Canada, the Spellbinder

by Lilian Whiting

These two fur-trading companies became important factors in the development of the North-West. There was an intense rivalry between them, yet the very intensity of the discord and ill feeling became an added impetus in the rivalry of exploration. Many and diverse qualities are brought into play in the conquering of a wilderness. Evil and good are always sown together like the wheat and the tares, and even the evil has its part to play and its work to do. Of this fierce rivalry between the two was born that activity which created so large a number of trading-posts, and the energy that founded numerous settlements, many of which are now recognised as prosperous centres.

In 1670, under the patronage of Prince Rupert, there was incorporated the "Honourable Company of Merchant-Adventurers Trading into Hudson's Bay," which developed later into the Hudson's Bay Company.

Pierre Radisson and the Sieur Groseillers, both among the most daring and heroic explorers the world has known, excited a wave of enthusiasm in England by the reports of the wilderness they carried back with them. For more than a century the Company under the patronage of Prince Rupert continued to carry on a prosperous business, and after this was merged into the Hudson's Bay Company, and again after the two rival associations united, a splendid business was developed. But while the rivalry had conduced to enterprise and exploration, the monopoly was as naturally concerned in not making too widely known the rich resources that might thus serve to attract other competitors.

Farming in Shellbrook District, Saskatchewan

Early in the nineteenth century a large Scotch settlement, under the auspices of the Earl of Selkirk, was established in the Red River region. They encountered almost every phase of hardship and trial. Great floods devastated their land and ruined their attempts at agriculture. The severe winters, with their enshrouding snow-drifts, their icy blasts, the imprisoning character of the elements, the remoteness from any vestige of human habitations or contact with civilisation, went far towards annihilating even the most persistent efforts to found a settlement that should withstand these conditions.

By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the settlements of the great North-West had become so numerous that there began to be requirements for larger means of protection. The Hudson's Bay Company, at this time, held territory to the extent of over two million square miles. All this expanse was admitted into the confederation, to the reassurance and great satisfaction of the settlers scattered over this wide region; but to the alarm and prevailing dissatisfaction of another order of the inhabitants, the French half-breeds, who were themselves a force with which a reckoning had to be made. Their alarm culminated in the Rebellion of 1869, an outbreak suppressed by Colonel (later Lord) Wolseley. Soon after this outbreak was quelled there came the formation of the Province of Manitoba, and from this event there dated a new epoch in the history of this part of the country. The conditions grew worse rather than better. The United States were also a contributing factor to greater discord. The treatment of the Indians by the government of the States had apparently left much to be desired (to put it mildly) and the turbulent warfare that went on almost continually in the western part of that country drove many of the Indian tribes into frenzy. Many of these tribes now crossed the border line into Canada to seek British protection. There were at this time in Canada some seventy thousand Indians to whom the Imperial government had promised protection, and the coming of these fresh tribes from the States, largely, too, in conditions of revolt and resentment at what they felt to be unjust and cruel treatment, could not but be regarded with grave apprehensions by the white settlers. They were alarmed at the close proximity of these unknown savage tribes as well as apprehensive of the effect they might produce on the Canadian Indians.

In the summer of 1872 the Canadian Adjutant-General, Colonel Robertson-Ross, was dispatched by the Government of the Dominion to make a tour of inspection through the North-West. He found that a party of lawless traders and smugglers from the States had established a trading-post which they had named Fort Hamilton, about sixty miles north of the border-line between the Dominion and the United States; and that they were conducting a species of barter with the Blackfeet Indians, supplying them with firearms and with ardent spirits, in direct opposition to the laws of both countries. They were paying no customs duty for the merchandise they were thus introducing into Canada. Colonel Robertson-Ross found the demoralisation that they were working to be very great and of great injury, not only to the Indians, but to the entire country. "At Fort Edmonton," said the Adjutant-General in his Report, "whisky was openly sold to the Blackfeet and other Indians trading at the Fort by smugglers from the United States, who derived large profits therefrom, and whom, on being remonstrated with by the official in charge of Hudson's Bay Post, coolly replied that they very well knew they were defying the laws, but as there was no force to prevent them they would do as they pleased."

All this inciting to intemperance and brawling led to other offences against law and order. The Indians took to horse-stealing, and the entire population of the North-West was at their mercy. Neither property nor life was safe. On dishonesty and robbery followed murder as a not uncommon occurrence and other crimes of a serious nature were not infrequent. Sir John Macdonald was at this time the Premier of Canada. It was on his initiative that Colonel Robertson-Ross had been sent on this reconnaissance to find out to what extent the lawless marauders were demoralising the entire country and the nature of the protection and safeguards that should be instituted for the population. The Adjutant-General earnestly recommended the establishment of a trained and disciplined military body, to be subject to its own rules, and to be distinct from any civil force, though acting as an addition to whatever civil force might also be formed. "Whatever feeling may be entertained toward policemen, animosity is rarely, if ever, felt toward disciplined soldiers wearing her Majesty's uniform in any portion of the British Empire," stated Colonel Robertson-Ross, and he added: "In the event of serious disturbance a police force, acting alone and unsupported by a disciplined military body, would probably be overpowered in a province of mixed races, where every man is armed, while to maintain a military without any civil force is not desirable."