The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin Part 7

[Footnote 189: Wis. Hist. Colls., XL, 260. Mich. Pioneer Colls., XVI., 103-104.]

[Footnote 190: Wis. Hist. Colls., XL, 255. Cf. Mich. Pioneer Colls., XVI., 67. Rolette, one of the Prairie du Chien traders, was tried by the British for treason to Great Britain.]

[Footnote 191: Amer. State Papers, For. Rels., III., 705.]

[Footnote 192: Amer. State Papers, Ind. Affs., L, 562. See map in Collet's Travels, atlas.]

THE NORTHWEST COMPANY.

The most striking feature of the English period was the Northwest Company.[193] From a study of it one may learn the character of the English occupation of the Northwest.[194] It was formed in 1783 and fully organized in 1787, with the design of contesting the field with the Hudson Bay Company. Goods were brought from England to Montreal, the headquarters of the company, and thence from the four emporiums, Detroit, Mackinaw, Sault Ste. Marie, and Grand Portage, they were scattered through the great Northwest, even to the Pacific ocean.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century s.h.i.+ps[195] began to take part in this commerce; a portion of the goods was sent from Montreal in boats to Kingston, thence in vessels to Niagara, thence overland to Lake Erie, to be res.h.i.+pped in vessels to Mackinaw and to Sault Ste. Marie, where another transfer was made to a Lake Superior vessel. These s.h.i.+ps were of about ninety-five tons burden and made four or five trips a season. But in the year 1800 the primitive mode of trade was not materially changed. From the traffic along the main artery of commerce between Grand Portage and Montreal may be learned the kind of trade that flowed along such branches as that between the island of Mackinaw and the Wisconsin posts. The visitor at La Chine rapids, near Montreal, might have seen a squadron of Northwestern trading canoes leaving for the Grand Portage, at the west of Lake Superior.[196]

The boatmen, or "engages," having spent their season's gains in carousal, packed their blanket capotes and were ready for the wilderness again. They made a picturesque crew in their gaudy turbans, or hats adorned with plumes and tinsel, their brilliant handkerchiefs tied sailor-fas.h.i.+on about swarthy necks, their calico s.h.i.+rts, and their flaming worsted belts, which served to hold the knife and the tobacco pouch. Rough trousers, leggings, and cowhide shoes or gaily-worked moccasins completed the costume. The trading birch canoe measured forty feet in length, with a depth of three and a width of five. It floated four tons of freight, and yet could be carried by four men over difficult portages. Its crew of eight men was engaged at a salary[197]

of from five to eight hundred livres, about $100 to $160 per annum, each, with a yearly outfit of coa.r.s.e clothing and a daily food allowance of a quart of hulled corn, or peas, seasoned with two ounces of tallow.

The experienced voyageurs who spent the winters in the woods were called _hivernans_, or winterers, or sometimes _hommes du nord_; while the inexperienced, those who simply made the trip from Montreal to the outlying depots and return, were contemptuously dubbed _mangeurs de lard_,[198] "pork-eaters," because their pampered appet.i.tes demanded peas and pork rather than hulled corn and tallow. Two of the crew, one at the bow and the other at the stern, being especially skilled in the craft of handling the paddle in the rapids, received higher wages than the rest. Into the canoe was first placed the heavy freight, shot, axes, powder; next the dry goods, and, crowning all, filling the canoe to overflowing, came the provisions--pork, peas or corn, and sea biscuits, sewed in canvas sacks.

The lading completed, the voyageur hung his votive offerings in the chapel of Saint Anne, patron saint of voyageurs, the paddles struck the waters of the St. Lawrence, and the fleet of canoes glided away on its six weeks' journey to Grand Portage. There was the Ottawa to be ascended, the rapids to be run, the portages where the canoe must be emptied and where each voyageur must bear his two packs of ninety pounds apiece, and there were the _decharges_, where the canoe was merely lightened and where the voyageurs, now on the land, now into the rus.h.i.+ng waters, dragged it forward till the rapids were pa.s.sed. There was no stopping to dry, but on, until the time for the hasty meal, or the evening camp-fire underneath the pines. Every two miles there was a stop for a three minutes' smoke, or "pipe," and when a portage was made it was reckoned in "pauses," by which is meant the number of times the men must stop to rest. Whenever a burial cross appeared, or a stream was left or entered, the voyageurs removed their hats, and made the sign of the cross while one of their number said a short prayer; and again the paddles beat time to some rollicking song.[199]

Dans mon chemin, j'ai rencontre Trois cavalieres, bien montees; L'on, lon, laridon daine, Lon, ton, laridon dai.

Trois cavalieres, bien montees, L'un a cheval, et l'autre a pied; L'on, lon, laridon daine, Lon, ton, laridon dai.

Arrived at Sault Ste. Marie, the fleet was often doubled by newcomers, so that sometimes sixty canoes swept their way along the north sh.o.r.e, the paddles marking sixty strokes a minute, while the rocks gave back the echoes of Canadian songs rolling out from five hundred l.u.s.ty throats. And so they drew up at Grand Portage, near the present northeast boundary of Minnesota, now a sleepy, squalid little village, but then the general rendezvous where sometimes over a thousand men met; for, at this time, the company had fifty clerks, seventy interpreters, eighteen hundred and twenty canoe-men, and thirty-five guides. It sent annually to Montreal 106,000 beaver-skins, to say nothing of other peltries. When the proprietors from Montreal met the proprietors from the northern posts, and with their clerks gathered at the banquet in their large log hall to the number of a hundred, the walls hung with spoils of the chase, the rough tables furnished with abundance of venison, fish, bread, salt pork, b.u.t.ter, peas, corn, potatoes, tea, milk, wine and _eau de vie_, while, outside, the motley crowd of engages feasted on hulled corn and melted fat--was it not a truly baronial scene? Clerks and engages of this company, or its rival, the Hudson Bay Company, might winter one season in Wisconsin and the next in the remote north. For example, Amable Grignon, a Green Bay trader, wintered in 1818 at Lac qui Parle in Minnesota, the next year at Lake Athabasca, and the third in the hyperborean regions of Great Slave Lake. In his engagement he figures as Amable Grignon, _of the Parish of Green Bay, Upper Canada_, and he receives $400 "and found in tobacco and shoes and two doges," besides "the usual equipment given to clerks." He afterwards returned to a post on the Wisconsin river. The att.i.tude of Wisconsin traders toward the Canadian authorities and the Northwestern wilds is clearly shown in this doc.u.ment, which brings into a line Upper Canada, "the parish of Green Bay," and the Hudson Bay Company's territories about Great Slave Lake![200]

How widespread and how strong was the influence of these traders upon the savages may be easily imagined, and this commercial control was strengthened by the annual presents made to the Indians by the British at their posts. At a time when our relations with Great Britain were growing strained, such a power in the Northwest was a serious menace.[201] In 1809 John Jacob Astor secured a charter from the State of New York, incorporating the American Fur Company. He proposed to consolidate the fur trade of the United States, plant an establishment in the contested Oregon territory, and link it with Michillimackinac (Mackinaw island) by way of the Missouri through a series of trading posts. In 1810 two expeditions of his Pacific Fur Company set out for the Columbia, the one around Cape Horn and the other by way of Green bay and the Missouri. In 1811 he bought a half interest in the Mackinaw Company, a rival of the Northwest Company and the one that had especial power in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and this new organization he called the Southwest Company. But the war of 1812 came; Astoria, the Pacific post, fell into the hands of the Northwest Company, while the Southwest Company's trade was ruined.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 193: On this company see Mackenzie, Voyages; Bancroft, Northwest Coast, I., 378-616, and citations; _Hunt's Merch. Mag._, III., 185; Irving, Astoria; Ross, The Fur Hunters of the Far West; Harmon, Journal; Report on the Canadian Archives, 1881, p. 61 et seq. This fur-trading life still goes on in the more remote regions of British America. See Robinson, Great Fur Land, ch. xv.]

[Footnote 194: Wis. Hist. Colls., XI., 123-5.]

[Footnote 195: Mackenzie, Voyages, x.x.xix. Harmon, Journal, 36. In the fall of 1784, Haldimand granted permission to the Northwest Company to build a small vessel at Detroit, to be employed next year on Lake Superior. Calendar of Canadian Archives, 1888, p. 72.]

[Footnote 196: Besides the authorities cited above, see "Anderson's Narrative," in Wis. Hist. Colls., IX., 137-206.]

[Footnote 197: An estimate of the cost of an expedition in 1717 is given in Margry, VI., 506. At that time the wages of a good voyageur for a year amounted to about $50. Provisions for the two months' trip from Montreal to Mackinaw cost about $1.00 per month per man. Indian corn for a year cost $16; lard, $10; _eau de vie_, $1.30; tobacco, 25 cents. It cost, therefore, less than $80 to support a voyageur for one year's trip into the woods. Gov. Ninian Edwards, writing at the time of the American Fur Company (_post_, p. 57), says: "The whole expense of transporting eight thousand weight of goods from Montreal to the Mississippi, wintering with the Indians, and returning with a load of furs and peltries in the succeeding season, including the cost of provisions and portages and the hire of five engages for the whole time does not exceed five hundred and twenty-five dollars, much of which is usually paid to those engages when in the Indian country, in goods at an exorbitant price." American State Papers, VI., 65.]

[Footnote 198: This distinction goes back at least to 1681 (N.Y. Col.

Docs., IX., 152). Often the engagement was for five years, and the voyageur might be transferred from one master to another, at the master's will.

The following is a translation of a typical printed engagement, one of scores in the possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society, the written portions in brackets:

"Before a Notary residing at the post of Michilimakinac, Undersigned; Was Present [Joseph Lamarqueritte] who has voluntarily engaged and doth bind himself by these Presents to M[onsieur Louis Grignion] here present and accepting, at [his] first requisition to set off from this Post [in the capacity of Winterer] in one of [his] Canoes or Bateaux to make the Voyage [going as well as returning] and to winter for [two years at the Bay].

"And to have due and fitting care on the route and while at the said [place] of the Merchandise, Provisions, Peltries, Utensils and of everything necessary for the Voyage; to serve, obey and execute faithfully all that the said Sieur [Bourgeois] or any other person representing him to whom he may transport the present Engagement, commands him lawfully and honestly; to do [his] profit, to avoid anything to his damage, and to inform him of it if it come to his knowledge, and generally to do all that a good [Winterer] ought and is obliged to do; without power to make any particular trade, to absent himself, or to quit the said service, under pain of these Ordinances, and of loss of wages. This engagement is therefore made, for the sum of [Eight Hundred] livres or s.h.i.+llings, ancient currency of Quebec, that he promises [and] binds himself to deliver and pay to the said [Winterer one month] after his return to this Post, and at his departure [an Equipment each year of 2 s.h.i.+rts, 1 Blanket of 3 point, 1 Carot of Tobacco, 1 Cloth Blanket, 1 Leather s.h.i.+rt, 1 Pair of Leather Breeches, 5 Pairs of Leather Shoes, and Six Pounds of Soap.]

"For thus, etc., promising, etc., binding, etc., renouncing, etc.

"Done and pa.s.sed at the said [Michilimackinac] in the year eighteen hundred [Seven] the [twenty-fourth] of [July before] twelve o'clock; & have signed with the exception of the said [Winterer] who, having declared himself unable to do so, has made his ordinary mark after the engagement was read to him.

his "JOSEPH X LAMARQUERITTE. [SEAL]

mark.

Louis GEIGNON. [SEAL]

"SAML. ABBOTT, Not. Pub."

Endorsed--"Engagement of Joseph Lamarqueritte to Louis Grignon."]

[Footnote 199: For Canadian boat-songs see _Hunt's Merch. Mag._, III., 189; Mrs. Kinzie, Wau Bun; Bela Hubbard, Memorials of a Half-Century; Robinson, Great Fur Land.]

[Footnote 200: Wis. Fur Trade MSS. (Wis. Hist. Soc.). Published in Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the State Hist. Soc.

of Wis. 1889, pp. 81-82.]

[Footnote 201: See Mich. Pioneer Colls., XV., XVI., 67, 74. The government consulted the Northwest Company, who made particular efforts to "prevent the Americans from ever alienating the minds of the Indians." To this end they drew up memoirs regarding the proper frontiers.]

AMERICAN INFLUENCES.

Although the Green Bay court of justice, such as it was, had been administered under American commissions since 1803, when Reaume dispensed a rude equity under a commission of Justice of the Peace from Governor Harrison,[202] neither Green Bay nor the rest of Wisconsin had any proper appreciation of its American connections until the close of this war. But now occurred these significant events:

1. Astor's company was reorganized as the American Fur Company, with headquarters at Mackinaw island.[203]

2. The United States enacted in 1816 that neither foreign fur traders, nor capital for that trade, should be admitted to this country.[204]

This was designed to terminate English influence among the tribes, and it fostered Astor's company. The law was so interpreted as not to exclude British (that is generally, French) interpreters and boatmen, who were essential to the company; but this interpretation enabled British subjects to evade the law and trade on their own account by having their invoices made out to some Yankee clerk, while they accompanied the clerk in the guise of interpreters.[205] In this way a number of Yankees came to the State.

3. In the year 1816 United States garrisons were sent to Green Bay and Prairie du Chien.[206]

4. In 1814 the United States provided for locating government trading posts at these two places.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 202: Reaume's pet.i.tion in Wis. Fur Trade MSS. in possession of Wisconsin Historical Society.]

[Footnote 203: On this company consult Irving, Astoria; Bancroft, Northwest Coast, I., ch. xvi.; II., chs. vii-x; _Mag. Amer. Hist._ XIII., 269; Franchere, Narrative; Ross, Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon, or Columbia River (1849); Wis. Fur Trade MSS. (State Hist. Sec.).]

[Footnote 204: U.S. Statutes at Large, III., 332. Cf. laws in 1802 and 1822.]

[Footnote 205: Wis. Hist. Colls., I., 103; Minn. Hist. Colls., V., 9.

The Warren brothers, who came to Wisconsin in 1818, were descendants of the Pilgrims and related to Joseph Warren who fell at Bunker Hill; they came from Berks.h.i.+re, Ma.s.s., and marrying the half-breed daughters of Michael Cadotte, of La Pointe, succeeded to his trade.]