TWO leading objects of commercial gain have given birth to wide
and daring enterprise in the early history of the Americas; the
precious metals of the South, and the rich peltries of the North.
While the fiery and magnificent Spaniard, inflamed with the mania
for gold, has extended his discoveries and conquests over those
brilliant countries scorched by the ardent sun of the tropics, the
adroit and buoyant Frenchman, and the cool and calculating Briton,
have pursued the less splendid, but no less lucrative, traffic in
furs amidst the hyperborean regions of the Canadas, until they have
advanced even within the Arctic Circle.
These two pursuits have thus in a manner been the pioneers and
precursors of civilization. Without pausing on the borders, they
have penetrated at once, in defiance of difficulties and dangers,
to the heart of savage countries: laying open the hidden secrets of
the wilderness; leading the way to remote regions of beauty and
fertility that might have remained unexplored for ages, and
beckoning after them the slow and pausing steps of agriculture and
civilization.
It was the fur trade, in fact, which gave early sustenance and
vitality to the great Canadian provinces. Being destitute of the
precious metals, at that time the leading objects of American
enterprise, they were long neglected by the parent country. The
French adventurers, however, who had settled on the banks of the
St. Lawrence, soon found that in the rich peltries of the interior,
they had sources of wealth that might almost rival the mines of
Mexico and Peru. The Indians, as yet unacquainted with the
artificial value given to some descriptions of furs, in civilized
life, brought quantities of the most precious kinds and bartered
them away for European trinkets and cheap commodities. Immense
profits were thus made by the early traders, and the traffic was
pursued with avidity.
As the valuable furs soon became scarce in the neighborhood of
the settlements, the Indians of the vicinity were stimulated to
take a wider range in their hunting expeditions; they were
generally accompanied on these expeditions by some of the traders
or their dependents, who shared in the toils and perils of the
chase, and at the same time made themselves acquainted with the
best hunting and trapping grounds, and with the remote tribes, whom
they encouraged to bring their peltries to the settlements. In this
way the trade augmented, and was drawn from remote quarters to
Montreal. Every now and then a large body of Ottawas, Hurons, and
other tribes who hunted the countries bordering on the great lakes,
would come down in a squadron of light canoes, laden with beaver
skins, and other spoils of their year's hunting. The canoes would
be unladen, taken on shore, and their contents disposed in order. A
camp of birch bark would be pitched outside of the town, and a kind
of primitive fair opened with that grave ceremonial so dear to the
Indians. An audience would be demanded of the governor-general, who
would hold the conference with becoming state, seated in an
elbow-chair, with the Indians ranged in semicircles before him,
seated on the ground, and silently smoking their pipes. Speeches
would be made, presents exchanged, and the audience would break up
in universal good humor.
Now would ensue a brisk traffic with the merchants, and all
Montreal would be alive with naked Indians running from shop to
shop, bargaining for arms, kettles, knives, axes, blankets,
bright-colored cloths, and other articles of use or fancy; upon all
which, says an old French writer, the merchants were sure to clear
at least two hundred per cent. There was no money used in this
traffic, and, after a time, all payment in spirituous liquors was
prohibited, in consequence of the frantic and frightful excesses
and bloody brawls which they were apt to occasion.
Their wants and caprices being supplied, they would take leave
of the governor, strike their tents, launch their canoes, and ply
their way up the Ottawa to the lakes.
A new and anomalous class of men gradually grew out of this
trade. These were called coureurs des bois, rangers of the woods;
originally men who had accompanied the Indians in their hunting
expeditions, and made themselves acquainted with remote tracts and
tribes; and who now became, as it were, peddlers of the wilderness.
These men would set out from Montreal with canoes well stocked with
goods, with arms and ammunition, and would make their way up the
mazy and wandering rivers that interlace the vast forests of the
Canadas, coasting the most remote lakes, and creating new wants and
habitudes among the natives. Sometimes they sojourned for months
among them, assimilating to their tastes and habits with the happy
facility of Frenchmen, adopting in some degree the Indian dress,
and not unfrequently taking to themselves Indian wives.
Twelve, fifteen, eighteen months would often elapse without any
tidings of them, when they would come sweeping their way down the
Ottawa in full glee, their canoes laden down with packs of beaver
skins. Now came their turn for revelry and extravagance. "You would
be amazed," says an old writer already quoted, "if you saw how lewd
these peddlers are when they return; how they feast and game, and
how prodigal they are, not only in their clothes, but upon their
sweethearts. Such of them as are married have the wisdom to retire
to their own houses; but the bachelors act just as an East Indiaman
and pirates are wont to do; for they lavish, eat, drink, and play
all away as long as the goods hold out; and when these are gone,
they even sell their embroidery, their lace, and their clothes.
This done, they are forced upon a new voyage for subsistence."
Many of these coureurs des bois became so accustomed to the
Indian mode of living, and the perfect freedom of the wilderness,
that they lost relish for civilization, and identified themselves
with the savages among whom they dwelt, or could only be
distinguished from them by superior licentiousness. Their conduct
and example gradually corrupted the natives, and impeded the works
of the Catholic missionaries, who were at this time prosecuting
their pious labors in the wilds of Canada.
To check these abuses, and to protect the fur trade from various
irregularities practiced by these loose adventurers, an order was
issued by the French government prohibiting all persons, on pain of
death, from trading into the interior of the country without a
license.
These licenses were granted in writing by the governor-general,
and at first were given only to persons of respectability; to
gentlemen of broken fortunes; to old officers of the army who had
families to provide for; or to their widows. Each license permitted
the fitting out of two large canoes with merchandise for the lakes,
and no more than twenty-five licenses were to be issued in one
year. By degrees, however, private licenses were also granted, and
the number rapidly increased. Those who did not choose to fit out
the expeditions themselves, were permitted to sell them to the
merchants; these employed the coureurs des bois, or rangers of the
woods, to undertake the long voyages on shares, and thus the abuses
of the old system were revived and continued.
The pious missionaries employed by the Roman Catholic Church to
convert the Indians, did everything in their power to counteract
the profligacy caused and propagated by these men in the heart of
the wilderness. The Catholic chapel might often be seen planted
beside the trading house, and its spire surmounted by a cross,
towering from the midst of an Indian village, on the banks of a
river or a lake. The missions had often a beneficial effect on the
simple sons of the forest, but had little power over the renegades
from civilization.
At length it was found necessary to establish fortified posts at
the confluence of the rivers and the lakes for the protection of
the trade, and the restraint of these profligates of the
wilderness. The most important of these was at Michilimackinac,
situated at the strait of the same name, which connects Lakes Huron
and Michigan. It became the great interior mart and place of
deposit, and some of the regular merchants who prosecuted the trade
in person, under their licenses, formed establishments here. This,
too, was a rendezvous for the rangers of the woods, as well those
who came up with goods from Montreal as those who returned with
peltries from the interior. Here new expeditions were fitted out
and took their departure for Lake Michigan and the Mississippi;
Lake Superior and the Northwest; and here the peltries brought in
return were embarked for Montreal.
The French merchant at his trading post, in these primitive days
of Canada, was a kind of commercial patriarch. With the lax habits
and easy familiarity of his race, he had a little world of
self-indulgence and misrule around him. He had his clerks, canoe
men, and retainers of all kinds, who lived with him on terms of
perfect sociability, always calling him by his Christian name; he
had his harem of Indian beauties, and his troop of halfbreed
children; nor was there ever wanting a louting train of Indians,
hanging about the establishment, eating and drinking at his expense
in the intervals of their hunting expeditions.
The Canadian traders, for a long time, had troublesome
competitors in the British merchants of New York, who inveigled the
Indian hunters and the coureurs des bois to their posts, and traded
with them on more favorable terms. A still more formidable
opposition was organized in the Hudson's Bay Company, chartered by
Charles II., in 1670, with the exclusive privilege of establishing
trading houses on the shores of that bay and its tributary rivers;
a privilege which they have maintained to the present day. Between
this British company and the French merchants of Canada, feuds and
contests arose about alleged infringements of territorial limits,
and acts of violence and bloodshed occurred between their
agents.
In 1762, the French lost possession of Canada, and the trade
fell principally into the hands of British subjects. For a time,
however, it shrunk within narrow limits. The old coureurs des bois
were broken up and dispersed, or, where they could be met with,
were slow to accustom themselves to the habits and manners of their
British employers. They missed the freedom, indulgence, and
familiarity of the old French trading houses, and did not relish
the sober exactness, reserve, and method of the new-comers. The
British traders, too, were ignorant of the country, and distrustful
of the natives. They had reason to be so. The treacherous and
bloody affairs of Detroit and Michilimackinac showed them the
lurking hostility cherished by the savages, who had too long been
taught by the French to regard them as enemies.
It was not until the year 1766, that the trade regained its old
channels; but it was then pursued with much avidity and emulation
by individual merchants, and soon transcended its former bounds.
Expeditions were fitted out by various persons from Montreal and
Michilimackinac, and rivalships and jealousies of course ensued.
The trade was injured by their artifices to outbid and undermine
each other; the Indians were debauched by the sale of spirituous
liquors, which had been prohibited under the French rule. Scenes of
drunkeness, brutality, and brawl were the consequence, in the
Indian villages and around the trading houses; while bloody feuds
took place between rival trading parties when they happened to
encounter each other in the lawless depths of the wilderness.
To put an end to these sordid and ruinous contentions, several
of the principal merchants of Montreal entered into a partnership
in the winter of 1783, which was augmented by amalgamation with a
rival company in 1787. Thus was created the famous "Northwest
Company," which for a time held a lordly sway over the wintry lakes
and boundless forests of the Canadas, almost equal to that of the
East India Company over the voluptuous climes and magnificent
realms of the Orient.
The company consisted of twenty-three shareholders, or partners,
but held in its employ about two thousand persons as clerks,
guides, interpreters, and "voyageurs," or boatmen. These were
distributed at various trading posts, established far and wide on
the interior lakes and rivers, at immense distances from each
other, and in the heart of trackless countries and savage
tribes.
Several of the partners resided in Montreal and Quebec, to
manage the main concerns of the company. These were called agents,
and were personages of great weight and importance; the other
partners took their stations at the interior posts, where they
remained throughout the winter, to superintend the intercourse with
the various tribes of Indians. They were thence called wintering
partners.
The goods destined for this wide and wandering traffic were put
up at the warehouses of the company in Montreal, and conveyed in
batteaux, or boats and canoes, up the river Attawa, or Ottowa,
which falls into the St. Lawrence near Montreal, and by other
rivers and portages, to Lake Nipising, Lake Huron, Lake Superior,
and thence, by several chains of great and small lakes, to Lake
Winnipeg, Lake Athabasca, and the Great Slave Lake. This singular
and beautiful system of internal seas, which renders an immense
region of wilderness so accessible to the frail bark of the Indian
or the trader, was studded by the remote posts of the company,
where they carried on their traffic with the surrounding
tribes.
The company, as we have shown, was at first a spontaneous
association of merchants; but, after it had been regularly
organized, admission into it became extremely difficult. A
candidate had to enter, as it were, "before the mast," to undergo a
long probation, and to rise slowly by his merits and services. He
began, at an early age, as a clerk, and served an apprenticeship of
seven years, for which he received one hundred pounds sterling, was
maintained at the expense of the company, and furnished with
suitable clothing and equipments. His probation was generally
passed at the interior trading posts; removed for years from
civilized society, leading a life almost as wild and precarious as
the savages around him; exposed to the severities of a northern
winter, often suffering from a scarcity of food, and sometimes
destitute for a long time of both bread and salt. When his
apprenticeship had expired, he received a salary according to his
deserts, varying from eighty to one hundred and sixty pounds
sterling, and was now eligible to the great object of his ambition,
a partnership in the company; though years might yet elapse before
he attained to that enviable station.
Most of the clerks were young men of good families, from the
Highlands of Scotland, characterized by the perseverance, thrift,
and fidelity of their country, and fitted by their native hardihood
to encounter the rigorous climate of the North, and to endure the
trials and privations of their lot; though it must not be concealed
that the constitutions of many of them became impaired by the
hardships of the wilderness, and their stomachs injured by
occasional famishing, and especially by the want of bread and salt.
Now and then, at an interval of years, they were permitted to come
down on a visit to the establishment at Montreal, to recruit their
health, and to have a taste of civilized life; and these were
brilliant spots in their existence.
As to the principal partners, or agents, who resided in Montreal
and Quebec, they formed a kind of commercial aristocracy, living in
lordly and hospitable style. Their posts, and the pleasures,
dangers, adventures, and mishaps which they had shared together in
their wild wood life, had linked them heartily to each other, so
that they formed a convivial fraternity. Few travellers that have
visited Canada some thirty years since, in the days of the
M'Tavishes, the M'Gillivrays, the M'Kenzies, the Frobishers, and
the other magnates of the Northwest, when the company was in all
its glory, but must remember the round of feasting and revelry kept
up among these hyperborean nabobs.
Sometimes one or two partners, recently from the interior posts,
would make their appearance in New York, in the course of a tour of
pleasure and curiosity. On these occasions there was a degree of
magnificence of the purse about them, and a peculiar propensity to
expenditure at the goldsmith's and jeweler's for rings, chains,
brooches, necklaces, jeweled watches, and other rich trinkets,
partly for their own wear, partly for presents to their female
acquaintances; a gorgeous prodigality, such as was often to be
noticed in former times in Southern planters and West India
creoles, when flush with the profits of their plantations.
To behold the Northwest Company in all its state and grandeur,
however, it was necessary to witness an annual gathering at the
great interior place of conference established at Fort William,
near what is called the Grand Portage, on Lake Superior. Here two
or three of the leading partners from Montreal proceeded once a
year to meet the partners from the various trading posts of the
wilderness, to discuss the affairs of the company during the
preceding year, and to arrange plans for the future.
On these occasions might be seen the change since the
unceremonious times of the old French traders; now the aristocratic
character of the Briton shone forth magnificently, or rather the
feudal spirit of the Highlander. Every partner who had charge of an
interior post, and a score of retainers at his Command, felt like
the chieftain of a Highland clan, and was almost as important in
the eyes of his dependents as of himself. To him a visit to the
grand conference at Fort William was a most important event, and he
repaired there as to a meeting of parliament.
The partners from Montreal, however, were the lords of the
ascendant; coming from the midst of luxurious and ostentatious
life, they quite eclipsed their compeers from the woods, whose
forms and faces had been battered and hardened by hard living and
hard service, and whose garments and equipments were all the worse
for wear. Indeed, the partners from below considered the whole
dignity of the company as represented in their persons, and
conducted themselves in suitable style. They ascended the rivers in
great state, like sovereigns making a progress: or rather like
Highland chieftains navigating their subject lakes. They were
wrapped in rich furs, their huge canoes freighted with every
convenience and luxury, and manned by Canadian voyageurs, as
obedient as Highland clansmen. They carried up with them cooks and
bakers, together with delicacies of every kind, and abundance of
choice wines for the banquets which attended this great
convocation. Happy were they, too, if they could meet with some
distinguished stranger; above all, some titled member of the
British nobility, to accompany them on this stately occasion, and
grace their high solemnities.
Fort William, the scene of this important annual meeting, was a
considerable village on the banks of Lake Superior. Here, in an
immense wooden building, was the great council hall, as also the
banqueting chamber, decorated with Indian arms and accoutrements,
and the trophies of the fur trade. The house swarmed at this time
with traders and voyageurs, some from Montreal, bound to the
interior posts; some from the interior posts, bound to Montreal.
The councils were held in great state, for every member felt as if
sitting in parliament, and every retainer and dependent looked up
to the assemblage with awe, as to the House of Lords. There was a
vast deal of solemn deliberation, and hard Scottish reasoning, with
an occasional swell of pompous declamation.
These grave and weighty councils were alternated by huge feasts
and revels, like some of the old feasts described in Highland
castles. The tables in the great banqueting room groaned under the
weight of game of all kinds; of venison from the woods, and fish
from the lakes, with hunters' delicacies, such as buffalos'
tongues, and beavers' tails, and various luxuries from Montreal,
all served up by experienced cooks brought for the purpose. There
was no stint of generous wine, for it was a hard-drinking period, a
time of loyal toasts, and bacchanalian songs, and brimming
bumpers.
While the chiefs thus revelled in hall, and made the rafters
resound with bursts of loyalty and old Scottish songs, chanted in
voices cracked and sharpened by the northern blast, their merriment
was echoed and prolonged by a mongrel legion of retainers, Canadian
voyageurs, half-breeds, Indian hunters, and vagabond hangers-on who
feasted sumptuously without on the crumbs that fell from their
table, and made the welkin ring with old French ditties, mingled
with Indian yelps and yellings.
Such was the Northwest Company in its powerful and prosperous
days, when it held a kind of feudal sway over a vast domain of lake
and forest. We are dwelling too long, perhaps, upon these
individual pictures, endeared to us by the associations of early
life, when, as yet a stripling youth, we have sat at the hospitable
boards of the "mighty Northwesters," the lords of the ascendant at
Montreal, and gazed with wondering and inexperienced eye at the
baronial wassailing, and listened with astonished ear to their
tales of hardship and adventures. It is one object of our task,
however, to present scenes of the rough life of the wilderness, and
we are tempted to fix these few memorials of a transient state of
things fast passing into oblivion; for the feudal state of Fort
William is at an end, its council chamber is silent and deserted;
its banquet hall no longer echoes to the burst of loyalty, or the
"auld world" ditty; the lords of the lakes and forests have passed
away; and the hospitable magnates of Montreal where are they?