Pioneers of the Pacific Coast / A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters

by Agnes C. Laut

CHAPTER VI

THE DESCENT OF THE FRASER RIVER

American traders were not slow to follow up the discovery of Robert Gray on the Pacific. Spain, the pioneer pathfinder, had ceded Louisiana to France; and France, by way of checkmating British advance in North America, had sold Louisiana to the United States for fifteen million dollars. What did Louisiana include? Certainly, from New Orleans to the Missouri. Did it also include from the Missouri to Gray's river, the Columbia? The United States had sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark overland from the Missouri to the Columbia, ostensibly on a scientific expedition, but in reality to lay claim to the new territory for the United States. This brings the exploration of the Pacific down to 1806.

Take a look at the map! Mackenzie had crossed overland from the Peace river to Bella Coola. Who was to own the great belt of empire—a third larger than Germany—between Mackenzie's trail westward and Lewis and Clark's trail to the mouth of the Columbia? In 1805 Simon Fraser, who as a child had come from the United States to Canada with his widowed mother in the Loyalist migration, and now in his thirtieth year was a partner in the North-West Company of Montreal, had crossed the Rockies by way of the Peace river. He had followed Mackenzie's trail over the terrible nine-mile carrying-place and had built there a fur-post—Rocky Mountain Portage. He had ascended that same Parsnip river, which Mackenzie had found so appalling, to a little emerald lake set like a jewel in the mountains. There he had built another fur-trading post, and named it after his friend, Archibald Norman M'Leod. This was the first fur-post known to have been erected in the interior of New Caledonia, now British Columbia. The new fort had been left in charge of James M'Dougall; and during the winter of 1806 M'Dougall had crossed the heavily drifted carrying-place and descended the Bad River as far as the south fork of the Fraser, which all traders at that time mistook for the upper reaches of Gray's Columbia. Instead of going down the main stream of the Fraser, M'Dougall ascended both the Nechaco and the Stuart; and if he did not actually behold the beautiful alpine tarns since known as Fraser Lake and Stuart Lake, he was at least the first white man to hear of them.

In May of 1806, after sending the year's furs from Rocky Mountain Portage east to Fort Chipewyan, Simon Fraser set out to explore this inland empire concerning which M'Dougall had reported. John Stuart accompanied Fraser as lieutenant. They crossed from the head-waters of the Parsnip to the south fork of the Fraser, and on June 10 camped at the mouth of the Nechaco. Towards the end of July the Carriers camped on Stuart Lake were amazed to see advancing across the waters, with rhythmic gallop of paddles, two enormous birch canoes. When the canoes reached the land Fraser and Stuart stepped ashore, and a volley was fired to celebrate the formal taking possession of a new inland empire. What to do with the white men's offerings of tobacco the Carriers did not know. They thought the white men in smoking were emitting spirits with each breath. When the traders offered soap to the squaws, the women at once began to devour it. The result was a frothing at the mouth as amazing to them as the smoke from the men. History does not record whether the women became as addicted to soap as the men to the fragrant weed.

Active trading with the Indians began at once. The lake was named Stuart in honour of Fraser's companion, and the ground was cleared for a palisaded fort, which, when erected, they named Fort St James. The scene was enchanting. The lake wound for a distance of fifty miles amid the foot-hills of the mighty forested mountains. It was four or five miles wide, and was gemmed with green islets; and all round, appearing through the clouds in jagged outline, were the opal summits of the snowy peaks. No wonder the two Scotsmen named the new inland empire New Caledonia—after their native land.

It will be remembered that M'Dougall had heard of another mountain tarn. This was forty miles south of Stuart Lake, at the headwaters of the Nechaco, the north fork of the Fraser. Stuart went overland south to spy out the southern lake; and his report was of such an entrancing region—heavily forested, with an abundance of game and fish—that Fraser glided down the Stuart river and poled up the Nechaco to the lake which Stuart had already named after his chief. Again a fort was erected and named Fort Fraser, making three forts in the interior of New Caledonia.

Fraser had sent a request to the directors of the North-West Company to be permitted to fit out an expedition down the great river, which he thought was the Columbia; and in the spring of 1807 two canoes under Jules Quesnel were sent out with goods. Quesnel arrived at Fort St James in the autumn, bringing from the east the alarming word that Lewis and Clark had gone overland and taken possession of all the territory between the Missouri and the mouth of the Columbia. No time was to be lost by Fraser in establishing a claim to the region to the west of the Rockies between the Peace and the Columbia. Fraser went down the river and strengthened British possession by building a fourth fort—Fort George at the mouth of the Nechaco. This was to be the starting-point of the expedition to the Pacific. Then, towards the end of May 1808, he set out down the great river with four canoes, nineteen voyageurs, and Stuart and Quesnel as first assistants.