Читать книгу Peter Pond - Fur Trader and Adventurer - Harold Adams Innis - Страница 4

Table of Contents

It has been a common assumption among writers on the fur trade that the more important traders and explorers were born in Scotland but in the formative period of the trade immediately following the Conquest and previous to the formation of the Northwest Company, traders born in the Colonies occupied an important place. Two of these traders, Alexander Henry, born in New Jersey in Aug. 1739, and Peter Pond, born in Milford in the county of New Haven in Connecticut on Jan. 18, 1740, exercised a profound influence on exploration and trade in the Northwest. They were born within a year of each other and there were two interesting coincidences in later life. At the surrender of Fort de Levis in 1760 and on the journey down the St. Lawrence to the attack on Montreal, Peter Pond was a commissioned officer under General Amherst, and Alexander Henry was a merchant engaged in supplying the commissariat. In 1775 Alexander Henry proceeded from Michilimackinac to Grand Portage and to the Northwest on his first visit and on Aug. 18 of that year on Lake Winnipeg he was joined by Peter Pond who was also on his first visit to that country. The work of Alexander Henry has been generally known through the editions of his Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian territories but the name of Peter Pond has been almost forgotten. This neglect has been due largely to the scarcity of material concerning him. His crowded life left little room for a formal education and his illiteracy was a serious handicap to the attainment of a permanent place in Canadian history. His journal was apparently written in the latter part of his life probably after he was sixty years of age and after he had ceased to have any connection with the fur trade. Apparently a large part of it has been destroyed but the remainder which has been printed in the Wisconsin Historical Collections and elsewhere is an extremely interesting and valuable record of the activities of his early life. From a study of this record it is possible to gain an insight into the later life of the man, a knowledge of which must be gleaned from scanty and biased information supplied by contemporaries.

My attention was attracted to the work of Peter Pond through a study of the early history of the Northwest Company. The organization of the technical side of the trade which followed the expansion to the Saskatchewan and especially to Athabaska and which made possible the evolution of the Northwest Company was to a large extent a result of the efforts of Peter Pond. He was the first white man to cross the Methye Portage to the drainage basin of the Mackenzie river. To understand the history of the fur trade of the Northwest during the formative stages of the Northwest Company I found it necessary to attempt a biography of Peter Pond. His contributions to Canadian development, and the Northwest Company was a crucial organization, appeared to warrant a general appreciation of his position as one of the fathers of Confederation. The vilification of his enemies has up to the present made this estimate impossible.

I should like to thank Mr. L. J. Burpee for his kindness in arranging for the presentation of a part of this study before the Royal Society of Canada at Winnipeg, in May 1928, as well as for other kindnesses.

H. A. I.