Northwest Company

“ The Northwest Company, by the honorable and humane course which they are noted as having pursued towards the Indians, and also towards their numerous Canadian and half-breed servitors and dependants, were, in return, loved by them, and in the efforts of these people to retain them in their country, blood was unfortunately made to flow. ”

“ But in 1783, at the close of the Revolutionary War, the Northwest Company was organized, with headquarters at Montreal. The British still held possession of our Northwest long after the treaty with the United States was signed. ”

“ There was constant shifting of men in the different departments of the Northwest Company. When Henry passed down Red River, in 1808, to go up the Saskatchewan, half the brigades struck westward from the Forks (Winnipeg) , up the Assiniboine River to Portage la Prairie and Souris, and Qu’ Appelle and Dauphin and Swan Lake. Each post of this department was worth some £700 a year to the Nor’Westers. Not very large returns when it is considered that a keg of liquor costing the Company less than $10 was sold to the Indians for one hundred and twenty beaver valued at from $2.00 to $3.00 a skin. ”

“ In the early part of the last century, John Jacob Astor, whose fur trade with the interior had not been altogether satisfactory, determined to explore the northwest coast, and proposed to the Northwest Company to join him in establishing a trading-post on the Columbia River. The proposition was declined. Nevertheless, in 1809, Astor formed the Pacific Fur Company, and needing able and experienced traders, he induced a number of men connected with the Northwest Company to leave that establishment and join him. ”

“ The consequence was that the servants of the Northwest Company, among whom Samuel Black and Mr. Peter Ogden, acted a conspicuous part when at leisure, amused themselves by annoying and insulting their neigh- bors, at times encouraging if not commanding their men to set their nets adrift, and at other times cutting them into pieces — not forgetting to pay occasional visits to the Hudson's Bay Company's House, where their conduct was often highly improper and unjustifiable. ”

“ Mackenzie's plan for consolidating the British North American fur trade. Mackenzie proposed that the Hudson Bay Company and Northwest Company should unite in a single organization to control the fur trade of North America from the parallel of 45° to the pole. ”

“ At the dissolution of the Northwest Company, citizens of the United States began seriously to turn their attention to the Ojibway fur trade, and from this time a new class of individuals, as traders, began to penetrate to the remotest villages of this tribe. ”

“ I have just learned, through a trusted Indian spy, that some Northwest men captured a traveler twenty miles up the river this morning. The prisoner is said to be a Hudson Bay Company courier, bound for Fort Garry with important dispatches from the north. He is held on a trumped-up charge of some sort, and before daylight to-morrow he is to be hurried round the fort and the settlement and conveyed down the river to the Northwest Company’s main post. His captors number seven, and to-night they are putting up at Lagarde’s store. ”

“ After the cession of Canada, by conquest, to the British, in 1762, the French, not dislodged from the woods, still continued the fur-trade through the coureurs de bois. The English monopoly for a while slackened in its vigor. The prize at stake, however, was a tempting one. Individual and associated enterprise, involving fierce altercations and treacherous alliances with the Indians, were enlisted in the fur-traffic. In 1783 some merchants of Montreal entered into a partnership company, and in 1787 united with another, thus constituting the famous Northwest Company. ”

“ They protest he has no authority to act for the Northwest Company. It may be they remember how they had jockeyed John Jacob Astor out of his fort on the Pacific by a [185] forced sale; and now guess the game that is being played with Daniel MacKenzie against them. The partners’ baggage is searched. The De Meurons turn even the pockets of the haughty partners inside out. Then the prisoners are embarked in four large canoes under escort of De Meuron soldiers. The canoes are hurriedly loaded and badly crowded. ”

“ Floyd is frank to confess that it is indefinite just how high the United States claims extended. He gives a satisfactory description of the Astoria settlement and enterprise and discusses the fur trade at some length, including the endeavors and profits of the Northwest Company. ”

“ MacKenzie, who was to become famous as a discoverer, was sent to Isle à la Crosse to intercept furs on the way to Hudson Bay. Ross was sent up to oppose Peter Pond of the Nor’Westers in Athabasca. Bostonnais Pangman went up the Saskatchewan to the Rockies, with headquarters at what is now Edmonton, and the rest of what were known as the Little Company faithfully dogged the Nor’Westers’ footsteps and built a trading house wherever Indians gathered.
Failing to establish a monopoly by law, the Nor’Westers set themselves to do it without law. The Little Company must be exterminated. ”

“ It is astonishing, too, to take a map of North America and consider what exploration stands to the credit of the fur traders. They were first overland from the St. Lawrence to Hudson Bay, and first inland from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi—thanks to Radisson.
In the exploration of the Arctic, who stands highest? It was a matter of paralyzing astonishment to the Company, itself, when I told them I had counted up in their books what they had spent on the Northwest Passage, and that before 1800 they had suffered dead loss on that account of £100,000. ”

“ If Dobbs’ Expedition had found a Northwest Passage, the history of the Adventurers would close here. With the merchants of London a unit against the charter and the Admiralty open to persuasion from either side, there can be no doubt that the discovery of a way to China through Hudson Bay would have sounded the death knell of the Company. ”

“ They contented themselves with blocking the petitions of rivals for trade privileges on the bay, but the eruption of these wildwood rovers—“The French Canadian Pedlars”—was a contingency against which there seemed to be no official redress.
It remained only for the old Company to gird itself to the fray—a fight with bandits and free-booters and raiders in a region where was law of [392] neither God nor man. Sales had fallen to a paltry £2,000 a year. Dividends stopped altogether. Value of stock fell from £250 to £50. The Company advertised for men—more men. ”

“ The organizers of the Northern Securities Company contended that their
ultimate purpose in organizing the company was to control the two
railway systems not for the purpose of suppressing competition, but to
create and develop a volume of trade among the States of the Northwest
and between the Orient and the United States by establishing and
maintaining a permanent schedule of cheap transportation rates. ”

“ Knowing full well the great influence, wealth and success of the Northwest Fur Company of Canada, and that said company had no trading posts west of the Rocky mountains, south of the headwaters of Frazer river, Astor made known to them his plans and invited them to join him in his new enterprise, offering them a third interest in his company. ”

“ The three agencies, agriculture, banking, and the carrier, are most important in our part of the country. Upon the wisdom and energy with which they are conducted, upon their coöperation each with the other, and upon the wise and fair treatment accorded them by the public through the forces of Government, depend their success and the continued growth and success of our great Northwestern country.
The American Northwest is a great empire, very young but very strong and full of opportunity for the best kind of human endeavor. ”