, an iron constitution. In rowing, the arms and breast of the “voyageur” are exerted to the utmost; and in shallow places he drags the boat after him, wading up to the knees and thighs in the water. Where he is obliged to force his way against a rapid, the drag-rope must be pulled over rocks and stumps of trees, through swamps and thickets; and at the portages the cargo and the boat have to be carried over execrable roads to the next navigable water. Then the “voyageur” takes upon his back two packages, each weighing 90 pounds, and attached by a leathern belt running over the forehead, that his hands may be free to clear the way; and such portages sometimes occur ten or eleven times in one day.
For these toils of his wandering life he has many compensations, in the keen appetite, the genial sensation of muscular strength, and the flow of spirits engendered by labor in the pure and bracing air. Surely many would rather breathe with the “voyageur” the fragrance of the pine forest, or share his rest upon the borders of the stream, than lead the monotonous life of an artisan, pent up in the impure atmosphere of a city.
During the first period of the American fur-trade the “coureurs des bois” used to set out on their adventurous expeditions from the village “La Chine,” one of the oldest and most famous settlements in Canada, whose name points to a time when the St. Lawrence was still supposed to be the nearest way to China. How far some of them may have penetrated into the interior of the continent is unknown; but so much is certain, that their regular expeditions extended as far as the Saskatchewan, 2500 miles beyond the remotest European settlements. Several factories or forts protected their interests on the banks of that noble river; and the French would no doubt have extended their dominion to the Rocky Mountains or to the Pacific if the conquest of Canada by England, in 1761, had not completely revolutionized the fur-trade. The change of dominion laid it prostrate for several years, but our enterprising countrymen soon opened a profitable intercourse with the Indian tribes of the west, as their predecessors had done before them. Now, however, the adventurous “coureur des bois,” who had entered the wilds as a semi-independent trader, was obliged to serve in the pay of the British merchant, and to follow him, as his “voyageur,”307 deeper and deeper into the wilderness, until finally they reached on the Athabasca and the Churchill River the Indian hunters who used to sell their skins in the settlements of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
This company was founded in the year 1670 by a body of adventurers and merchants under the patronage of Prince Rupert, second cousin of Charles II. The charter obtained from the Crown was wonderfully liberal, comprising not only the grant of the exclusive trade, but also of full territorial possession to all perpetuity of the vast lands within the watershed of Hudson’s Bay. The Company at once established some forts along the shores of the great inland sea from which it derived its name, and opened a very lucrative trade with the Indians, so that it never ceased paying rich dividends to the fortunate shareholders until towards the close of the last century, when, as I have already mentioned, its prosperity began to be seriously affected by the energetic competition of the Canadian fur-traders.
In spite of the flourishing state of its affairs, or rather because the monopoly which it enjoyed allowed it to prosper without exertion, the Company, as long as Canada remained in French hands, had conducted its affairs in a very indolent manner, waiting for the Indians to bring the produce of their chase to the Hudson’s Bay settlements, instead of following them into the interior and stimulating them by offering greater facilities for exchange.
For eighty years after its foundation the Company possessed no more than four small forts on the shores of Hudson’s Bay; and only when the encroachments of the Canadians at length roused it from its torpor, did it resolve likewise to advance into the interior, and to establish a fort on the eastern shore of Sturgeon Lake, in the year 1774. Up to this time, with the exception of the voyage of discovery which Hearne (1770–71) made under its auspices to the mouth of the Coppermine River, it had done but little for the promotion of geographical discovery in its vast territory.
Meanwhile the Canadian fur-traders had become so hateful to the Indians that these savages formed a conspiracy for their total extirpation.
Fortunately for the white men, the small-pox broke out about this time among the Redskins, and swept them away as the fire consumes the parched grass of the prairies. Their unburied corpses were torn by the wolves and wild dogs, and the survivors were too weak and dispirited to be able to undertake any thing against the foreign intruders. The Canadian fur-traders now also saw the necessity of combining their efforts for their mutual benefit, instead of ruining each other by an insane competition; and consequently formed, in 1783, a society which, under the name of the North-west Company of Canada, at first consisted of sixteen, later of twenty partners or shareholders, some of whom lived in Canada, while the others were scattered among the various stations in the interior. The whole Canadian fur-trade was now greatly developed; for while previously each of the associates had blindly striven to do as much harm as possible to his present partners, and thus indirectly damaged his own interests, they now all vigorously united to beat the rival Hudson’s Bay Company out of the field. The agents of this North-west Company, in defiance of their charter, were indefatigable in exploring the lakes and woods,308 the plains and the mountains, for the purpose of establishing new trading-stations at all convenient points.
The most celebrated of these pioneers of commerce, Alexander Mackenzie, reached, in the year 1789, the mouth of the great river which bears his name, and saw the white dolphins gambol about in the Arctic Sea. In a second voyage he crossed the Rocky Mountains, and followed the course of the Fraser River until it discharges its waters into the Georgian Gulf opposite to Vancouver’s Island. Here he wrote with perishable vermilion the following inscription on a rock-wall fronting the gulf:—
A. Mackenzie
arrived from Canada by land,
22 July, 1792.
The words were soon effaced by wind and weather, but the fame of the explorer will last as long as the English language is spoken in America.
The energetic North-west Company thus ruled over the whole continent from the Canadian Lakes to the Rocky Mountains, and in 1806 it even crossed that barrier and established its forts on the northern tributaries of the Columbia River. To the north it likewise extended its operations, encroaching more and more upon the privileges of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which, roused to energy, now also pushed on its posts farther and farther into the interior, and established in 1812 a colony on the Red River to the south of Winipeg Lake, thus driving, as it were, a sharp thorn into the side of its rival. But a power like the North-west Company, which had no less than 50 agents, 70 interpreters, and 1120 voyageurs in its pay, and whose chief managers used to appear at their annual meetings at Fort William, on the banks of Lake Superior, with all the pomp and pride of feudal barons, was not inclined to tolerate this encroachment; and thus, after many quarrels, a regular war broke out between the two parties, which, after two years’ duration, led to the expulsion of the Red River colonists and the murder of their governor, Semple. This event took place in the year 1816, and is but one episode of the bloody feuds which continued to reign between the two rival companies until 1821. At first sight it may seem strange that such acts of violence should take place between British subjects and on British soil, but then we must consider that at that time European law had little power in the American wilderness.
The dissensions of the fur-traders had most deplorable consequences for the Redskins; for both companies, to swell the number of their adherents, lavishly distributed spirituous liquors—a temptation which no Indian can resist.
The whole of the hunting-grounds of the Saskatchewan and Athabasca were but one scene of revelry and bloodshed. Already decimated by the small-pox, the Indians now became the victims of drunkenness and discord, and it was to be feared that if the war and its consequent demoralization continued, the most important tribes would soon be utterly swept away.
113. WINTER HUT OF HUNTERS.
The finances of the belligerent companies were in an equally deplorable state; the produce of the chase diminished from year to year with the increase309 of their expenditure; and thus the Hudson’s Bay Company, which used to gratify its shareholders with dividends of 50 and 25 per cent., was unable, from 1808 to 1814, to distribute a single shilling among them. At length wisdom prevailed over passion, and the enemies came to a resolution which, if310 taken from the very beginning, would have saved them both a great deal of treasure and many crimes. Instead of continuing to swing the tomahawk, they now smoked the calumet, and amalgamated in 1821, under the name of the “Hudson’s Bay Company,” and under the wing of the charter. The British Government, as a dowry to the impoverished couple, presented them with a license of exclusive trade throughout the whole of that territory which, under the name of the Hudson’s Bay and North-west territories, extends from Labrador to the Pacific, and from the Red River to the Polar Ocean. This license was terminable in 21 years, but in 1838 it was renewed again for the same period. The good effects of peace and union soon became apparent, for after a few years the Company was enabled to pay half-yearly dividends of five per cent., and the Indians, to whom brandy was now no longer supplied unless as a medicine, enjoyed the advantages of a more sober life.
About 1848 the Imperial Government, fearing that Vancouver’s Island might be annexed by the United States, resolved to place it under the management of the Hudson’s Bay Company. This was accordingly done in 1849. A license of exclusive trade and management was granted for ten years, terminable therefore in 1859 (the time of expiration of the similar license over the Indian territory).
These were the palmy days of the Hudson’s Bay Company. They held Rupert’s Land by the royal charter, which was perpetual; they held Vancouver’s Island and the whole Indian territory to the Pacific by exclusive licenses, terminable in 1859; and thus maintained under their sole sway about 4,000,000 square miles—a realm larger than the whole of Europe.
For the ten years ending May 31, 1862, the average net annual profits of the Company amounted to £81,000 on a paid-up capital of £400,000, but a portion only of this income was distributed as dividend.
In 1863 the Company was reconstructed, with a capital of £2,000,000, for the purpose of enlarging its operations—such as opening the southern and more fruitful districts of the Saskatchewan or the Winipeg to European colonization; but the northern, and by far the larger portion of the vast domains over which, after the dismemberment of British Columbia and the Stikine territory, it still holds sway, have too severe a climate ever to be cultivated, and, unless their mineral wealth be............