XI The British Fur Traders
The movements of Lewis and Clark were watched by the Northwest Company, who already had planned a house at the Mandans. Jefferson was not an hour too soon.
“Yes,” said Larocque, “I will pass the winter there and watch those Americans.”
In the midst of the frightful cold, twenty-two degrees below zero, on December 16, 1804, Larocque and Mackenzie came over again from Fort Assiniboine and with them came Alexander Henry.
“Strangers are among us,” said the Indians, “Big Knives from below. Had they been kind they would have loaded their Great Boat with goods. As it is they prefer throwing away their ammunition to sparing a shot to the poor Mandans. There are only two sensible men among them, the worker of iron and the mender of guns.”
“Amazing long pickets,” remarked Larocque, as they came in sight of the new stockade of Fort Mandan.
The triangular fort, two sides formed of houses and the front of pickets, presented a formidable appearance in the wild.
“Cannon-ball proof,” remarked Larocque, taking a good squint at the high round bastion in the corner between the houses, defending two sides of the fort. On the top was a sentry all night, and below a sentry walked all day within the fort.
“Well guarded against surprise,” remarked Alexander Henry, as he tapped at the gate with the ramrod of his gun.
As the party knocked at the gates of Fort Mandan, in their winter coats of leather lined with flannel, edged with fur, and double-breasted, the lively eye of Patrick Gass peeped out.
“Some more av thim Britishers to ascertain our motives fur visitin’ this countery, and to gain infurmation with rispict to th’ change o’ gov’m’t,” was the shrewd guess of Pat.
The hospitable Captains were more than glad to entertain visitors. They were there to cultivate international amity.
In their hearts Lewis and Clark never dreamed what a commotion that friendly letter to Chaboillez had stirred up. It had gone far and awakened many. Immediately upon its receipt Chaboillez sent out a runner.
“Lewis and Clark with one hundred and eighty soldiers have arrived at the Mandan village,” so the story flew. “On their arrival they hoisted the American flag and informed the natives that their object was not to trade, but merely to explore the country; and that as soon as navigation shall open they design to continue their route across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. They have made the natives a few small presents and repaired their guns and axes free. They have behaved honourably toward my people, who are there to trade with the natives.”
Such a message as this was enough to bring Alexander Henry down to investigate. The cottonwood fires at Fort Mandan roared up the chimneys with unwonted splendour that winter night. The thermometer suddenly fell to forty-five degrees below zero; but warm and comfortable beside the blaze they talked, American and British, in this border of the nations.
Charles Mackenzie had been a clerk of the Northwest Company for a year. Of the same rank as himself was Larocque, and both were popular with the redmen. In fact, Mackenzie, a Scot from the Highlands, was already married to an Indian girl, and Larocque was a Frenchman. That was enough. No nation fraternized with the redmen as the Frenchmen did.
Alexander Henry, fur trader among the American Indians and one of the famous Northwesters, bore a great name in the north. There were two Alexander Henrys; the younger was a nephew of the other, and he it was that had now come to visit Lewis and Clark. He knew more of the country than, perhaps, any other man in the northwest. In fact, his uncle, the elder Henry, was at Michilimackinac in the days of Pontiac, and had penetrated to the Saskatchewan before ever there was a Northwest Company.
Henry, Jr., wintered on the Red River the very year that Alexander Mackenzie crossed the continent,—1793. As a bourgeois of the Northwesters, with a fleet of canoes and twenty-one men he had led the Red River brigade of 1800 up into the Winnipeg country.
The scarlet belts, breeches of smoked buckskin, and blue cloth leggings of Alexander Henry’s old coureur des bois were known for hundreds of miles.
Yes, he knew the Sioux. Their pillaging bands sometimes plundered his traders. “They are not to be trusted,” he declared in positive tone.
“A very sensible, intelligent man,” said Lewis and Clark to themselves as the great Northwester talked of the country and the tribes.
But time seemed pressing. Questions of cold or of comfort weighed not with these dauntless Northwesters when the interests of their company were at stake. They had come on horseback. To return that way was out of the question; and so sleds were fitted up with Jussaume’s Eskimo dogs, the “Huskies” of the fur traders.
“They seem happy to see us,” remarked Mackenzie from under his muffler, as they rode away. “They treat us with civility and kindness, but Captain Lewis cannot make himself agreeable. He speaks fluently, even learnedly, but to me his inveterate prejudice against the British stains all his eloquence.”
“Captain Clark is more cordial,” rejoined Larocque. “He seems to dislike giving offence unnecessarily. Do you recall his thoughtfulness in sending for our horses when we feared they might be stolen? He let his men guard them with his own.”
With the thermometer thirty-two degrees below zero, the dogsleds flew swift across the snow, bearing news not alone to Assiniboine, but to Fort William on the northern shore of Lake Superior where the Northwesters had built their trading centre.
Fort William, built in 1803 and named in honour of William McGillivray, was the great distributing point, where “the lords of the lakes and the forests” came to hold their rendezvous. In front rolled Superior, the great Canadian Sea. Schooners, laden with merchandise, peltries, and provisions, plied between Fort William and Sault Ste. Marie.
One of the honoured names of the Northwest Company was Philip de Rocheblave. Captured by George Rogers Clark at Kaskaskia, sent to Virginia and there let out on parole, he broke faith and fled to New York, to turn up at Montreal in the winter of 1783-4 along with McTavish, McGillivray, the Frobishers and Frasers, founders of the Northwest Fur Company. Pierre de Rocheblave had now succeeded to his uncle’s honours. Would he be apt to let the United States get ahead of him? And by means of a Clark at that?
“I must go down to the American fort to get my compass put in order,” said Larocque again, in January. “The glass is broken and the needle does not point due north.”
He found Captain Clark sketching charts of the country, Lewis making vocabularies; Jussaume and Charboneau, the Frenchmen, interpreting and disputing on the meaning of words.
“They write down our words,” whispered the suspicious Indians. “What wicked design have they on our country?”
Captain Lewis spent a whole day fixing Larocque’s compass.
“I hardly get a skin when the Hudson’s Bay trader is with me,” said Larocque. “He is known by all the Indians, and understands and talks their language. I must get Charboneau.” And the two went away together.
“Of what use are beaver?” inquired the Indians. “Do you make gunpowder of them? Do they preserve you from sickness? Do they serve you beyond the grave?”
Alexander Henry went to Fort William.
“A new rival has arisen,” said the Northwest traders at their hurried conference. “We must anticipate these United States explorers and traders. They may advance northward and establish a claim to ownership by prior right of discovery or occupation. We must build a chain of posts and hold the country.”
“But whom can we send on such a monumental enterprise?”
There seemed but one man,—Simon Fraser.
Simon Fraser was the son of a Scottish Tory who had been captured by the Americans at Burgoyne’s surrender and had died in prison. His wife, with Simon a babe in arms, removed to Canada, to rear her son beneath the banner of her King. At sixteen, young Fraser became a clerk of the Northwest Company and a bourgeois. But the Frasers were great-brained people; young Simon was soon promoted; and now at the age of twenty-nine he was put in charge of the greatest enterprise since the incomparable feat of Alexander Mackenzie.
“You, Simon Fraser, are to establish trading-posts in the unknown territory, and in this way take possession for Great Britain.”
Over at Sault Ste. Marie a young doctor by the name of John McLoughlin would gladly have accompanied his uncle Simon on that perilous undertaking. But his day was to come later. Both of their names are now linked with the Old Oregon.
Young men of the two most progressive modern nations were to be pitted in this race for Empire,—Lewis and Clark, and Simon Fraser.