Beckles Willson

Effect of the Conquest on the Fur-trade of the French—Indians again Seek the Company's Factories—Influx of Highlanders into Canada—Alexander Henry—Mystery Surrounding the Albany Cleared Up—Astronomers Visit Prince of Wales' Fort—Strike of Sailors—Seizure of Furs—Measures to Discourage Clandestine Trade.

Effect of the Conquest.

The conquest of Canada by the English in 1760[68] had an almost instantaneous effect upon the fur-trade of the French. The system of licenses was swept away with the rÉgime of Intendants of New France. The posts which, established chiefly for purposes of trade, were yet military, came to be abandoned, and the officers who directed them turned their disconsolate faces towards France, or to other lands where the flag of the lily still waved. The English colonies were not devoid of diligent traders ready to pursue their calling advantageously: but they shrank from penetrating a country where the enemy might yet lurk, a country of whose approaches, and of whose aspect or inhabitants they knew nothing and feared everything. As for the Indians themselves, they, for a time, awaited patiently the advent of the French trader. Spring came and found them at the deserted posts. They sought but they could not find; "their braves called loudly, but the sighing trees alone answered their call." Despair at first filled the bosoms of the Red men when they found that all their winter's toil and hardships in the forest and over the trail had been in vain. They waited all summer, and then, as the white trader came not, wearily they took up their burdens and began their journey anew.

For a wise Indian had appeared amongst them, and he had said: "Fools, why do you trust these white traders who come amongst you with beads, and fire-water and crucifixes? They are but as the crows that come and are gone. But there are traders on the banks of the great lake yonder who are never absent, neither in our time nor in the time of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers. They are like the rock which cannot be moved, and they give good goods and plenty, and always the same. If you are wise you will go hence and deal with them, and never trust more the traders who are like fleas and grasshoppers—here one minute and flown away the next."

More than one factor of the Company heard and told of this oft-spoken harangue, and many there lived to testify to its effect upon the assembled Indians. Not even was it forgotten or disregarded years afterwards in the height of the prosperity of the Northmen, whose arts of suasion were exercised in vain to induce the Red man to forego his journey to York, Churchill or Cumberland.

"No," they would say, "we trade with our friends, as our grandfathers did. Our fathers once waited for the French and Bostonians to come to their forts, and they lay down and died, and their squaws devoured them, waiting still. You are here to-day, but will you be here to-morrow? No, we are going to trade with the Company."

And so they pressed on, resisting temptation, wayward, though loyal, enduring a long and rough journey that they might deal with their friends.

The "coureurs de bois."

Thus for some years the Company prospered, and did a more thriving business than ever. But before, however, dealing with the new rÉgime, let us turn for a moment to the Canadian bushrangers and voyageurs thus cut off from their homes and abandoned by their officers and employers. Their occupation was gone—whither did they drift? Too long had they led the untrammelled life of the wilderness to adjust again the fetters of a civilized life in Montreal or Quebec; they were attached to their brave and careless masters; these in many instances they were permitted to follow; but large numbers dispersed themselves amongst the Indians. Without capital they could no longer follow the fur-trade; they were fond of hunting and fishing; and so by allying themselves with Indian wives, and by following the pursuits and adopting the customs of the Red men, themselves became virtually savages, completely severed from their white fellows.

But an influx of Scotch Highlanders had been taking place in Canada ever since 1745, and some of these bold spirits were quick to see the advantages of prosecuting, without legal penalty, a private trade in furs. To these were added English soldiers, who were discharged at the peace, or had previously deserted. How many of these were slain by the aborigines, and never more heard of, can never be computed; but it is certain that many more embarked in the fur-trade and fell victims to the tomahawk, torch, hunger and disease than there is any record of.

Hostility of the Indians to the English.

It is certain, also, that the hostility of the tribes, chief amongst them the Iroquois, to the English, was very great, and this hostility was nourished for some years by the discontented bushrangers and voyageurs. In the action of Pontiac at Detroit, and the surprise and capture of Michilimackinac with its attendant horrors, there is ample proof, both of the spirit animating the Indians, and the danger which went hand in hand with the new trade in furs.

A Blackfoot Brave.
(Drawn by Edmund Morris, after photo.)

The first of these English traders at Michilimackinac to penetrate into the west, where the French had gone, is said to be Thomas Curry. This man, having by shrewdness and ability procured sufficient capital for the purpose, engaged guides and interpreters, purchased a stock of goods and provisions, and with four canoes reached Fort Bourbon, which was situated at the western extremity of Cedar Lake, on the waters of the Saskatchewan. His venture was successful, and he returned to Montreal with his canoes loaded with fine furs. But he never expressed a desire to repeat the performance, although it was not long before his example was followed by many others. James Finlay was the first of these; he penetrated to Nipawee, the last of the French posts on the Saskatchewan, in latitude 53½, and longitude 103. This trader was equally successful.

Henry's expedition.

After a career of some years in the vicinity of Michilimackinac, of a general character, identical with that pursued a hundred years before by Groseilliers, another intrepid trader, Alexander Henry, decided to strike off into the North-West. He left "the Sault," as Sault Ste. Marie was called, on the 10th of June, 1775, with goods and provisions to the value of £3,000 sterling, on board twelve small canoes and four larger ones. Each small canoe was navigated by three men, and each larger one by four. On the 20th they encamped at the mouth of the Pijitic. It was by this river, he tells us, that the French ascended in 1750, when they plundered one of the Company's factories in the bay, and carried off the two small pieces of brass cannon, which fell again into English hands at Michilimackinac. But here Henry fell into error; for it was by the River Michipicoten that the French went, and the factory plundered of its adornments was Moose, not Churchill, and the year 1756, not 1750.

Henry himself was going on a sort of plundering expedition against the Company, which was to be far more effective in setting an example to others, than any the French had yet carried through. Everywhere as he passed along there were evidences of the recent French occupation.

To return to 1767, this year had witnessed a clearing up of the mystery surrounding the fate of the Albany, the first of the vessels sent by the Company to search for a north-west passage.

Alexander Henry.

Fate of the "Albany."

The Company was at that time carrying on a black whale fishery, and Marble Island was made the rendezvous, not merely on account of the commodious harbour, but because of the greater abundance of whales there. Under these circumstances the boats, when on the lookout for fish, had frequent occasion to row close to the island, which led to the discovery, at the easternmost extremity, of a new harbour.[69] Upon landing at this place, the crews made a startling discovery. They found English guns, anchors, cables, bricks, a smith's anvil, and many other articles lying on the ground, which, though they were very old, had not been defaced by the hand of time, and which having been apparently without use to the native Esquimaux, and too heavy to be removed by them, had not been removed from the spot where they had originally been laid a little farther inland. The whalers beheld the remains of a frame house,[70] which, though half destroyed by the Esquimaux for the wood and iron, yet could plainly be seen at a distance. Lastly, when the tide ebbed in the harbour there became visible the hulls of two craft, lying sunk in five fathoms of water. The figurehead of one of these vessels, together with the guns and other implements, was shortly afterwards carried to England. The hypothesis of Governor Norton was instantly and only too correctly espoused by the Company. On this inhospitable island, where neither stick nor stump was, nor is to be seen, and which lies sixteen miles from a mainland, no less inhospitable, perished Knight, Barlow, and the other members of the exploring expedition of 1719. Thus was a fate nearly half a century in the balance ascertained at last.

Two years later some members of a whaling party landed at this same harbour, and one of their number, perceiving some aged Esquimaux, determined to question them on the matter.

"This," says the narrator, "we were the better enabled to do by the assistance of an Esquimau, who was then in the Company's service as a linguist, and annually sailed in one of their vessels in that character. The account received from these aged natives was 'full, clear and unreserved,' and its purport was in this wise:

"When the doomed vessels arrived at Marble Island, it was late in the autumn of 1719, and in making the harbour through the ice, the larger was considerably damaged. The party landed safely, however, and at once set about building the house. As soon as the ice permitted, in the following summer, the Esquimaux paid them a further visit, and observed that the white strangers were largely reduced in number and that the survivors were very unhealthy in appearance. According to the account given by these Esquimaux, these were very busily employed, but the nature of their employment they could not easily describe. It is probable they were lengthening the long-boat or repairing the ship, and to support this conjecture, forty-eight years later there lay, at a little distance from the house, a quantity of oak chips, 'most assuredly made by carpenters.'"

Much havoc must have been thenceforward wrought among the explorers, who could not repair their ship, which even may by this time have been sunk; and by the second winter, only twenty souls out of fifty remained.

Wretched death of Knight and his men.

That same winter, some of the Esquimaux had taken up their abode on the opposite side of the harbour to the English, and frequently supplied them with such provisions as they had, which consisted chiefly of whale's blubber, seal's flesh and train oil. When the spring advanced, the natives crossed over to the mainland, and upon visiting Marble Island in the summer of 1721 found only five of the white men alive, and those in such distress that they instantly seized upon and devoured the seal's flesh and whale blubber, given them in trade by their visitors, in a raw state. This occasioned a severe physical disorder which destroyed three of the five; and the other two, though very weak made shift to bury their dead comrades. These two survivors eked out a wretched existence for many weeks, frequently resorting to the summit of an adjacent rock, in the vain hope of being seen by some relief party. But alas, they were doomed to a daily disappointment; the Esquimaux themselves had little to offer them; and at last they were seen by the wandering natives to crouch down close together and cry aloud like children, the tears rolling down their cheeks. First one of the pair died, and then the other, in an attempt to dig a grave for his fellow. The Esquimau who told the story, led the whalers to the spot and showed them the skulls and the larger bones of the luckless pair, then lying above ground not a great distance from the dwelling. It is believed that the last survivor must have been the armourer or smith of the expedition, because according to the account given by the aborigines, he was always employed in working iron into implements for them, some of which they could still show.

There flourished in 1768 the body known as the "Royal Society for Improving Natural Knowledge." This society wrote to the Company, requesting that two persons might be conveyed to and from Fort Churchill in Hudson's Bay, in some of the Company's ships, "to observe the passage of Venus over the sun, which will happen on the 3rd of June, 1769." It was desired that these persons might be maintained by the Company, and furnished with all necessary articles while on board and on shore. The Company was asked to furnish them with materials and the assistance of servants to erect an observatory; the Society engaging to recoup the Company's whole charge, and desiring an estimate of the expense.

Astronomers at Hudson's Bay, 1769.

The Company expressed itself as "ready to convey the persons desired, with their baggage and instruments, to and from Fort Churchill, and to provide them with lodging and medicine while there, gratis, they to find their own bedding." The Company demanded £250 for diet during the absence of the astronomers from England, which would be about eighteen months. The Adventurers recommended the Society to send the intended building in frame, with all necessary implements, tools, etc., which "will be conveyed upon freight, the Royal Society likewise paying for any clothing that may be supplied the observers during their residence in Hudson's Bay."

It is interesting to record that the expedition was entirely successful. The two astronomers went out to Prince of Wales' Fort, and returned in the Prince Rupert, after having witnessed the transit of Venus on the 3rd of June, 1769.

Towards the middle of the century there had grown up a deep prejudice and opposition towards the Hudson's Bay Company from the sailors and watermen who frequented the Thames.

It was alleged that the Company did nothing to make itself popular; its rules were strict and its wages to seamen were low, albeit it had never suffered very much from this prejudice until the return of the Middleton expedition. Many absurd stories became current as to the Company's policy and the life led by the servants at the factories. These travellers' tales had been thoroughly threshed out by the enquiry of 1749. The opponents of the Company had told their "shocking narratives." It was only natural, perhaps, that these should be passed about from mouth to mouth, and so become exaggerated beyond bounds. Upon the discharge and death of Captain Coats a demonstration against the Company had been talked of at Wapping and Gravesend, but nothing came of it but a few hootings and bawlings as the ships sailed away on their annual voyages to the Bay.

By 1768, however, the dissatisfaction had spread to the Company's own seamen, and now took an active form. The time was well chosen by the malcontents, because the public were ready at that time to sympathize with the movement for the amelioration of the conditions which characterized the merchant service generally.

The Company's seamen strike.

A numerous body of seamen forcibly entered the Company's ships in the River Thames, demanding that wages should be raised to 40s. per month. They struck the topgallant masts and yards, and lowered the lower yards close down, and got them in fore and aft. The consequence was that the crews of the Company's ships and brigantine were compelled to quit their vessels.

The moment the tidings of this reached the Governor and Company it was deemed advisable for the Deputy Governor, Thomas Berens and James Fitzgerald, Esquires, to "attend his Majesty's principal Secretaries of State, and such other gentlemen in the Administration as they shall find necessary, and represent the urgent situation of the Company's affairs in general."

This was done forthwith, and the facts of the situation placed before Viscount Weymouth and Sir Edward Hawke First Lord of the Admiralty.

Secretary of State Weymouth appeared well disposed to do all the service in his power to redress the present grievances; that a memorial should be presented on the Company's behalf.

While the memorial was being drawn up, the three captains acquainted the Commissioners that under the present disturbances on the River Thames, they should not be able to secure the seamen they had already got, without allowing their sailors 40s. per month. It was then the 18th of May, and the Company considered that the lives of its servants abroad, and the event of the intended voyage, would not admit of delay. They therefore told their three captains, and the master of the Charlotte, brigantine, that they would allow the sailors 35s. per month from their respective entries to this day, inclusive, and 40s. per month from this day for their voyage out and home.

Hardly had this been done than a letter was received expressing Lord Weymouth's great concern on being informed that the Company's ships had been prevented from sailing until a promise was made to raise the seamen's wages, and that some acts of violence had been committed to effect their purpose. From the strong assurance his Lordship had received that there was no danger of any obstacle to delay the voyages, he was almost ready to doubt the rumour.

Berens called on Weymouth and informed him that the Company's critical situation had already obliged the Company to acquiesce in the demand of 40s. per month for the seamen's wages. No acts of violence were committed on board the Company's ship, other than that the crews were daily forced against their inclination to join the rioters.

The ships were at length got down to Greenwich and proceeded on their voyage with despatch.

But the Company was not yet out of the wood. Clandestine trade was to be again its bogey. The disaffection had been temporarily arrested amongst the sailors: but they were hardly prepared to learn that it extended to the captains themselves, who had, however, the best of reasons for concealing their feelings. When the ships came home in the following year the Company received information that a seizure of furs and other valuable goods brought from Hudson's Bay had been made since the arrival of the Company's ships that season. Communication was entered into with the Commissioners of Customs requesting a particular account of such seizures either from the Company's ships or other places, "in order that the Commissioners may pursue an enquiry for detecting the frauds that have been committed to the prejudice of His Majesty's Revenue and the interest of the Company."

Clandestine trade by the Company's captains.

Suspicion for the loss of numerous packages of furs now began to fasten itself upon one of the Company's captains, Horner of the Seahorse. Horner acknowledged that he was not altogether ignorant that the furs had been abstracted from the hold of his ship. The Company deliberated on his case, and it was "unanimously resolved that the said John Horner be discharged from the Company's service." The other captains were now called in and acquainted with the reasons for Captain Horner's discharge. The Adventurers declared their determination to make the like public example of all persons who should be found to be concerned in clandestine trade.

In the following year the Company came to a wise decision. Taking into consideration the state of its trade and the many frauds that "have been practised and detected," it was concluded that such frauds were connived at by the Company's chief factors and captains, who were not only privy thereto, but in consideration for some joint interest, permitted this illicit trade to be carried on.

Salaries increased.

The Company seems to have thought that the chief factors and captains might have been tempted to these nefarious practices by the smallness of their respective salaries, and therefore in the hope of securing their fidelity and encouraging diligence and industry, and the extending of the Company's trade to the utmost to the benefit of the Company and the revenue, it was decided that a salary of £130 per annum be allowed the chief factors at York, Albany, and Prince of Wales' Fort; also the factors about to be appointed at Moose Fort and Severn House, "in lieu of former salaries, and all trapping gratuities, and perquisites whatever, except a servant, which is to be allowed to them as before."

A gratuity was to be given to all chief factors of three shillings upon every score of made beaver which they consigned and "which shall actually be brought home to the Company's account."

To the captains a gratuity was decreed of one shilling and sixpence per score of made beaver which they should bring to the Company's warehouse in good saleable condition.

To prevent any loss from rioters or dissatisfied sailors the Company decided, in 1770, to insure their ships and goods for the first time in its history. The secretary made enquiries at the London Assurance Office, and reported that the premium would be five per cent. per annum on each ship during their being in dock, or on the River Thames above Gravesend; and the same on the ships' stores while they continued in the Company's warehouse at Ratcliff. Whereupon the Company insured each of its three ships for £2,000, and the ships' stores in the above warehouse for £3,000.