The Scot in British North America

Preface

. tHE lamented death of the author, whose clear, incisive style, vigorous thought, and painstaking research, have imparted so much interest to the preceding pages, leaving the manuscript of the concluding pages of this volume incomplete, renders apology superfluous for all delay in presenting it to the public. Another hand has completed the unfinished task with the honest endeavour to follow, as far as possible, the lines laid down by the author. A generous, and fair-minded public, will make due allowance for the difficulty of undertaking, at short notice, to deal with a subject demanding accurate historical and geographical knowledge and exactness of statement to do even a measure of justice to the work. It is eminently fit that a book of the nature of the " Scot in British North America " should include some notice, how ever fragmentary and imperfect, of the writer, whose early decease has left such a void in the ranks of Canadian literature.

The personal details that, had he lived, the modesty which was so conspicuous a feature in his character, would have prevented his giving, may now appropriately be supplied. William J. Rattray was born in London, England, about the year 1835, his father being a Scot and his mother English. The family came to Canada about the year 1848, settling in Toronto, where Mr. Rattray, Senr., was, for many years engaged in trade, being highly respected as a man and a citizen. William J. Rattray entered Toronto University about the year 1854, and devoted himself earnestly to study

PREFACE.

. IV especially in the department of metaphysics and philosophy. He soon developed rare intellectual gifts as a profound and acute reasoner. He became Prize Speaker and President of the Literary Society, and his clear and thoughtful utterances soon won him a brilliant reputation among the young men of his time. On graduating he won the gold medal in Mental Science. Mr. Rattray was for many years before his death connected with the press of Toronto, his most noteworthy work being done on the staff of the Toronto Mail. A series of articles which appeared weekly during a period extending over several years, dealing with the conflict between agnosticism in its various forms and revealed religion, excited much attention and were greatly admired by a wide circle of readers. They presented the orthodox side of the question with much force and ability.

Mr. Rattray's intellect was an unusually active one. His brilliant natural faculties were cultivated by assiduous study and constant reflection. Essentially a many-sided man intellectually, he displayed equal power and grasp of his subject in dealing with current political and social topics, as in grappling with the deeper problems of life and eternity, which, of late years, engrossed so much of his thoughts. His style was notable for its lucidity, smoothness, and finish, which made everything he wrote readable, and fascinated even where it did not convince. Personally, Mr. Rattray was one of the most loveable of men and though, owing to a somewhat retiring disposition, his circle of intimate friends was hot wide, there were many who, having but a slight and passing acquaintance with him, felt a pang of sincere sorrow at his' untimely death.

He died at Toronto on the 26th of September, 1883, after an illness, the long and insiduous approaches of which had considerably impaired his customary mental force. The readers of the " Scot in British North America " can best realize how great a loss Canadian literature has sustained. December 13th 1883. TABLE OF CONTENTS Vol. IV. PAGE. Preface iii Part v. the scot in the north-west. Chap. I. The Country and its early History 9;U Chap. II. British Fur-hunting, and Settlement 950 Chap. III. The Rival Companies and Lord Selkirk 965 Chap. IV. The Company and Colonization 1014 Chap. V. The Canadian Pacific Railway 1060 Chap. VI. The Influx of Settlement 1081 Chap. VII British Columbia 1101 Chap. VIII. Journalism and Literature 1122 Chap. IX. Addenda The following are some of the works consulted in the preperation of this volume : Parkman's The Old Regime in Canada ; Parkman's Frontenac ; Garneau's History of Can ada ; Sir Alexander Mackenzie's General History of the Fur Trade ; Le Moine's Maple Leaves ; Ballantyne's Hudson Bay ; Alex.

Ross's The Red River Settlement ; Hargrave's Red River ; Hamilton's The Prairie Province ; Morgan's Celebrated Canadians ; Macdonell's Narrative of Transac tions in the Red River Country ; Statement respecting the Earl of Selkirk's Settlement ; Murray's British America ; Alex. Rattray's Vancouver Island and British Columbia; Sir George Simpson's Overland Journey round the World; Withrow's Popular History of Canada ; Begg's History of the Red River Rebellion ; Begg's Creation of Manitoba ; The Clerical Guide and Churchman's Directory ; Ma coun's Manitoba and the Great North-West ; Bryce's Manitoba, Its Infancy, Growth, and Present Condition; Grant's Ocean to Ocean ; Macfie's Vancouver Island and British Columbia ; Dent's Canadian Portrait Gallery ; Mac donald's British Columbia ; A Guide to British Columbia ; John Gait's Autobiography; The Canadian Parliamentary Companion from 1S72 to 1883 ; Chambers' Encyclopedia ; Reports of the Chief Engineer of the Canadian Pacific Rail way ; &c. Owing to Mr. Rattray's death it is impossible to supply a complete list of the books consulted, or to give more than a general acknowledgement of the many favours received from the friends who have rendered valuable assistance in obtaining information.

PART V. THE SCOT IN THE NORTH-WEST CHAPTER

I. the country and its early history. fTRETCHING from ocean to ocean, with " cold and pitiless" Labrador at the eastern extremity, and Vancouver Island for its western outpost, lies a broad belt of land, bounded on the south by Quebec, Ontario and the United States, but unlimited northward, save by the icy ramparts which encompass the Polar Sea. All this vast expanse is British territory and forms part and parcel of the Dominion of Canada. Of the eastern portion little will require to be said, except in so far as the Hudson Bay Company's trading operations may invite notice. It is almost uniformly bleak and barren, whatever may be its mineral value, and is historically interesting only because it has afforded scope for the adventurous trapper and huntsman. It is with the North-West that we have now chiefly to do, including in that term all that region lying from James Bay to the Pacific.

It will be found that, as a field for ex ploration, trade and settlement, this broad domain has claims upon the consideration of Britons of which the vast majority of them have only the feeblest conception. The literature accumulated upon the subject is voluminous enough certainly ; and yet it is not too much to affirm that the surpass ing value and importance of this noble possession of the Crown are far from being appreciated not only in Europe, but even in the older Provinces of the Dominion. To under value what is but partially and imperfectly known, especially if it be distant or demand energy and self-denial to secure, has been a characteristic of many nations otherwise suffi ciently diverse in their tempers and tendencies. It is, so to speak, the wisdom of ignorance, quickened into contempt by the languid energy of indolence and satiety.

The cynical Frenchman who consoled Louis XV. for the loss of New France by the sneer at those " few arpents of snow," represented a large class not yet extinct. There are not a few men now who are not much better than he, the only difference being that they laugh at his ignorance, and at the same time re peat it along with the sneer, when they speak of the Sas katchewan Valley. The " arpents " are not few, farther west than the courtier dreamed of, but they are only " arpents of snow " after all. It was Lord Salisbury, if we mistake not, who uttered some pungent remarks concerning the right and wrong use of maps a few years ago. There is need of a similar cau tion otherwhere than in Eastern concerns. To some men it would appear to be not merely inexplicable, but prepos terous, that the climate and fruitfulness of a continent, throughout its entire breadth should depend upon anything except the parallels of latitude.

They are astonished, if not incredulous, when told that the isothermal line which passes below the city of Quebec reaches the Pacific Ocean at almost the sixtieth degree of north latitude, and therefore, that all their preconceptions regarding the North-West are far astray. In European countries, especially in the British Isles, there is no room for tracing these broad climatic laws. It seems startling, therefore, to be told that in and about the Pro vince of Manitoba, seven hundred miles north of Toronto, as fine, if not finer, wheat is grown than in any part of the rich peninsula of Ontario ; and further, that this fertile breadth of one hundred miles, hemmed in between the northern lakes and the boundary line, expands, like the cornucopia, as it stretches to the Rocky Mountains, until it measures three or four hundred miles.

Even north of that fertile belt, about far-distant Hudson Bay, " houses " and " factories," cereals are cultivated regularly and with assured success. Another point deserves notice. It is constantly urged by the pessimists that, whatever the natural advantages of the North-West may be, it can never compete with the Ameri can line of overland travel, either for traffic or permanent settlement. Now, in the first place, there is the superiority of the country itself to be taken into account. The Ameri can Desert is almost entirely south of the boundary line ; in fact it only impinges slightly upon British territory and need not be taken into account. There is no salt solitude on the banks of the Assiniboine, the Saskatchewan, or any of the other generous streams which water our central Ame rica.

Broad prairie, navigable waters — lake and river — and what our neighbours lack, coal almost the entire way from Manitoba to Victoria. The mineral wealth of the North- West has only been vaguely guessed at ; but it is known that not only in the " fertile belt," but far north, upon the Mackenzie River, even beyond the Arctic Circle, gold, iron, copper, lead, and coal have been found in exhaustless abun dance. There is another advantage in the climate, notwithstanding the fact that the extremes of heat and cold exceed those of the older Provinces, though not those of Minnesota. The atmosphere is dry, and the temperature in any given season more equable than in other parts of the Dominion. The snow-fall is less heavj', and there is not usually that distressing interchange of frost and thaw, ice and slush, which are so trying elsewhere.

Those who have passed the winter in the west as well as the east, express their decided preference for the climate of the former. So lightly does the icy finger of the north press upon the fertile country that horses and cattle are often pastured all the winter upon the long grass on the prairie, without shelter and yet with out risk. The facilities for the construction of a transcontinental railway are as much in our favour as the fertility and well-watered character of the land. Most of the country is comparatively level, or, at worst, rolling prairie, and the engineering difficulties are few, until the Rocky Mountains are reached. Even there, the passes are at a lower elevation, the snows less threatening, and the work necessarily less expensive. Add to this, that, through this rich and fertile region, lies the shortest route from Europe to China and Japan, and the reader may form some conception of the glorious future in store for the Canadian North-West.

The pioneers in discovery here were, of course, the French of Old Canada ; but it is to Scotsmen especially, that the world owes the complete exploration of the tenitory, and the first efforts put forth for its settlement and civilization under the British regime. The successors of Champlain, La Salle, Marquette, Joliet, and De La Verendrye — the first white man to lift his eyes upon the snow-tipped summits of the Rocky Mountains — were almost all of them Scots. Some indications of Scottish energy are embalmed in the maps and charts of the country ; yet they inadequately represent the courage and enterprise displayed in the early days by those avant-couriers of trade and exploration. The river nomenclature is usually supposed to afford the best indication of the race earliest at work in any country ; and, if that be taken as a mark of Scotch priority, the evi dence is conclusive.

The Mackenzie River — longer than the St. Lawrence, including its great chain of lakes — traced by him whose name it bears to the delta through which it struggles, by various mouths, into the frozen sea, the Fraser River of British Columbia, the Simpson and the Finlay — ■ all afford silent testimony to the indomitable courage and enterprise of the North Briton. Whatever future — and it must needs be a glorious one — awaits this noble British domain, in the past certainly, all the rough, and much that proved thankless, work was accomplished by the stout arm, the strong will, and the hard head of the Scot. Multitudes of diverse nationalities will pour upon those fertile plains, and enjoy the fruits of the Scotsman's labours, without thinking of their benefactor ; still, to the eye of the histo rian, or even the grateful patriot, in centuries to come, the trials and struggles of the past will assume their fair pro portions in any panorama of this greater Scotland in the North American continent.

During the French period which the graphic pen of Mr. Parkman, for the first time, introduced to the notice of the English reader — the fur trade was the be-all and the end-all of colonization. It was the pursuit of skins and peltries of all sorts that more than anything else, fomented the natural antagonism between French and English colonies, aggra vated the horrors of Indian tribal warfare, and eventually brought about — first, the death-struggle between the powers in the North, and, secondly, by necessary sequence, though indirectly, the American Revolution.* The great aim of the Colonial Governors, both English and French, was to detach the Indian tribes from alliance with their national rivals. When the French were not fighting the Iroquois of the Brit ish colonies, they were intriguing with them, though for the most part unsuccessfully.

The English, on the other hand, strove to destroy the French trade by seducing or crushing the Hurons and Ottawas, who not only served the masters of New France, but commanded their communications with the North-West, both by the Ottawa and the Upper Lakes, and at Michillimackinac (now Mackinaw), the junction of Lakes Huron and Michigan, by the frontier route. It was the settled policy of the French rulers to hem in the British colonies by Gallic settlements on all sides, and if they could not drive them off the continent, at least to concede only a strip of territory, upon the Atlantic. It was with this * "We come now to a trade far more important than all the rest together, one which absorbed the enterprise of the colony, drained the life sap from other branches of com merce, ai d, even more than a vicious system of government, kept them in a state of chronic debility— the hardy, adventurous, lawless, fascinating fur trade.

In the eighteenth century Canada exported a moderate quantity of timber, wheat, the herb called ginseng, and a few other commodities ; but from first to last she lived chiefly on beaver-skins. The government tried without ceasing to control and regulate this traffic ; but it never succeeded. Park man : The Old Regime in Canada, p. 303. object that the heroic La Salle, Father Marquette and other daring explorers, wandered far west and north and south. Fort du Quesne on the Ohio, memorable as the scene of Braddock's defeat, was only one of the cordon of strongholds designed to strangle British North American colonization in its infancy. The claim set up by Frontenac, Denonville and other French Viceroys to both shores of the great lakes, and all the territory watered by streams flowing into them, was prompted by no mere lust of national aggrandizement in the way of land, but by a settled determination to secure and maintain possession of the great water highways of the continent.

All those historical episodes, which give so romantic a tinge and shed so sombre an interest over the chronicles of of New France — the surprises, the heroisms, the patience, the endurance and the sufferings of soldier, priest, religieuse and habitan — were occasioned by the Indian intrigues and counter-intrigues in the great struggle for the mastery in trade competition. The mother countries might be at peace, and yet covert, and often open, war was waged between the colonies. Even during the later Stuart epoch, when the honour and fortunes of England were at the lowest ebb, the royal pensioners of France who sat on the throne could not restrain the impetuosity of the Virginia, New York, and New England colonists. The struggle between Denonville and Gov. Dongan of New York may serve to illustrate the internecine conflict which never ceased until the red cross of St. George floated over the castle of St. Louis.

The Mar quis de Denonville, with his predecessor the irascible De la Barre, filled up the space between the two vice-royalties of Frontenac. His term almost exactly coincided with the reign of James II. in England. He appears to have been a pious, well-meaning ruler, not without considerable abilities and certainly with strong patriotic feelings. Colonel Thomas Dongan, an Irishman and nephew of the redoutable Earl of Tyrconnel, was a Catholic, and yet no friend either to the Jesuits or the French. He had been strictly enjoined, both by Charles and James, to concede every French demand, to give no countenance to the Iroquois or any Indian tribe hostile to the French ; and yet, either from choice or necessity, he violated his instructions in every particular. The Dutch and English settlers were determined to assert their claims to a share in the lucrative fur-trade in the North- West.

As this traffic could not be carried on without con tracting Indian alliances, of which the French were naturally jealous, conflict was inevitable under any circumstances. The Iroquois were not merely friends of both races, but even aspired to hold the balance of power between them. Don gan was, perhaps unjustly, accused of having incited the Five (or Six) Nation Indians to war ; unhappily, as the whole history shows, they stood in no need of prompting. The scalping-knife was always ready whetted ; it was only to sing the war-dance, brandish the tomahawk, and away to the harvest of death. The French had an astute agent in the Jesuit Lamberville, but they made little progress south of the Lakes. The chief, " Big Mouth," as represented in Park man's graphic narrative* was wily enough to palter with the bluff La Barre, and, in spite of his plausible and almost eloquent harangues, little satisfaction was obtained by the * Parkman : Frontenac, p. 109, French.

The old soldier failed and was succeeded by Den onville, who, according to Saint Vallicr, always had the Psalms of David in his hands. The Church, no less than the State, hoped much from his piety and administrative skill. He was a soldier of long service, but he had to face a difficult and trying crisis with an empty exchequer and a mere handful of troops. The people of New France were numerically inferior to those of New England and New York ; the flower of their youth were scouring the woods, huckstering with the Indians and worse ; and above all there was a government which was despotic without effec tive power, strong where it might have been mild, and weak where it ought to have been strong. And yet the task was laid upon Denonville to decide in France's favour the deadly struggle between the French and English colonies.* Denonville was not disposed to resort to any means which his religious spirit did not sanction.

He was a firm ally of the clergy in their inflexible hostility to the traffic in brandy with the Indians; but he could also use religion as a political engine, when French emissaries were needed on British territory. He appeals rather too fervently to Don gan, as a man "penetrated with the glory of that name which makes Hell tremble, and at the mention of which all the powers of Heaven fall prostrate," to " come to under standing to sustain our missionaries by keeping those fierce * " The Senecas, insolent and defiant, were still attacking the Illinois ; the tribes of the North-West were angry, contemptuous and disaffected ; the English of New York were urging claims to the whole country south of the great lakes, and to a controlling share in all the western fur trade ; while the English of Hudson Bay were competing for the traffic of the northern tribes, and the English of New England were seizing upon the fisheries of Acadia, and now and then making practical descents upon its coast.

The great question. lay between New York and Canada. Which of these two should gain mastery in the west. — Frontenac, p. 117. tribes in respect and fear." But although Col. Dongan was a Catholic, he was too crafty a bird to be caught in the net spread in his sight. He knew full well what the Jesuits, Lamberville, Engelran, and their associates were about amongst the Iroquois, the Hurons and Ottawas ; and he knew his duty as an English governor. He boldly entered the lists against the French schemes. " If his policy should prevail," writes Parkman, " New France would dwindle to a feeble Province on the St. Lawrence ; if the French policy should prevail, the English colonies would remain a narrow strip along the sea."* The " diplomatic duel " which ensued between the two rulers, is diverting at all events, if not edifying.

The earnest appeals of Denonville, the rough-andready coarseness of retort used by the Irishman, together, .give spice to an altogether futile correspondence. Denonville complains that Dongan had promised to leave everything in dispute to decision by the kings at home, and yet had disregarded the orders of his master. So, he had no doubt, but, with the mental reservation, that he should only obey instructions of which he approved. The Frenchman scolds his neighbour for permitting the sale of New England rum to the Aborigines. " Think you," he writes, " that religion will make any progress, while your traders supply the savages in abundance with the liquor which, as you ought to know, converts them into demons, and their lodges into counterparts of Hell ? " " Certainly," replies Dongan, " our rum doth as little hurt as your brandy, and, in the opinion of Christians is much more wholesome."f The New York Governor scouted the idea that " a few loose fellows Ibid., p. 119. t Ibid., pp. 127, 128. rambling amongst Indians to keep themselves from starving gave the French a right to the North-West."

As for the plea drawn from the French Jesuit missionary, he sneer ingly remarks " The King of China never goes anywhere without two Jesuits with him. I wonder you make not the like pretence to that kingdome."* In short, Dongan utterly repudiated the French claims either to territorial ownership or the exclusive right to trade. This brief glimpse of the relations between the colonies touching the fur trade and the Indian tribes, may serve to illustrate the deadly conflict which was almost unintermittently waged between the two nationalities. It remains to give a slight glance at French progress in the North-West. In the peltry traffic, as elsewhere, the Royal authorities, the King, his Minister, the Governor and the Intendant, attempted to inspect everything with their administrative microscope and manage everything with their official tweezers.

The Bourbon system was, above all things, paternal — the exact antipodes of any government a Scot or an Englishman could either frame or endure. Colbert, the great minister of Louis XIV., wrote to the ablest and best of » the Quebec Intendants, in 1666, after assuring him that the King regards all his Canadian subjects as his own children, desires the Sieur Talon "to solace them in all things, and encourage them to trade and industry." To this end he was instructed to " visit all their settlements, one after the other, in order to learn their true condition, provide as much as possible for their wants, and, performing the duty of a good head, of a family, put them in the way of making some Ibid., p. 161. profit."* How this unwieldy system was manipulated from Paris may be seen in the three volumes of the Royal Edicts and Ordinances reprinted in Canadaf by the Provincial Gov ernment in 1854.

A glance at the indexes at the end of the third volume will, of itself, give some idea of the minute care exercised over the mint, anise and cummin of Canada, while the weightier matters of the law were being dealt with as avarice or love of adventure might suggest on the " few arpents of snow " lining the St. Lawrence. It will be be found that whilst all sorts of petty arrangements were solemnly made in Paris to bind Canadians, not merely such as we are accustomed to consider within the purview of government, but matters commercial and purely personal of the most trivial character, the inherent weakness of this scheme of centralized despotism would early have manifested itself in any case, but it became clearly apparent the moment free Anglo-Saxon energy became a competitor in the race. The fur-trade was, of course, taken, so far as possible, under the fatherly care of the rulers at Paris, Quebec, and Mon treal, but to begin with, their hands were not clean.

Syste matic jobbery pervaded the entire governmental system. The taxes were farmed to the highest bidders, and of the small portion which passed nominally into the coffers of the State, far too much stuck to the fingers of the Governors, Intendants, and those creatures to whom New France was simply a place of exile, where rapid fortunes were to be made by the greedy and unscrupulous. The mother country was early depleted of men and treasure by its vast and expensive * Parkman : Old Rigime, p. 209. t Edits, Ordonnances Royaux, Declarations et A rrets du Consvil dEtat da Roi, concern nant le Canada. Quebec, 1854. wars, and as the Canadian officials were poorly paid and supported, they were compelled to make a competence, and often a bare livelihood by engaging in trade, and not seldom by barefaced extortion, peculation and fraud.

Whilst the minister at Paris and his master were framing edicts against profane swearing, deciding where the officials should sit at church, how many horses a farmer should keep, and how large a house he might build, &c, the men high in place were plundering all alike with admirable impartiality. Bigot, the last and far the most infamous of the Intendants, al though he robbed right and left, was so solicitous about the morals of the people that he forbade those residing in the country to remove into Quebec, lest they should be cor rupted by city life.* The paralyzing hand of absolutism was everywhere, meddling even with the bread a man ate and the texture of his coat ; and, as for freedom of speech, Intendant Meules accurately expressed the prevailing view when he said : " It is of great consequence that the people should not be left at liberty to speak their minds."^ So far as trade was concerned, the French policy may be summed up in one word — monopoly.

Early in the sixteenth century, Cardinal Richelieu chartered " The Company of the Hundred Associates," ceding to them all French North Ame rica on the usual terms of feudality. After being about thirty years in active operation, the Associates, who had dwindled down to forty-five, surrendered their charter in 1663. This Company possessed governmental and even royal powers, but, when it disappeared, a regular system of ' Old Regime, p 279. t For a general view of the Civil and Ecclesiastical Government of Canada see Bell's Garneau : Histon/ of Canada, B. III. Chaps 111. and administration was established. In 1664 the monopoly of trade was given to the West India Company for a period of fifty years, and at about the same time the feudal system was regularly and definitely introduced. M. Talon, the first and best of the Intendants, under the new colonial system, amongst other wise and beneficent measures, urged and obtained a relaxation of trade from Colbert, by which the people were allowed to import their own goods, and buy furs and peltries from the Indians, subject to a royalty pay able to the all-devouring Company.

The traffic in furs was, however, from the first, almost beyond the control both of the government and the monopolists. It was, in fact, the only safety-valve for the pent-up energy, enterprise and spirit of adventure, which lay within the breasts of the Canadian Youth. Companies and farmers of taxes might mulct the owners of beaver-skins, at Montreal, Three Rivers or Quebec, but they had little or no control over the Indians who trapped the fur-bearing animals, or the middle men who traded both with the aborigines and with the merchants of New France. The Coureurs des Bois or Wood-coursers, as the middle men came to be called, soon formed a distinct class of the Canadian population. As the discoverer of the Mackenzie River says, they were "a kind of pedlars, and were ex tremely useful to the merchants engaged in the fur-trade who gave them the necessary credit to proceed in their com mercial undertakings.