To find the first champions of the great Northland as a prospective theatre of enterprise and development, and to trace the history of the exploration of the region from the beginning, it is necessary to go back many years, to a date, in fact, only two years more recent than the founding of Quebec by Samuel de Champlain.
Henry Hudson, the great English sea captain, was engaged in the search for a northwest passage, when on August 3, 1610, he rounded the northwestern shoulder of Labrador and entered the bay which he thus discovered and which now bears his name. The exploration of this great inland sea was begun, not for the sake of gaining a knowledge of the country surrounding it, nor for the development of its resources, but in the delusive hope of finding a passage through it to the western ocean. In 1612, Captain (afterwards Sir) Thomas Button, commissioned to search for Hudson and to look for a northern passage, entered the bay with two ships, and, holding on his westward course, encountered land at about 60° 40′ north latitude. Being a Welshman, he called the land “New Wales,” a name which afterwards gave place to “New North Wales” for the northern part, and “New South Wales” for the southern; but all three designations, as applied to the Hudson bay coast, are now only of historic interest. Button wintered at Port Nelson, which he so named in memory of a shipmaster who, with many of the sailors, died there. When the ice broke up he went northwards past Cape Churchill and landed at a place about 60° north which he called “Hubbart’s Hope.”
The southern coast of Hudson bay, east from Port Nelson (York Factory), was visited and explored by Captains Luke Foxe of London and Thomas James of Bristol in 1631, and again visited by James in 1632. These two navigators met off the coast near the mouth of Winisk river on August 29-30, 1631. Each had given a name to the country to the southwest. Foxe called it “New Yorkshire” and James “The South Principality of Wales,” probably on account of the previous name “New Wales” given by Button in 1612 to the land southwest of Port Nelson. These two navigators sailed together to the eastward, to the entrance to James bay, and there separated, Foxe to go north and James to the southward, to winter. Foxe called the bay he had left “Wolstenholme’s Ultimum Vale.” James, after rounding the cape, determined its latitude (55° 5′) and called it “Henrietta Maria Cape,” after the Queen, and also after his own ship.
Oat field at Ile à La Crosse.
In 1668 Captain Gillam entered Hudson bay with a pioneer fur-trading expedition under the patronage of some influential Londoners, at the head of whom was Prince Rupert, Duke of Cumberland, Count Palatine of the Rhine and cousin of Charles II, King of England. Thus was inaugurated the regime of the Hudson’s Bay Company, but the Royal charter to Prince Rupert and his associates, constituting them “The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay”, was not granted until 1670.[[2]]
“The Hudson’s Bay Company.”
The company was organized to prosecute the fur trade, and not for colonizing purposes. The few explorations into and from the company’s first posts on the bay were made solely in the interests of the fur trade. When in 1683 Governor Sargeant was urged to send men to penetrate into the country, the object was distinctly stated to be “to draw down the Indians by fair and gentle means to trade with us.” This was the burden of many letters of instruction sent out to Hudson bay in those days, but the response was not very promising. The company’s servants were not easily induced to imperil their lives, particularly as they complained of lack of encouragement. In 1688 Governor George Geyer, who himself, in 1773, had volunteered to do some exploring, was instructed to send the boy Henry Kelsey to Churchill river for an exploring trip “because we are informed he is a very active lad, delighting much in the Indians’ company and being never better pleased than when he is travelling amongst them.” Thus began the adventurous career of one who may be regarded as the pioneer explorer of the region under review.[[3]] In 1690 Kelsey “cheerfully undertook a journey up into the country of the Assiniboine Poets, with the Captain of that Nation.” The following year he accompanied the Indians on a journey he computed at four hundred or five hundred miles, penetrating as far as the buffalo and grizzly bear countries. A diary of this trip was published, but it contained no references to the natural resources of the country. There followed a period of some activity in the matter of exploration by sea, the discovery of a northwest passage being aimed at. Between 1719 and 1737 the Hudson’s Bay Company alone fitted out nine vessels to participate in this discovery, but these voyages added nothing to the scanty knowledge then available as to the resources of the territory ruled over by the company.
Soon after the Hudson’s Bay Company obtained its monopolistic charter, antagonism to it arose in England, and this hostility steadily developed, the legality of the charter being flatly challenged. One of the bitterest opponents of the company was Mr. Arthur Dobbs, a gentleman of means and scientific attainment, intensely interested in the subject of the northwest passage, who became embittered because he considered the Hudson’s Bay Company had not furthered the exploration projects as he thought they should have done. In 1744 he published a volume on the countries adjoining Hudson bay, in which he arraigned the company for keeping the country back. He declared that the company would not allow their servants to make any improvements at the posts except it be to plant turnip gardens. He proceeded:—“There might be comfortable settlements made in most places, and very tolerable, even in the worst and coldest parts of that continent, which are the northeast and northwest sides of the bay; but in the southern and western sides of the bay, there might be made as comfortable settlements as any in Sweden, Livonia or the south side of the Baltic, and farther into the country, southwest, the climate is as good as the southern part of Poland and north part of Germany and Holland.”
An Early Parliamentary Inquiry.