The Deed Poll—A Governor-in-Chief Chosen—A Chaplain Appointed—New License from George IV.—Trade on the Pacific Coast—The Red River Country Claimed by the States—The Company in California—The Oregon Question—Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1825—The Dryad Affair—Lieutenant Franklin's two Expeditions—Red River Territory Yielded to Company—Enterprise on the Pacific.
By the terms of the Deed Poll, the immediate control of the Company's affairs in its territory passed from the hands of a committee sitting in London, to a personage known as Governor-in-Chief of Rupert's Land and his council. His commission extended over all the Company's lands and possessions, with an unlimited tenure of office. The council was to be composed of chief factors, and occasionally a few chief traders, who were to meet at some convenient centre for the purposes of consultation, this particular feature being a survival of the rendezvous of Fort William. The chartered territories and circuit of commercial relations were divided into vast sections, known as the Northern, Southern, Montreal and Western Departments. The Northern extended between Hudson's Bay and the Rocky Mountains, the Southern, between James' Bay and Canada, including a part of the eastern shore of Hudson's Bay.
Governor Simpson.
Such a Governor-in-Chief should be a person of energy, shrewdness and ability. Mr. Ellice had been struck by the qualities and special aptitude for this important post of a young Scotchman, named George Simpson. This young man was an illegitimate son of the maternal uncle of Thomas Simpson, the Arctic explorer. While clerk in a London counting-house, George Simpson had attracted the attention of Andrew Colville, Lord Selkirk's brother-in-law, who sent him to Rupert's Land in the service of the Company. The responsibility was a tremendous one, but Simpson did not flinch from accepting it; and the end showed the wisdom of the appointment. For nearly forty years this man stood at the head of the fur-trade: a potentate in the midst of the wilderness, the virtual ruler of almost one-half of a continent. Governor Simpson was a man of small stature, but he had "the self-possession of an emperor."[110] Accompanied by his voyageurs and clerks, he journeyed along the old Ottawa and lake route, through the Grand Portage, or by Fort William and Lake of the Woods, accomplishing this feat at least once a year throughout the entire period of his rule. At the outset of his career he perceived that the management of Red River colony was an extremely difficult task—harder perhaps than the management of the fur-trade. But he attacked both with energy, resolved to serve his employers, and to create, at all hazards, harmony and prosperity in the territories.
Part of the time he spent at Red River, part in Oregon, in Athabasca, and at Hudson's Bay. He crossed the Rocky Mountains at three different latitudes, and journeyed extensively over the vast territory of which he was truly the "commercial sovereign."
The appointment of the Rev. Mr. West as principal chaplain to the Company led to very great improvements in the moral and religious life at the forts. Many of the traders and servants of the Company were soon afterwards induced to marry the women with whom they had lived, a material step towards the amelioration of the condition of the Indian and half-breed females.
Company obtains a new license.
The next step on the part of the Honourable Adventurers was to further safeguard their interests, and supplement their charter by a license from the new king, George IV. This license was for the exclusive privilege of trading with the Indians in such parts of North America as were not part of the territories heretofore granted to the Hudson's Bay Company. This Royal license, dated the 5th of December, 1821, at Carlton House, was expressly issued to prevent the admission of individual or associated bodies into the British North American fur-trade, inasmuch as the competition therein had been found for years to be productive of enormous loss and inconvenience to the Hudson's Bay Company and to trade at large, and also of much injury to the natives and half-breeds.
