Traders Leaving Athabasca Landing for the North.
When Cocking tried to persuade the Blackfeet to come down to the fort with furs, they were reluctant. They did not understand canoe travel and could not take their horses, and why should they go down? The Assiniboines would trade the furs for firearms to be brought to the Blackfeet. Cocking pointed out that with more firearms, they could be masters of the entire country and by dint of presenting cocked hats and swords and gold-laced red coats to the chiefs, induced them to promise not to trade with “the Canadian Pedlars.” “We have done all in our power to keep them from trading with François or Curry, who lie at the Portage (the Rapids) of the Saskatchewan to intercept the natives coming to us.”
On May 16, 1773, Cocking set out to return to the fort. For the first time, a few young Blackfeet joined the canoes going to York. At the Forks, two rival camps were found, that of Louis Primo who had come over to the Hudson’s Bay from the French, and old François working for the French Canadians. The English traders had no liquor. Four gallons of rum diluted with water won the Indians over to old François, the Canadian, who picked out one hundred of the rarest skins and was only hindered taking the entire hunt because he had no more goods to trade. François’ house was a long log structure divided into two sections, half for a kitchen and mess room, half for a trading room, and the furs were kept in the loft. Outside, were two or three log cabins for François’ white men, of whom he had twenty. Round all ran ten-foot stockades against which lay the great canoes twenty-four feet long, twenty-two inches deep, which carried the furs to Lake Superior. Cocking, who was used to factors ruling like little kings, was shocked to find old François “an ignorant Frenchman, who did not keep his men at proper distance and had no watch at night. It surprises me,” he writes, “to observe what a warm side the natives hath to the French Canadians.”
Down at Grand Rapids near the mouth of the Saskatchewan, Cocking received another shock. Louis Primo and those Frenchmen bribed to join the Hudson’s Bay, who had gone on from the Forks ahead of Cocking, were to join him at the last portage of the Saskatchewan to go down to York. He found that they had gone back to the French bag and baggage with all their furs and goods supplied by the Hudson’s Bay and were already halfway down to Lake Superior. Spite of being only “an ignorant old Frenchman,” François had played a crafty game. By June 18, Cocking was back at York.
But the Company did not content itself with occasional expeditions inland. Henceforth “patroons of the woods,” as they were called, were engaged to live inland with the Indians and collect furs. Fifty-one men were regularly kept at Cumberland House, and a bonus of £20 a year regularly paid to the patroons. Whenever a Frenchman could be bribed to come over to the Hudson’s Bay traders, he was engaged at £100 a year. Bonuses above salaries amounted to £200 a year for the factors, to £40 for the traders, to £80 for traveling servants. The Company now had a staff of five hundred white men on the field and ten times as many Indians. In 1785, Robert Longmore is engaged to explore inland up Churchill River as far as Athabasca, where, in 1799, Malcolm Ross is permanently placed as chief trader at £80 a year. In 1795, Joseph Howse is sent inland from York to explore the Rockies, where he gives his name to a pass, and “it is resolved that forts shall be erected in this country too.” John Davidson explores the entire coast of Labrador on the east; and on the west of Hudson Bay Charles Duncan reports finally and, as far as the Company is concerned, forever—there is no navigable Northwest Passage. In all, the Company has spent £100,000 seeking that mythical passage, which is now written off as total loss. Up at Marble Island, the sea still takes toll of the brave, and James Mouat, the whaler, is buried in 1773, beside Captain Knight. At this stage too, I am sorry to say, 12,000 gallons of brandy are yearly sent into the country.
It was in 1779 that The King George ship beat about the whole summer in the ice without entering York and was compelled to unload its cargo at Churchill, for which Captain Fowler was suspended and lost his gratuity of £100.
Such strenuous efforts brought big rewards in beaver, seventy, and eighty, and ninety thousand a year to London, but the expenses of competition had increased so enormously that dividends had fallen from 10 to 5 per cent. I suppose it was to impress the native mind with the idea of pomp, but about this time I find the Company furnished all its officers with “brass-barreled pistols, swords with inlaid handles, laced suits and cocked hats.” A more perfect example of the English mind’s inability to grasp American conditions could not be found than an entry in the expense book of 1784 when the Company buys “150 tracts on the Country Clergyman’s Advice to Parishioners” for distribution among North American Indians, who could not read any language let alone English.
It was no longer a policy of drift but drive, and in the midst of this came the shock of the French war. All hands were afield from Churchill but thirty-nine white servants one sleepy afternoon on August 8, 1782, and Governor Hearne was busy trading with some Indians whom Matonabbee had brought down, when the astounding apparition appeared of a fleet at sea. No appointed signals were displayed by the incoming ships—they were not Company ships, and they anchored five miles from the fort to sound. Churchill had not heard of war between France and England. No alarm was felt. The fort had been forty years in building and was one of the strongest in America, constructed of stone with forty great guns and an outer battery to prevent approach. Probably intending to send out a boat the next morning, Hearne went comfortably to bed. At three in the morning, which was as light as day, somebody noticed that four hundred armed men had landed not far from the fort and were marching in regular military order for the gates. Too late, a reveille sounded and bells rang to arms. Hearne dashed out with two men and met the invaders halfway. Then he learned that the fleet was part of the French navy and the four hundred invaders regular marines under the great officer—La Perouse. Resistance was impossible now. The guns of the fort were not even manned. The garrison was too small to permit one man to a gun. At six in the morning, the British flag was lowered and a white tablecloth of surrender run up on the pole. Hearne and the officers were taken on board prisoners of war. Then the rough soldiery ran riot. Furs, stores, documents—all were plundered, and a second day spent blowing up the fortifications. Buildings were burned but the French were unable to do serious damage to the walls. Matonabbee the great chief looked on in horror. He had thought his English friends invincible, and now he saw his creed of brute strength turned upon them and upon himself. No longer he smiled contemptuously at the horror. It was one thing to glory in the survival of the strong—another to be the under dog. Matonabbee drew away outside the walls and killed himself. Old Norton’s widows and children were scattered. On one the hardships fell with peculiar harshness. His daughter Marie he had always nurtured as a white girl. She fled in terror of her life from the brutal soldiery and perished of starvation outside the walls.
Hearne has been blamed for two things in this surrender, for not making some show of resistance and for not sending scouts overland south to warn York. For thirty-nine men to have fought four hundred would have invited extermination, and Hearne did not know that the invaders were enemies till he himself was captured and so could not send word to York. What he might have done was earlier in the game. If he had sent out a pilot to guide the ships into Churchill Harbor, it might have led the enemy to wreck among reefs and sand-bars.