“Eighteen men! Do these British traders know the nature of the savages?” ask the amazed Russians. And the Beaver goes on to Sitka with Douglas. Loud roars the welcome from the Russian guns in honor of Douglas. Green were the waters of the mountain girt harbor, gold and opal the shimmering mountains. Etholine is Russian Governor in charge now, a military officer with his bride; and gay is Sitka with bunting and Chinese lanterns and feast and dance while the Hudson’s Bay men visit the fort. What did they talk about over their cups, these crafty gamesters of the wilderness, when Etholine’s bride and Glen Rae’s wife— Eloise McLoughlin—had withdrawn and left the feasters to wassail till midnight?
Who knows! It was the policy of the Hudson’s Bay Company from the beginning to tell absolutely nothing. Until they played their cards, these gamesters never showed their hands. All we know is when Douglas left Stickine, the Russian company had agreed to buy all the supplies they could procure from the Hudson’s Bay Company farms on Puget Sound and the Willamette and the Columbia. That was cheaper than bringing supplies all the way across Siberia; and the supplies were paid for in Alaskan furs. You see the fine hand of the Company’s diplomacy? On the supplies was a profit varying from 1000 to 2000 per cent. On the furs taken in exchange was another profit unspecified but easily guessed when it is known that the Russians got their furs from the Aleutians by club law. What had the deal cost the English? Two thousand land otter a year for a ten-mile strip, the said otter bartered from the Indians at about two shillings each. But one bad blunder was made, which did not come out till long after. Russia had tried in vain to raise her own supplies on a farm at Bodega, California. On the farm were some 1500 sheep and 3000 cattle and horses. Etholine offered to sell the Hudson’s Bay Company all Russia’s holdings in California for $30,000. There the old diplomacy of always haggling till you caught the other party to the bargain at a disadvantage—over-reached itself. Douglas haggled and missed the bargain; and the bargain was a chance to give his Company foothold in a country, owned by Mexico, which in turn owed debt of five million pounds to British financiers. It is a sort of subterranean diplomacy, after all, but one can guess to what end these hidden motives were aiming.
While the Company builds yet more forts up the Pacific Coast—Tako, and later Nanaimo—John McLoughlin, Jr., reigns at Stickine. Glen Rae, who came with Douglas to help establish the post, has gone on down to California in connection with that secret Hudson’s Bay diplomacy. McLoughlin was an example of reversion to ancestral type. In his veins flowed the blood of his mother’s Indian race; and in him were all the passions and few of the virtues of either his mother’s or father’s race. Morose, severe, vindictive with his men, he had neither the strength of will nor good fellowship to hold the loyalty of his staff. Outside the fort were two thousand of the fiercest Indians on the Pacific Coast. McLoughlin rightly forbade the use of liquor with these savages, but while he interdicted his men from all vices, he indulged in wildest orgies himself. In his cups, like many morose men, he became so genial that he actually plied his traders with the forbidden liquor. Excesses followed such outbursts as are better guessed than told. One night toward the end of April, 1842, McLoughlin was on one of his sprees and the fort was a roaring bedlam of drunken, yelling, fighting white men; while outside camped the Indian warriors ready for a raid. A French Canadian was for breaking rules and rushing past the sentry out to the Indian camp. McLoughlin roared out an oath forbidding him. The drunken Frenchman turned and shot his leader dead. Four days later came Sir George Simpson to find flags at half-mast and the murderer in irons. Henceforth, no more rum in Pacific Coast trade! Governor Simpson for the English, and Governor Etholine for the Russians, bound themselves to abolish the use of liquor in trade. The murderer was carried to Sitka for trial but escaped punishment, probably because McLoughlin was so much in the wrong that the dead trader’s conduct would not bear the light of investigation. This caused the first friction between Governor Simpson and Chief Factor McLoughlin. The governor blamed the doctor for placing such a worthless son in charge of any fort.
What was William Glen Rae, Eloise McLoughlin’s husband, doing in California?
He had been McLoughlin’s chief lieutenant before Douglas came down from New Caledonia. Swarthy, straight as a lance, somber and passionate in his loves and hates, Rae was a Scotchman of princely presence, like all the men whom McLoughlin chose for promotion. Loyal to his father-in-law to a degree, he was the very man for a delicate mission of possibly far-reaching importance.
Away back in 1828, when Ogden was leading the Southern Brigades to Nevada and Utah and Mt. Shasta, four white men—Jedediah Smith and American trappers—had escaped with their lives from the Umpqua River region and come to Fort Vancouver destitute, wounded, almost naked. They had been trapping in California and following up the valley of the Sacramento had crossed over to the Umpqua intending to proceed East by way of the Columbia when the party of twenty was attacked at the ford of Umpqua River. Fifteen of the trappers were shot down instantly by the Umpqua and Rogue River Indians. All the horses were stampeded. Goods, furs, everything was plundered, the results of two years’ toil. Breathless and foredone, the refugees rapped at the gates of Fort Vancouver. They were Americans. They were rivals. “You must positively drive out all American trappers,” Simpson had ordered McLoughlin. And these men belonged to the same St. Louis outfitters, who had profited by the robbing of Peter Skene Ogden. “Heh! What? American trappers? Bless my soul,” exclaimed the Hudson’s Bay McLoughlin. “How on earth did you come over the mountains all this way? What—robbed? You don’t tell me? Plundered; and by our Indians? Fifteen men murdered! Come in! Come in! McKay, there, I say McKay,” he shouted to his stepson scout, “I say McKay, hear this! These gentlemen have been robbed by the Rogue River Indians. Where’s La Framboise? (the guide). Saddle the horses quick! Take the South Brigade! Go rescue these gentlemen’s property!”
And the hoofs of the South Brigade have not clanked far on the trail at a gallop before McLoughlin has the refugees in the mess-room plied with food, while he questions them of minutest detail. The Americans are completely in his power. He supplies them with clothing and an outfit to proceed East by way of the Columbia; but what does he do with the furs Tom McKay brings back with the South Brigade after a wordy tussle and the giving of many presents to the Rogue River Indians? Ogden had been robbed by Americans. Surely here is a chance to even the score! Can one imagine a grasping Wall Street Crœsus missing such an opportunity to cripple a rival? And I have just related how deep, how crafty, how subtle and devious the Company policy could be at times. What did McLoughlin with these rivals in his power, who had injured him? He wrote Smith a draft for the entire lot of furs at the current London prices—$20,000 some reports say; others put it $40,000.
McKay and McLeod are at once sent down with the South Brigade to build a Hudson’s Bay fort on the Umpqua. It is known as McKay’s fort. La Framboise—Astor’s old interpreter—and McKay now regularly range the Sacramento, though Sutter, the Swiss adventurer, who has a fort of his own on the Sacramento, tries to stir up the Spaniards against them and a subsequent arrangement with the Spanish authorities expressly stipulates that only thirty trappers shall be allowed in the brigades. Who is to count those thirty trappers in mountain wilds? La Framboise and McKay led as many as two hundred to the very doors of Monterey. It may have been a necessity of the climate. It may have been a disguise; but the H. B. C. brigades of California dressed so completely disguised as Spaniards that they almost deceived Sir George Simpson.
It was in Simpson’s fertile brain that the whole California scheme originated. December, 1841, McLoughlin, Douglas and Simpson sail into the harbor of San Francisco. By land go McKay and La Framboise and Ermatinger with the brigades. Presto! First news! Sutter, the Swiss, had already bought the Russian fort at Bodega for $30,000. Douglas grinds his teeth; but Sir George Simpson is not discouraged. Mexico owes England five million, he says; and these Spanish colonies are having fresh revolutions almost every year. They are wined and dined and feasted and fêted by the pleasure-loving Spaniards at General Vallejo’s, and later meet General Alvarado at Monterey. What did they talk about? Again I answer—we must judge by the cards which the gamesters played. It is permitted the Hudson’s Bay may have a trading post at Yerba Buena, in other words, San Francisco. It is permitted they may buy Spanish hides and Spanish stock to be paid in trade from the stores of Fort Vancouver—goods from England. Also, of course, it is understood these South Brigades have not come to trap at all, but just to drive the purchased stock North by way of the Sacramento to the Columbia. Simpson and Douglas and McLoughlin depart well satisfied.