And a sorry thing “the capturing business” proved. Robertson does not give any details. He is evidently both ashamed of the episode and sorry; but the account is found in the journals of the Nor’Westers. Anxious to rescue Robertson, the Hudson’s Bay governor had his barges strung across the river and his soldiers in ambush along the trail of the portage, when the unsuspecting Athabasca brigade, laden with furs to the water line, glided down the Saskatchewan. The canoes arrived in three detachments on the 18th, and 20th, and 30th of June. Rapids behind and pointed swivels before, the voyageurs were easy victims, surrendering to the soldiers at once. It was another matter with the partners. Both Hudson’s Bay and Nor’Westers knew these lawless raids would be condemned by the courts; but each side also knew if it could capture and hold the other out of the Athabasca for a single year, the excluded rival would be ruined.
Frobisher and Campbell, accompanied by two servants, were the first partners to set out across the portage. Half way over, a movement in the grass caught their attention, and before they could speak they were surrounded by fifteen Hudson’s Bay soldiers with pointed bayonets. Frobisher was a man of enormous strength and violent temper. No Nor’Wester had exercised more wanton cruelty over Hudson’s Bay captives than he. As he saw himself suddenly looking into the barrel of a Hudson’s Bay gun, he had involuntarily knocked aside the muzzle and doubled his fist for a blow, when sharp bayonet prods in the small of his back sent him along the path at a run. The other partners as they came were captured in the same summary way. Cooped up in the hunter’s lodge at the foot of the rapids, they demanded of Governor Williams his warrant for such proceedings.
“Warrant?” roared the Hudson’s Bay governor. “What warrant had you when you held Robertson captive all last winter in Athabasca? What warrant had you for flogging Clarke out of the country two years ago? Talk to me of your Royal Proclamations of peace! I don’t care a curse for your royal proclamations. I rely on the charter of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Your governor of Canada is a d—— rascal! He is bribed by your Northwest gold! Warrants—indeed! Warrants are d—— nonsense in this country! Out of this country you go. I’ll drive out every Nor’Wester or die in the attempt.” In the midst of the tornado, some excitement arose from McIntosh, a Northwest partner, who was ill and had run the rapids with his canoemen, jumping overboard and trying to swim ashore. Two Hudson’s Bay canoemen pursued, caught him by the scruff of the neck and towed him ashore. Satisfied that he had captured all the partners in this brigade, Williams at once released the clerks and voyageurs with their cargoes of furs to proceed to Montreal. As the canoemen walked out of the hunter’s cabin past the sentry, Frobisher beside himself with rage at the governor’s rating—attempted to follow. He was clubbed to the ground. He hurled the full force of his herculean strength at his assailant. This time, the gun-stock struck him on the head. It is said from that moment he became so violently insane that he had to be kept under guard of two personal servants, Turcotte and Lepine. During the week that Williams waited at Grand Rapids for the coming of Robertson, the Northwest captives were kept on an island in midstream, forbidden even to leave their tent. One night, the partner McIntosh, succeeded in rolling himself out under the tent flap to the rear. Crawling to that side of the island farthest from the sentries, he bound two or three floating logs together in a raft and with a dead branch as a sweep, succeeded in escaping across the river. When he was missed in the morning, William, the Hudson’s Bay governor, ordered his Indian scouts out “to take McIntosh dead or alive,” but Indian friends faithfully concealed the Nor’Wester. He was recaptured by force the next winter.
When Colin Robertson came down the Saskatchewan in his canoe on the 30th of June, instead of being a prisoner as he had expected, he was one of a party of one hundred and thirty Hudson’s Bay men to conduct the captured Northwest partners across Lake Winnipeg to Norway House. Here, Robertson remained. Governor Williams took the prisoners on to York Factory on Hudson’s Bay. The question was—what to do with the prisoners? At any cost, they must be kept out of Athabasca. That would effect the ruin of the Northwest Company in a year, but the Hudson’s Bay Company would not thank Williams for landing them in any more lawsuits by illegal acts, and they could not be taken to Montreal. Shaw and Campbell and McTavish—the same McTavish who had sent Astor’s men packing from the Columbia—were treated as prisoners of honor in the main house of York Fort at Hudson’s Bay and allowed to exercise on the lead roof of the building. On the 30th of August came Franklin, the explorer, with letters of introduction to both Northwest and Hudson’s Bay traders. It was suggested by Franklin that the Northwest partners be sent home to England by the boat that had brought him out. Shaw and McTavish sailed as steerage passengers. Campbell chose to go down to the end of James Bay and overland to Canada, where the story of his adventures ran like wildfire; but the Hudson’s Bay governor went back to the interior without leaving any instructions as to Frobisher. Either the Company would not forgive his cruel treatment of Hudson’s Bay servants, or it was unsafe to release him in his violent condition. He was confined in a dilapidated outhouse where rain formed pools of water on the mud floor, with no protection against the cold but the clothes on his back and a three-point blanket. With him were the servants, Turcotte and Lepine. His violent ravings and maniacal struggles gradually gave place to a great depression. A servant of the fort took pity on the three prisoners and began smuggling extra rations at night through the iron-barred window.
From this time, Benjamin Frobisher planned a desperate escape, saving at the cost of physical strength food from their daily allowance for the inland voyage. His men expostulated. A voyage inland so late meant certain death. It was a pitch dark night on the 30th of September. Frobisher and his men broke gaol, coaxed the friendly Hudson’s Bay man to give them three extra pairs of moccasins and mits, picked up an old fish net, with a piece of deerskin to act as tent, and clambered over the palisades. Winter had set in early. The rain-swollen river was cold as ice, but in the three emaciated fugitives plunged, and swam to the far shore where there chanced to rock an old canoe. With the help of the tide, they made ten miles that night. Frobisher began to recover courage, singing wildly and paddling buoyant as a school boy, irresponsible as a maniac. Hudson’s Bay fur brigades were still passing down the river. The three Nor’Westers passed these at night with muffled paddles, keeping to the far side of the stream. At intervals were abandoned hunter’s cabins. Here, the three would take refuge for a night, leaving their net set in the river for fish. The pemmican saved from the allowance at the fort and the fish caught at night were the only food. By the 19th of October, they had passed the Hudson’s Bay post, now called Oxford House, half way between Hudson Bay and the Saskatchewan. The nights now became bitterly cold, and there were no more old lodges—only a wind-break made of the canoe and the deerskin. Frobisher had become apparently quite sane, but provisions were running low, and he was visibly feebler each day.
The river here widened to a labyrinth of winding lakes, and the men kept losing themselves, missing in the blinding rains the poles stuck up here and there to mark the way. They were wasting time, and it was a race against death. When they arose on October 23rd, six inches of snow lay on the ground, and shore ice was so thick they could not break it with their paddles. The canoe had to be left behind and the march continued by land. At the end of that week, there were only two pounds of pemmican left, and the men begged Frobisher to give himself up at the Hudson’s Bay post of Norway House near Lake Winnipeg, but Frobisher bade them push on. There would be Indians at Lake Winnipeg. By a curious perversity of weather, a thaw now came, and they found themselves at Lake Winnipeg before open water without a canoe. Whether they waited here with an Indian camp until the ice would bear them, or followed the north shore of the lake on foot, cannot be told from Frobisher’s disjointed journal. Their moccasins were worn to shreds, their feet bleeding, their only food the bit of deerskin and tatters of buffalo hide stuck up on the bushes as trail marks by the Indians. Staggering through snow and water to their waists, tripped and tangled by windfall, losing themselves in the autumn storms, the three men were now barely conscious. About the third week of November, Frobisher could walk no farther, and the brave Half-breeds, who could have saved their own lives by deserting him long ago, carried him by turns on their backs. Such conduct needs no comment. On the 20th of November, they were only two days from the first Northwest post on the Saskatchewan. With a last flickering gleam of reason, Frobisher realized the only hope was for the men to leave him and get help. “For God’s sake,” he penciled on a slip of paper, “lose not a moment to relieve me,” and he ordered Turcotte and Lepine to carry this to the Northwest post on the Saskatchewan. They kindled fire for him and left him broiling a piece of the old deerskin for food; but the men were so feeble they made poor progress. It was four days before they reached the fort, having actually eaten their leather clothing and crawled the last day’s travel. The two Half-breeds arrived delirious. It was three days more before messengers reached Frobisher’s camp. His lifeless body was found lying across the ashes of the fire. So perished one of the founders of the Great Northwest Company—the victim of his own policy of lawless violence.
But a life more or less was not to stand in the way of the fur trade. The very next winter, Colin Robertson was back with the Hudson’s Bay fur brigade on the Saskatchewan and Athabasca, pushing the traders over the mountains to the Pacific Coast. “Opponents have given us no trouble,” he writes, “but starvation nearly forced us to abandon the country. From November to February, I lived on dried berries and water with flour.” Letters record how at one post famine compelled the Hudson’s Bay men to surrender to the Nor’Westers; how at another, Black, “the Northwest bully,” was cudgelled from his post by Hudson’s Bay partisans. So the merry play went on with these dare-devil gamesters of the wilderness till in the spring of 1820, bringing the fur brigade down the Saskatchewan, Robertson found the tables reversed. The gamesters were again playing with loaded dice. “The Nor’Westers have assembled to catch us at Grand Rapids,” he writes. What defense can be expected from our sixty men worn down by hunger? This is returning the blow with a vengeance.... I told Mr. Miles, my assistant, all was not right at Grand Rapids. The governor was not there to protect our passing.... We hid the Company’s papers in a pemmican sack between beef and fat. If no scouts came back, either our spies were seized, or the Grand Rapids were clear and the passage free.... Passing a sleepless night, we embarked at daybreak, descended the current slowly, passed to the north bank ... then asked my guide to run the rapids without the men disembarking. This he positively refused to do, saying he would not venture the rapids unless the men got out and each carried a pack to lighten the canoe.... So we began to cross the portage and had nearly reached the end when a large party of Half-breeds and Indians started from concealment, armed.... A Northwest agent snatched my gun ... my men hesitated whether to come to the rescue, but I signalled them to be off and escape in the canoes.
The Nor’Wester who had captured Robertson, was the same J. D. Campbell captured at this very place and sent down to Hudson’s Bay with Robertson’s aid two years before. Fortunately, this Northwest partner was deadly tired of the policy of gasconading violence. He told Robertson frankly he must either sign an oath never to return to Athabasca, or go a prisoner to Montreal. “I gave the fellow one look of perfect contempt,” writes Robertson. On his way down to Montreal, he succeeded in borrowing a few dollars from a friendly passer-by. At Wright’s Farm, near the present city of Ottawa, the brigade was ordered to rest for some days. Robertson knew it was only to enable constables to come up from Montreal to arrest him. When the order was given to embark, he seized a biscuit (his enemies say a crow-bar) and hurling it in the face of the Northwest partner, leveled his pistol and dared the whole company to take him. The Northwesters did not accept the challenge. They no doubt knew as Robertson says, “that most of the constables in Montreal were out after me.” After a few days’ rest at the wayside inn, the doughty Hudson’s Bay fighter rode like mad for American territory, pausing only to change horses at Montreal. “The night was dark. The rain fell in torrents. A faithful friend rode before day and night all the way.... At three in the morning ... we reached Plattsburg.”
On the way to Montreal, Robertson had heard that the Nor’Westers were about to propose a union with the Hudson’s Bay, and he judged that he could serve his Company best by hurrying to London and pressing on the General Court the fact that the country was already in the hands of the Hudson’s Bay traders without any union. What was his amazement on taking ship at New York to find as fellow passengers two Northwest partners, Bethune and McLoughlin, now on the way to London to urge the union. “Hunting bees’ wings in their champagne glasses,” as Robertson describes their postprandial talks, the two Nor’Westers actually asked Robertson to introduce them to the Hudson’s Bay Company, but the feud lasted to the end of the voyage. “Wine went round freely and subscriptions were opened for the ship’s hands,” writes Robertson. “Our friend, the Nor’Wester, Dr. McLoughlin, had put down his name. I took the pen to put mine down, but seeing Bethune, the other Nor’Wester, waiting, said to Abbé Carriere:
“‘Come Abbé, put down your name. I don’t want to sign between two Nor’Westers.’