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

by Agnes C. Laut

When the river turned sharply west, Fraser could not help noticing that the Indians became more violently hostile. Far south could be seen the opal dome of Mount Baker, named by Vancouver after one of his lieutenants. As they advanced, the banks lowered to reedy swamps and mosquitoes appeared in clouds. What troubled Fraser most was the fact that the river lay many miles north of the known latitude of the Columbia. It daily grew on him that this could not possibly be the Columbia. The tide rose and fell in the river. The Indian guide begged the white men not to go on; he was afraid, he said, of the Indians of the sea-coast. The river channel divided. Natives along the shore began singing war-songs and beating the war-drum; then they circled out threateningly round the white men's boats. Signs were seen of the sea ahead; but the Indians were 'howling like wolves and brandishing war-clubs,' and Fraser concluded that it would be unwise to delay longer amid such dangers. To his intense disappointment he had established the latitude as 49°, whereas the Columbia was in latitude 46° 20'. 'This river is therefore not the Columbia,' he declared. 'If I had been convinced of this when I left my canoes, I would certainly have returned.'

The return journey was fraught with danger. Always one man stood guard while the others slept; and again and again the little party was surrounded by ferociously hostile bands. Between apprehension of the dangers of the wild trail of the Fraser canyons and fear of hostile natives, the men became so panic-stricken that they threw down their paddles and declared their intention of trying to escape overland through the mountains. Fraser reasoned and remonstrated, and finally threatened. After so much heroism he would not permit cowardly desertion. Then he forced each voyageur to swear on the Cross: 'I do solemnly swear that I will sooner perish than forsake in distress any of our crew during the present voyage.' With renewed self-respect they then paddled off, singing voyageurs' songs to keep up their courage. Imagine, for a moment, the scene! The turbid, mad waters of the Fraser hemmed in between rock walls, carving a living way through the adamant; banks from which red savages threw down rocks wherever the wild current drove the dug-out inshore; and, tossed by the waves—a chip-like craft containing nineteen ragged men singing like schoolboys! Once away from the coastal tribes, however, the white men were aided by the inland Carriers. They found the canoes and supplies in perfect condition and unmolested, though hundreds of Carrier Indians must have passed where lay the belongings of the white strangers. On August 5, to the inexpressible relief of Fort George, the little band once more were at their headquarters in New Caledonia.

CHAPTER VII

THOMPSON AND THE ASTORIANS

While Fraser was working down the wild canyons of the great river which now bears his name, other fur traders were looking towards the Pacific ocean. In 1810 John Jacob Astor, a New York merchant, who bought furs from the Nor'westers in Montreal for shipment to Germany, formed the Pacific Fur Company, and took into its service a number of the partners and servants of the North-West Company. Some of these men were dispatched round the Horn in the Tonquin to the mouth of the Columbia; while another party went overland from Mackinaw and St Louis, following the trail of Lewis and Clark. One of the Nor'westers who entered Astor's service was Alexander Mackay, Mackenzie's companion on the journey to the coast; another was a brother of the Stuart who had accompanied Fraser through New Caledonia; and a third was a brother of the M'Dougall who commanded Fort M'Leod, the first fort built by the Nor'westers in New Caledonia.

In the light of subsequent developments, it is a matter for speculation whether these Nor'westers joined Astor purposely to overthrow his scheme in the interests of their old company; or were later bribed to desert him; or, as is most likely, simply grew dissatisfied with the inexperienced, blundering mismanagement of Astor's company, and reverted gladly to their old service. However that may have been, it is certain that the North-West Company did not fail to take notice of the plans that Astor had set afoot for the Pacific fur trade; for in a secret session of the partners, at Fort William on Lake Superior, 'it was decided in council that the Company should send to Columbia River, where the Americans had established Astoria, and that a party should proceed overland to the coast.'

It puzzled the Nor'westers to learn that the river Fraser had explored in 1808 was not the Columbia. Where, then, were the upper reaches of the great River of the West which Gray and Vancouver had reported? The company issued urgent instructions to its traders in the Far West to keep pushing up the North and South Saskatchewan, up the Red Deer, up the Bow, up the Athabaska, up the Smoky, up the Pembina, and to press over the mountains wherever any river led oceanwards through the passes. This duty of finding new passable ways to the sea was especially incumbent on the company's surveyor and astronomer, David Thompson. He was formerly of the Hudson's Bay Company, but had come over to the Nor'westers, and in their service had surveyed from the Assiniboine to the Missouri and from Lake Superior to the Saskatchewan.

Towards the spring of 1799 Thompson had been on the North Saskatchewan and had moved round the region of Lesser Slave Lake. That year, at Grand Portage, at the annual meeting of the traders of the North-West Company, he was ordered to begin a thorough exploration of the mountains; and the spring of 1800 saw him at Rocky Mountain House[[1]] on the upper reaches of the North Saskatchewan above the junction of the Clearwater. Hitherto the Nor'westers had crossed the mountains by way of the Peace river. But Thompson was to explore a dozen new trails across the Great Divide. While four of his men crossed over to the Red Deer river and rafted or canoed down the South Saskatchewan, Thompson himself, with five French Canadians and two Indian guides, crossed the mountains to the Kootenay country. The Kootenay Indians were encamped on the Kootenay plains preparatory to their winter's hunt, and Thompson persuaded some of them to accompany him back over the mountains to Rocky Mountain House on the North Saskatchewan. This was the beginning of the trade between the Kootenays and white men. Probably from these Indians Thompson learned of the entrance to the Rockies by the beautiful clear mountain-stream now named the Bow; and Duncan M'Gillivray, a leading partner, accompanied him south from Rocky Mountain House to the spot on the Bow where to-day the city of Calgary stands. It was on this trip that Nor'westers first met the Piegan Indians. From these horsemen of the plains the explorers learned that it was only a ten-day journey overland to the Missouri. Snow was falling when the traders entered the Rockies at what is now the Gap, on the Canadian Pacific Railway. Inside the gateway to the rugged defile of forest and mountain the traders revelled in the sublime scenery of the Banff valley. At Banff, eastward of Cascade mountain, on the sheltered plain where Kootenays and Stonies used to camp, one can still find the circular mounds that mark a trading-station of this era. Whether the white men discovered the beautiful blue tarn now known as Devil's Lake, or saw the Bow river falls, where tourists to-day fish away long summer afternoons, or dipped in the famous hot springs on the slope of Sulphur mountain, we do not know. They could hardly have met and conversed with the Kootenays and Stonies without hearing about these attractions, which yearly drew Indian families to camp in the encircling mountains, while the men ranged afield to hunt.