The Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company. Bryce George

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СКАЧАТЬ and their written and forcible remonstrance made no impression. Legardeur de St. Pierre, more to the mind of the selfish Bigot, was given their place and property, and in 1751 a small fort was built on the upper waters of the Saskatchewan, near the Rocky Mountains, near where the town of Calgary now stands. This was called in honour of the Governor, Fort La Jonquière. A year afterward, St. Pierre, with his little garrison of five men, disgusted with the country, deserted Fort La Reine, which, a few weeks after, was burned to the ground by the Assiniboines.

      The fur trade was continued by the French in much the same bounds, so long as the country remained in the hands of France.

      We are fortunate in having an account of these affairs given in De Bougainville's Memoir, two years before the capture of Canada by Wolfe. The forts built by Verendrye's successors were included under the "Post of the Western Sea" (La Mer de l'Ouest). Bougainville says, "The Post of the Western Sea is the most advanced toward the north; it is situated amidst many Indian tribes, with whom we trade and who have intercourse with the English, toward Hudson Bay. We have there several forts built of stockades, trusted generally to the care of one or two officers, seven or eight soldiers, and eighty engagés Canadiens. We can push further the discoveries we have made in that country, and communicate even with California."

      This would have realized the dream of Verendrye of reaching the Western Sea.

      "The Post of La Mer de l'Ouest includes the forts of St. Pierre, St. Charles, Bourbon, De la Reine, Dauphin, Poskoiac, and Des Prairies (De la Jonquière), all of which are built with palisades that can give protection only against the Indians."

      "The post of La Mer de l'Ouest merits special attention for two reasons: the first, that it is the nearest to the establishments of the English on Hudson Bay, and from which their movements can be watched; the second, that from this post, the discovery of the Western Sea may be accomplished; but to make this discovery it will be necessary that the travellers give up all view of personal interest."

      Two years later, French power in North America came to an end, and a generation afterward, the Western Sea was discovered by British fur traders.

       CHAPTER XI

      THE SCOTTISH MERCHANTS OF MONTREAL

      Unyielding old Cadot – Competition – The enterprising Henry – Leads the way – Thomas Curry – The older Finlay – Plundering Indians – "Grand Portage" – A famous mart – The plucky Frobishers – The Sleeping Giant aroused – Fort Cumberland – Churchill River – Indian rising – The deadly smallpox – The whites saved.

      The capture of Canada by General Wolfe in 1759 completely changed the course of affairs in the Western fur country. Michilimackinac and Sault Ste. Marie had become considerable trading centres under the French régime, but the officers and men had almost entirely been withdrawn from the outposts in the death struggle for the defence of Quebec and Montreal.

      The conquest of Canada was announced with sorrow by the chief captain of the West, Charles de Langlade, on his return after the capitulation of Montreal. The French Canadians who had taken Indian wives still clung to the fur country. These French half-breed settlements at Michilimackinac and neighbouring posts were of some size, but beyond Lake Superior, except a straggler here and there, nothing French was left behind. The forts of the western post fell into decay, and were in most cases burnt by the Indians. Not an army officer, not a priest, not a fur trader, remained beyond Kaministiquia.

      The French of Michilimackinac region were for a time unwilling to accept British rule. Old trader, Jean Baptiste Cadot, who had settled with his Indian wife, Anastasie, at Sault Ste. Marie, and become a man of wide influence, for years refused to yield, and a French Canadian author says: "So the French flag continued to float over the fort of Sault Ste. Marie long after the fleur-de-lis had quitted for ever the ramparts of Quebec. Under the shadow of the old colours, so fruitful of tender memories, he was able to believe himself still under the protection of the mother-country." However, Cadot ended by accepting the situation, and an author tells us that like Cadot, "were the La Cornes, the Langlades, the Beaujeus, the Babys, and many others who, after fighting like lions against England, were counted a little later among the number of her most gallant defenders." For several years, however, the fur trade was not carried on.

      The change of flag in Canada brought a number of enterprising spirits as settlers to Quebec and Montreal. The Highland regiments under Generals Amherst and Wolfe had seen Montreal and Quebec. A number of the military became settlers. The suppression of the Jacobite rebellion in Scotland in 1745 had led to the dispersion of many young men of family beyond the seas. Some of these drifted to Montreal. Many of the Scottish settlements of the United States had remained loyal, so that after the American Revolution parties of these loyalists came to Montreal. Thus in a way hard to explain satisfactorily, the English-speaking merchants who came to Canada were largely Scottish. In a Government report found in the Haldimand papers in 1784, it is stated that "The greater part of the inhabitants of Montreal (no doubt meaning English-speaking inhabitants) are Presbyterians of the Church of Scotland." It was these Scottish merchants of Montreal who revived the fur trade to the interior.

      Washington Irving, speaking of these merchants, says, "Most of the clerks were young men of good families from the Highlands of Scotland, characterized by the perseverance, thrift, and fidelity of their country." He refers to their feasts "making the rafters resound with bursts of loyalty and old Scottish songs."

      The late Archbishop Taché, a French Canadian long known in the North-West, speaking of this period says, "Companies called English, but generally composed of Scotchmen, were found in Canada to continue to make the most of the rich furs of the forests of the North. Necessity obliged them at first to accept the co-operation of the French Canadians, who maintained their influence by the share they took in the working of these companies… This circumstance explains how, after the Scotch, the French Canadian element is the most important."

      The first among these Scottish merchants to hie away from Montreal to the far West was Alexander Henry, whose "Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories between the years 1760 and 1766" have the charm of narrative of an Irving or a Parkman. He knew nothing of the fur trade, but he took with him an experienced French Canadian, named Campion. He appeared at Michilimackinac two years after the conquest by Wolfe, and in the following year visited Sault Ste. Marie with its stockaded fort, and formed a friendship with trader Cadot. In the following year, Henry was a witness of the massacre at Michilimackinac, so graphically described by Parkman in his "Conspiracy of Pontiac." Henry's account of his own escape is a thrilling tale.

      In 1765 Henry obtained from the Commandant at Michilimackinac licence of the exclusive trade of Lake Superior. He purchased the freight of four canoes, which he took at the price of 10,000 good, merchantable beavers. With his crew of twelve men, and supplies of fifty bushels of prepared Indian corn, he reached a band of Indians on the Lake who were in poverty, but who took his supplies on trust, and went off to hunt beaver. In due time the Indians returned, and paid up promptly and fully the loans made to them. By 1768 he had succeeded in opening up the desired route of French traders, going from Michilimackinac to Kaministiquia on Lake Superior and returning. His later journeys we may notice afterwards.

      Of the other merchants who followed Henry in reviving the old route, the first to make a notable adventure was the Scotchman Thomas Curry. Procuring the requisite band of voyageurs and interpreters, in 1766 he pushed through with four canoes, along Verendrye's route, even to the site of the old French Fort Bourbon, on the west of Cedar Lake, on the lower Saskatchewan River. Curry had in his movement something of the spirit of Verendrye, and his season's trip was so successful that, according to Sir Alexander Mackenzie, his fine furs gave so handsome a return that "he was satisfied never again to return to the Indian country."

      Another valorous Scotchman, James Finlay, of Montreal, took up the paddle that Curry had laid СКАЧАТЬ