The Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company

Returning from this side excursion, the Captain resumed his command, and having obtained McKay, the Hudson's Bay Company officer at Fort Ellice, with Governor Christie's permission, set off by way of Qu'Appelle Lakes for the elbow of the Saskatchewan.

On the South Saskatchewan Palliser came to the "heart of the buffalo country." The whole region as far as the eye could reach was covered with the buffalo in bands varying from hundreds to thousands. So vast were the herds, that he began to have serious apprehensions for his horses, as "the grass was eaten to the earth, as if the place had been devastated by locusts."

Crossing the Saskatchewan the explorers went northward to Fort Carlton on the north branch, where the party wintered while Captain Palliser returned to Canada, paying 65l. to a Red River trader to drive him five hundred and twenty miles from Fort Garry to Crow Wing, the nearest Minnesota settlement. Palliser's horse, for which he had bargained, was killed at Pembina, and he walked the four hundred and fifty miles of the journey, which was made with painful slowness by the struggling horses and sleds of the traders.

In June of the following year Palliser left Fort Carlton, part of his command going to the Red Deer River, the other part to visit Fort Pitt and Edmonton House. From Edmonton the explorer reports that during the summer, his men had succeeded in finding a pass through the Rocky Mountains, one not only practicable for horses, but which, with but little expense, could be rendered available for carts also.

He also states the passes discovered by him to be: —

(1) Kananaskis Pass and Vermilion Pass;

(2) Lake Pass and Beaver Foot Pass;

(3) Little Fork Pass;

(4) Kicking Horse Pass – six in all, which, with the North Kootenay (on British territory), make up seven known passes.

Having wintered at Edmonton, he satisfied himself that this region so far north and west is a good agricultural region, that the Saskatchewan region compares favourably with that of the Red River Valley, that the rule of the country should be given over by the Hudson's Bay Company to the general Govern ment, and that a railway could be built easily from the Red River to the eastern foot of the Rocky Mountains.

Orders having reached Palliser to proceed, he undertook, in the summer of 1859, a journey across the Rocky Mountains, following in part the old Hudson's Bay Company trail. On St. Andrew's Day, the party arrived at the Hudson's Bay Company post at Vancouver on the Columbia, and was welcomed by Mr. Graham, the officer in charge.

Taking steamer down the Columbia with his assistant Sullivan, Captain Palliser went to Victoria, a Hudson's Bay Company establishment on Vancouver Island, whither they were followed by Dr. Hector. Journeying south-west to San Francisco, he returned, viâ Isthmus of Panama, to New York and England.

The expedition was one of the best organized, best managed, and most successful that visited Rupert's Land. The report is a sensible, well-balanced, minute, and reliable account of the country passed over.

HIND AND DAWSON'S EXPLORATION

In the same year that Palliser's expedition was despatched by the British Government to examine the resources and characteristics of Rupert's Land, a party was sent by the Canadian Government with similar ends in view, but more especially to examine the routes and means of access by which the prairies of the North-West might be reached from Lake Superior.

The staff of the party was as follows: George Gladman, director; Professor Henry Youle Hind, geologist; W. H. E. Napier, engineer; S. J. Dawson, surveyor. These, along with several foremen, twelve Caughnawaga Iroquois, from near Lachine, and twelve Ojibway Indians from Fort William, made up a stirring canoe party of forty-four persons.

In July, 1857, the expedition left Toronto, went by land to Collingwood on Lake Huron, embarked there on the steamer Collingwood, and passing by Sault St. Marie, reached on August 1st Fort William at the mouth of the Kaministiquia. Mr. John McIntyre, the officer of the Hudson's Bay Company in charge of Fort William, has given to the writer an account of the arrival of the party there with their great supply canoes, trading outfit, and apparatus, piled up high on the steamer's deck – a great contrast to the scanty but probably more efficient means of transport found on a Hudson's Bay Company trading journey. The party in due time went forward over the usual fur traders' route, which we have so often described, and arrived at Fort Garry early in September.

As the object of the expedition was to spy out the land, the Red River settlement, now grown to considerable size, afforded the explorers an interesting field for study. Simple though the conditions of life were, yet the fact that six or seven thousands of human beings were gaining a livelihood and were possessed of a number of the amenities of life, made its impress on the visitors, and Hind's chapters VI. to X. of his first volume are taken up with a general account of the settlement, the banks of the Red River, statistics of population, administration of justice, trade, occupations of the people, missions, education, and agriculture at Red River.

Having arrived at the settlement, the leaders devised plans for overtaking their work. The approach of winter made it impossible to plan expeditions over the plains to any profit. Mr. Gladman returned by canoe to Lake Superior early in September, Napier and his assistants took up their abode among the better class of English-speaking half-breeds between the upper and lower forts on the banks of the Red River. Mr. Dawson found shelter among his Roman Catholic co-religionists half a mile from Fort Garry. He and his party were to be engaged during the winter between Red River and the Lake of the Woods, along the route afterwards called the Dawson Road, while Hind followed his party up the western bank of Red River to Pembina, and his own account is that there was of them "all told, five gentlemen, five half-breeds, six saddle horses, and five carts, to which were respectively attached four poor horses and one refractory mule."

This party was returning to Canada, going by way of Crow Wing, thence by stage coach to St. Paul, on the Mississippi, then by rail unbroken to Toronto, which was reached after an absence of three and a half months.

The next season Hind was placed in charge of the expedition, and with new assistants went up the lakes in May, leading them by the long-deserted route of Grand Portage instead of by Kaministiquia. The journey from Lake Superior to Fort Garry was made in about twenty-one days. On their arrival at Red River the party found that Mr. Dawson had gone on an exploring tour to the Saskatchewan. Having organized his expedition Hind now went up the Assiniboine to Fort Ellice. The Qu'Appelle Valley was then explored, and the lake reached from which two streamlets flow, one into the Qu'Appelle and thence to the Assiniboine, the other into the Saskatchewan. Descending the Saskatchewan, at the mouth of which the Grand Rapids impressed the party, they made the journey thence up Lake Winnipeg and Red River to the place of departure. The tour was a most interesting one, having occupied all the summer. Hind was a close observer, was most skilful in working with the Hudson's Bay Company and its officers, and he gained an excellent view of the most fertile parts of the country. His estimate of it on the whole has been wonderfully borne out by succeeding years of experience and investigation.

MILTON AND CHEADLE

The world at large, after Hind's expedition and the publication of his interesting observations, began to know more of the fur traders' land and showed more interest in it. In the years succeeding Hind's expedition a number of enterprising Canadians reached Fort Garry by way of St. Paul, Minn., and took up their abode in the country. A daring band of nearly 20 °Canadians, drawn by the gold fever, started in 1862, on an overland journey to Cariboo; but many of them perished by the way. Three other well-known expeditions deserve notice.

The first of these was in 1862 by Viscount Milton and Dr. Cheadle. Coming from England by way of Minnesota to Fort Garry, they stopped at Red River settlement, and by conveyance crossed the prairies in their first season as far as Fort Carlton on the North Saskatchewan, and wintered there. The season was enjoyable, and in spring the explorers ascended the Saskatchewan to Edmonton, and then, by way of the Yellow Head Pass, crossed the Rocky Mountains. Their descent down the Thompson River was a most difficult one. The explorers were nearly lost through starvation, and on their arrival by way of Fraser River at Victoria their appearance was most distressing and their condition most pitiable. A few years ago, in company with a party of members of the British Association, Dr. Cheadle visited Winnipeg, and at a banquet in the city expressed to the writer his surprise that the former state of scarcity of food even on Red River had been so changed into the evident plenty which Manitoba now enjoys. Milton and Cheadle's "The North-West Passage by Land" is a most enjoyable book.

CAPTAIN BUTLER

In the early months of the year 1870, when Red River settlement was under the hand of the rebel Louis Riel, a tall, distinguished-looking stranger descended the Red River in the steamer International. News had been sent by a courier on horseback to the rebel chief that a dangerous stranger was approaching. The stalwart Irish visitor was Captain W. F. Butler, of H.M. 69th Regiment of Foot. As the International neared Fort Garry, Butler, with a well-known resident of Red River settlement, sprang upon the river-bank from the steamer in the dark as she turned into the Assiniboine River.

He escaped to the lower part of the settlement, but the knowledge that he had a letter from the Roman Catholic Archbishop Taché led to the rebel chief sending for and promising him a safe-conduct. Butler came and inspected the fort, and again departed to Lake Winnipeg, River Winnipeg, and Lake of the Woods, where he accomplished his real mission, in telling to General Wolseley, of the relief expedition coming to drive away the rebels, the state of matters in the Red River.

Captain Butler then went west, crossed country to the Saskatchewan, descended the river, and in winter came through, by snow-shoe and dog train, over Lakes Winnipegoosis and Manitoba to the east, and then to Europe.

Love of adventure brought Captain Butler back to the North-West. In 1872 he journeyed through the former fur traders' land, reaching Lake Athabasca in March, 1873. Ascending the Peace River, he arrived in Northern British Columbia in May. Through three hundred and fifty miles of the dense forests of New Caledonia he toiled to reach Quesnel, on the Fraser, four hundred miles north of Victoria, British Columbia, where he in due time landed.

Captain Butler has left a graphic, perhaps somewhat embellished, account of his travels in the books, "Great Lone Land" and "Wild North Land." The central figure of his first book is the faithful horse "Blackie" and of the second the Eskimo dog "Cerf-Vola." The appreciative reader feels, however, especially in the latter, the spirit and power of Milton's and Cheadle's "North-West Passage by Land" everywhere in these descriptive works.

FLEMING AND GRANT

Third of these expeditions was that undertaken in 1872, under the leadership of Sandford Fleming, which has been chronicled in the work "Ocean to Ocean," by Rev. Principal Grant. The writer saw this expedition at Winnipeg in the summer of its arrival. It came for the purpose of crossing the plains, as a preliminary survey for a railway. The party came up the lakes, and by boat and portage over the traders' route, and the Dawson Road from Lake of the Woods to Red River, and halted near Fort Garry. Going westward, they for the most part followed the path of Milton and Cheadle. Fort Carlton and then Edmonton House were reached, and the Yellow Head Pass was followed to the North Thompson River. The forks of the river at Kamloops were passed, and then the canoe way down the Fraser to the sea was taken. The return journey was made by way of San Francisco. The expedition did much to open the way for Canadian emigration and to keep before the minds of Canadians the necessity for a waggon road across the Rocky Mountains and for a railway from ocean to ocean as soon as possible. Dr. Grant's conclusion was: "We know that we have a great North-West, a country like old Canada – not suited for lotus-eaters to live in, but fitted to rear a healthy and hardy race."

CHAPTER XXXV

RED RIVER SETTLEMENT

1817-1846

Chiefly Scottish and French settlers – Many hardships – Grasshoppers – Yellow Head – "Gouverneur Sauterelle" – Swiss settlers – Remarkable parchment – Captain Bulger, a military governor – Indian troubles – Donald Mackenzie, a fur trader, governor – Many projects fail – The flood – Plenty follows – Social condition – Lower Fort built – Upper Fort Garry – Council of Assiniboia – The settlement organized – Duncan Finlayson governor – English farmers – Governor Christie – Serious epidemic – A regiment of regulars – The unfortunate major – The people restless.

The cessation of hostilities between the rival Companies afforded an opportunity to Lord Selkirk's settlement to proceed with its development. To the scared and harassed settlers it gave the prospects of peace under their Governor, Alexander Macdonell, who had been in the fur trade, but took charge of the settlement after the departure of Miles Macdonell. The state of affairs was far from promising. The population of Scottish and Irish settlers was less than two hundred. There were a hundred or thereabout of De Meurons, brought up by Lord Selkirk, and a number of French voyageurs, free traders or "freemen" as opposed to engagés, and those who, with their half-breed families, had begun to assemble about the forks and to take up holdings for themselves. For the last mentioned, the hunt, fishing, and the fur trade afforded a living; but as to the settlers and De Meurons, Providence seemed to favour them but little more than the hostile Nor'-Westers had done.

The settlers were chiefly men who were unacquainted with farming, and they had few implements, no cattle or horses, and the hoe and spade were their only means of fitting the soil for the small quantity of grain supplied them for sowing. Other means of employment or livelihood there were none. In 1818 the crops of the settlers were devoured by an incursion of locusts. On several occasions clouds of these destructive insects have visited Red River, and their ravages are not only serious, but they paralyze all effort on the part of the husbandmen. The description given by the prophet Joel was precisely reproduced on the banks of the Red River, "the land is as the Garden of Eden before them, and behind them is a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them." There was no resource for the settlers but to betake themselves to Pembina to seek the buffalo. In the next year they sowed their scanty seed, but the young "grasshoppers," as they were called, rose from the eggs deposited in the previous year, and while the wheat was in the blade, cleared it from the fields more thoroughly than any reaper could have done. This scourge continued till the spring of 1821, when the locusts disappeared suddenly, and the crop of that year was a bountiful one.

During these years the colony was understood to be under the personal ownership of Lord Selkirk. He regarded himself as responsible, as lord paramount of the district, for the safety and support of the colonists. In the first year of the settlement he had sent out supplies of food, clothing, implements, arms, and ammunition; a store-house had been erected; and this continued during these years to be supplied with what was needed. It was the Governor's duty to regulate the distribution of these stores and to keep account of them as advances to the several settlers, and of the interest charged upon such advances. Whilst the store was a boon, even a necessity, to the settlers, it was also an instrument of oppression. Alexander Macdonell was called "Gouverneur Sauterelle" ("Grasshopper Governor"), the significant statement being made by Ross "that he was so nicknamed because he proved as great a destroyer within doors as the grasshoppers in the fields." He seems, moreover, to have been an extravagant official, being surrounded by a coterie of kindred spirits, who lived in "one prolonged scene of debauchery."

With the departure of the grasshoppers from the country departed also the unpopular and unfaithful Governor. It was only on the visit of Mr. Halkett, one of Lord Selkirk's executors, that Macdonell's course of "false entries, erroneous statements, and over-charges" was discovered, and the accounts of the settlers adjusted to give them their rights. The disgraceful reign of Governor Macdonell was brought to a close none too soon.

During the period of Governor Macdonell's rule a number of important events had taken place. The union of the two rival Companies was accomplished. Clergy, both Roman Catholic and of the Church of England, had arrived in the colony. A farm had been begun by the Colony officers on the banks of the Assiniboine, and the name of Hayfield Farm was borne by it. Perhaps the most notable event was the arrival at Red River of a number of Swiss settlers. These were brought out by Colonel May, late of the De Watteville regiment. A native of Berne, he had come to Canada, but not to Red River.

The Swiss were in many ways an element of interest. Crossing the ocean by Hudson's Bay Company's ships they arrived at York Factory in August, 1821, and were borne in the Company's York boats to their destination. Gathered, as they had been, from the towns and villages of Switzerland, and being chiefly "watch and clock makers, pastry cooks, and musicians," they were ill-suited for such a new settlement as that of Red River, where they must become agriculturists. They seem to have been honest and orderly people, though very poor.

It will be remembered that the De Meurons had come as soldiers; they were chiefly, therefore, unmarried men. The arrival of the Swiss, with their handsome sons and daughters, produced a flutter of excitement in the wifeless De Meuron cabins along German Creek. The result is described in the words of a most trustworthy eye-witness of what took place: "No sooner had the Swiss emigrants arrived than many of the Germans, who had come to the settlement a few years ago from Canada and had houses, presented themselves in search of a wife, and having fixed their attachment with acceptance, they received those families in which was their choice into their habitations. Those who had no daughters to afford this introduction were obliged to pitch their tents along the banks of the river and outside the stockades of the fort, till they removed to Pembina in the better prospects of provisions for the winter." The whole affair was a repetition of the old Sabine story.

In connection with these De Meurons and Swiss, it may be interesting to mention a remarkable parchment agreement which the writer has perused. It is eleven feet long, and one and a half feet wide, containing the signatures of forty-nine settlers, of which twenty-five are those of De Meurons or Swiss, the remainder being of Highlanders and Norwegians. Among these names are Bender, Lubrevo, Quiluby, Bendowitz, Kralic, Wassloisky, Joli, Jankosky, Wachter, Lassota, Laidece, Warcklur, Krusel, Jolicœur, Maquet, and Lalonde.

This agreement binds the Earl of Selkirk or his agents not to engage in the sale of spirituous liquors or the fur trade, but to provide facilities for transport of goods from and into the country, and at moderate rates. The settlers are bound to keep up roads, to support a clergyman, and to provide for defence. The document is not only a curiosity, but historically valuable. There is no date upon it, but the date is fixed by the signatures, viz. "for the Buffalo Wool Company, John Pritchard." That Company, we know, began, and as we shall see afterwards, failed in the years 1821 and 1822. This, accordingly, is the date of the document marking the era of the fusion of the Hudson's Bay Company and the Nor'-Westers.

The De Meurons and Swiss never took kindly to Red River. So early as 1822, after wintering at Pembina, a number of them, instead of turning their faces toward Fort Garry, went up the Red River into Minnesota, and took up farms where St. Paul now stands, on the Mississippi. They were the first settlers there. Among their names are those of Garvas, Pierrie, Louis Massey, and that of Perry, men who became very rich in herds in the early days of Minnesota.

On the removal of Governor Macdonell, Captain A. Bulger was, in June, 1822, installed as Governor of Assiniboia. His rule only lasted one year and proved troublous, though he was a high-minded and capable official. There lies before the writer, "Papers Referring to Red River," consisting chiefly of a long letter published by the Captain in India, written in 1822 to Andrew Colville, one of the executors of Lord Selkirk.

One of his chief troubles was the opposition given him by the Hudson's Bay Company officer Clarke, who was in charge of their establishment at the Forks. Every effort was put forth by Clarke to make Bulger's position uncomfortable, and the opposition drove the Captain away.

Bulger also had a worrying experience with Peguis, the chief of the Indians on the Lower Red River. Though Peguis and the other chiefs had made a treaty with Lord Selkirk and ceded certain lands to his Lordship, they now, with the fickleness of children, repented of their bargain and sought additional payment for the concession. Bulger's military manner, however, overcame the chief, and twenty-five lashes administered to an Indian who had attempted violence had a sobering effect upon the Red man.

Governor Bulger expresses himself very freely on the character of the De Meuron settlers. He says: "It is quite absurd to suppose they will ever prove peaceable and industrious settlers. The only charm that Red River possesses in their eyes, and, I may say, in the eyes of almost all the settlers, is the colony stores. Their demands are insatiable, and when refused, their insolence extreme. United as they are among themselves, and ferocious in their dispositions, nothing can be done against them." It is but fair, however, to state that the Captain had a low opinion both of the Hudson's Bay Company's officers and of the French Canadian freemen.

Governor Bulger, on retiring, made the following suggestions, which show the evils which he thought needed a remedy, viz. "to get courts and magistrates nominated by the King; to get a company of troops sent out to support the magistrates and keep the natives in order; to circulate money; to find a market for the surplus grain; to let it be determined whether the council at York Factory are justified in preventing the settlers from buying moose or deer skin for clothing and provisions." The Governor's closing words are, "if these things cannot be done, it is my sincere advice to you to spend no more of Lord Selkirk's money upon Red River."

Governor Bulger was succeeded by Robert Pelly, who was the brother of Sir J. H. Pelly, the Governor of the Company in London. It seems to have been about this time that the executors of Lord Selkirk, while not divesting themselves of their Red River possessions, yet in order to avoid the unseemly conflicts seen in Bulger's time, entrusted the administration of their affairs to the Company's officers at Red River. We have seen in a former chapter the appointment of the committee to manage these Red River affairs at Norway House council.

After two years Pelly retired, and Donald McKenzie, a fur trader who had taken part in the stirring events of Astoria, to which we have referred, became Governor.

The discontent of the settlers, and the wish to advance the colony, led the Company for a number of years after the union of the Companies to try various projects for the development of the colony. Though the recital of these gives a melancholy picture of failure, yet it shows a heartiness and willingness on the part of the Company to do the best for the settlers, albeit there was in every case bad management.

Immediately after the union of the two fur Companies in 1821, a company to manufacture cloth from buffalo wool was started. This, of course, was a mad scheme, but there was a clamour that work should be found for the hungry immigrants. The Company began operations, and every one was to become rich. $10,000 of money raised in shares was deposited in the Hudson's Bay Company's hands as the bankers of the "Buffalo Wool Company," machinery was obtained, and the people largely gave up agriculture to engage in killing buffalo and collecting buffalo skins. Trade was to be the philosopher's stone. In 1822 the bubble burst. It cost $12.50 to manufacture a yard of buffalo wool cloth on Red River, and the cloth only sold for $1.10 a yard in London. The Hudson's Bay Company advanced $12,500 beyond the amount deposited, and a few years afterwards was under the necessity of forgiving the debt. The Hudson's Bay Company had thus its lesson in encouraging the settlers.