Читать книгу The History of the Northern Interior of British Columbia - Rev. A. G. Morice - Страница 21

Not unaware of the importance of his discoveries, Alexander Mackenzie resolved to publish his Journal, and, after preparing it for the printer, he visited Scotland, only to return to Canada in 1795 without having accomplished his object. Thenceforth he was to stay in Montreal, there to act in the capacity of a partner of the North-West Company. Just then his services were badly wanted, for in that very year several partners having seceded from the Canadian concern, owing to the autocratic ways of its chief, Simon McTavish, they set up a rival corporation, which soon became known as the X Y Company. With the love of independence which characterized Mackenzie, he was only too inclined to join the seceders. Yet he was persuaded to stay another three years with the North-Westers.

In 1799, however, he finally severed his connection with them, crossed over to England, published in 1801 his "Voyages," and was knighted by George III.

Sir Alexander's services to geography and ethnography were very valuable, and well deserved the recognition they received. His journey to the Pacific, especially, was an exceedingly dangerous venture, and the fact that he emerged without bloodshed from his many difficulties speaks volumes for his tact and prudence. His observa tions on the manners and customs of the people he encountered betray an able and evenly balanced mind. We could almost wish that the chronicler had been more particular about place names and topographical matters in general, as it is with the extremest difficulty that a person, however well acquainted with the territory he explored, can follow him. Moreover, while he notes the passing of several unimportant streams flowing into the Parsnip River and elsewhere, we look in vain in his journal for any mention of such large rivers as the Pack, or McLeod, whose waters differ so much from those of the Parsnip, into which it empties itself, and even the Nechaco, which is as important as the Peace west of the Rockies. [30]

From a purely literary standpoint, his Journal, though revised by his cousin, Roderick Mackenzie, stands open to criticism. Again, its author does not seem to have been blessed with anything like a keen ear, nor any aptitude for native languages. On pages 257-8 of his volume he gives us brief vocabularies of the "Nagailer or Chin Indians," and of the "Atnah or Carrier Indians," which are philologically worthless. Moreover, his so-called Carrier vocabulary is made up of Shushwap words, while its "Nagailer" counterpart is intended to reproduce words which, in the mouth of his informants, were evidently Carrier.

In the course of that same year (1801), the explorer returned to Canada, and, freed from the bonds which had so far kept him with the McTavish concern, threw himself body and soul into the X Y Company, of which he became the directing spirit.

It does not fall within our province to describe here the heated contentions, the bitter rivalries, the fights and the brigandage which ensued between the opposing factions. Suffice it to say that McTavish's death, in 1805, removed the main cause of the whole trouble, and the following year the divided parties were reunited into one. What we are concerned with is the territory traversed by the indomitable Scotchman and its fate after it became known to the traders.

The bitter struggle between the rival factions in the east forced them to concentrate, instead of extending, their energies, and the newly-discovered fields west of the Rocky Mountains had to wait for the restoration of peace before anything could be done for them. Four years after Mackenzie's voyage, in the course of 1797, a certain James Finlay did, indeed, ascend that part of the Peace River which now bears his name, after which he followed that explorer's route along the Parsnip almost to its source; but that was merely travelling, and it is safe to say that no tangible benefit thereby accrued to the fur trade or the Indians.

As for the older Hudson's Bay Company, it was far too conservative and too much devoid of initiative to have dreamed of establishing itself in a distant country just revealed to the world through the exertions of one of its natural enemies. Nay, it was only reaching the middle of the continent when Alexander Mackenzie was visiting the Pacific Coast. [31]

As that gentleman was leaving, in 1792, on his memorable journey, a youth of sixteen [32] was entering the service of the North-West Company, who was to be the man of whom his employers would avail themselves to reap the first-fruits of Mackenzie's voyage. Sir Alexander had discovered the land; Simon Fraser was to establish the first trading-posts therein.

Born at Bermington, on the Hudson, of a Scottish United Empire Loyalist, a Captain Fraser, who died in prison after he had been captured by the Americans at Burgoyne's surrender, he was taken by his widowed mother to Upper Canada, in the vicinity of Cornwall, where he passed his infancy. In 1792 he joined as clerk the ranks of the North-West Company, and ten years afterwards he obtained the honorable position of a bourgeois or partner, a fact which is certainly the best proof of his ability, and should silence the attacks of such writers as H. H. Bancroft, who never tires of belittling him. To be made a partner of a powerful commercial company at twenty-six is certainly no sign of a soft brain, of lack of education, or of administrative incapacity.

After a first appointment to Grand Portage, he was sent to Lake Athabaska, and in 1805, new men and more abundant resources having been added to the North-West Company by the absorption of its active rival, the X Y Company, it was decided, at a conference held at Fort William, the headquarters of the entire concern, to extend the Company's activities west of the Rocky Mountains. Fraser was chosen as the man best fitted for the purpose.

In the spring of that same year (1805), one of his subordinates, James McDougall, who was to make his mark as a popular fur-trader in the wilds of the extreme west, had already visited the sheet of water which empties itself into the Parsnip River and which was soon to be called McLeod Lake. Pushing still farther west, he had even reached a lake some fifteen miles east of the present Fort St. James, which, his guide having told him was within Carrier territory, has remained to this day known as Carrier Lake or Lac Porteur.

In compliance with his orders, Fraser proceeded in the autumn of the same year to a place on the Peace, immediately east of the Rockies, where he established a post under the name of Rocky Mountain Portage. There he left fourteen men (two clerks and twelve servants), and went up with six others as far as a tributary of the Parsnip, the Pack River, which Mackenzie had overlooked, and which would have immensely lightened the difficulties of his progress during the first half of his voyage. This stream he entered and ascended until he came in view of a narrow lake, seventeen miles long, which he named McLeod, in honor of a friend in the service, Archibald Norman McLeod.

There, on a peninsula formed by a tributary (Long Lake River) and its outlet, by latitude 55°0´2´´ north, he founded the first permanent post ever erected within what we now call British Columbia. [33] This was to accommodate the trade with the Sekanais Indians, and for a short time it even served as a supply house for the forts later established among the Carriers. It has existed to this day without a year of interruption.

Leaving three men at the new post, he returned, in November, to winter at the Rocky Mountain House with his three remaining companions and the fourteen men he had left there.

The three French Canadians now stationed at Fort McLeod were pioneers among the many fur-traders who were to toil and die on the west side of the Rockies. They might be considered the very first resident British Columbians. Their first immediate superior was La Malice, who was, however, soon to be replaced by James McDougall. The trio may not have enjoyed their enforced solitude on the shore of Lake McLeod. They certainly do not seem to have pulled well together, and before many months had elapsed, La Malice, who was a worthless kind of a fellow, had left on the pretence that his men would not do their duty.

Things were going more smoothly at the parent house, immediately to the east of the mountains, where good humor, if nothing of a less peaceful character, was maintained by means of copious libations of rum.

On the 28th of January, 1806, McDougall was sent on a second expedition to McLeod Lake. Taking with him a limited store of tobacco, beads and ammunition, he set out, accompanied by two Canadians and an Indian, and that time he even went so far as the site of the present Fort St. James, near the outlet of Lake Stuart, which he was the first white man to behold. Where the imposing structures and dependencies of that establishment now stand was then to be seen a thick forest of spruce. One of these trees he blazed and adorned with an inscription whereby he claimed the spot in the name of the Company he represented. One of the few Indians he saw, a man apparently of little worth, called Tœyen or Shaman, whom he wished to invest with some sort of authority, he presented with a piece of red cloth, thereby securing his good offices in a possible hour of need. This done, he returned east.

On the 9th of February, two Canadians, Farcier and Varin, were sent to La Malice with an assortment of axes, knives, and other articles most in demand at McLeod Lake.

Meantime, Fraser was laying plans for his projected expedition to the westward, and in April, 1806, he had five bales of goods made up and carried to the western end of the portage, there to remain ready for the early spring.

Moreover, fully realizing the importance and difficulty of that undertaking, he was feeling his ground in advance and studying the geography of the country he intended to endow with its first trading establishments. His text-book was no other than the Indians, not always quite reliable or properly understood, who occasionally called at his place. Thus, under date of 23rd April, 1806, he records in his Journal the arrival of natives from the Finlay River, near the source of which he is told that there is "a large lake called Bear Lake, where the salmon come up, and from which there is a river that falls into another...that glides in a north-west direction.... It is in that quarter they get their iron works and ornaments; but they represent the navigation beyond that lake as impracticable, and say there are no other Indians excepting a few of their relations that ever saw white men thereabout, and to get iron works they must go far beyond it, which they perform in long journeys on foot."

"We cannot understand what river this is," adds the chronicler, who thereby confesses his ignorance as to the lake itself. Bancroft is not so self-diffident. In a foot-note he peremptorily solves the problem. "It is Babine Lake here referred to," he says. [34]

We are sorry to contradict so voluminous a writer, but the lake above mentioned is simply Bear Lake, sometimes called Connolly by a few strangers, and the river that exercises the mind of Fraser is the Skeena. Bear Lake is within Sekanais territory, and is frequently visited to this day by the Finlay River Indians. The source of their supply of implements of European manufacture was merely the tribes of Tsimpsian parentage stationed along the Skeena, who obtained them from their congeners on the coast. The Sekanais of that early period probably did not even know of Babine Lake, and the only inaccuracy in their report is that relative to the proximity of Bear Lake to the Finlay, which, as the present writer has personally ascertained, is one hundred and eighty miles instead of "half the length of the Rocky Mountain Portage."

This item of information seems to have preyed on Fraser's mind, and two days later he adds, after further inquiry from new arrivals, the unwelcome circumstance that, though that river seems to have nothing in common with the Columbia (he means the Fraser), it is through it that they get most of their goods, among which he mentions guns and ammunition. One of the reasons which prompted his superiors to send him west was to forestall the Americans, of whom they seem to have vaguely heard in the east. It must, therefore, not have been without a pang that he had to chronicle the fact that, according to his informants, "white people came there in the course of the summer; but, as they came on discovery, they had little goods. I have seen a pistol," continues Fraser, "brass-mounted, with powder and ball, which they say they had from them."

This was dismal intelligence indeed for a fur-trader who was just on the point of setting out to establish new posts where he thought he had not been preceded. Had he been better acquainted with the ways of the Déné nation, he would have known that its members call whites anybody who conforms to the whites. Those who traded occasionally at Bear Lake were only Tsimpsians from the coast. Nay, the Skeena valley, precisely on account of the monopoly claimed by the Tsimpsian adventurers, is one of the territories of any importance within British Columbia which has remained the longest free of any real white man.

Before his departure for his important journey, which, after information furnished by James McDougall, he foresaw would be long and tedious, Fraser received, on the 27th of April, Archibald McGillivray, who came from the east to take charge of the Rocky Mountain Fort during his absence. Prudence suggested as early a start as possible in May, in order to avoid the June freshets; but one of his men, the truant La Malice, did not arrive until the 17th of that month, and a woman he brought with him, and for whom he is said to have paid £300 sterling, caused still further delay. Fraser would have none of her in his expedition, and La Malice refused to go without her. Finally, his employer, short of men as he was, had to yield.

At length, after he had sent to Fort Chippewayan two canoes loaded with furs, together with an account of his operations up to date, Fraser left on the 20th of May, 1806. After a portage of fifteen miles, two canoes were loaded, when it was discovered that a third was necessary, which was entrusted to La Malice. Fraser had with him an able lieutenant in the person of John Stuart, a young clerk, who was to be more or less identified in after years with the fur-trade west of the mountains. Among his crew was also a young half-breed, Jean Baptiste Boucher, who, under the nickname of "Waccan," we will likewise have to mention more than once in the following pages.

On the 28th of May they came upon two natives, who, though they had never seen a white man, were possessed of guns, which they had obtained from relatives among the Beaver Indians. At noon of the same day, they entered the Parsnip, whose banks they were sorry to find overflowed, so that their progress was necessarily very slow, [35] the passage over rocks, through driftwood and rapids occasioned by the high water, rendering their leaky canoes unwieldy and far from safe.

Nation River was passed on the 2nd of June, and three days afterwards they encamped two miles up the Pack or McLeod River. There all the goods which were not destined to outfit Fort McLeod were cached, when they proceeded to the post where McDougall, now in charge, was anxiously awaiting them. New canoes were now made and two Sekanais engaged to introduce them to the land of the Carriers.

Ignorance of the geography of the country was to lead Fraser to repeat the mistake already made by Alexander Mackenzie, and cause him to seek the Fraser by way of the Parsnip and Bad Rivers, instead of through Crooked River and what we now call Giscome Portage. We do not see Bancroft's object in insisting that both Fraser and Mackenzie could not have gone by way of that portage, since, by their own account, there cannot be the shadow of a doubt that they did not, the former going so far as to state explicitly that, when he reached the head-waters of the Parsnip, he was told by a Sekanais that, were he at McLeod Lake, he could show him a shorter and better route than that he was on.

At first Fraser was only following Mackenzie's itinerary of 1793, and experiencing the same difficulties, increased, however, by the unusual state of the water, resulting from the lateness of the season, the first explorer having been fully a month in advance of Fraser, who started from the eastern side of the Rockies, and had, moreover, to deliver freight at Fort McLeod. Then, again, La Malice became sick to the point of showing symptoms of delirium, and all the other men complained of some ailment, a circumstance of which Bancroft takes occasion to have another fling at poor Fraser, who, he seriously asserts, should have had better men in his fort!

Arrived at the terrible Bad River, which was now swollen by the freshets, La Malice was sufficiently recovered to make trouble and thwart his employer by threatening to remain behind, a step which Fraser was too kind-hearted to allow.

At ten o'clock on the 10th of June they were in sight of the Fraser, and the next day they encamped at the confluence of the Nechaco. Up that beautiful river the brigade encountered other enemies in the shape of grizzly bears, two of which they chased. "One man was caught and badly torn, the dogs coming up just in time to save his life. The wife of one of the hunters escaped a horrible death by throwing herself flat on her face, the enraged brute, in consequence, passing her by in pursuit of her flying husband." [36]

The first Carriers sighted by the expedition must have been the survivors of the Chinlac massacre recorded in our first chapter, as they were met at the confluence of the Stuart and Nechaco Rivers, [37] to the number of thirty men, arrayed in robes of beaver, lynx, and marmot skins.

The 26th of July, 1806, was a rather windy day on what the Indians then called Lake Na’kal, the surface of which was being ploughed into deep furrows. The soap-berries were ripening, and most of ’Kwah's people were camped at the mouth of Beaver Creek, to the south-west of the present Fort St. James, when what appeared to them two immense canoes were descried struggling against the wind, around a point which separated them from the outlet of the lake.

Immediately great alarm arises in the crowd of natives. As such large canoes have never plied on Carrier waters, there is hardly a doubt that they must contain Tœyen's friends, the wonderful strangers from "the country beyond the horizon" he had been told to expect back. Meanwhile, the strange crafts are heading for Beaver Creek, and lo! a song the like of which has never been heard in this part of the world strikes the native ear. What can that mean? Might not this be a war party, after all?

"No," declares Tœyen, who, donning his red piece of cloth as an apron, seizes a tiny spruce bark canoe lying on the beach and fearlessly paddles away. On, on he goes, tossed about by the great waves, until he meets the strangers, who, recognizing him by his badge, bid him come on board. His fellow-tribesmen, now seeing in the distance his own little canoe floating tenantless, take fright.

"They have already killed him," they exclaim. "Ready, ye warriors; away with the women!"

At this cry, which flies from mouth to mouth, the men seize their bows and arrows, and the women and children seek shelter in the woods. But the curious crafts, which, on coming nearer, prove to be large birch-bark canoes, are now within hearing distance, and Tœyen cries out to the men on shore to be of good cheer and have no fear, as the strangers are animated by the most friendly dispositions. The fugitives are hastily recalled, and Simon Fraser, with John Stuart and his other companions, put ashore in the presence of a crowd of wondering Carriers.

Lake Stuart was discovered, and a new province was added to the geographical conquests of the North-West Company. To accomplish this it had taken Fraser's party only seven days less than Mackenzie had required to reach the seacoast from his winter quarters. [38]

On landing, Fraser's men, to impress the natives with a proper idea of their wonderful resources, fired a volley with their guns, whereupon the whole crowd of Carriers fell prostrate to the ground. To allay their fears and make friends, tobacco was offered them, which, on being tasted, was found too bitter, and thrown away. Then, to show its use, the crew lighted their pipes, and, at the sight of the smoke issuing from their mouths, the people began to whisper that they must come from the land of the ghosts, since they were still full of the fire wherewith they had been cremated. Pieces of soap were given to the women, who, taking them to be cakes of fat, set upon crunching them, thereby causing foam and bubbles in the mouth, which puzzled both actors and bystanders.

All these phenomena, however, were soon explained away, leaving no suspicion in the native mind, but a most pronounced admiration for the foreigners and their wares. That this last impression was not quite reciprocal is gathered from one of Fraser's letters, wherein he describes his new acquaintances.

"They are," he writes, "a large, indolent, thievish set of vagabonds, of a mild disposition. They are amazing fond of goods, which circumstance might lead to imagine that they would work well to get what they seem to be so fond of; but then, they are independent of us, as they get their necessaries from their neighbors, who trade with the natives of the seacoast." [39]

Trading and bartering were started on the spot. The natives, who received illusory substitutes for their fur coats and robes, were instructed thenceforth to exert themselves and procure as many as possible of the skins enumerated to them.

The first introduction over, the young founder set his men to work at clearing the ground for a new fort at the exact spot McDougall had marked out, just one mile to the north-west of the outlet of the large sheet of water which, called at first Sturgeon Lake, was finally christened Stuart Lake, as a compliment to Fraser's chief companion.

The latitude of the new place was 54° 26´ 52´´, by longitude about 124° 30´. It stood on a bay with shallow waters, not on a peninsula, as Bancroft says. [40]To the beauty of its surroundings even fault-finding John McLean was to bear testimony when, forty-three years later, he wrote the following description, which is about accurate, though by no means adequate:

"Fort St. James, the depot of New Caledonia district, stands near the outlet of Stuart Lake, and commands a splendid view of the surrounding country. The lake is about fifty miles in length, and from three to four miles in breadth, stretching away to the north and north-east for about twenty miles. The view from the fort embraces nearly the whole of this section of it, which is studded with beautiful islands. The western shore is low, and indented by a number of small bays formed by wooded points projecting into the lake, the background rising abruptly into a ridge of hills of varied height and magnitude. On the east the view is limited to a range of two or three miles by the intervention of a high promontory, from which the eye glances to the snowy summits of the Rocky Mountains in the distant background. I do not know that I have seen anything to compare with this charming prospect in any other part of the country; its beauties struck me even at this season of the year, when, nature having partly assumed her hybernal dress, everything appeared to so much greater disadvantage." [41]

McLean hardly does justice to the beautiful mountains which rise on either side of Lake Stuart, one of which towers 2,600 feet above the surface of the water, while on the opposite shore another, though less prominent, is still higher. These reminded Fraser of the absent fatherland so often vaunted by his mother, and led him to call the whole country New Caledonia. [42] Then, again, the lake is wider than our author thinks. By actual measurement it is in places over six miles broad.

While we may overlook the many geographical errors committed in describing Fraser's progress by the few authors (Bancroft, Masson, Bryce) who have referred to it, we must be allowed to question the propriety of Mr. Masson's express statement to the effect that Fraser established a fort he named New Caledonia about fifty miles from the mouth of the Stuart River. Dr. Bryce reiterates that assertion, though in vaguer terms, on page 142 of his own book, "The Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company." Now, there has never been a vestige of such an establishment, and none of the oldest aborigines has ever heard of it. Fraser's limited personnel did not warrant three foundations without receiving reinforcements. Stuart, the very man who is credited with having been placed in charge of that mythical post, was in reality sent to see and report on the region of Lake Fraser. Fraser himself writes to his partners in August, 1806: "We have established the post [not the posts] beyond the mountains, and will establish another in the most conventional (sic) place we can find before the fall," meaning Fort Fraser. It is probable, however, that both Masson and Bryce refer only to that place which was to be known later as Fort St. James. In that case, both of them are wrong, the former as to distances (Fort St. James being fully ninety miles from the mouth of Stuart River), and the latter as to the site of the place (said fort being not on Stuart River, but on Stuart Lake). On the other hand, Masson can hardly be accurate in writing that Fraser "passed the summer" at the lake called after him, since he had not yet so much as seen it on the 3rd of September.

Thus was the second fort established west of the mountains. [43]

It was intended as a rendezvous for the natives of the whole lake, the exact number of whom could hardly be realized in the haste of the first visit. Both McDougall and Fraser, seeing only one fraction of the entire population, do not seem to have been much impressed by its importance; but it is safe to say that they scarcely met one-quarter of the Indians claiming the lake or its immediate vicinity as their habitat. Yet the former states that he saw some fifty natives hovering about the lower end of the lake. If we take these to be hunters and heads of families, as McDougall no doubt meant it, and if we give four children to each—a very fair average for the Carriers—the numbers of that band must have been something like three hundred souls.

But, fourteen miles farther north, at the mouth of the Pinche River, on the same body of water, there was, and still remains, a village of Carriers who were somewhat less numerous, though more sedentary. Again, a very large settlement stood at the mouth of the Thaché River, the principal affluent of the lake, just opposite the site of the present village, and another powerful clan, that of the Beavers (which should not be confounded with the tribe of the Beaver Indians east of the Rockies), had their homes on the same stream, at a place called Grand Rapid, perhaps eighteen miles above. Finally, on a minor tributary, flowing into the northern end of the lake now called the Portage, were a few bands of Carriers, mostly fishermen, living on the fine whitefish abounding in that quarter. All told, one thousand souls is a conservative estimate for the Stuart Lake population at that early period.