Then came the next great struggle of the Company for its life—against the North-West Company in Canada and the American traders in the Western States. Sales fell as low as £2,000. Oddly enough to-day, with its monopoly of exclusive trade long since surrendered to the Canadian Government, its charter gone, free traders at liberty to come or go, and populous cities spread over two-thirds of its old stamping ground, the sales of the Company yield as high returns as in its palmiest days.
The reason is this:
It was only in regions where there were rival traders, or where colonization was bound to come, as in the Western States, that the fur brigades waged a war of extermination against the beaver. Elsewhere, north of the Saskatchewan and Athabasca, where cold must forever bar out the settler and leave the hunter in undisturbed possession of his game preserve, the Company acted as a nursery for the fur-bearing animals. Indians were taught not to kill in summer, not to kill the young, to leave the mother untouched. Tales are told—and the tales are perfectly true—of Hudson’s Bay fur traders taking a particularly long-barreled old musket standing it on the ground and ordering the poor, deluded Indian to pile furs to the top before he could have the gun; but to make these tales entirely true it should be added that the furs were muskrat and rabbit killed out of season not worth a penny apiece in the London market and only taken to keep the Indians going till a year of good hunting came. When arraigned before a committee of the House of Commons, in 1857, charged with putting an advance of 50 per cent. on all goods traded to the Indians, and with paying ridiculously small prices for the rare skins in proportion to what they had paid for the poor, the Company frankly acknowledged both facts, but it was proved that 33 per cent. of the advance represented expenses of carriage to the interior. As for the other charge, the Company contended that it was wiser to take many skins that were absolutely worthless and buy the valuable pelts at a moderate price; otherwise, the Indians would die from want in bad years, and in good years kill off the entire supply of the rare fur-bearing animals. Since the surrender of the monopoly, countless rival traders have invaded the hunting grounds of the Company. None has yet been able to wean the Indians away from the old Company. It is a question if the world shows another example of such a long-lived feudalism.
Though a Hudson’s Bay servant could not take as much as one beaver skin for himself, every man afield had as keen an interest in the total returns as the shareholders in London. This was owing to the bounty system. To encourage the servants and prevent temptations to dishonesty, the Company paid bounty on every score (20) of made beaver to captains, factors, traders, and trappers, in amounts ranging from three shillings to sixpence a score. Latterly, this system has given place to larger salaries and direct shareholding on the part of the servants, who rise in the service.
A change has also taken place in methods of barter. Up to 1820, beaver was literally coin of the realm. Mink, marten, ermine, silver fox, all were computed as worth so much or so many fractions of beaver. A roll of tobacco, a pound of tea, a yard of blazing-red flannel, a powderhorn, a hatchet, all were measured and priced as worth so many beaver. This was the Indian’s coinage, but this, too, has given way to modern methods, though the old system may perhaps be traced among the far Northern tribes. The account system was now used, so much being consigned to each factor, for which he was responsible. The trader, in turn, advanced the Indian whatever he needed for a yearly outfit, charging it against his name. This was repaid by the year’s hunt. If the hunt fell short of the amount, the Indians stood in debt to the Company. This did not in the least prevent another advance for the next year. If the hunt exceeded the debt, the Indian might draw either cash or goods to the full amount or let the Company stand in his debt, receiving coins made from the lead of melted tea chests with 1, 2, 3 or 4 B—beaver—stamped in the lead, and the mystic letters N. B., A. R., Y. F., E. M., C. R., H. H., or some other, meaning New Brunswick House, Albany River, York Fort, East Main, Churchill River, Henley House—names of the Company’s posts on or near the bay. And these coins have in turn been supplanted by modern money.
One hears much of the Indians’ slavery to the Company owing to the debts for these advances, but any one who knows the Indians’ infinite capacity for lounging in idleness round the fort as long as food lasts, must realize that the Company had as much trouble exacting the debt as the Indian could possibly have in paying it.
A more serious charge used to be leveled against the fur traders—the wholesale use of liquor by which an Indian could be made to give away his furs or sell his soul. Without a doubt, where opposition traders were encountered—Americans west of the Mississippi, Nor’Westers on the Saskatchewan, French south of the bay, Russians in Alaska—liquor and laudanum, bludgeon and bribe were plied without stint. Those days are long past. For his safety’s sake, the fur trader had to relinquish the use of liquor, and for at least a century the strictest rules have prohibited it in trade, the old Russian company and the Hudson’s Bay binding each other not to permit it. And I have heard traders say that when trouble arose at the forts the first thing done by the Company was to split open the kegs in the fort and run all liquor on the ground.
The charge, however, is a serious one against the Company’s past, and I searched the minutes for the exact records on the worst year. In 1708, conflict was at its height against the French. The highest record of liquor sent out for two hundred servants was one thousand gallons—an average of five gallons a trader for the year, or less than two quarts a month. In 1770, before the fight had begun with the Nor’Westers, the Company was sending out two hundred and fifty gallons a year for three hundred traders. In 1800, when Nor’Westers and Hudson’s Bay came to open war and each company drove the other to extremes of outlawry, neither had intended at the beginning, coureurs falling by the assassin’s dagger, a Hudson’s Bay governor butchered on the open field, Indians horsewhipped for daring to communicate with rivals, whole camps demoralized by drugged liquor, the highest record was twelve thousand six hundred gallons of brandy sent out for a force of between 4,000 or 5,000 men. This gives an average of three gallons a year for each trader. So that however terrible the use of liquor proved in certain disgraceful episodes between the two great British companies—it must be seen that the orgies were neither general nor frequent.