The Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company / Including that of the French Traders of North-Western Canada and of the North-West, XY, and Astor Fur Companies

by George Bryce

FORT GOOD HOPE.

Not only did the impulse of union between the North-West and X Y Companies reach Bear River, but in the same year, at a point on the Mackenzie River beyond the high perpendicular cliffs known as "The Ramparts," some two hundred miles further north than Fort Norman, was Fort Good Hope erected. Here it remained for nearly a score of years as the farthest north outpost of the fur trade, but after the union of the North-West and Hudson's Bay Companies it was moved a hundred miles southward on the river and erected on Manitoulin Island. After some years (1836) an ice jam of a serious kind took place, and though the inmates escaped in a York boat, yet the fort was completely destroyed by the rushing waters of the angry Mackenzie. The fort was soon rebuilt, but in its present beautiful situation on the eastern bank of the river, opposite the old site on Manitoulin Island.

During Governor Simpson's time the extension of trade took place toward the mouth of the Mackenzie River. A trader, John Bell, who not only faced the hardships of the region within the Arctic Circle, but also gained a good name in connection with Sir John Richardson's expedition in search of Franklin, built the first post on Peel's River, which runs into the delta of Mackenzie River. Bell, in 1846, descended the Rat River, and first of British explorers set eyes on the Lower Yukon.

In the following year the Hudson's Bay Company established La Pierre's House in the heart of the Rocky Mountains toward the Arctic Sea, and Chief Trader Murray built and occupied the first Fort Yukon. This fort the Hudson's Bay Company held for twenty-two years, until the territory of Alaska passed into the hands of the people of the United States. Rampart House was built by the Hudson's Bay Company within British territory. Both Rampart House and La Pierre's House were abandoned a few years ago as unprofitable. A similar fate befell Fort Anderson, two degrees north of the Arctic Circle, built for the Eastern Eskimos on the Anderson River, discovered in 1857 by Chief Factor R. MacFarlane, a few years before the transfer of the territory of the Hudson's Bay Company to Canada. No doubt the withdrawal from Fort Anderson was hastened by the terribly fatal epidemic of scarlatina which prevailed all over the Mackenzie River district in the autumn and early winter of 1865. More than eleven hundred Indians and Eskimos, out of the four thousand estimated population, perished. The loss of the hunters caused by this disease, and the difficulties of overland transport, led to the abandonment of this out-of-the-way post.

THE LIARD RIVER.

The conflict of the North-West and X Y Companies led to the most extraordinary exploration that Rupert's Land and the Indian territories have witnessed. At the time when the Mackenzie River, at the beginning of the century, was being searched and occupied, a fort known as The Forks was established at the junction of the Liard and Mackenzie Rivers. This fort, called, after the union of the Hudson's Bay and North-West Companies, Fort simpson, became the base of operations for the exploration of the Liard River. We have followed the course of trade by which the Mackenzie itself was placed under tribute; it may be well also to look at the occupation of the Liard, the most rapid and terrible of all the great eastern streams that dash down from the heart of the Rocky Mountains.

The first post to be established on this stream was Fort Liard, not far below the junction of the western with the east branch of the river. There was an old fort between Fort Liard and Fort Simpson, but Fort Liard, which is still occupied by the Hudson's Bay Company, began almost with the century, and a few years afterwards was under the experienced trader, George Keith. Probably, at an equally early date, Fort Nelson, on the eastern branch of the river, was established. In the second decade of the century, Alexander Henry, the officer in charge, and all of his people were murdered by the Indians. The post was for many years abandoned, but was rebuilt in 1865, and is still a trading post.

It was probably shortly after the union of the North-West and Hudson's Bay Companies that Fort Halkett, far up the western branch of the river, was erected. After forty or fifty years of occupation, Fort Halkett was abandoned, but a small post called Toad River was built some time afterward, half way between its site and that of Fort Liard. In 1834, Chief Trader John M. McLeod, not the McLeod whose journal we have quoted, pushed up past the dangerous rapids and boiling whirlpools, and among rugged cliffs and precipices of the Rocky Mountains, discovered Dease River and Dease Lake from which the river flows.

Robert Campbell, an intrepid Scottish officer of the Hudson's Bay Company, in 1838, succeeded in doing what his predecessors had been unable to accomplish, viz. to establish a trading-post on Dease Lake. In the summer of the same year Campbell crossed to the Pacific Slope and reached the head waters of the Stikine River.

In opening his new post Campbell awakened the hostility of the coast Indians. He and his men became so reduced in supplies that they subsisted for some time on the skin thongs of their moccasins and snow shoes and on the parchment windows of their huts, boiled to supply the one meal a day which kept them alive. In the end Campbell was compelled to leave his station on the Dease Lake, and the fort was burnt by the Indians.