The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay Part 5

The wildest of the buffalo hunts used to take place along this section of the river, or between what are now known as Pitt and Battleford. It was a common trick of the eternally warring Blackfeet and Cree to lie in hiding among the woods here and stampede all horses, or for the Blackfeet to set canoes adrift down the river or scuttle the teepees of the frightened Cree squaws who waited at this point for their lords'

return from the Bay.

Round that three-hundred mile bend in the river known as 'the Elbow' the water is wide and shallow, with such numbers of sand-bars and shallows and islands that one is lost trying to keep the main current. Shallow water sounds safe and easy for canoeing, but duststorms and wind make the Elbow the most trying stretch of water in the whole length of the river. Beyond this great bend, still called the Elbow, the Saskatchewan takes a swing north-east through the true wilderness primeval. The rough waters below the Elbow are the first of twenty-two rapids round the same number of sharp turns in the river. Some are a mere rippling of the current, more noisy than dangerous; others run swift and strong for sixteen miles. First are the Squaw Rapids, where the Indian women used to wait while the men went on down-stream with the furs. Next are the Cold Rapids, and boats are barely into calm water out of these when a roar gives warning of more to come, and a tall tree stripped of all branches but a tufted crest on top--known among Indians as a 'lob-stick,--marks two more rippling rapids. The Crooked Rapids send canoes twisting round point after point almost to the forks of the South Saskatchewan. Here, five miles below the modern fur post, at a bend in the river commanding a great sweep of approach, a gay courtier of France built Fort La Corne. Who called the bold sand-walls to the right Heart Hills? And how comes it that here are Cadotte Rapids, named after the famous voyageur family of Cadottes, whose ancestor gave his life and his name to one section of the Ottawa?

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CAMP IN THE SWAMP COUNTRY From a photograph]

Forty miles below La Corne is Nepawin, the 'looking-out-place' of the Indians for the coming trader, where the French had another post. And still the river widens and widens. Though the country is flat, the level of the river is ten feet below a crumbling sh.o.r.e worn sheer as a wall, with not the width of a hand for camping-place below. On a spit of the north sh.o.r.e was the camping-place known as Devil's Point, where no voyageur would ever stay because the long point was inhabited by demons.

The bank is steep here, flanked by a swamp of huge spruce trees criss-crossed by the log-jam of centuries. The reason for the ill omen of the place is plain enough--a long point running out with three sides exposed to a bellowing wind.

East of Devil's Point, the Saskatchewan breaks from its river bed and is lost for a hundred and fifty miles through a country of pure muskeg, quaking silt soft as sponge, overgrown with reed and goose gra.s.s. Here are not even low banks; there are no banks at all. Canoes are on a level with the land, and reeds sixteen feet high line the aisled water channels. One can stand on prow or stern and far as eye can see is naught but reeds and waterways, waterways and reeds.

Below the muskeg country lies c.u.mberland Lake. At its widest the lake is some forty miles across, but by skirting from island to island boatmen could make a crossing of only twenty-three miles. Far to the south is the blue rim of the Pas mountain, named from the Indian word Pasquia, meaning open country.

Hendry's canoes were literally loaded with peltry when he drew in at the Pas. There he learned a bitter lesson on the meaning of a rival's suavity. The French plied his Indians with brandy, then picked out a thousand of his best skins, a trick that cost the Hudson's Bay Company some of its profit.

On June 1 the canoes once more set out for York. With the rain-swollen current the paddlers easily made fast time and reached York on June 20.

James Isham, the governor of the fort, realized that his men had brought down a good cargo of furs, but when Hendry began to talk of Indians on horseback, he was laughed out of the service. Who had ever heard of Indians on horseback? The Company voted Hendry 20 reward, and Isham by discrediting Hendry's report probably thought to save himself the trouble of going inland.

But the unseen destiny of world movement rudely disturbed the lazy trader's indolent dream. In four years French power fell at Quebec, and the wildwood rovers of the St Lawrence, unrestricted by the new government and soon organized under the leaders.h.i.+p of Scottish merchants at Montreal, invaded the sacred precincts of the Company's inmost preserve.

In other volumes of this Series we shall learn more of the fur lords and explorers in the great West and North of Canada; of the fierce warfare between the rival traders; of the opening up of great rivers to commerce, and of the founding of colonies that were to grow into commonwealths. We shall witness the gradual, stubborn, and unwilling retreat of the fur trade before the onmarching settler, until at last the Dominion government took over the vast domain known as Rupert's Land, and the Company, founded by the courtiers of King Charles and given absolute sway over an empire, fell to the status of an ordinary commercial organization.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

On the era prior to the Cession (1763) very few printed records of the Hudson's Bay Company exist. Most books on the later period--in which the conflict with the North-West Company took place--have cursory sketches of the early era, founded chiefly on data handed down by word of mouth among the servants and officers of the Company. On this early period the doc.u.ments in Hudson's Bay House, London, must always be the prime authority. These doc.u.ments consist in the main of the Minute Books of some two hundred years, the Letter Books, the Stock Books, the Memorial Books, and the Daily Journals kept from 1670 onwards by chief traders at every post and forwarded to London. There is also a great ma.s.s of unpublished material bearing on the adventurers in the Public Record Office, London. Transcripts of a few of these doc.u.ments are to be found in the Canadian Archives, Ottawa, and in the Newberry Library, Chicago.

Transcripts of four of the Radisson Journals--copied from the originals in the Bodleian Library, Oxford--are possessed by the Prince Society, Boston. Of modern histories dealing with the early era Beckles Willson's _The Great Company_ (1899), George Bryce's _Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company_ (1900), and Laut's _Conquest of the Great North-West_ (1899) are the only works to be taken seriously. Willson's is marred by many errors due to a lack of local knowledge of the West.

Bryce's work is free of these errors, but, having been issued before the Archives of Hudson's Bay House were open for more than a few weeks at a time, it lacks first-hand data from headquarters; though to Bryce must be given the honour of unearthing much of the early history of Radisson.

Laut's _Conquest of the Great North-West_ contains more of the early period from first-hand sources than the other two works, and, indeed, follows up Bryce as pupil to master, but the author perhaps attempted to cover too vast a territory in too brief a s.p.a.ce.

Data on Hudson's tragic voyages come from _Purchas His Pilgrimes_ and the Hakluyt Society Publications for 1860 edited by Asher. Jens Munck's voyage is best related in the Hakluyt Publications for 1897. Laut's _Pathfinders of the West_ gives fullest details of Radisson's various voyages. The French State Papers for 1670-1700 in the Canadian Archives give full details of the international quarrels over Radisson's activities. On the d'Iberville raids, the French State Papers are again the ultimate authorities, though supplemented by the Jesuit Relations of those years. The Colonial Doc.u.ments of New York State (16 vols.), edited by O'Callaghan, give details of French raids on Hudson Bay.

Radisson's various pet.i.tions will be found in Laut's _Conquest of the Great North-West_. These are taken from the Public Records, London, and from the Hudson's Bay Company's Archives. Chouart's letters are found in the Doc.u.ments de la Nouvelle France, Tome I--1492-1712. Father Sylvie, a Jesuit who accompanied the de Troyes expedition, gives the fullest account of the overland raids. These are supplemented by the affidavits of the captured Englishmen (State Papers, Public Records, London), by La Potherie's _Histoire de l'Amerique_, by Jeremie's account in the Bernard Collection of Amsterdam, and by the Relations of Abbe Belmont and Dollier de Ca.s.son. The reprint of the Radisson Journals by the Prince Society of Boston deserves commendation as a first effort to draw attention to Radisson's achievements; but the work is marred by the errors of an English copyist, who evidently knew nothing of Western Indian names and places, and very plainly mixed his pages so badly that national events of 1660 are confused with events of 1664, errors ascribed to Radisson's inaccuracy. Benjamin Sulte, the French-Canadian historian, in a series of papers for the Royal Society of Canada has untangled this confusion.

Robson's _Hudson's Bay_ gives details of the 1754 period; but Robson was a dismissed employee of the Company, and his Relation is so full of bitterness that it is not to be trusted. The events of the search for a North-West Pa.s.sage and the Middleton Controversy are to be found in Ellis's _Voyage of the Dobbs and California_ (1748) and the Parliamentary Report of 1749. Later works by fur traders on the spot or descendants of fur traders--such as Gunn, Hargreaves, Ross--refer casually to this early era and are valuable for local identification, but quite worthless for authentic data on the period preceding their own lives. This does not impair the value of their records of the time in which they lived. It simply means that they had no data but hearsay on the early period.

See also in this Series: _The Blackrobes; The Great Intendant; The Fighting Governor; Pathfinders of the Great Plains; Pioneers of the Pacific; Adventurers of the Far North; The Red River Colony._

Chronicles of Canada Series

Thirty-Two Volumes Ill.u.s.trated

Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton

Chronicles of Canada Series

PART I THE FIRST EUROPEAN VISITORS

1. THE DAWN OF CANADIAN HISTORY By Stephen Leac.o.c.k.

2. THE MARINER OF ST MALO By Stephen Leac.o.c.k.

PART II THE RISE OF NEW FRANCE

3. THE FOUNDER OF NEW FRANCE*

By Charles W. Colby.

4. THE BLACKROBES*

By J. Edgar Middleton.

5. THE SEIGNEURS OF OLD CANADA By W. Bennett Munro.

6. THE GREAT INTENDANT By Thomas Chapais.

7. THE FIGHTING GOVERNOR*

By Charles W. Colby.

PART III THE ENGLISH INVASION

8. THE GREAT FORTRESS*

By William Wood.

9. THE ACADIAN EXILES*

By Arthur G. Doughty.

10. THE Pa.s.sING OF NEW FRANCE By William Wood.

11. THE WINNING OF CANADA By William Wood.

PART IV THE AMERICAN INVASIONS

12. THE INVASION OF 1775*

By C. Frederick Hamilton.

13. BATTLEFIELDS OF 1812-14*

By William Wood.