Harmon, who came West with Henry’s brigade of Pembina back in 1811, remains almost to the time of the Company’s union, when he retires to Vermont. John Stuart, who voyaged with Fraser, comes after Harmon; but he retires to spend his last days in Scotland. He is succeeded by William Connolly, an Irishman of Babine Lake, a northern post. East at McLeod Lake is Tod, who is to win fame at Kamloops. South is Paul Fraser, son of the explorer, at the Fraser Lake post. Down at Fort George on the Fraser, is little James Murray Yale, who served as a boy under John Clarke in Athabasca, when, on one of the terrific marches of the famine stricken Hudson’s Bays, little Yale’s short legs could keep the pace no longer and the boy fell exhausted on the snow to die. “Come on! Come on garçon,” called a big voyageur, whose admiration had been won by Yale’s pluck. “Go on,” retorted Yale. “I’ve reached the Great Divide,” and the big voyageur turned to see that the brave boy preferred to die rather than impede the others. The rough fellow’s heart smote within him. He burst in tears, tore back mumbling out a cannonade of oaths, bent his big back, hoisted Yale on his shoulders like a papoose in a Squaw’s mossbag, and rejoined the marchers, muttering a patois of pidgin English and jargon French—“Sacré! Too much brave, he little man! Misere! Tonnere! Come on!” Here, then is Yale, grown man, though still small, now serving the united companies at Fort George and later to be shifted down the Fraser to Fort Langley at tidewater, and Yale Fort, higher up, and Hope at the mountain gorge. To keep track of these little kings ruling in the wilderness, shifted from post to post, would necessitate writing chapters to vie with Hebrew genealogies. The careers of only the most prominent may be followed, and of all the traders serving under Chief Factor Connolly of Stuart Lake, in 1822-23, the most important was James Douglas, a youth of some twenty years.
Born in Demerara, on August 11, 1803, of a beautiful Creole mother and father, who was the scion of the noble Black Douglas of Scottish story—James Douglas had been carefully educated in Scotland and joined the fur companies a soldier of fortune before he was twenty-one. Douglas inherited the beauty of his mother, the iron strength and iron will and never-bending reserve of his father’s race. At first, he had been disgusted with the ruffianism of the two great companies, and had intended to retire from the country; but McLoughlin of Fort William had taken a fancy to the Scotch youth and persuaded Douglas to come West after the union. McLoughlin advised as a friend that Douglas serve in as many posts as possible and climb from the bottom rung of the ladder so that every department of the trade would be mastered first-hand. Hence, Douglas was assigned as clerk under Connolly of Stuart Lake at a salary of £60 a year. He, who was to become titled governor of British Columbia, had now to keep the books, trade with the Indians, fish through ice with bare hands, haul sleighloads of furs through snowdrifts waist deep—in a word, do whatever his hand found to do, and do it with his might.
Chief Factor Connolly had a beautiful daughter of native blood, as Douglas’ mother had been of Creole blood. The girl was fifteen. Douglas was twenty-one. The inevitable happened. Nellie Connolly and Douglas fell in love and were married according to the rites of the Company—which simply consisted of open avowal and entry on the books—a pair of children dreaming love’s dream in surroundings that would have made fit setting for the honeymoon of monarchs. Later, when there came a Reverend Mr. Beaver to the Columbia in 1837-38, breathing fire and maledictions on unions which had not been celebrated by his own Episcopal Church, Douglas was re-married to Nellie Connolly. In fact, Douglas and McLoughlin who had both married their wives according to the law of the Company—and there was no other law—had an uncomfortable time of it as missionaries came to the Columbia. The Reverend Beaver openly preached against McLoughlin living in a state of sin. McLoughlin, being good Catholic, kicked the reverend gentleman soundly for his impudence; but to still the wagging of tongues had himself married by the church to McKay’s widow. Even that did not suffice. Catholics did not recognize ceremonies performed by Protestants. Protestants did not recognize unions cemented by Catholics. It is said that the saintly old Father of Oregon actually had himself married two or three times to satisfy his critics; and at this distance of time one may be permitted to wonder which ceremony was written down as holiest in the courts of heaven—the civil contract of the Company by which a chivalrous gentleman took the widow of his friend under his protection, or the later unions lashed like a “diamond” hitch by well meaning enthusiasts.
Meanwhile, up at Stuart Lake, was Douglas learning what was untellable—the daily discipline of strong, absolutely self-reliant living; Douglas developing what McLoughlin meant should be developed when he sent the young man to such a hard post—iron in muscle, iron in nerve, iron in will.
The story is told that once at a later era in Douglas’ life at Victoria, a clerk dashed breathless into his presence gasping out that a whole tribe of unruly Indians had got possession of the fort courtyard. “Will we fire, sir? Will we man the guns?” asked the distracted young gentleman. Douglas looked the young man over very coldly, then answered in measured, deliberate tones: “Give them some bread and treacle! Give them some bread and treacle!” Sure enough! The régale pacified the discontent, and the Indians marched off without so much as the firing of a gun. People asked where Douglas had learned the untellable art of governing unruly hordes. It was in New Caledonia, and the school was a hard one. Douglas’ first lesson nearly cost him his life. This story has been told often and in many different versions. The first version is that of McLean of Kamloops. All legends are variations of this story, but the facts of the case are best set forth by the missionary to the Carrier Indians—Father Morice, who questioned all the old traders and Indians on the spot. Here is the substance of the story as told to Morice:
Jimmie Yale went home from Stuart Lake to Fort George on the Fraser one night in 1823 to find his two white workmen murdered by two Fraser Lake Indians, mutilated and thrown in outhouses for dogs to eat. The Hudson’s Bay Company never let a murder pass unpunished. One of the murderers was secretly done to death by paid agents of the Company, “who buried the remains,” relates Morice, “in a way to suggest accident as the cause of death.” Five years passed. Surely the Company had forgotten about the crime. The other murderer ventured a visit to Stuart Lake. Chief Factor Connolly was away. James Douglas was the only white man at Fort St. James. As soon as he heard of the murderer’s visit, he bade the Indians arm themselves with cudgels and follow him. The criminal had hidden in terror under a pile of skins in a sick woman’s lodge. Douglas dragged him forth by the hair, demanding his name. The fellow mumbled out some assumed cognomen.
“You lie,” answered Douglas to the stammered answer, firing point-blank in the fellow’s face; but in the struggle, the ball went wide. The Indians thereupon fell on the criminal and beat him to death.
“The man he killed was eaten by dogs. By dogs let him be eaten,” Douglas pronounced sentence, ordering the body to be cast unburied outside the palisades. This was enforcing the savage law of a tooth for a tooth with a vengeance. The chief of the Carriers determined to give young Douglas the lesson of his life. Punish murderers? Yes; but not as if Indians were dogs.
A few weeks afterward, followed by a great concourse of warriors from Fraser Lake, old Chief Kwah marched boldly into the Indian Hall of Fort St. James. Douglas sprang to seize a musket hanging on the wall. Fort hands rushed to trundle cannon into the room, but the Indians snatched the big guns, though brave little Nancy Boucher, wife of the interpreter, managed to slam the doors shut against more intruders and Nellie Connolly came from her room half dazed with sleep just in time to grasp a dagger from the hands of the murdered Indian’s father. Chief Kwah’s nephew had a poniard at Douglas’ heart and was asking impatiently:
“Shall I strike? Shall I strike? Say the word and I stab him!”