“Honorable,” roared the indignant Clarke, shaking the canoe in his wrath. “Justice be blanked! Did you give us justice when you hounded us out of Athabasca,” and he followed the serenade up with a volley that brought the whole Northwest Company to the shore.
Before trouble could brew, Robertson marshaled his men to the old Hudson’s Bay quarters, and within a few days more than forty Indian tents had deserted from the Nor’Westers. Clarke was sent up Peace River for the winter. Robertson retained a force of one hundred men well equipped with arms and provisions to hold the fort at Lake Athabasca. “We had completed the fitting out of the Indians,” he writes, “established our fisheries and closed the fall business when the loaded canoes of the Northwest hunters began to arrive. Black, the Nor’Wester, is now in his glory, leading his bullies. Every evening they come over to our fort in a body, calling on our men to come out and fight pitched battles. One of their hair-pulling bullies got his challenge accepted and an unmerciful thrashing to boot from a little Frenchman of ours—Boucher. Mr. Simon McGillivray, the chief partner of the Nor’Westers, who is with Mr. McLeod, was rather forward on this occasion. Having a strong force, he approached too near. I ordered our men to arms and his party made a precipitate retreat. Our men are in high spirits. The Indians have regained confidence in us and boldly leave the Nor’Westers every day for the Hudson’s Bay.”
Now that their winter hunters had come in, and they were stronger, the Nor’Westers were not to be so easily routed from Athabasca. Robertson’s next letters are dated from the Nor’Westers’ fort. He had been captured within ten days of his arrival. “You ... will perceive from the date of this letter, the great reverse.... If I were the only sufferer it might be borne, but when I reflect on the consequences to the Hudson’s Bay Company and to Lord Selkirk, it almost drives me mad.... On the morning of the 11th of October, about an hour before day, my servant entered my bedroom and informed me a canoe had just arrived with the body of a fisherman accidentally shot the night before.... Sleep was out of the question. I rose and ordered an early breakfast, but just as we were sitting down one of the men entered with word that a Northwest bully had come and was daring little Boucher to fight. As was my custom, I put a pistol in my pocket and going toward the fellow saw Mr. Simon McGillivray, the Northwest partner.... Just then eight or ten Nor’Westers made a rush from concealment behind.... It was all a trick.... I was surrounded.... In the struggle my pistol got entangled and went off.... At the sound, they rushed on me and dragged me to the beach.... I freed myself and laid about with my empty pistol.... When thrown in the canoe, I tried to upset and escape by swimming, but Black put a pistol to my head till we arrived at the Nor’Westers’ fort.... Landing, I dashed for their Indian Hall and at once ... called on the Indians, representing that the cowardly attack was an effort to reduce them to slavery; but Black rushed up to stop me. Seizing a fork on the hall table I kept the vagabond at bay. I loaded him with every abuse and evil name I could think of, then to the Indians: ‘Do not abandon the Hudson’s Bay on this account! There are brave men at our fort to protect you! That fellow was not brave enough to seize me; he stole me, and he would now rob you of your hunt if it were not for the young men I have left in my fort. Tell Clarke not to be discouraged. We will be revenged for this, but not like wolves prowling in the bushes. We will capture them as we captured them at Fort William, with the sun shining on our faces.’ At this moment, the Indian chief came up and squeezing my hand, whispered, ‘Never mind, white man! All right! We are your friends.’ ... This closed the turbulent scene.... Figure my feelings ... tumbled by an act of illegal violence from the summit of hope ... confidence of friends withdrawn ... all my prospects for life blasted ... mere personal danger is secondary now—I am in despair.”
Simon McGillivray, Black, McIntosh, McLeod, in a word, the most influential partners in the Northwest Company were at Fort Chippewyan when Robertson was captured; but the post was in charge of that John George McTavish, who had helped to trick Astor out of his fur post on the Columbia. It was probably the ruinous lawsuits against the Nor’Westers that now restrained their savage followers from carrying out their threat “to scalp Robertson and feed him to the dogs,” but the Hudson’s Bay leader was clapped into a small room with log walls, under guard day and night. He was compelled to state his simplest wants in a formal daily letter. Pen and paper, the clothes on his back, a jack-knife in his pocket—that was Robertson’s entire paraphernalia during his captivity; but for all that, he outwitted the enemy. One of his written requests was that a Nor’Wester go across to the Hudson’s Bay fort under flag of truce for a supply of liquor. The Nor’Westers were delighted at the chance to spy on the Hudson’s Bay fort, and doubly delighted at the prospect of their captive fuddling himself hors de combat with drink. It was an easy trick to give a rival his quietus with whiskey.
Taking long strips of writing paper, the Hudson’s Bay man invented a cipher code in numbers from one to six hundred, some well known trading phrase placed opposite each number. This he rolled like a spool, so tight it was waterproof, sealed each end with wax, knocked the bung out of the whiskey barrel, bored a tiny hole beside the bung with his jack-knife, hooked a piece of twine through one end to the sealed message, the other to the inner end of the plug, thrust the paper inside the liquor and plugged up the hole. Then dusting all over with mud from the floor of the cabin, he complained the whiskey was musty—diluted with rum. He requested that it be sent back with orders for his men to cleanse the barrel. Before sending it back, the Nor’Westers actually sealed the barrel “contents unknown.” But what was Robertson’s disgust when the men of the fort instead of cleansing this barrel, sent back a fresh one!
Again he put his wits to work. Sending for a volume of Shakespeare’s plays, he wrote in fine pencil opposite Falstaff’s name: “Examine—the—first—keg.” The messenger, who went for the weekly supply, carried the Shakespeare back to the Hudson’s Bay fort. A week passed. No sign came from his men. Exasperated to the point of risk, Robertson tried a last expedient. The next week, the messenger carried an open letter to Robertson’s men. It was inspected by his captors but allowed to pass. It read: “To amuse myself, I am trying to throw into verse some of Falstaff’s good sayings. There is one expression where he blows out, ‘I am not a wit but the cause of wit in others.’ This sounds harsh. Please send exact words as in the play.” No doubt the Northwest partners thought poor Robertson far gone with liquor when he took to versifying. Back came word with the week’s supplies, stating that the volume of Shakespeare had been carried off to the fishery by one of the traders; but “would Mr. Robertson please let his men know if he wished the following traders to have the following supplies”—a string of figures conveying the joyful news that the cipher had been found; the Hudson’s Bay fort was on guard against surprise; the men were in good spirits; the Indians loyal; all things prosperous.
For eight months a prisoner in a small room, Robertson directed the men of his own fort by means of the whiskey kegs, sending word of all secrets he could learn in the enemy’s camp, checkmating every move of the Nor’Westers among the Indians. In vain, he urged his followers to sally out and rescue him. The Hudson’s Bay traders were not willing to risk another such massacre as on Red River. Immunity bred carelessness. In the month of May a Nor’Wester, spying through crevices of the logs, caught Robertson sealing up the bung in the whiskey keg. Swords and pistol in hand, the angry partners burst into the room with torrents of abuse that Robertson was quite able to return. He was too dangerous a man to keep prisoner. The Nor’Westers decided to ship him out of the country on pain of assassination if he dared to return. No doubt Robertson smiled. His own coureurs had long since been sent speeding over prairie and swamp for Red River to warn the Hudson’s Bay governor, Williams, to catch the Northwest fur brigade when the canoes would be running the rapids of the Saskatchewan in June.
Of the forty Nor’Westers conducting the June brigade to Montreal, half a dozen were directors. “I was embarked with Simon McGillivray,” Robertson writes. “At Isle a la Crosse ... seeing the strong rapids before us, I threw off my cloak as was my custom when running rapids.... What was my horror when I perceived our canoe swept out of its track into a shute over the rocks.... Our steersman shouted, ‘My God, we are all lost.’ ... The canoe upset.... I attempted to swim ashore but the strong eddies drew me under the falls where I found Mr. Simon McGillivray and two or three others clinging to the gun’els of the canoe.... The canoe swept on down the current and Mr. Shaw, one of the partners, caught us below.” What was almost an escape through an accident evidently suggested to Robertson’s mind that it was not absolutely necessary he should be deported out of the country against his will. At Cumberland House, where the brigade camped for a night, there was a Hudson’s Bay as well as a Northwest post. Robertson asked leave to say good-by to his old friends, but no sooner was he inside the gates of the Hudson’s Bay post than bolts were shot and every man of the ten inside the palisades, armed ready to fire if the Nor’Westers approached. “I have escaped,” he writes, “but not agreeable to my feelings.... However my friends may applaud the act, my conscience tells me I have not done right in breaking my parole.... However, it is all over now.... At half past ten in the morning, the Northwest canoes pushed off from the beach without me.”
Where the Saskatchewan empties into Lake Winnipeg are rough ledges of rock known as Grand Rapids. Here, it was usual to lighten loads, passengers landing to walk across the portage, the voyageurs running the canoes down full swirl to a camp below the rapids. Robertson knew that Williams, the Hudson’s Bay governor from Red River, would be waiting for the Northwest brigade at this point. Barely had his captors’ canoes paddled away from Cumberland House, when Robertson launched out on their trail far enough behind to escape notice, bound for the exciting rendezvous of Grand Rapids. “In paddling along,” he writes, “we were suddenly interrupted with a shout ‘Canoe ahead!’ ... A shot was fired.... We arranged our pistols. The canoe was plainly approaching us. What shall be done? If these are enemies, the water is the safest place for defense. It was a moment of anxiety. As the canoe came nearer, a stranger stood up, waved his hat and shouted, ‘Glorious news! Five North-West partners captured at Grand Rapids—Shaw, McIntosh, Campbell, McTavish and Frobisher taken! I am sent to meet Mr. Robertson!’ We at once shaped our course to the canoe when our voyageurs struck up a song the men of both canoes yelling a cheer at each chorus.” At eleven on the morning of July 30th, Robertson crossed the portage of Grand Rapids. He found himself in the midst of a stirring scene. Strung across the river at the foot of the rapids were barges mounted with swivels. On the bank lay the entire year’s output of Athabasca furs, the poor French voyageurs huddling together, the loudest bully cowed; and apart from the camp in the windowless lodge of an old French hunter, were the captured Northwest partners surrounded by the guard of a hundred De Meuron soldiers under Governor Williams. This was a turning of the tables with a vengeance. As Williams blurted out in a gasconade striding forward to welcome Robertson, “two could play at the capturing business.”