CHAPTER XV.
THE PROVINCES OF THE NORTH-WEST.
The boundary-line which marks the southern limit of British territory divides the continent into two not very unequal portions. On one side stretches out the vast area covered by the United States—the home of fifty million people—the seat of the manifold industries which their energy has called into existence. On the other side there lies a yet wider expanse of territory, whose development is still in the future. Northward and westward of the original line of settlement in the valley of the St. Lawrence the possessions of Great Britain are nearly equal in extent to the whole of Europe. Towards the Atlantic vast pine-forests cover the ground. Towards the Pacific are great mountain-ranges, rich with mineral treasures, destined to yield wealth to the men of future generations. The central portion of the continent is a vast expanse of rich farm-land, where the slightest efforts of the husbandman yield lavish increase.[20] Great navigable rivers, which take their origin in the Rocky Mountains, traverse the continent, and wait, silent and unused, to bear the traffic which coming years must bring. The Saskatchewan, after a course of thirteen hundred miles, and the Red River, whose sources are very near those of the Mississippi, after flowing nearly seven hundred miles, pour their ample floods into Lake Winnipeg—a vast sheet of water, covering an area equal to one-third that of Scotland. The Nelson River carries the waters of Lake Winnipeg into Hudson Bay by a course of three hundred miles, which could easily be rendered navigable for ships of large burden.
Lake Winnipeg is in the latitude of England; but the genial influences of the Gulf Stream do not visit those stern coasts, whose temperature is largely governed by the ice-cold currents of the Arctic Ocean. The climate is severe, the winter is long. During five or six months of the year the country lies under a covering of snow; river and lake are fast bound by frost; the thermometer occasionally sinks to fifty degrees below zero. This stern dominion does not pass gradually away; it ceases almost suddenly. The snow disappears as if by magic; the streams resume their interrupted flow; trees clothe themselves with foliage; the plains are gay with grass and flower. At one stride comes the summer, with its fierce heat, with its intolerable opulence of insect life, with its swift growth and ripening of wild fruits, and of the seeds which the sower has scattered over the fertile soil.
At the coming of Europeans into America this magnificent region was possessed by numerous tribes of Indians, who gained their food and clothing almost wholly by the chase. In course of years the white man found that the Indian would sell, for trivial payment, rich furs which were eagerly desired in Europe. The Indian came to understand that he could exchange his easily obtained furs for the musket which the strangers brought and taught him to use, for the beads with which he loved to ornament himself, for the seductive liquors which quickly asserted a destructive mastery over his savage nature. Out of these experiences there arose trading relations between the Indians of the North-West and the adventurous Europeans who from time to time made their way into those mysterious regions. A sagacious Frenchman perceived the advantage which was to be gained by an organized and systematic prosecution of this lucrative commerce. 1668 A.D. He proposed the enterprise to his countrymen, but it failed to command their support. The baffled projector made his way to England, and obtained access to Prince Rupert, to whom he unfolded his scheme. A quarter of a century had passed since the fierce charges of Rupert’s cavalry swept down the troops of the Parliament at Naseby and Newark, since he himself had been chased from Marston Moor by the stern Ironsides of Cromwell. The prince was now a sedate man of fifty. The vehemence of his youth had mellowed itself down to a love of commercial adventure. He lent a willing ear to the ingenious Frenchman. His influence with the public procured the formation of a company, whose paid-up capital was £10,500. His influence with his cousin, King Charles, sufficed to obtain a charter. 1670 A.D. The liberal monarch bestowed half a continent upon these speculators, on no more burdensome terms than that they should pay two elks and two black beavers to the sovereign whensoever he visited their territory. “The Governor and Company of Adventurers trading into Hudson Bay” were endowed by this liberal monarch with “all countries which lie within the entrance of Hudson’s Straits, in whatever latitude they may be, so far as not possessed by other Christian States.” Thus largely privileged, the adventurers entered upon a career of unusual success. In a few years they paid a dividend at the rate of fifty per cent.; a little later they trebled their capital out of profits, and paid to shareholders twenty-five per cent. upon the increased amount; still later the capital was once more trebled from the same source, without diminution of the rate of dividend.
The fur trade was one of the most lucrative of which merchants had any experience. The savages who overthrew the Roman empire had introduced to Southern Europe the beautiful furs of the north. Henceforth the article was in urgent demand. Great ladies sought eagerly, for purposes of ornament, such furs as those with which the northern savage clothed himself and his children—sought eagerly, but often unsuccessfully, for demand outstripped supply. It was certain that Europe would purchase at liberal prices all the furs which the adventurers were able to bring.
The Hudson Bay Company entered with vigour upon this inviting field. They established a fort near the coast, and made it known among the Indians that they were prepared to trade. With as little delay as possible they pushed their settlement far into the interior. Scattered at great intervals across the continent arose the little trading-stations. They were composed of a few wooden huts, with a strong surrounding palisade or wall; with well-barred gates; with loop-holes, from which, in case of need, the uncertain clients of the Company could be controlled by musketry. These posts were ordinarily established near rivers, accessible to the savages by canoe or by sledge. Their loneliness was extreme. For hundreds of miles on every side stretched the dense forest or the boundless prairie, untrodden by man. At fixed seasons—once or twice in the year—the natives appeared, bearing the spoils of the chase—skins, oil, the tusk of the walrus, feathers, dried fish. Ordinarily the entire tribe come on this great mission. They encamp before the fort. An officer goes forth, and the gate is jealously barred behind him. Gifts are exchanged and speeches effusively affectionate and confiding. Within the fort are stores filled with wares, which the Company has brought from afar,—blankets, beads, scalping-knives, fish-hooks, muskets, ammunition, tea, sugar, red and yellow paints for purposes of personal adornment. These strange traders enter in groups of three or four, for they cannot be trusted in larger numbers. They deposit the articles which they offer; the Company’s servants put a value upon these, and hand over an equivalent, according to the choice of their customer. Money, until lately, would have been worthless to the Indian, and none was offered. At one time spirits were supplied, with frightful results in uproar and violence; but this evil practice has been discontinued or carefully restricted. When the negotiation is concluded, the Indians withdraw and resume their wanderings.
The Company supplied such government as the unpeopled continent required. They had many rivals in the lucrative commerce which they carried on, and it was often needful for them to defend by arms their coveted monopoly. The French strove during many years to drive out the English and possess the fur trade. French ships of war appeared in the bay; French soldiers attacked the posts of the Company. Scarcely had those angry debates been silenced by the victory of Wolfe, when a yet more formidable competition arose. 1784 A.D. Some enterprising Canadians founded a rival Company, and traded so prosperously that in a few years they had established numerous stations, and possessed themselves of much of the trade which had hitherto been enjoyed by the older Company. Perpetual strife raged between the servants of the rival institutions. Battles were fought; much blood was shed; the revenues of the Hudson Bay Company decayed; its rich dividends wholly ceased. 1816 A.D. At length a union of the Companies closed these wasteful feuds, and restored the almost forgotten era of prosperity.
For a century and a half from the formation of the Company there was no attempt to colonize the vast region over which its dominion extended. The Englishmen and Scotchmen who occupied the trading-stations were the only civilized inhabitants of the North-West. The stations were in number about one hundred; the entire white population did not exceed one or two thousand. There were stations on the Mackenzie River, within the Arctic circle, where the cold was so intense that hatchets of ordinary temper shivered like glass at the first blow. There were stations on the Labrador coast, and twenty-five hundred miles away from these there were stations on the Pacific. The Company did not desire to carry civilization into this wilderness. The interests of the fur trade are not promoted by civilization. That industry cannot live within sound of the settler’s axe, or where the yellow corn waves in the soft winds of autumn. It prospers only where the silence of the forest is unbroken; where the fertile glebe lies undisturbed by the plough. The Company gave no encouragement to the coming in of human beings, in presence of whom the more profitable occupancy of beaver and bison and silver fox must cease. At length, and for the only time, the traditional policy was departed from. 1812 A.D. While the struggle with the rival Company still raged, Lord Selkirk, who was then chairman of the Hudson Bay Company, bethought him of sending out a number of Scotch Highlanders to found a permanent settlement, and thus give preponderance to the interests of which he was the guardian. At that time the Duke of Sutherland was in process of removing small farmers from his estates in Sutherlandshire, in order that he might give effect to modern ideas on the subject of sheep-farming. Lord Selkirk collected a band of these dispossessed Highlanders, and settled them in the solitudes of the Winnipeg valley. The point which he selected was near the confluence of the Red River and the Assiniboine, and forty miles from the lake into which these rivers fall. It was many hundred miles from a human habitation; this lonely colony was the only seat of population on all the northern portion of a vast continent. But the soil possessed remarkable fertility; and the Scotchmen were robust and industrious. Gradually they were joined by other adventurers to whom the severity of the climate was without terrors. Ejected Highland crofters, soldiers disbanded after Waterloo, sought in little groups this remote and dimly-known region. The retired servants of the Company came to spend the evening of their days in the settlement. A line of block houses and of cultivated farms stretched for many miles up the valleys of the Assiniboine and Red River. A cluster of wooden huts received the name of Winnipeg, and started upon its career as a prairie town at a rate of progress so leisurely that in 1871 it held no more than four hundred inhabitants. Fort Garry, the chief seat of the Company’s authority, added to the dignity of the colony, which soon became the recognized metropolis of all the north-western region. Its growth has not been rapid, but it has been steady; and the population, if we accept the mean of very diverse estimates, is probably now about fifteen thousand souls. These are largely Scotch; but there are also French and Indians, and there has been a copious admixture of the European and native races. There are Scotch half-breeds and French half-breeds, in whom the aspect and the qualities of both races are combined, and many of whom are not inferior in intelligence and education to their European parentage.
In course of years political government by trading companies became utterly discredited in England. The government of the East India Company had long been regarded with disapproval; after the great mutiny of 1857 occurred, it was felt to be intolerable. No voice of authority was raised in favour of its longer continuance, and the political functions of the Company were extinguished as inconsistent with the general welfare. The Hudson Bay Company was not more fortunate in its rule than the great sister Company had been. Latterly it had failed to maintain order among the scanty population over which it presided. Occasionally, when its officers pronounced an unacceptable sentence, the friends of the offender forced the prison-doors, and set the prisoner free. The Company was willing to be relieved from the burden of an authority which it was no longer able to exercise. The new Dominion of Canada desired to add to its possessions the vast domain of the Hudson Bay Company. 1869 A.D. A transfer which was sought for on both sides was not difficult to arrange. The Company received the sum of £300,000 and certain portions of land around its trading-stations. All besides passed into the hands of the Canadian Government.