The autumn campaign was without doubt marked by the most comical and heroic episodes of the war. Wilkinson was to go down the St. Lawrence from Lake Ontario with eight thousand men to join General Hampton coming by the way of Lake Champlain with another five thousand men in united attack against Montreal. November 5 Wilkinson's troops descended in three hundred flat-boats through the Thousand Islands, now bleak and leafless and somber in the gray autumn light. It seemed hardly possible that the few Canadian troops cooped up in Kingston would dare to pursue such a strong American force, but history is made up of impossibles. Feeling perfectly secure, Wilkinson's troops scattered on the river. By November 10, at nine in the morning, half the Americans had run down the rapids of the Long Sault, and were in the region of Cornwall, pressing forward to unite with Hampton, where Chateauguay River came into Lake St. Louis, just above Montreal. The other half of Wilkinson's army was above the Long Sault, near Chrysler's Farm. From the outset the rear guard of the advancing invaders had been harried by Canadian sharpshooters. November 11, about midday, it was learned that a Canadian battalion of eight hundred was pressing eagerly on the rear. Chance shots became a rattling fusillade. Quick as flash the Americans land and wheel face about to fight, posted behind a stone wall and along a dried gully with sheltering cliffs at Chrysler's Farm. By 2.30 the foes are shooting at almost hand-to-hand range. Then, through the powder smoke, the Canadians break from a march to a run, and charge with all the dauntless fury of men fighting for hearth and home. Before the line of flashing bayonets the invaders break and run. Two hundred have fallen on each side in an action of less than two hours. Then the boats go on down to the other half of the army at Cornwall, and here is worse news,—news that sends Wilkinson's army back to the American side of the St. Lawrence without attempting attack on Montreal. General Hampton on his way from Lake Champlain has been totally discomfited.
Finding the way to the St. Lawrence barred by the old raiders' trail of Richelieu River, Hampton had struck across westward from Lake Champlain to join Wilkinson on the St. Lawrence, west of Montreal, somewhere near the road of Chateauguay River. With five thousand infantry and one hundred and eighty cavalry he has advanced to a ford beyond the fork of Chateauguay. Uncertain where the blow would be struck, Canada's governor had necessarily scattered his meager forces.
To oppose advance by the Chateauguay he has sent a young Canadian officer, De Salaberry, with one hundred and fifty French Canadian sharp-shooters and one hundred Indians. De Salaberry does not court defeat by neglecting precautions because he is weak. Windfall is hurriedly thrown up as barricade along the trail. Where the path narrows between the river and the bleak forest, De Salaberry has tree trunks laid spike end towards the foe. At the last moment comes McDonnell of Brockville with six hundred men, but De Salaberry's three hundred occupy the front line facing the ford. McDonnell is farther along the river. By the night of October 25 the American army is close on the dauntless little band hidden in the forest. On the morning of the 26th three thousand Americans cross the south bank of the river, with the design of crossing north again farther down and swinging round on De Salaberry's rear. At the first shot of the bluecoats poor De Salaberry's forlorn little band broke in panic fright and fled, but De Salaberry on the river bank had grabbed his bugle boy by the scruff of the neck with a grip of iron, and in terms more forcible than polite bade him "sound—sound—sound the advance," till the forest was filled with flying echoes of bugle calls. McDonnell behind hears the challenge, and mistaking the cheering call for note of victory, bids his buglers blow, blow advance, blow and cheer like devils! The Americans pour shot into the forest. The bugle calls multiply till the woods seem filled with an advancing army and the yells split the sky. Also McDonnell has ordered his men to fire kneeling, so that few of the American shots take effect. The advancing host became demoralized. At 2.30 they sounded retreat, and it may truly be said that the battle of Chateauguay was won by De Salaberry's bugle boy, held to the sticking point, not because he was brave, but because he could not run away. It is said that Hampton simply would not believe the truth when told of the numbers by whom he had been defeated. It is also said that immediately after the victory De Salaberry fell ill from a bad attack of nerves, brought on by lack of sleep. However that may be, the Canadian governor, Prevost, did not suffer from an attack of conscience, for in his report to the English government he ascribed the victory to his own management and presence on the field.
The year of 1813 closes darkly for both sides. Before withdrawing from Niagara region the invaders ravage the country and set fire to the village of Newark, driving four hundred women and children roofless to December snows. Sir Gordon Drummond, who has just come to command in Ontario, retaliates swiftly and without mercy. He crosses the Niagara by night; the fort is carried at bayonet point, three hundred men captured and three thousand arms taken. Next, Lewiston is burned, then Black Rock, and on the last day of the year, Buffalo. Down on the Atlantic Coast both fleets win victories, but the English work the greater hurt, for they blockade the entire coast south of New York. On the English squadron are European mercenaries who have been given the name of Canadian battalions, because their work is to harry the American coast in order to draw off the American army from Canada. European mercenaries have been the same the world over,—riffraff blackguards, guilty of infamous outrages the moment they are out from under the officers' eye. These were the troops misnamed "Canadians," whose infamous conduct left a heritage of hate long after the war; but this is a story of the navy rather than of Canada.
The contest has now lasted for almost two years, and both sides are as far from decisive victory as when war was declared in June of 1812. Long since the embargo laws of France and England against neutral nations have been rescinded, and the American coast has suffered more from the blockade of this war than it ever did from the wars between France and England. The year 1814 opens with Napoleon defeated and England pouring aid across the Atlantic into Canada. Wilkinson's big army hovers inactive round Lake Champlain, and Prevost is afraid to weaken Montreal by forwarding aid to Drummond at Niagara. The British fleet blockades Sackett's Harbor, and the American fleet blockades Kingston. The Canadians raid Oswego on Lake Ontario for provisions. The Americans raid Port Dover on Lake Erie, leaving the country a blackened waste and Tom Talbot's Castle Malahide of logs a smoking ruin, with the determined aim of cutting off all supplies in Ontario. Drummond sends his troops scouring the country inland from Niagara for provisions. Military law is established for the seizure of cattle and grain, but for the latter as high a price is paid as $2.50 a bushel, and many a pioneer farmer back from York (Toronto) and Burlington (Hamilton) dates the foundation of his fortune from the famine prices paid for bread during the War of 1812.
Of course the United States did not purpose leaving the frontier of Niagara because Drummond had burnt the forts. By May, Major General Brown had taken command of the United States troops at Buffalo. The next two months pass, drilling and training, and bringing forward provisions. July 3, at day dawn, during fog thick as wool on the lake, five thousand American troops cross to the Canadian side. Fort Erie's English garrison capitulates on the spot, and the English retreat down Niagara River towards Chippewa by the Falls. At Chippewa, at Queenston, at Fort George, in all to guard the Canadian frontier are only some twenty-eight hundred men. Three fourths of these are kept doing garrison duty, leaving only seven hundred men free afield. Just beside Chippewa, a creek some twenty feet wide comes into Niagara River. The Canadians have destroyed the bridge as they retreat, but the Americans pursue, and at midnight of the 4th the two armies are facing each other across the brook, ominous dreadful silence through the darkness but for the sentry's arms or the lumbering advance of artillery wagons dragged cautiously near the Canadians. The bridge is repaired under peppering shot from the British. By four on the afternoon of the 5th, the Americans have crossed the stream. Their artillery is in place, and another battalion has forded higher up and swept round to take the Canadians on the flank. The Canadians must either flee in such blind panic as Procter displayed at Moraviantown, or turn and fight. Indians in ambush, reënforcements from Fort George and Queenston formed in three solid columns, the English wheel to face the foe. First there is the rattling clatter of musketry fire from shooters behind in the grass. Then the solid columns break from a march to a run, and charge with their bayonets. The artillery fire of the Americans meets the runners in a terrible death blast; but as the front lines drop, the men behind step in their places till the armies are not one hundred yards apart. Then another blast from the heavy guns of the Americans literally tears the Canadian columns to tatters. As the smoke lifts there are no columns left, only scattered groups of men retreating across a field strewn thick with the mangled dead. Out of twelve hundred men, the Canadians have lost five hundred. The charge of the forlorn twelve hundred at Chippewa against the artillery of four thousand Americans has been likened to the charge of the Light Brigade in the Russian War. Though the Canadians were defeated, their heroic defense had for a few days at least checked the advance of the invaders. And now the position of the beleaguered became desperate. At Fort George, at Queenston, and at Burlington Heights, the men were put on half rations.
Why did the Americans not advance at once against Queenston and Fort George? For three weeks they awaited Chauncey's fleet to attack from the water side, so the army could rush the fort from the land side; but Chauncey was ill and could not come, and the interval gave the hard-pressed Canadians their chance. Drummond comes from Kingston with four hundred fresh men; also he calls on the people to leave their farms and rally as volunteers to the last desperate fight. This increased his troops by another thousand, though many of the volunteers were mere boys, who scarcely knew how to hold a gun. Then, from a dozen signs, Drummond's practiced eye foresaw that a forward movement was being planned by the enemy without Chauncey's coöperation. All the American baggage was being ordered to rear. False attacks to draw off observation are made on Fort George outposts. American scouts are seen reconnoitering the Back Country. Drummond rightly guessed that the attack was being planned in one of two directions,—by rounding through the Back Country, either to fall in great numbers on Fort George, or to cut between the Canadian army of Hamilton region and of Niagara region, taking both battalions in the rear. From Fort George to Queenston Canadian troops are posted by Drummond, and where the road called Lundy's Lane runs from the Falls at right angles to the Back Country more battalions are ordered on guard against the advance of the invaders. Fitzgibbons, the famous scout, climbing to a tree on top of a high hill, sees the Americans, five thousand of them, gray coats, blue coats, white trousers, moving up from Chippewa towards Lundy's Lane. Quickly sixteen hundred Canadian troops under General Riall take possession of a hill fronting Lundy's Lane and the Falls. On the hill is a little brown church and an old-fashioned graveyard. In the midst of the graves the Canadian cannon are posted. Round the cemetery runs a stone wall screened by shrubbery, and on both sides of Lundy's Lane are endless orchards of cherry and peach and apples, the fruit just beginning to redden in the summer sun. Whether the enemy aim at Fort George or Hamilton, the Canadian position on Lundy's Lane must be passed and captured. As soon as Drummond had Fitzgibbons' report, he sent messengers galloping for Hercules Scott, who had been ordered to retreat to the lake, to come back to Lundy's Lane with his twelve hundred men. It may be imagined that the Americans guessed what message the horseman, in the slather of foam was bearing back to Hercules Scott; for they at once attacked the Canadians in Lundy's Lane with fury, to capture the guns on the hill before Hercules Scott's reënforcements could come.
It was now six o'clock in the evening of July 25, a sweltering hot night, and the troops on both sides were parched for water, though the roar of whole inland oceans of water could be heard pouring over the Falls of Niagara. As the Canadians had charged against the American guns at Chippewa, so now the Americans charged uphill against the guns of the Canadians, hurling their full strength against the enemy's center. Creeping under shelter of the cemetery stone walls, the bluecoats would fire a volley of musketry, jump over the fence, dash through the smoke, bayonet in hand, to capture the Canadian guns. Time, time again, the rush was dauntlessly made, and time, time again met by the withering blast. Before nine o'clock the attacking lines had lost more than five hundred men, and as many Canadians had fallen on the hill. The dead and mangled lay literally in heaps. As darkness deepened, lit only by the wan light of a fitful moon and the awesome flare of volley after volley, the fearful screams of the dying could be heard above the roar of the Falls and the whistle of cannon ball. Riall, the commander of the Canadians, had been wounded and captured. Of his sixteen hundred Canadians, Drummond had now left only one thousand, and he was himself bleeding from a deep wound in the neck. Half the American officers had been carried from the field injured, and still the command was repeated to rush the hill before Scott's reënforcements came, and each time the advancing line was driven back shattered and thinned, Canadians dashing in pursuit, cheering and whooping, till both armies were so inextricably mixed it was impossible to hear or heed commands. It was in one of these mêlées that Riall, the Canadian, found himself among the American lines and was captured to the wild and jubilant shouting of the boys in blue and gray. Pause fell at nine o'clock. The Americans were mustering for the final terrible rush. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and the darkness was inky. Then a shout from the Canadian side split the very welkin. Hercules Scott had arrived with his twelve hundred men on a run, breathless and tired from a march and countermarch of twenty miles. The Americans took up the yell; for fresh reserves had joined them, too, and Lundy's Lane became a bedlam of ear-shattering sounds,—heavy artillery wagons forcing up the hill at a gallop over dead and dying, bombs from the Canadian guns exploding in the darkness, horses taking fright and bolting from their riders, carrying American guns clear across the lines among the Canadians. A wild yell of triumph told that the Americans had captured the hill. For the next two hours it was a hand-to-hand fight in pitchy darkness. Drummond, the Englishman, could be heard right in the midst of the American lines, shouting, "Stick to them, men! stick to them! Don't give up! Don't turn! Stick to them! You 'll have it!" And American officers were found amidst Canadian battalions, shouting stentorian command: "Level low! Fire at their flashes! Watch the flash, and fire at their flashes!"
The Americans have captured the Canadian guns, but in the darkness they cannot carry them off. Each side thinks the other beaten, and neither will retreat. In the confusion it is impossible to rally the battalions, and men are attacking their own side by mistake. Both sides claim victory, and each is afraid to await what daylight may reveal; for it is no exaggeration to say that at the battle of Lundy's Lane the blood of one third of each side dyed the field. The Canadians as defenders of their own homes, fighting in the last ditch, dare not retire. The Americans, having more to risk in numbers, withdraw their troops at two in the morning. Of her twenty-eight hundred men Canada had lost nine hundred; and the American loss is as great. Too exhausted to retire, Drummond's men flung themselves on the ground and slept lying among the dead, heedless alike of the drenching rain that follows artillery fire, of the roaring cataract, of the groans from the wounded. Men awakened in the gray dawn to find themselves unrecognizable from blood and powder smoke, to find, in some cases, that the comrade whose coat they had shared as pillow lay cold in death by morning. While Drummond's men bury the dead in heaps and carry the wounded to Toronto, the invaders have retreated with their wounded to Fort Erie.
It now became the dauntless Drummond's aim to expel the enemy from Fort Erie. Five days after the battle of Lundy's Lane he had moved his camp halfway between Chippewa and Fort Erie; but in addition to its garrison of two thousand, Fort Erie is guarded by three armed schooners lying at anchor on the lake front. Captain Dobbs of Drummond's forces makes the first move. At the head of seventy-five men, he deploys far to the rear of the fort through the woods, carrying five flatboats over the forest trail eight miles, and on the night of the 12th of August slips out through the water mist towards the American schooners.
"Who goes?" challenges the ships' watchman.
"Provision boats from Buffalo," calls back the Canadian oarsman; and the rowboats pass round within the shadow of the schooner. A moment later the American ships are boarded. A trampling on deck calls the sailors aloft; but Dobbs has mastered two vessels before the fort wakes to life with a rush to the rescue.
Delay means almost inevitable loss to Drummond; for Prevost will send no more reënforcements, and the Americans are daily strengthening Fort Erie. Bastions of stone have been built. Outer batteries command approach to the walls, and along the narrow margin between the fort and the lake earthworks have been thrown up, mounted with cannon elbowing to the water's edge. Taking advantage of the elation over Dobbs' raid on the schooners, Drummond plans a night assault on the 15th of August. Rain had been falling in splashes all day. The fort trenches were swimming like rivers, and it may be mentioned that Drummond's camp was swimming too, boding ill for his men's health. One of the foreign regiments was to lead the assault round by the lake side, while Drummond and his nephew rushed the bastions. It will be remembered these foreign regiments of Napoleonic wars were composed of the offscourings of Europe. The fighters were to depend "on bayonet alone, giving no quarter." Splashing along the rain-soaked road in silence and darkness, scaling ladders over shoulders, bayonets in hand, the foreign troops came to the earthwork elbowing out into the lake. This was passed by the men wading out in the lake to their chins; but the noise was overheard by the fort sentry, and a perfect blaze of musketry shattered the darkness and drove the mercenaries back pellmell, bellowing with terror. A few of the English and Canadian troops pressed forward, only to find that they could not reach within ladder distance of the walls at all, for spiked trees had been placed above the trenches in a perfect crisscross hurdle of sharpened ends. In old letters of the period one reads how the trenches were literally heaped with a jumbled mass of the dead. The other attacking columns fared almost as badly. One of the bastions had been entered by the cannon embrasures, Drummond, Junior, shouting to "give no quarter—give no quarter," when, from the cross firing in the courtyards, the powder magazine below this bastion was set on fire, and exploded with a terrific crash, killing the assailants almost to a man. In all,—killed, wounded, missing,—the assault cost Drummond's army nine hundred men. September proved a rainy month. Drummond's camp became almost a marsh, and the health of the troops compelled a move to higher ground. It was then the Americans sallied out in assault. Neither side could claim victory, but the skirmish cost each army more than five hundred men. Sir James Yeo now comes sailing up Lake Ontario with some of the sixteen thousand troops sent from England. The weather became unfavorable to movement on either side,—rain and sleet continuously. Drummond foresaw that the season would compel the abandonment of Fort Erie, and on November 5, a scout came in with word that the invaders had crossed to the American side and Fort Erie had been blown up.
While Drummond is fighting for the very life of Canada along the Niagara frontier, the war continues in desultory fashion elsewhere. Kentucky riflemen raid western Ontario from Detroit to Port Dover. Up on the lakes is a story of the war that reads like a page from border raiders. American fur traders destroy Sault Ste. Marie. Canadian fur traders retaliate by swooping on Mississippi fur posts. Out on the Pacific Coast an English gunboat has captured John Jacob Astor's fur post on the Columbia; and now in the fall of 1814 the Northwest Fur Company of Montreal are conveying from Astor's fort the furs, worth millions of dollars, in canoes across the Upper Lakes to Ottawa River. Two armed American schooners, hiding on the north shore of Lake Huron, lie in wait for the gay raiders of the Northwest Company; but at the Sault the Nor'west voyageurs get wind of the danger. They, in turn, hide their canoes in some of the blue coves of the north shore. Then, stealing out at night, in canoes with muffled paddles, the Nor'westers come on one schooner while the watch is asleep. They board her, bayonet the crew, "pinion some of the wounded to the decks," and with the captured vessel sidle up to the other vessel, and, before she is aware of the new masters on board, have captured her too. Then, scalps flaunting at the prows of their canoes, the Nor'west fur traders gayly go their way. Down at Lake Champlain occurs the great fiasco of the war,—the blot on Canada's escutcheon. Prevost with ten thousand reënforcements has been ordered by the English Governor to proceed from Montreal against the Americans by both water and land. While an English fleet attacks the Americans, Prevost is to lead the troops against Plattsburg. But the Canadian fleet meets terrible disaster. The commander is killed by a rebounding cannon ball just as the action begins; and twelve of the gunboats manned by the hired foreigners desert en masse. The rest of the fleet is literally destroyed. Instead of seconding attack by a battle on land, Prevost sits behind his trenches waiting for the little fleet to win the battle for him; and when the fleet is defeated, Prevost's courage sinks with the sinking ships. He gathers up his troops and retreats in a scare of haste,—such a fright of unseemly, unsoldierly haste that nearly one thousand of his soldiers desert in sheer disgust. Down at Nova Scotia are raid and counter-raid too. The British and American fleets wage fierce war that is not part of Canada's story; but in the contest the public buildings of Washington are burned in retaliation for the burning of Newark; and down at New Orleans the English suffer a crushing defeat.
Meanwhile the peace commissioners have been at work; and the war that ought never to have taken place, that settled not one jot of the dispute which caused it, was closed by the Treaty of Ghent, Christmas Eve of 1814. All captured forts, all plunder, all prisoners, are to be restored. Michilimackinac and Fort Niagara and Astoria on the Columbia go back to the United States; but of "impressment" and "right of search" and "embargo of neutrals" not a word. The waste of life and happiness accomplished not a feather's weight unless it were the lesson of the criminal folly of a war between nations akin in aim and speech and blood.
Selkirk's colony—Troubles on passage—Winter on the bay—First winter on Red River—First conflict—Nor'westers rally to defense—The storm gathers—The Nor'westers victorious—Selkirk to the rescue—Banditti warfare in Athabasca—In Athabasca—Robertson escapes—Frobisher's death—The Pacific empire—Secede from Oregon
When Sir Alexander MacKenzie, the discoverer, went home to retire on an estate in Scotland, he found the young nobleman and philanthropist, Lord Selkirk, keenly interested in accounts of vast, new, unpeopled lands, which lay beyond the Great Lakes. A change in the system of farming, which dispossessed small farmers to turn the tenantries into sheep runs, had caused terrible poverty in Scotland at this period. Here in Scotland were people starving for want of land. There in America were lands idle for lack of people. Selkirk had already sent out some colonists to the Lake St. Clair region of Ontario and to Prince Edward Island, but what he heard from MacKenzie turned his attention to the new empire of the prairie. Then in Montreal, where he had been dined and wined by the Northwest Company's "Beaver Club," he had heard still more of this vast new land, of its wealth of furs, of its untimbered fields, where man had but to put in the plowshare to sow his crop. The one great obstruction to settlement there would be the claims of the Hudson's Bay Company to exclusive monopoly of the country; but as Selkirk listened to the descriptions of the Red River Valley given by Colin Robertson, who had been dismissed by the Nor'westers, he thought he saw a way of overcoming all difficulties which the fur traders could put in the way of settlement.
Owing to competition Hudson's Bay stock had fallen from two hundred and fifty to fifty pounds sterling a share. On returning to Scotland Lord Selkirk had begun buying up Hudson's Bay stock in the market, along with Sir Alexander MacKenzie; but when MacKenzie learned that Selkirk's object was colonization first, profits second, he broke in violent anger from the partnership in speculation, and besought William MacGillivray to go on the open market and buy against Selkirk to defeat the plans for settlement. What with shares owned by his wife's family of Colville-Wedderburns, and those he had himself purchased, Selkirk now owned a controlling interest in the Hudson's Bay Company.
Early in 1811 the Company deeds to Lord Selkirk the country of Red River Valley, exceeding in area the British Isles and extending, through the ignorance of its donors, far south into American territory. Colin Robertson, the former Nor'wester, who first interested Selkirk in Red River, has meanwhile been gathering together a party of colonists. Miles MacDonell, retired from the Glengarry Regiment, has been appointed by Selkirk governor of the new colony.
What of the Nor'westers while these projects went forward? Writes MacGillivray from London, where he has been stirring up enmity to Selkirk's project, "Selkirk must be driven to abandon his project at any cost, for his colony would prove utterly destructive of our fur trade." How he purposed doing this will be seen. Writes Selkirk to the governor of his colony, Miles MacDonell: "The Northwest Company must be compelled to quit my lands. If they refuse, they must be treated as poachers." Selkirk believed that the Hudson's Bay Company charter to the Great Northwest was legal and valid. He believed that the vast territory granted to him was legally his own as much as his parks in Scotland. He believed that he possessed the same right to expel intruders on this territory as to drive poachers from his own Scotch parks. It was the spirit of feudalism. As for the Nor'westers, let us look at their rights. They disputed that the charter of the Hudson's Bay Company applied beyond the bounds of Hudson Bay. Even if it did so apply, they pointed out that by the terms of the charter it applied only to lands not possessed by any other Christian power; and who would dispute that French fur traders and Nor'westers, as their successors, had ascended the streams of the interior long before the Hudson's Bay men? It was the spirit of democracy. It needed no prophet to foresee when these two sets of claims came together there would be a violent clash.
It is evening in the little harbor of Stornoway, off the Hebrides, north of Scotland, July 25, 1811. Waning midsummer has begun to shorten the long days; and lying at anchor in the twilight a few yards offshore are the three Hudson's Bay Company boats, outward bound. For a week the quiet little fishing hamlet has been in a turmoil, for Governor Miles MacDonell and Colin Robertson have ordered the Selkirk settlers here—129 of them, 70 farmers, 59 clerks—to join the Hudson's Bay boats as they swing out westward on their far cruise to the north, and the atmosphere has literally been on fire with vexations created by spies of the Northwest Company. In the first place, as the settlers wait for the ships coming up from London, trouble makers pass from group to group scattering a miserable little sheet called "The Highlander," warning "the deluded people" against going to "a polar land of Indian hostiles." Besides, dark hints are uttered that the settlers are not wanted for colonists at all, but for armed battalions to fight the Nor'westers for the Hudson's Bay Company, in proof whereof the prophets of evil point ominously to the cannon and munitions of war on board the three old fur boats. Then there is too much whisky afloat in Stornoway that week. Settlers are taken ashore and farewelled and farewelled and farewelled till unable to find their way down to the rowboats, and then they are easily frightened into abandoning the risky venture altogether. On the settlers who have come as clerks to the Company Governor MacDonell can keep a strong hand, for they have been paid their wages in advance and are seized if they attempt to desert. Then the excise officer here is a friend of the Nor'westers, and he creates endless trouble rowing round and round the boats, bawling … bawling out … to know "if all who are embarking are going of their own free will," till the ship's hands, looking over decks, become so exasperated they heave a cannon ball over rails, which goes splash through the bottom of the harbor officer's rowboat and sends him cursing ashore to dispatch a challenge for a duel to Governor MacDonell. MacDonell sees plainly that if he is to have any colonists left, he must sail at once. Anchors up and sails out at eleven that night, the ships glide from shore so unexpectedly that one faint-heart, desperately resolved on flight, has to jump overboard and swim ashore, while two other settlers, who have been lingering over farewells, must be rowed across harbor by Colin Robertson to catch the departing ships. Then Robertson is back on the wharf trumpeting a last cheer through his funneled hands. The Highlanders on decks lean over the vessel railings waving their bonnets. The Glasgow and Dublin lads indentured as clerks give a last huzza, and the Selkirk settlers are off for their Promised Land.
As long ago Cartier's first colonists to the St. Lawrence had their mettle tested by tempestuous weather and pioneer hardships, so now the first colonists to the Great Northwest must meet the challenge that fate throws down to all who leave the beaten path. Though the season was late, the weather was extraordinarily stormy. Sixty-one days the passage lasted, the tubby old fur ships lying water-logged, rolling to the angry sea. MacDonell was furious that colonists had been risked on such unseaworthy craft, but those old fur-ship captains, with fifty years ice battling to their credit, probably knew their business better than MacDonell. The fur ships had not been built for speed and comfort, but for cargoes and safety, and when storms came they simply lowered sails, turned tails to the wind, and rolled till the gale had passed, to the prolonged woe of the Highland landsmen, who for the first time suffered seasick pangs. Then, when Governor MacDonell attempted drills to pass the time, he made the discovery that seditious talk had gone the rounds of the deck. "The Hudson's Bay had no right to this country." "The Nor'westers owned that country." "The Hudson's Bay could n't compel any man to drill and fight." Selkirk could not give clear deed to their "lands," and much more to the same effect, all of which proved that some Nor'wester agent in disguise had been busy on board.
September 24, amid falling snow and biting frost, the ships anchored at Five Fathom Hole off York Factory, Port Nelson.
The Selkirk settlers had been sixty-one days on board, and they were still a year away from their Promised Land. Champlain's colonists of Acadia and Quebec had come to anchorage on a land set like a jewel amid silver waters and green hills, but the Selkirk settlers have as yet seen only rocks barren of verdure as a billiard ball, vales amidst the domed hills of Hudson Straits, dank with muskeg, and silent as the very realms of death itself, but for the flacker of wild fowl, the roaring of the floundering walrus herds, or the lonely tinkling of mountain streams running from the ice fields to the mossy valleys bordering the northern sea. It needed a robust hope, or the blind faith of an almost religious zeal, to penetrate the future and see beyond these sterile shores the Promised Land, where homes were to be built, and plenty to abound. If pioneer struggles leave a something in the blood of the race that makes for national strength and permanency, the difference between the home finding of the West and the home finding of the East is worth noting.
There were, of course, no preparations for the colonists at York Fort, for the factor could not know they were coming, or anything of Selkirk's plans, till the annual ships arrived. On the chance of finding better hunting farther from the fort, MacDonell withdrew his people from Hayes River, north across the marsh to a sheltered bank of the River Nelson. Winter had set in early. A whooping blizzard met the pilgrims as they marched along an Indian trail through the brushwood. There is a legend of Miles MacDonell, the governor, becoming benighted between York Fort and Nelson River, and losing his way in the storm. According to the story, he beat about the brushwood for twenty-four hours before he regained his bearings. Rude huts of rough timber and thatch roof with logs extemporized for berths and benches were knocked up for wintering quarters on Nelson River, and the next nine months were passed hunting deer for store of provisions, and building flatboats to ascend the interior. All winter a mutinous spirit was at work among the young clerks, which MacDonell, no doubt, ascribed to the machinations of Nor'westers; but the chief factor quickly quelled mutiny by cutting off supplies, and all hands were ready to proceed when the fur brigades set out for the interior on the 21st of June, 1812.
Up Hayes River, up the whole length of Winnipeg Lake, then in August the flatboats are ascending the muddy current of Red River, through what is now Manitoba, and for the first time the people see their Promised Land. High banks fringed with maple and oak line the river at what is now Selkirk. Then the cliffs lower, and through the woods are broken gleams of the rolling prairie intersected by ravines, stretching far as eye can see, where sky and earth meet. From the lateness of the season one can guess that the river was low at the bowlder reach known as St. Andrew's Rapids, and that while the boats were tracked upstream the people would disembark and walk along the Indian trails of the west bank. There was no Fort Garry near the rapids, as a few years later. Buffalo-skin tepees alone broke the endless sweep of russet prairie and sky, clear swimming blue as the purest lake. Then the people are back aboard, laboring hard at the oar now, for they know they are nearing the end of their long pilgrimage. The river banks rise higher. Then they drop gradually to the flats now known as Point Douglas. Another bend in the sinuous red current, looping and curving and circling fantastically through the prairie, and the Selkirk settlers are in full view of the old Cree graveyard,—bodies swathed in skins on scaffolding,—down at the junction of the Assiniboine. Hard by they see the towered bastions of the Northwest Company's post, Fort Gibraltar. Somewhere between what are known to-day as Broadway Bridge and Point Douglas, the Selkirk settlers land on the west side. Chief Peguis and his Cree warriors ride wonderingly among the white-faced newcomers, marveling at men who have crossed the Great Waters "to dig gardens and work land." The barracks knocked up hastily is known after Selkirk's family name as Fort Douglas; but the store of deer meat has been exhausted, and the colonists are on the verge of a second winter. They at once join the Plain Rangers, or Bois Brulés (Burnt Wood Runners), half-breed descendants of French and Nor'west fur traders, who have become retainers of the Montreal Company. With them the Selkirk settlers proceed south to Pembina and the Boundary to hunt buffalo. No instructions had yet come to Red River of the Northwest Company's hostility to the colony, and the lonely Scotch clerks of Fort Gibraltar were glad to welcome men who spoke their own Highland tongue. Volumes might be written of this, the colonists' first year in their Promised Land: how the rude Plain Rangers conveyed them to the buffalo hunt in their creaking Red River carts,—carts made entirely of wood, hub, tire, axle, and all, or else on loaned ponies; how when storm came the white settlers were welcomed to the huts and skin tents of the French half-breeds, given food and buffalo blankets; how many a young Highlander came to grief in the wild stampede of his first buffalo hunt; how when the hunters returned to Fort Gibraltar (Winnipeg), on Red River, with store enough of pemmican for all the fur posts of the Nor'westers, many a wild happy winter night was passed dancing mad Indian jigs to the piping of the Highland piper and the crazy scraping of some Frenchman's fiddle; how when morning came, in a gray dawn of smoking frost mist, a long line of the colonists could be seen winding along the ice of Red River home to Fort Douglas, Piper Green or Hector McLean leading the way, still prancing and blowing a proud national air; how when spring opened, ten-acre plots were assigned to each settler, close to the fort at what were known as the Colony Buildings, and one hundred-acre farms farther down the river. All this and more are part of the story of the coming of the first colonists to the Great Northwest. The very autumn that the first settlers had reached Red River in 1812 more colonists had arrived on the boats at Hudson Bay. These did not reach Red River till October of 1812 and the spring of 1813. By 1813, and on till 1817, more colonists yearly came. The story of each year, with its plot and counterplot, I have told elsewhere. Spite of Nor'westers' threats, spite of the fact there would be no market for the colonists when they had succeeded in transforming wilderness prairie into farms, Selkirk's mad dream of empire seemed to be succeeding.
The cardinal mistake in the contest between Hudson's Bay Company and Nor'westers, between feudalism and democracy, was now committed by the governor of the colony, Miles MacDonell. The year 1813 had proved poor for the buffalo hunters. Large numbers of colonists were coming, and provisions were likely to be scarce. Also, note it well, while the War of 1812 did not cut off supplies through Hudson Bay to the English Company, it did threaten access to the West by the Great Lakes, and cut off all supplies by way of Detroit and Lake Huron for the Nor'westers. Was MacDonell scoring a point against the Nor'westers, when they were at a disadvantage? Who can answer? Selkirk had ordered him to expel the Nor'westers from his lands, and if the violent contest had not begun in this way, it was bound to come in another. What MacDonell did was issue a proclamation in January of 1814, forbidding taking provisions from Selkirk's territory of Assiniboia. It practically meant that the Plain Rangers must not hunt buffalo in the limits of modern Manitoba, and must not sell supplies to the Nor'westers. It also meant that all the upper posts of the Nor'westers—the fur posts of Athabasca and British Columbia, which depended on pemmican for food—would be without adequate provisions. The Plain Rangers were enraged beyond words, and doubly outraged when some Hudson's Bay men began seizing buffalo meat at Pembina River, which was beyond the limits of Selkirk's territory. Writes Peter Fidler, one of the Hudson's Bay factors, "If MacDonell only perseveres, he will starve the Nor westers out."
One can guess the anger in the annual meeting of the Nor'westers at Fort William in July of 1814. Like generals on field of war they laid out their campaign. Duncan Cameron, a United Empire Loyalist officer of the 1812 War, is to don his red regimentals and proceed to Red River, where his knowledge of the Gaelic tongue may be trusted to win over Selkirk settlers. "Nothing but the complete downfall of the colony will satisfy some," wrote one of the fiery Nor'westers to a brother officer. Such was the mood of the Nor'westers when they came back from their annual meeting on Lake Superior to Red River, and MacDonell fanned this mood to dangerous fury by threatening to burn the Nor'westers' forts to the ground unless they moved from Selkirk's territory. For the present Duncan Cameron contents himself with striking up a warm friendship with the Highlanders of the settlement and offering to transport two hundred of them free of cost to Eastern Canada. MacDonell seizes still more provisions from northwest forts. Cameron, the Nor'wester, comes back from the annual meeting of 1815 still more bellicose. He carries the warrant to arrest Governor Miles MacDonell for the seizure of those provisions. MacDonell, safe behind the palisades of Fort Douglas, laughs the warrant to scorn; but it is another matter when the Plain Rangers ride across the prairie from Fort Gibraltar armed, and pour such hot shot into Fort Douglas that the colonists, frenzied with fear, huddle to the fort for shelter. To insure the safety of his colonists, MacDonell surrenders to the Nor'westers and is sent to Eastern Canada for a trial which never takes place. No sooner has Governor MacDonell been expelled than Cuthbert Grant, warden of the Plain Rangers, rides over to the colony and warns the colonists to flee for their lives, from Indians enraged at "these land workers spoiling the hunting fields." What the Indians thought of this defense of their rights is not stated. They were silent and unacting witnesses of the unedifying spectacle of white men ready to fly at each other's throats. It was too late for the colonists to reach Hudson Bay in time for the annual ships of 1815, so the houseless people dispersed amid the forests of Lake Winnipeg, where they could be certain of at least fish for food.
Word of the two hundred settlers having been moved from Red River by the Nor'westers, of MacDonell's forcible expulsion, and of the dispersion of the rest of the colony had, of course, been sent to Selkirk and his agents in both Montreal and London. Swift retaliation is prepared. Colin Robertson, who speaks French like a Canadian and knows all the Nor'west voyageurs of the St. Lawrence, is sent to gather up two hundred French boatmen under the very noses of the Nor'westers at Montreal. With these Robertson is to invade the far-famed Athabasca, whence come the best furs, the very heart of the Nor'westers' stamping ground. Robert Semple is appointed governor of the colony on Red River, with instructions to resist the aggressions of the Nor'westers even to the point of "a shock that may be felt from Montreal to Athabasca." Selkirk himself comes to Canada to interview the Governor General about military forces to protect his colony.
Robertson, with his two hundred voyageurs for Athabasca, follows the old Ottawa trail of the French explorers, from the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes, and from the Great Lakes to Red River by way of Winnipeg Lake. Whom does he find on the shores of the lake but Selkirk's dispersed colonists! Ordering John Clarke, an old campaigner of Astor's company on the Columbia, to lead the two hundred French voyageurs on up to Athabasca, Colin Robertson rallies the colonists together and leads them back to Red River for the winter of 1815-1816. Feeling sure that he had destroyed Selkirk's scheme root and branch, Cameron has remained at Fort Gibraltar with only a few men, when back to the field comes Robertson, stormy, capable, robust, red-blooded, fearless, breathing vengeance on Selkirk's foes.