Hendry was invited into the French post as the guest of the master. If he had been as crafty as he was brave, he would have hurried his Indians past the rival post, but he had to live and learn. While he was having supper, the French distributed ten gallons of brandy among the Assiniboines. By morning, the French had obtained the pick of the furs, one thousand of the best pelts, and it was three days before the amazed Hendry could coax the Indians away from his polite hosts. Two hundred miles more, brought the brigade to the main French post—the Pas. Nine Frenchmen were in possession, and the trick was repeated. “The Indians are all drunk,” deplores Hendry, “but the master was very kind to me. He is dressed very genteel but his men wear nothing but drawers and striped cotton shirts ruffled at the hand and breast. This house has been long a place of trade and is named Basquia. It is twenty-six feet long, twelve wide, nine high, having a sloping roof, the walls log on log, the top covered with willows, and divided into three rooms, one for trade, one for storing furs, and one for a dwelling.”
Four days passed before the Indians had sobered sufficiently to go on, and they now had only the heavy furs that the French would not take. On June 1, the brigade again set out for York. Canoes were lighter now. Seventy miles a day was made. Hendry does not give any distances on his return voyage, but he followed the same course by which he had come, through Deer Lake and Steel River to Hayes River and York, where all arrived on the 20th of June.
To Hendry’s profound disgust, he was not again permitted to go inland. In fact, discredit was cast on his report. “Indians on horseback!” The factors of the bay ridiculed the idea. They had never heard of such a thing. All the Indians they knew came to the fort in canoes. Indeed, it was that spirit of little-minded narrowness that more than anything else lost to the Company the magnificent domain of its charter. If the men governing the Company had realized the empire of their ruling as fully as did the humble servants fighting the battles on the field, the Hudson’s Bay Company might have ruled from Atlantic to Pacific in the North, and in the West as far south as Mexico. But they objected to being told what they did not know. Hendry was “frozen” out of the service. The occasion of his leaving was even more contemptible than the real cause. On one of his trading journeys, he was offered very badly mixed brandies, probably drugged. Being a fairly good judge of brandies from his smuggling days, Hendry refused to take what Andrew Graham calls “such slops from such gentry.” He quit the service in disgust.
The Company, as the minutes show, voted him £20 gratuity for his voyage. Why, then, did the factors cast ridicule on his report? Supposing they had accepted it, what would have been entailed? They must capture the furs of that vast inland country for their Company. To do that, there must be forts built inland. Some factor would be ordered inland. Then, there would be the dangers of French competition—very real danger in the light of that brandy incident. The factors on the bay—Norton and Isham—were not brave enough men to undertake such a campaign. It was easier sitting snugly inside the forts with a multitude of slave Indians to wait on their least want. So the trade of the interior was left to take care of itself.
Notes on Chapter XVIII.—Hendry’s Journal is in Hudson’s Bay Company’s House, London. A copy is also in the Canadian Archives. Andrew Graham of Severn has written various notes along the margin. If it had not been for Graham, it looks much as if Hendry’s Journal would have been lost to the Company. Hendry gives the distances of each day’s travel so minutely, that his course can easily be followed first to Basquia, then from Basquia to the North Saskatchewan region. Graham’s comment that Hendry was at 59° north is simply a slip. It is out of the question to accept it for the simple reason Hendry could not have gone eight hundred and ten miles southwest from York, as his journal daily records, and have been within 6° of 59°. Besides his own discovery that he had been crossing branches of the Saskatchewan all the time and his account of his voyage down the Saskatchewan to the Pas, are unmistakable proofs of his whereabouts. Also he mentions the Eagle Indians repeatedly. These Indians dwelt between the north and south branches of the Saskatchewan. Whether the other rivers that he crossed were the Assiniboine or the Qu’ Appelle or the Red Deer of Lake Winnipegosis—I do not know.
I had great trouble in identifying the Archithinue Indians of Hendry’s Journal till I came on Matthew Cocking’s Journal over the same ground. Dec. 1, 1772, Cocking says: “This tribe is named Powestic Athinuewuck, Waterfall Indians. There are four tribes or nations which are all Equestrian Indians, viz:
(1) Mithco Athinuewuck, or Bloody Indians.
(2) Koskiton Wathesitock, or Black Footed Indians.