Part 3 (1/2)

Six months later (1817), when ice had closed the rivers, he sent Captain d'Orsennens overland westward to Red River, where Fort Douglas was captured back one stormy winter night by the soldiers scaling the fort walls during a heavy snowfall. The conflict had been just as ruthless on the Saskatchewan. Nor' Westers were captured as they disembarked to pa.s.s Grand Rapids and s.h.i.+pped down to York Factory, where Franklin the explorer saw four Nor' Westers maltreated. One of them was the same John George MacTavish who had helped to capture Astoria; another, Frobisher, a partner, was ultimately done to death by the abuse. The Deschamps murderers of Seven Oaks fled south, where their crimes brought terrible vengeance from American traders.

Victorious all along the line, the Hudson's Bay Company were in a curious quandary. Suits enough were pressing in the courts to ruin both companies; and for the most natural reason in the world, neither Hudson Bay nor Nor' Wester could afford to have the truth told and the crimes probed. There was only one way out of the dilemma. In March, 1821, the companies amalgamated under the old t.i.tle of Hudson's Bay. In April, 1822, a new fort was built half-way between the sites of Gibraltar and Fort Douglas, and given the new name of Fort Garry by Sir George Simpson, the governor, to remove all feeling of resentment. The thousand men thrown out of employment by the union at once crossed the line and enlisted with American traders.

The Hudson's Bay was now strong with the strength that comes from victorious conflict--so strong, indeed, that it not only held the Canadian field, but in spite of the American law[26] forbidding British traders in the United States, reached as far south as Utah and the Missouri, where it once more had a sharp brush with l.u.s.ty rivals.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 21: Some say seventy-four.]

[Footnote 22: The enormous returns made up largely of the Astoria capture. The unusually large guard was no doubt owing to the War of 1812.]

[Footnote 23: An antecedent of the late Sir Roderick Cameron of New York.]

[Footnote 24: More of the _voyageurs'_ romance; named because of a voice heard calling and calling across the lake as _voyageurs_ entered the valley--said to be the spirit of an Indian girl calling her lover, though prosaic sense explains it was the echo of the _voyageurs'_ song among the hills.]

[Footnote 25: Continental soldiers disbanded after the Napoleonic wars.]

[Footnote 26: A law that could not, of course, be enforced, except as to the building of permanent forts, in regions beyond the reach of law's enforcement.]

CHAPTER V

MR. ASTOR'S COMPANY ENCOUNTERS NEW OPPONENTS

That Andrew Henry whom Lisa had sought when he pursued the Astorians up the Missouri continued to be dogged by misfortune on the west side of the mountains. Game was scarce and his half-starving followers were scattered, some to the British posts in the north, some to the Spaniards in the south, and some to the nameless graves of the mountains. Henry forced his way back over the divide and met Lisa in the Aricara country.

The British war broke out and the Missouri Company were compelled to abandon the dangerous territory of the Blackfeet, who could purchase arms from the British traders, raid the Americans, and scurry back to Canada.

When Lisa died in 1820 more than three hundred Missouri men were again in the mountains; but they suffered the same ill luck. Jones and Immel's party were annihilated by the Blackfeet; and Pilcher, who succeeded to Lisa's position and dauntlessly crossed over to the Columbia, had all his supplies stolen, reaching the Hudson's Bay post, Fort Colville, almost dest.i.tute. The British rivals received him with that hospitality for which they were renowned when trade was not involved, and gave him escort up the Columbia, down the Athabasca and Saskatchewan to Red River, thence overland to the Mandan country and St. Louis.

These two disasters marked the wane of the Missouri Company.

But like the s.h.i.+pwrecked sailor, no sooner safe on land than he must to sea again, the indomitable Andrew Henry linked his fortunes with General Ashley of St. Louis. Gathering to the new standard Campbell, Bridger, Fitzpatrick, Beckworth, Smith, and the Sublettes--men who made the Rocky Mountain trade famous--Ashley and Henry led one hundred men to the mountains the first year and two hundred the next. In that time not less than twenty-five lives were lost among Aricaras and Blackfeet. Few pelts were obtained and the expeditions were a loss.

But in 1824 came a change. Smith met Hudson's Bay trappers loaded with beaver pelts in the Columbia basin, west of the Rockies. They had become separated from their leader, Alexander Ross, an old Astorian. Details of this bargain will never be known; but when Smith came east he had the Hudson's Bay furs. This was the first brush between Rocky Mountain men and the Hudson's Bay, and the mountain trappers scored.

Henceforth, to save time, the active trappers met their supplies annually at a _rendezvous_ in the mountains, in Pierre's Hole, a broad valley below the Tetons, or Jackson's Hole, east of the former, or Ogden's Hole at Salt Lake. Seventeen Rocky Mountain men had been ma.s.sacred by the Snake Indians in the Columbia basin; but that did not deter General Ashley himself from going up the Platte, across the divide to Salt Lake. Here he found Peter Ogden, a Hudson's Bay trapper, with an enormous prize of beaver pelts. When the Hudson's Bay man left Salt Lake, he had no furs; and when General Ashley came away, his packers were laden with a quarter of a million dollars worth of pelts. This was the second brush between Rocky Mountain and Hudson's Bay, and again the mountaineers scored.

The third encounter was more to the credit of both companies. After three years' wanderings, Smith found himself stranded and dest.i.tute at the British post of Fort Vancouver. Fifteen of his men had been killed, his horses taken and peltries stolen. The Hudson's Bay sent a punitive force to recover his property, gave him a $20,000 draft for the full value of the recovered furs, and sent him up the Columbia. Thenceforth Rocky Mountain trappers and Hudson's Bay respected each other's rights in the valley of the Columbia, but southward the old code prevailed.

Fitzpatrick, a Rocky Mountain trader, came on the same poor Peter Ogden at Salt Lake trading with the Indians, and at once plied the argument of whisky so actively that the furs destined for Red River went over the mountains to St. Louis.

The trapper probably never heard of a Nemesis; but a curious retribution seemed to follow on the heels of outrage.

Lisa had tried to balk the Astorians, and the Missouri Company went down before Indian hostility. The Nor' Westers jockeyed the Astorians out of their possessions and were in league with murderers at the ma.s.sacre of Seven Oaks; but the Nor' Westers were jockeyed out of existence by the Hudson's Bay under Lord Selkirk. The Hudson's Bay had been guilty of rank outrage--particularly on the Saskatchewan, where North-West partners were seized, manacled, and sent to a wilderness--and now the Hudson's Bay were cheated, cajoled, overreached by the Rocky Mountain trappers. And the Rocky Mountain trappers, in their turn, met a rival that could outcheat their cheatery.

In 1831 the mountains were overrun with trappers from all parts of America. Men from every State in the Union, those restless spirits who have pioneered every great movement of the race, turned their faces to the wilderness for furs as a later generation was to scramble for gold.

In the summer of 1832, when the hunters came down to Pierre's Hole for their supplies, there were trappers who had never before summered away from Detroit and Mackinaw and Hudson Bay.[27] There were half-wild Frenchmen from Quebec who had married Indian wives and cast off civilization as an ill-fitting garment. There were Indian hunters with the mellow, rhythmic tones that always betray native blood. There were lank New Englanders under Wyeth of Boston, erect as a mast pole, strong of jaw, angular of motion, taking clumsily to buckskins. There were the Rocky Mountain men in tattered clothes, with unkempt hair and long beards, and a trick of peering from their bushy brows like an enemy from ambush. There were probably odd detachments from Captain Bonneville's adventurers on the Platte, where a gay army adventurer was trying his luck as fur trader and explorer. And there was a new set of men, not yet weather-worn by the wilderness, alert, watchful, ubiquitous, scattering themselves among all groups where they could hear everything, see all, tell nothing, always shadowing the Rocky Mountain men who knew every trail of the wilds and should be good pilots to the best hunting-grounds. By the middle of July all business had been completed, and the trappers spent a last night round camp-fires, spinning yarns of the hunt.

Early in the morning when the Rocky Mountain men were sallying from the valley, they met a cavalcade of one hundred and fifty Blackfeet. Each party halted to survey its opponent. In less than ten years the Rocky Mountain men had lost more than seventy comrades among hostiles. Even now the Indians were flouris.h.i.+ng a flag captured from murdered Hudson's Bay hunters.