It is now necessary to examine how the Nor’Westers blocked out their Northern Empire over which they kept more jealous guard than Bluebeard over his wives.
Take a map of North America. Up on Hudson Bay is the English Company with forts around it like a wheel. Of this circle, the bay is the hub. Eastward are the forts in Labrador; southward, Abbittibbi toward Quebec; westward, three lines of fur posts extending inland like spokes of the wheel—1st, up Albany River toward the modern Manitoba—(Mine, water; toba, prairie, that is, country of the prairie water), along the valley of Red River to modern Minnesota (Mine, water; sotar, sky-colored, that is, country of the sky-colored water), and up the winding Assiniboine (country of the stone boilers where the Assiniboines cooked food on hot stones) to the central prairie; 2nd, up Hayes River from York (Nelson) to the Saskatchewan as far as the Rockies; 3rd, up Churchill River from Churchill Fort to Portage de Traite and Isle a la Crosse and far-famed Athabasca and MacKenzie River.
The wheel that has for its hub Hudson Bay, has practically only five spokes—two, eastward; three, westward. Between these unoccupied spokes are areas the size of a Germany or a Russia or a France. Into these the Nor’Westers thrust themselves like a wedge.
Look at the map again. This time the point of radiation is Fort William on Lake Superior. Between Lake Superior and Hudson Bay northward for seven hundred miles is not a post. Into these dark, impenetrable, river-swamped forests the Nor’Westers send their men. Dangerous work, this! For some unaccountable reason the Indians of these shadowy forests are more treacherous and gloomy than the tribes of the plains. Umfreville passes through their territory when he tries to find a trail westward not on American soil. Shaw, the partner, and Long, the clerk, are sent in to drum up trade. The field is entered one hundred miles east of Fort William at Pays Plat, where canoes push north to Lake Nipigon. First, a fort is built on Lake Nipigon named Duncan, after Duncan Cameron. Long stays here in charge. Shaw, as partner, pushes on to a house half way down to Albany on Hudson Bay. The Indians call Mr. Shaw “the Cat” from his feeble voice. A third hand, Jacque Santeron, is sent eastward to the Temiscamingue Lakes south of Abbittibbi. The three Nor’Westers have, as it were, thrust themselves like a wedge between the spokes of the Hudson’s Bay Company from Moose River to Albany; but a thousand perils assail them, a thousand treacheries. First, the Frenchman Santeron loses courage, sends a farewell written on a birch-bark letter down to Long at Nipigon, and deserts bag and baggage, provisions and peltries, to the Hudson’s Bay at Abbittibbi. Determined to prevent such loss, Long tears across country to Temiscamingue only to find Santeron’s cabins abandoned and these words in charcoal on bark: “Farewell my dear comrade; I go with daring and expect a good price for my furs with the English. With the best heart, I wish you luck. My regards to my partners. Good-by.” But desertion and theft of Company goods are not the worst of it. Down at Nipigon, Long hears that the Indians of the North are going to murder “the Cat”—Mr. Shaw—probably to carry the plundered furs down to the Hudson’s Bay. Long rushes to the rescue to find Shaw cooped up in the cabin surrounded by a tribe of frenzied Indians whom he tried in vain to pacify with liquor.
“My God! But I’m glad to see you,” shouts Shaw, drawing Long inside the door. For a week the Indians had tried to set fire to his house by shooting arrows of lighted punk wood at it, but every window and crevice of the cabin bristles with loaded muskets—twenty-eight of them—that keep the assailants back. The Indians demand more liquor. Shaw gives it to them on condition they go away, but at daybreak back they come for more, naked and daubed with war paint from head to foot.
“More,” shouts Long. “Come on then,” throwing the doors wide open and rolling across the entrance a keg of gunpowder from which he knocks the lid. “One step across the door and we all perish together,” cocking his pistol straight for the powder. Pell-mell off dashed the terrified Indians paddling canoes as fast as drunken arms could work the blades. Another time, Long discovers that his Indian guide is only awaiting a favorable chance to assassinate him. A bottle of drugged liquor puts the assassin to sleep and another Indian with a tomahawk prevents him ever awakening. When Long retires, Duncan Cameron, son of a royalist in the American Revolution, comes to command Nipigon. Cameron pushes on up stream past Nipigon two hundred miles to the English post Osnaburg, where the Hudson’s Bay man, Goodwin, welcomes the Nor’Wester—a rival is safer indoors than out, especially when he has no visible goods; but Cameron manages to speak with the Indians during his visit and when he departs they follow him back to the place where he has cached his goods and the trade takes place. Henceforth traders of the Nipigon do not stay in the fort on the lake but range the woods drumming up trade from Abbittibbi east, to Albany west.
Meanwhile, what are the brigades of Fort William doing? Fifteen days at the most it takes for the “goers and comers” of Montreal to exchange their cargo of provisions for the Northerners’ cargo of furs. When the big canoes head back for the East at the end of July, the Montreal partners go with them. Smaller canoes, easier to portage and in more numerous brigades, set out for the West with the wintering partners. These are “the wolves of the North”—the MacKenzies and Henry and Harmon and Fraser and a dozen others—each to command a wilderness empire the size of a France or a Germany.
By the new route of Kaministiquia, it is only a day’s paddling beyond the first long portage to the height of land. Beyond this, the canoes launch down stream, gliding with the current and “somerseting” or shooting the smaller rapids, portaging when the fall of water is too turbulent. Wherever there is a long portage there stands a half-way house—wayside inn of logs and thatch roof where some stray Frenchman sells fresh food to the voyageurs—a great nuisance to the impatient partners, for the men pause to parley. First of the labyrinthine waterways that weave a chain between Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg is Rainy River, flowing northwest to Lake of the Woods, or Lake of the Isles as the French called it. On Rainy River are the ruins of an old fort of the French traders. Here the Northbound brigades often meet the Athabasca canoes which can seldom come down all the way as far as Fort William and go back to Athabasca before winter. Again an exchange of goods takes place, and the Athabasca men head back with the Northbound brigades.
Wherever the rivers widen to lakes as at Lake Francis and Lake of the Woods, the canoes swing abreast, lash gun’els together by thwarting paddles, hoist sails and drift lazily forward on the forest-shadowed, placid waters, crews smoking, or singing with weird cadences amid the loneliness of these silent places. In this part of the voyage, while all the brigades were still together, there were often as many as five hundred canoes spread out on the lakes like birds on wing. Faces now bronzed almost to the shade of woodland creatures, splashes of color here and there where the voyageurs’ silk scarf has not faded, blue sky above with a fleece of clouds, blue sky below with a fleece of clouds and all that marked where sky began and reflection ended the margin of the painted shores etched amber in the brown waters—the picture was one that will never again be witnessed in wilderness life. Sometimes as the canoes cut a silver trail across the lakes, leather tepee tops would emerge from the morning mists telling of some Cree hunters waiting with their furs, and one of the partners would go ashore to trade, the crew camping for a day. Every such halt was the chance for repairing canoes. Camp fires sprang up as if by magic. Canoes lay keel up and tar was applied to all sprung seams, while the other boatmen got lines out and laid up supplies of fresh fish. That night the lake would twinkle with a hundred fires and an army of voyageurs lie listening to the wind in the pines. The next day, a pace would be set to make up for lost time.