Canada To-day and To-morrow

by Arthur E. Copping

Then three of Iberville’s other ships arrived, one without her steering gear, another without her rudder. The Violent had foundered in a storm. A Frenchman went with flag of truce and bandaged eyes to demand surrender of the fort. Its English garrison sent him back with “No” for his answer. Under cover of fog, the French landed and erected their cannon in the very teeth of the fort. A mutual bombardment occupied two days. Then the French sent another emissary to explain that, if the fort did not surrender, no quarter would be given. “Quarter be cursed!” thundered Bailey, the English commander. Afterwards the palisades were hacked down; and when the inevitable capitulation took place, the garrison marched out with flags flying, to the defiant music of fife and drum.

Truly, the French and English of those days were game and tough, and not lacking in the more conspicuous qualities of the tiger and the bulldog. For all those ships and men to have been fighting over the beaver and the silver fox, and the filling of that iron box in Fenchurch Street, gives the modern mind a good deal to think about. As one reads the story of fierce international hatred, of incursions and pillage and crafty ambuscades, of frequent battles on land and water, Hudson Bay figures to the imagination as a frozen inferno of bloodshed, famine, disease and human anguish unspeakable. The rival traders and raiders timed their death-grips as far as possible to correspond with official periods of warfare between France and Great Britain; but European compacts did not always carry weight with the moving spirits of Hudson Bay. However, the Peace of Utrecht left the company at last in uncontested possession of that huge area, and brought to a close the Adventurers’ long maritime struggle. Their warlike operations, however, were not over, for presently the company became involved in sustained and sanguinary inland strife.

When the French King held sway in “New France,” certain of its citizens, acting under Royal licence, adventured into the forests to collect furs from the Indians. Strangely enough, the extinction of French authority in Eastern Canada gave a great impetus to that French industry. Licences being no longer needed, an augmented army of daring spirits went forth in canoes to voyage into the unknown territories, and barter beads and brandy for the red man’s furry booty. Merchants at Montreal fitted out the dashing voyageurs, and waxed opulent from the sale of skins. A fierce rivalry grew among the enterprising Frenchmen, who strove to out-vie one another in hospitality to the much-sought-after Indians. There were incidents like this:

A party of drunken Crees became so obstreperous in their demand for more rum that three traders, who had a little fort as shelter, sought to strengthen their position by adding laudanum to the liquor. One Indian drank too much and died, whereupon his enraged followers smashed the fort and slaughtered their three treacherous hosts, as well as seven other men who happened to be present. Nor did revenge stop there. Word was sent to other tribes that all white traders had better be massacred; and not far away, three companies of Frenchmen, sleeping within the inadequate protection of three wooden houses, were aroused one night by the dread war cry of the Assiniboines, and, for the most part, were promptly slain.

Meanwhile the English fur traders were traversing the rivers that flowed into Hudson Bay, and erecting their fortified posts away inland. Just how far “Rupert’s Land” extended in any given direction they were not in a position to say—they merely knew that, be it little or much, it all belonged to them; Charles II., having, indeed, given away most of the North American continent with true kingly generosity.

And thus it came about that the French fur traders, besides having to put up with a rivalry among themselves, and with spasmodic Indian savagery, found themselves confronted by English competitors, who looked upon them as trespassers and thieves. In the circumstances, the Montreal merchants (who, to add to the complication, were Scotsmen) judged it advisable to combine, so that the voyageurs from Eastern Canada should present a united front to their foes. Such was the origin, in 1783, of the North-West Company, destined to grow exceedingly rich and reckless and to maintain a long, fierce and bloody feud with the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Let us glance at a few representative incidents recorded by Agnes Laut: “The North-West partner, Haldane, came to Bad Lake in 1806 with five voyageurs and knocked up quarters for themselves near the Hudson’s Bay cabins. By May, William Corrigal, the Hudson’s Bay man, had four hundred and eighty packs of furs. One night, when all the English were asleep, the Nor’-West bullies marched across, broke into the cabins, placed pistols at the heads of Corrigal and his men, and plundered the place of furs.” There was further trouble at the same place a little later. “An Indian had come to the post in September. Corrigal outfitted him with merchandise for the winter’s hunt, and three English servants accompanied the saulteur down to the shore. Out rushed the Nor’-Wester MacDonell flourishing his sword, accompanied by a bully, Adhemer, raging aloud that the Indian had owed furs to the Nor’-Westers and should not be allowed to hunt for the Hudson’s Bay. The two Corrigal brothers and one Tait ran from the post to the rescue. With one sweep of the sword, Eneas MacDonell cut Tait’s wrist off, and with another hack on the neck felled him to the ground. The French bully had aimed a loaded pistol at the Corrigals, daring them to take one step forward. John Corrigal dodged into the lake. MacDonell then rushed at the Englishmen like a madman, cutting off the arm of one, sending a hat flying from another whose head he missed, hacking the shoulder of a third. Unarmed, the Hudson’s Bay men fled for the fort gates. The Nor’-Westers pursued. Coming from the house door, John Mowat, a Hudson’s Bay man, drew his pistol and shot Eneas MacDonell dead. Couriers went flying to the North-West camp for reinforcements. Haldane and McLellan, two partners, came with a rowdy crew and threatened if Mowat were not surrendered they would have the Indians butcher every soul in the fort, if it cost a keg of rum for every scalp. Mowat promptly surrendered,” and, after being confined for a year at Fort William, was sentenced by Montreal judges to be imprisoned for six months and to be branded.

The business rivals overran the whole country right to the Pacific, and the names of rivers and passes in Western Canada bear witness to the enterprise and hardihood of those pioneer explorers. Indeed, the Hudson’s Bay men and the Nor’-Westers discovered between them the bulk of the Dominion. That is their title to the respect and gratitude of posterity. For the rest, what a tragic farce the whole business was! Here was a country so enormous that the fastest trains to-day occupy nearly a week in crossing it by a direct route from east to west; a country stretching so far northward that its present population of eight million merely suffices thinly to sprinkle a southern strip; a country with agricultural and mineral resources adequate for the support of over one hundred million people—and those two commercial corporations turned their opportunities to no better account than in murdering one another’s representatives over the miserable business of trading beads and brandy for the hides of small quadrupeds.

Please do not suppose that I write in any spirit of criticism and censure. The world evolves in its own strange way; and the human race is permanently incapacitated by altered circumstances from sitting in judgment on its ancestors. Still, the spectacle of those two companies feeling cramped by each other’s presence in a roomy place like Canada, and using pistols and daggers to lessen the pressure of commercial competition, is exceedingly droll, if grim.

The state of affairs to which I have referred continued until 1821, when the Hudson’s Bay Company absorbed its formidable opponent. That amalgamation was preceded by a very interesting and important event. Lord Selkirk, a wealthy viscount, and one of the noblest characters in Canadian history, established the first community of immigrant settlers in the North-West—a fact to which I shall recall the reader’s attention in my chapter about Winnipeg. The area conceded for settlement was known as the Red River district, and included much of the present Province of Manitoba and part of what is now the State of Minnesota. To secure the co-operation of the Hudson’s Bay Company in his philanthropic design, Lord Selkirk had taken the precaution first to buy up a controlling interest in that commercial concern. Warfare between Nor’-Westers and Hudson’s Bay men involved those early settlers in some bloody horrors. But in the present chapter we need only consider the affairs of the pioneer community in relation to the future opening up of the entire North-West to colonisation. And first I would mention a peaceful understanding at which the Selkirk settlers arrived with the Indians of the district. Land was surrendered in consideration of the annual payment to each tribe of “one hundred pounds of good merchantable tobacco”; that compact of 1817 being interesting as the forerunner of an important series of treaties with the red man.