The conquest of the great Northwest, Volume 2 (of 2) /

by Agnes C. Laut

Albany River at this time was the trail inland from Hudson Bay to the plains, to the Red River and the Missouri and modern Edmonton. The Nor’Westers determined to block this trail. The Northwest partner, Haldane, came to Bad Lake in 1806 with five voyageurs and knocked up quarters for themselves near the Hudson’s Bay cabins. By May, William Corrigal, the Hudson’s Bay man, had four hundred and eighty packs of furs. One night, when all the English were asleep, the Nor’West bullies marched across, broke into the cabins, placed pistols at the head of Corrigal and his men, and plundered the place of furs. Never dreaming that Haldane, the Northwest partner, would countenance open robbery, Corrigal dressed and went across to the Northwest house to complain.

Haldane met the complaint with a loud guffaw. “I have come to this country for furs,” he explained, “and I have found them, and I intend to keep them.”

Red Lake in Minnesota belonged to the same Albany department. Before Corrigal could dispatch the furs to the bay, Haldane’s bullies swooped down and pillaged the cabins there, this time not only of furs, but provisions.

Up at Big Falls near Lake Winnipeg, John Crear and five men had built a fort for the English. One night toward fall a party of Northwest voyageurs, led by Alexander MacDonell, landed and camped. Next morning when all of Crear’s men had gone fishing but two, MacDonell marched to the Hudson’s Bay house, accused Crear of taking furs owed in debt to the Nor’Westers, and on that excuse broke open the warehouse. Plowman, a Hudson’s Bay hunter, sprang to prevent. Quick as flash, MacDonell’s dagger was out. Plowman fell stabbed and the voyageurs had clubbed Crear to earth with the butt ends of their rifles. Furs and provisions were carried off. As if this were not enough and ample proof that the accusation had simply been an excuse to drive the Hudson’s Bay men off the field, MacDonell came back in February of 1807, surrounded Crear’s house with bullies, robbed it of everything and had Crear beaten till he signed a paper declaring he had sold the furs and that he would never again come to the country.

This was no fur trading. It was raiding—such raiding as the Highlanders carried into the Lowlands of Scotland. It was a banditti warfare that was bound to bring its own punishment.

Besides Albany River, the two great river trails inland to the plains from Hudson’s Bay were by Churchill River to Athabasca and by Hayes River to Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan. From 1805 J. D. Campbell was the Northwest partner appointed to block the advance inland to this region. John Spencer was at Reindeer Lake for the Hudson’s Bay in 1808. Knowing when the Indians from the Athabasca were due, he had sent William Linklater out to meet them, and Linklater was snowshoeing leisurely homeward drawing the furs on a toboggan, when toward nightfall he suddenly met the Northwest partner and his bullies on the trail. There was the usual pretence that the furs were a debt owed to the Nor’Westers, and the hollowness of that pretence was shown by the fact that before Linklater could answer, a Northwest bully had seized his snowshoes and sent him sprawling. Campbell and the bullies then marched off with the furs. This happened twice at Caribou Lake.

But the worst warfare waged round Isle a la Crosse, the gateway to Athabasca. Peter Fidler went there in 1806 with eighteen men for the Hudson’s Bay. Then came J. D. Campbell, the Nor’Wester, with an army of bullies, forbidding the Indians to enter Fidler’s fort or Fidler and his men to stir beyond a line drawn on the sands. On this line was built a Nor’West sentry box, where the bullies kept guard night and day. For three years, Peter Fidler stuck it out, sending men across the line secretly at night, directing the Indians by a detour down to the other Hudson’s Bay forts and in a hundred ways circumventing his enemies. Then Campbell’s bullies became bolder. Fidler’s firewood was stolen, his fish nets cut, his canoes hacked to pieces. He was literally starved off the field and compelled to retire in 1809.

Down in Albany, things were going from bad to worse with Corrigal. The contest concentrated at Eagle Lake, half way between Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg just where Wabigoon River intersects with the modern Canadian Pacific Railroad. The English company had strengthened Corrigal with more Orkneymen, and he had a strongly palisaded fort. But the Nor’Westers set the MacDonell clan with their French bullies on his trail.

An Indian had come to the post in September. Corrigal outfitted him with merchandise for the winter’s hunt, and three English servants accompanied the Saulteur down to the shore. Out rushed the Nor’Wester, MacDonell, flourishing his sword accompanied by a bully, Adhemer, raging aloud that the Indian had owed furs to the Nor’Westers and should not be allowed to hunt for the Hudson’s Bay. The two Corrigal brothers and one Tait ran from the post to the rescue. With one sweep of his sword Eneas MacDonell cut Tait’s wrist off and with another hack on his neck felled him to the ground. The French bully had aimed a loaded pistol at the Corrigals daring them to take one step forward. John Corrigal dodged into the lake. MacDonell then rushed at the Englishmen like a mad man, cutting off the arm of one, sending a hat flying from another whose head he missed, hacking the shoulder of a third. Unarmed, the Hudson’s Bay men fled for the fort gates. The Nor’Westers pursued. Coming from the house door, John Mowat, a Hudson’s Bay man, drew his pistol and shot Eneas MacDonell dead. Coureurs went flying to Northwest camps for reinforcements. Haldane and McLellan, two partners, came with a rowdy crew and threatened if Mowat were not surrendered they would have the Indians butcher every soul in the fort if it cost a keg of rum for every scalp. Mowat promptly surrendered and declared he would shoot any Nor’ Wester on the same provocation.

For this crime and before the Company in England could be notified, Mowat was carried away in irons. Two servants—McNab and Russell—and one of the Corrigals volunteered to accompany him as witnesses for the defense. For a winter Mowat was imprisoned in the miserable butter vat of a jail at Fort William, and when it was found that every indignity and insult would not drive the three witnesses away, they were arrested as abettors of the so-called crime. At Mowat’s trial in Montreal, of the four judges who presided, one was notoriously corrupt and two, the fathers of Northwest partners. Of the jury, half the number were Nor’Westers. Naturally, Mowat was pronounced guilty. He was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and branding. When he was discharged penniless, he set out through the United States to take ship for England. It is supposed that he was lost in a storm, or drowned crossing some of the New England rivers.