Before that time other men had been sent into the wilderness, in the same way, from factories, especially from York, where, in 1690, Henry Kelsey had travelled southward until he met the so-called "Naywatamee poets" or Mandan Indians, somewhere near the banks of the Assiniboine or South Saskatchewan Rivers,[8] and in 1754 Anthony Hendry had made a notable journey up the North Saskatchewan River to the great plains, where he had endeavoured to establish friendly relations with the Blackfeet Indians and their allies, and to prevent them from selling their furs to Luc la Corne and the French merchants from Montreal, who had penetrated into the same country several years before. Both these men had been treated with the greatest kindness by the natives and had brought back intelligent accounts of the countries visited by them, though neither of them had the ability of Samuel Hearne to enable them to prepare a report such as the one here published.
Governor Norton was a man of much more than the ordinary intelligence and strength of character, and he saw that if the expedition was to be a success it must be conducted by some one who would be able to make full and accurate surveys of the route followed, and who could intelligently describe the character and value of the "mine" and determine its latitude and longitude by astronomical observations. For this purpose he chose Samuel Hearne, now a young man twenty-four years of age, who, after his service as a midshipman in the British Navy, was at the time employed as a mate on the Charlotte, one of the Company's sloops trading from Churchill with the Eskimos. The story of his journey, the hardships which he endured, and the success which he achieved, form the subject of this book and need not be discussed here.[9]
Hearne's character, which had been moulded to a large extent by his surroundings, can be fairly well understood from a careful reading of his book. He was diligent and reasonably accurate but not strong or forceful. In this latter particular he differed from his great successor, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, who descended the Mackenzie River eighteen years after Hearne had reached its waters at Great Slave Lake. Alexander Mackenzie was a man of masterful temperament, and those who accompanied him, whether white men or natives, were merely so many instruments to be used in the accomplishment of any purpose which he had in hand. Their likes and dislikes, and their habits of life, were merely interesting to him in so far as they affected the results that he wished to attain. His book is a detailed description of the directions and distances which he travelled each day, and of the incidents of travel as they occurred. To Samuel Hearne the natives with whom he travelled were beings whose thoughts and habits of life he found supremely interesting. Their intentions and desires largely controlled the expeditions on which he had embarked. With the exception of the accomplishment of the main object in view, of reaching the Coppermine River, their wishes were everything, his nothing.
His first expedition was a complete failure, as the Indians simply took him off with them for a couple of hundred miles into the wilderness until they became tired of his company and then robbed him of everything he had and left him to find his own way back to Churchill as best he could. His second expedition was more successful, as the Indians tolerated his company for eight months and supported him as long as food was plentiful, but their enthusiasm, or duty to the Master at Churchill, did not last long enough to carry them to the Coppermine River.
Of his third and successful expedition Hearne was the historian and surveyor, while Matonabbee, a bold and forceful Chipewyan Indian about ten years his senior, was its leader. If at any time Hearne tried to interfere with the arrangements made by the leader he was promptly told to follow instructions if he wished to reach the copper mine. While Matonabbee probably reciprocated, to some extent at least, Hearne's affection for him, he was evidently thinking of and working for Moses Norton, the rough but powerful governor of Fort Prince of Wales, rather than for the quiet and observant young man who was accompanying him. Hearne's sketch of the life of Matonabbee is one of the most appreciative and sympathetic accounts of a North American Indian that has come to my notice.
Hearne was evidently gifted with a very retentive memory, and had the artist's faculty of seeing the interesting features of his surroundings in their true perspective. Though, like Robert Louis Stevenson and many others, he had not been a brilliant student at school, he possessed the literary ability to present what he saw or knew in an interesting and attractive form. In the ordinary quietude of his tent or office, when thinking of nothing but the subject which he was describing, he undoubtedly recorded his observations with accuracy. But in the warmth of dispute, when endeavouring to overcome the criticisms or objections of others, he was liable to be carried beyond the points of strict accuracy and, in order to strengthen his argument, to fill in blanks in his record from his imagination. He says, for example, that the sun was above the horizon at midnight at the mouth of the Coppermine River. But it is certain either that, on the night which he spent there, the weather was too cloudy to permit of seeing the sun, if it had been above the horizon, or that, even if the weather was clear, the sun must necessarily have been below the horizon at the time. His sketch of Moses Norton also has the appearance of being highly coloured by his evident personal dislike of the man. No one can justly accuse Hearne of lack of personal courage, for the annoyances, hardships, and sufferings, which he endured without complaining, put the thought of personal cowardice entirely out of the question. He had acquired the stoicism of the Indian and he suffered quietly, just as an Indian is prepared to suffer. During the years which Hearne spent among the Indians, living on what they were able to obtain from day to day, as well as in his general intercourse with them as a trader bartering for the furs which they were able to collect and bring to him, he had learned to endure privations, to compromise rather than to fight, and to accomplish his purpose by politic and peaceful, rather than by warlike, methods. Naturally of a complaisant disposition, he had learned to give whatever was demanded of him, no matter who made the demand. Nothing could be more typical of the habits which he had thus acquired than the little experiences in trading, recounted on page [285], where, after an Indian had received full payment for the furs which he had brought in, he was given in addition the long list of articles there enumerated. Apparently, the Indian was not refused anything if he persisted in asking.
This habit of acceding to requests to avoid dispute and difficulty, rather than any real fear of personal danger, accounts for Hearne's surrender of Fort Prince of Wales to the French without a struggle. In this case it is quite possible that, in spite of the great strength of the fort which he occupied, he was really not able to make effective resistance against his powerful and determined enemy, who outnumbered him more than ten to one. Although the fort mounted forty heavy guns, and was provided with plenty of ammunition and small arms, it had only thirty-nine men within its walls at the time. But even if Hearne had had a stronger garrison, it is doubtful whether he would have attempted resistance, for his training in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company had taught him to preserve the peace at any price, and it was impossible for him to set aside at a moment's notice what had become second nature to him.
We have seen that Hearne had not the forceful character possessed by Alexander Mackenzie; yet, as a man must be judged by the results which he achieves, it is perhaps all the more creditable to him to have done what he did with his more complaisant and observant disposition. Though he could not control the Indians with whom he travelled, he nevertheless accomplished his purpose of making the journey, and has left a splendid record of it to enrich posterity. He was hardly a great geographer, though he added largely to the geographical knowledge of Northern Canada west of Hudson Bay. It was he who finally set at rest the question of a north-west passage by sea to China and the Orient, south of the mouth of the Coppermine River. He knew nothing of mines or ores, and the information he brought back about the "mine" of copper which he was sent to explore was exceedingly meagre. He verified the report of the existence of native copper on the surface in uncertain quantity. Incidentally he showed that the place where it occurred was too remote and difficult of access to permit of a copper mine being worked at a profit, even if the copper should be found in great abundance. But that was all. In fact, even to the present time, we have very little accurate knowledge of the character and extent of this copper deposit near the Coppermine River, as may be seen by referring to the notes on pages [194] et seq.