But the fur trade paid too well to be left alone by the Montrealers who knew of Verandrye's exploits on the Ottawa and the Upper Lakes. When Canada became British, many daring spirits hastened to it from New York and New Jersey States. Montreal became the home of many young men of Scottish families. Some of their fathers had fled to the Colonies after the Stuart Prince was defeated at Culloden, and after the power of the Jacobites was broken. Some of the young men of enterprising spirit were the sons of officers and men who had fought in the Seven Years' War against France and now came to claim their share of the conqueror's spoils. Some men were of Yankee origin, who with their proverbial ability to see a good chance, came to what has always been Canada's greatest city, on the Island of Montreal. It was only half a dozen years after Wolfe's great victory, that a great Montreal trader, Alexander Henry, penetrated the western lakes to Mackinaw—the Island of the Turtle, lying between Lakes Huron and Michigan. At Sault Ste. Marie, "he fell in with a most noted French Canadian, Trader Cadot, who had married a Saulteur wife. He became a power among the Indians. With Scottish shrewdness Henry acquired from the Commandant at Mackinaw the exclusive right to trade on Lake Superior. He became a partner of Cadot, and they made a voyage as Canadian Argonauts, to bring back very rich cargoes of fur. They even went up to the Saskatchewan on Lake Winnipeg. After Henry, came another Scotchman, Thomas Curry, and made so successful a voyage that he reached the Saskatchewan River, and came back laden with furs, so that he was now satisfied never to have to go again to the Indian country. Shortly afterwards James Findlay, another son of the heather, followed up the fur-traders' route, and reached Saskatchewan. Thus the Northwest Fur Trade became the almost exclusive possession of the Scottish Merchants of Montreal. With the master must go the man. And no man on the rivers of North America ever equalled, in speed, in good temper, and in skill, the French Canadian voyageur. Almost all the Montreal merchants, the Forsythes, the Richardsons, the McTavishes, the Mackenzies, and the McGillivrays, spoke the French as fluently as they did their own language. Thus they became magnetic leaders of the French canoemen of the rivers. The voyageurs clung to them with all the tenacity of a pointer on the scent. There were Nolins, Falcons, Delormes, Faribaults, Lalondes, Leroux, Trottiers, and hundreds of others, that followed the route until they became almost a part of the West and retired in old age, to take up a spot on some beautiful bay, or promontory, and never to return to "Bas Canada." Those from Montreal to the north of Lake Superior were the pork eaters, because they lived on dried pork, those west of Lake Superior, "Couriers of the Woods," and they fed on pemmican, the dried flesh of the buffalo. They were mighty in strength, daring in spirit, tractable in disposition, eagles in swiftness, but withal had the simplicity of little children. They made short the weary miles on the rivers by their smoking "tabac"—the time to smoke a pipe counting a mile—and by their merry songs, the "Fairy Ducks" and "La Claire Fontaine," "Malbrouck has gone to the war," or "This is the beautiful French Girl"—ballads that they still retained from the French of Louis XIV. They were a jolly crew, full of superstitions of the woods, and leaving behind them records of daring, their names remain upon the rivers, towns and cities of the Canadian and American Northwest.
Some thirty years before the arrival of the Colonists, the Montreal traders found it useful to form a Company. This was called the North-West Fur Company of Montreal. Having taken large amounts out of the fur trade, they became the leaders among the merchants of Montreal. The Company had an energy and ability that made them about the beginning of the nineteenth century the most influential force in Canadian life. At Fort William and Lachine their convivial meetings did something to make them forget the perils of the rapids and whirlpools of the rivers, and the bitterness of the piercing winds of the northwestern stretches. Familiarly they were known as the "Nor'-Westers." Shortly before the beginning of the century mentioned, a split took place among the "Nor'-Westers," and as the bales of merchandise of the old Company had upon them the initials "N.W.," the new Company, as it was called, marked their packages "XY," these being the following letters of the alphabet.
Besides these mentioned there were a number of independent merchants, or free traders. At one time there were at the junction of the Souris and Assiniboine Rivers, five establishments, two of them being those of free traders or independents. Among all these Companies the commander of a Fort was called, "The Bourgeois" to suit the French tongue of the men. He was naturally a man of no small importance.
"THE DUSKY RIDERS OF THE PLAINS."
But the conditions, in which both the traders and the voyageurs lived, brought a disturbing shadow over the wide plains of the North-West. Now under British rule, the Fur trade from Montreal became a settled industry. From Curry's time (1766) they began to erect posts or depots at important points to carry on their trade. Around these posts the voyageurs built a few cabins and this new centre of trade afforded a spot for the encampment near by of the Indian teepees made of tanned skins. The meeting of the savage and the civilized is ever a contact of peril. Among the traders or officers of the Fur trade a custom grew up—not sanctioned by the decalogue—but somewhat like the German Morganatic marriage. It was called "Marriage of the Country." By this in many cases the trader married the Indian wife; she bore children to him, and afterwards when he retired from the country, she was given in real marriage to some other voyageur, or other employee, or pensioned off. It is worthy of note that many of these Indian women became most true and affectionate spouses. With the voyageurs and laborers the conditions were different. They could not leave the country, they had become a part of it, and their marriages with the Indian women were bona fide. Thus it was that during the space from the time of Curry until the arrival of the Selkirk Colonists upwards of forty years had elapsed, and around the wide spread posts of the Fur Trading Companies, especially around those of the prairie, there had grown up families, which were half French and half Indian, or half English and half Indian. When it could be afforded these children were sent for a time to Montreal, to be educated, and came back to their native wilds. On the plain between the Assiniboine and the Saskatchewan, a half-breed community had sprung up. From their dusky faces they took the name "Bois-Brulés," or "Charcoal Faces," or referring to their mixed blood, of "Metis," or as exhibiting their importance, they sought to be called "The New Nation." The blend of French and Indian was in many respects a natural one. Both are stalwart, active, muscular; both are excitable, imaginative, ambitious; both are easily amused and devout. The "Bois-Brulés" growing up among the Indians on the plains naturally possessed many of the features of the Indian life. The pursuit of their fur-bearing animals was the only industry of the country. The Bois-Brulés from childhood were familiar with the Indian pony, knew all his tricks and habits, began to ride with all the skill of a desert ranger, were familiar with fire-arms, took part in the chase of the buffalo on the plains, and were already trained to make the attack as cavalry on buffalo herds, after the Indian fashion, in the famous half-circle, where they were to be so successful in their later troubles, of which we shall speak. Such men as the Grants, Findlays, Lapointes, Bellegardes, and Falcons were equally skilled in managing the swift canoe, or scouring the plains on the Indian ponies. We shall see the part which this new element were to play in the social life and even in the public concerns of the prairies.
THE STATELY HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY.
The last of the elements to come into the valley of the Red River and to precede the Colonists, was the Hudson's Bay Company—even then, dating back its history almost a century and a half. They were a dignified and wealthy Company, reaching back to the times of easy-going Charles II., who gave them their charter. For a hundred years they lived in self-confidence and prudence in their forts of Churchill and York, on the shore of Hudson Bay. They were even at times so inhospitable as to deal with the Indians through an open window of the fort. This was in striking contrast to the "Nor'-Wester" who trusted the Indians and lived among them with the freest intercourse. For the one hundred years spoken of, the Indians from the Red River Country, the Saskatchewan, the Red River and Lake Winnipeg, found their way by the water courses to the shores of the Hudson Bay. But the enterprise of the Montreal merchants in leaving their forts and trading in the open with the Indians, prevented the great fleets of canoes, from going down with their furs, as they had once done to Churchill and York. The English Company felt the necessity of starting into the interior, and so within six years of the time of the expedition of Thomas Curry, appeared five hundred miles inland from the Bay, and erected a fort—Fort Cumberland—a few hundred yards from the "Nor'-Westers'" Trading House, on the Saskatchewan River. By degrees before the end of the century almost every place of any importance, in the fur-producing country, saw the two rival forts built within a mile or two of each other. Shortly before the end of the 18th Century, the "Nor'-Westers" came into the Red River Valley and built one or two forts near the 49th parallel, N. lat.—the U.S. boundary of to-day. But four years after the new Century began, the "Nor'-Westers" decided to occupy the "Forks" of the Red and Assiniboine River, near where Verandrye's Fort Rouge had been built some sixty years before. Evidently both companies felt the conflict to be on, in their efforts to cover all important parts, for they called this Trading House Fort Gibraltar, whose name has a decided ring of the war-like about it. It is not clear exactly where the Hudson's Bay post was built, but it is said to have rather faced the Assiniboine than the Red River, perhaps near where Notre Dame Avenue East, or the Hudson's Bay stores is to-day. It was probably built a few years after Fort Gibraltar, and was called "Fidler's Fort." By this time, however, the Hudson's Bay Company, working from their first post of Cumberland House, pushed on to the Rocky Mountains to engage in the Titanic struggle which they saw lay ahead of them. One of their most active agents, in occupying the Red River Valley, was the Englishman Peter Fidler, who was the surveyor of this district, the master of several forts, and a man who ended his eventful career by a will made—providing that all of his funds should be kept at interest until 1962, when they should be divided, as his last chimerical plan should direct. It thus came about that when the Colonists arrived there were two Traders' Houses, on the site of the City of Winnipeg of to-day, within a mile of one another, one representing a New World, and the other an Old World type of mercantile life. It was plain that on the Plains of Rupert's Land there would come a struggle for the possession of power, if not for very existence.
CHAPTER II.
"A SCOTTISH DUEL."