It is astonishing, too, to take a map of North America and consider what exploration stands to the credit of the fur traders. They were first overland from the St. Lawrence to Hudson Bay, and first inland from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi—thanks to Radisson.
In the exploration of the Arctic, who stands highest? It was a matter of paralyzing astonishment to the Company, itself, when I told them I had counted up in their books what they had spent on the Northwest Passage, and that before 1800 they had suffered dead loss on that account of £100,000. Beginning with old Captain Knight in 1719, who starved to death on Marble Island with his forty-three men, on down to Hearne in 1771, and Simpson and Rae in later days—that story of exploration is one by itself. The world knows of Franklins and Nansens, but has never heard of the Company’s humble servants whose bones are bleaching on the storm-beaten rocks of the desolate North. Take that bleak desert of the North, Labrador—of which modern explorers know nothing—by 1750 Captain Coates of the Hudson’s Bay had explored its shores at a loss to the company of £26,000.
Inland—by 1690, that ragamuffin London boy, Henry Kelsey, who ran away with the Indians and afterward rose to greatness in the service, had penetrated to the present province of Manitoba and to the Saskatchewan. The MacKenzie River, the Columbia, the Fraser, the passes of the Rocky Mountains, the Yukon, the Liard, the Pelly—all stand to the credit of the fur trader. And every state north of Louisiana, west of the Mississippi, echoed to the tramp of the fur traders’ horses sweeping the wilderness for beaver. Gentlemen Adventurers, they called themselves, but Lords of the Outer Marches were they, truly as any robber barons that found and conquered new lands for a feudal king.
Old-fashioned feudalism marked the Company’s treatment of its dependents. To-day, the Indian simply brings his furs to the trader, has free egress to the stores, and goes his way like any other buyer. A hundred years ago, bartering was done through a small wicket in the gate of the fort palisades; but in early times, the governor of each little fort felt the pomp of his glory like a Highland chief. Decking himself in scarlet coat with profusion of gold lace and sword at belt, he marched out to the Indian camp with bugle and fife blowing to the fore, and all the white servants in line behind. Bartering was then accomplished by the Indian chief, giving the white chief the furs, and the white chief formally presenting the Indian chief with a quid pro quo, both sides puffing the peace pipe like chimney pots as a token of good-fellowship.
How these pompous governors—little men in stature some of them—kept their own servants obedient and loyal in the loneliness of these wilderness wilds, can only be ascribed to their personal prowess. Of course, there were desertions, desertions to the wild life and to the French overland in Canada and to the Americans south of the boundary, but only once was payment withheld from the men of the far fur post on account of mutiny, though many a mutiny was quelled in its beginnings by the governor doffing his dignity and laying a sound drubbing on the back of the mutineer. The men were paid by bills drawn on the home office to the amount of two thirds of their wages, the other third being kept against their return as savings. Many devices were employed to keep the men loyal. Did a captain accomplish a good voyage? The home committee ordered him a bounty of £150. Hearne, for his explorations inland, over and above his wages was given a present of £200. Did a man suffer from rigorous climate? The committee solemnly indites: “£4, smart money, for a frozen toe.” Such luck as a French wood-runner deserting from Canada to the Hudson’s Bay was promptly recognized by the order: “To Jan Ba’tiste Larlée, £1-5, a periwig to keep him loyal.” No matter to what desperate straits war reduced the Company’s finances, it was never too poor to pension some wreck of the service, or present gold plate to some hero of the fight, or give a handsome funeral to some servant who died in harness—“funeral by torch light and linkmen, to St. Paul’s Churchyard, company and crew in attendance, £31.” Though Governor Semple had been little more than a year on the field when he was murdered, the Company pensioned both his sisters for life. The humblest servants in the ranks—men beginning on twenty shillings a month, like Kelsey, and Grimmington, and Hearne, and old Captain Knight—were urged and encouraged to rise to the highest positions in the Company. The one thing required was—absolute, implicit, unquestioning loyalty; the Company could do no wrong. Quite the funniest instance of the Company’s fatherly care for its servants was the matrimonial office. For years, especially in time of war, it was almost impossible to secure apprentices at all, though the agents paid £2 as bonus on signing the contract. At this period in the Company’s history, I came across a curious record in the minutes. A General Court was secretly called of which no entry was to be made in the minutes, to consider the proposals of one, Mr. Andrew Vallentine, for the good of the Company’s service. In addition to the shareholders’ general oath of secrecy, every one attending this meeting had to take solemn vows not to reveal the proceedings. What could it be about? I scanned the general minutes, the committee books, the sub-committee records of shippings and sailings and wars. It was not about France, for proceedings against France were in the open. It was not a “back-stairs” fund, for when the Company wanted favors it openly sent purses of gold or beaver stockings or cat-skin counterpanes. But farther on in the minutes, when the good secretary had forgotten all about secrecy, I found a cryptic entry about the cryptic gentleman, Mr. Andrew Vallentine—“that all entries about Mr. Andrew Vallentine’s office for the service of the Company be made in a Booke Aparte,” and that 10 per cent. of the regular yearly dividends go as dowries for the brides of the apprentices, the ceremonies to be performed—not by any unfrocked clergyman under the rose—but by the Honorable, the Very Reverend Doctor Sacheverell of renown. The business with the gentleman of matrimonial fame was not called “a marriage office.” No such clumsy herding of fair ones to the altar, as in Virginia and Quebec, where brides were sent in shiploads and exposed on the town square like slaves at the shambles. The Company’s matrimonial venture was kept in dignified reserve, that would send down no stigma to descendants. It was organized and designated as a separate company; certainly, a company of two. Later on, Mr. Vallentine’s office being too small for the rush of business, the secretary, “Mr. Potter is ordered to arrange a larger office for Mr. Vallentine in the Buttery of the Company’s store house.” But all the delightful possibilities hidden in Mr. Vallentine’s suggestive name and in the oleaginous place which he chose for his matrimonial mart—failed to make the course of true love run smooth. Mr. Vallentine entangled the Company in lawsuits and on his death in 1731, the office was closed.
Notes on Foregoing Chapters.—Groseillers’s name is given in a variety of ways, the full name being Medard Chouart Groseillers—the last translated by the English as “Goosebery,” which of course would necessitate the name being spelled “Groseilliers.”
The account of the passage of the ships across the Atlantic is drawn from Radisson Journals, from his Petitions, and from the Journal of Gillam as reported by Thomas Gorst, Bayly’s secretary. There are also scraps about the trip in Sir James Hayes’ report of damage to The Eaglet, which he submitted to the Admiralty.
The relationship of Radisson to Groseillers and the French version of the quarrel on the bay—are to be found in the life of Radisson in Pathfinders of the West. Though I have searched diligently, I have not been able to find a single authority, ancient or modern, for the odd version given by several writers of Radisson and Groseillers absconding overland to New France. The statement is sheer fiction—neither more nor less, as the Minutes of Hudson’s Bay House account for Radisson’s movements almost monthly from 1667 to 1674, when he left London for France.