The Story of the Trapper

by Agnes C. Laut

Determined to catch the brigade, one schooner was hovering about the Sault, the other cruising into the countless recesses of the north shore. Against the latter the Mackinaw traders directed their forces, boarding her, and, as MacDonald tells with brutal frankness, "pinning the crew with fixed bayonets to the deck." Lying snugly at anchor, the victors awaited the coming of the other unsuspecting schooner, let her cast anchor, bore down upon her, poured in a broadside, and took both schooners to Mackinac. Freed from all apprehension of capture, the North-West brigade proceeded eastward to the Ottawa River, and without further adventure came to Montreal, where all was wild confusion from another cause.

At the very time when war endangered the entire route of the Nor' Westers from Montreal to the Pacific, the Hudson's Bay Company awakened from its long sleep. While Mr. Astor was pushing his schemes in the United States, Lord Selkirk was formulating plans for the control of all Canada's fur trade. Like Mr. Astor, he too had been the guest at the North-West banquets in the Beaver Club, Montreal, and had heard fabulous things from those magnates of the north about wealth made in the fur trade. Returning to England, Lord Selkirk bought up enough stock of the Hudson's Bay Company to give him full control, and secured from the shareholders an enormous grant of land surrounding the mouths of the Red and Assiniboine rivers.

Where the Assiniboine joins the northern Red were situated Fort Douglas (later Fort Garry, now Winnipeg), the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company, and Fort Gibraltar, the North-West post whence supplies were sent all the way from the Mandans on the Missouri to the Eskimo in the arctics.

Not satisfied with this coup, Lord Selkirk engaged Colin Robertson, an old Nor' Wester, to gather a brigade of voyageurs two hundred strong at Montreal and proceed up the Nor' Westers' route to Athabasca, MacKenzie River, and the Rockies. This was the noisy, blustering, bragging company of gaily-bedizened fellows that had turned the streets of Montreal into a roistering booth when the Astorians came to the end of their long eastward journey. Poor, fool-happy revellers! Eighteen of them died of starvation in the far, cold north, owing to the conflict between Fort Douglas and Gibraltar, which delayed supplies.

Beginning in 1811, Lord Selkirk poured a stream of colonists to his newly-acquired territory by way of Churchill and York Factory on Hudson Bay. These people were given lands, and in return expected to defend the Hudson's Bay Company from Nor' Westers. The Nor' Westers struck back by discouraging the colonists, shipping them free out of the country, and getting possession of their arms.

Miles MacDonell, formerly of the King's Royal Regiment, New York, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Douglas, at once issued proclamations forbidding Indians to trade furs with Nor' Westers and ordering Nor' Westers from the country. On the strength of these proclamations two or three outlying North-West forts were destroyed and North-West fur brigades rifled. Duncan Cameron,[23] the North-West partner at Fort Gibraltar, countered by letting his Bois-Brûlés, a ragged half-breed army of wild plain rangers under Cuthbert Grant, canter across the two miles that separated the rival forts, and pour a volley of musketry into the Hudson Bay houses. To save the post for the Hudson's Bay Company, Miles MacDonell gave himself up and was shipped out of the country.

But the Hudson's Bay fort was only biding its time till the valiant North-West defenders had scattered to their winter posts. Then an armed party seized Duncan Cameron not far from the North-West fort, and with pistol cocked by one man, publicly horsewhipped the Nor' Wester. Afterward, when Semple, the new Hudson's Bay governor, was absent from Fort Douglas and could not therefore be held responsible for consequences, the Hudson's Bay men, led by the same Colin Robertson who had brought the large brigade from Montreal, marched across the prairie to Fort Gibraltar, captured Mr. Cameron, plundered all the Nor' Westers' stores, and burned the fort to the ground. By way of retaliation for MacDonell's expulsion, the North-West partner was shipped down to Hudson Bay, where he might as well have been on Devil's Island for all the chance of escape.

One company at fault as often as the other, similar outrages were perpetrated in all parts of the north fur country, the blood of rival traders being spilt without a qualm of conscience or thought of results. The effect of this conflict among white men on the bloodthirsty red-skins one may guess. The Bois-Brûlés were clamouring for Cuthbert Grant's permission to wipe the English—meaning the Hudson's Bay men—off the earth; and the Swampy Crees and Saulteaux under Chief Peguis were urging Governor Semple to let them defend the Hudson's Bay—meaning kill the Nor' Westers.

The crisis followed sharp on the destruction of Fort Gibraltar. That post had sent all supplies to North-West forts. If Fort Douglas of the Hudson's Bay Company, past which North-West canoes must paddle to turn westward to the plains, should intercept the incoming brigade of Nor' Westers' supplies, what would become of the two thousand North-West traders and voyageurs and engagés inland? Whether the Hudson's Bay had such intentions or not, the Nor' Westers were determined to prevent the possibility.

Like the red cross that called ancient clans to arms, scouts went scouring across the plains to rally the Bois-Brûlés from Portage la Prairie and Souris and Qu'Appelle.[24] Led by Cuthbert Grant, they skirted north of the Hudson's Bay post to meet and disembark supplies above Fort Douglas. It was but natural for the settlers to mistake this armed cavalcade, red with paint and chanting war-songs, for hostiles.