Happy Were They, Too, If They Could Meet With Some
Distinguished Stranger; Above All, Some Titled Member Of The
British Nobility, To Accompany Them On This Stately Occasion, And
Grace Their High Solemnities.
Fort William, the scene of this important annual meeting, was a
considerable village on the banks of Lake Superior.
Here, in an
immense wooden building, was the great council hall, as also the
banqueting chamber, decorated with Indian arms and accoutrements,
and the trophies of the fur trade. The house swarmed at this time
with traders and voyageurs, some from Montreal, bound to the
interior posts; some from the interior posts, bound to Montreal.
The councils were held in great state, for every member felt as
if sitting in parliament, and every retainer and dependent looked
up to the assemblage with awe, as to the House of Lords. There
was a vast deal of solemn deliberation, and hard Scottish
reasoning, with an occasional swell of pompous declamation.
These grave and weighty councils were alternated by huge feasts
and revels, like some of the old feasts described in Highland
castles. The tables in the great banqueting room groaned under
the weight of game of all kinds; of venison from the woods, and
fish from the lakes, with hunters' delicacies, such as buffalos'
tongues, and beavers' tails, and various luxuries from Montreal,
all served up by experienced cooks brought for the purpose. There
was no stint of generous wine, for it was a hard-drinking period,
a time of loyal toasts, and bacchanalian songs, and brimming
bumpers.
While the chiefs thus revelled in hall, and made the rafters
resound with bursts of loyalty and old Scottish songs, chanted in
voices cracked and sharpened by the northern blast, their
merriment was echoed and prolonged by a mongrel legion of
retainers, Canadian voyageurs, half-breeds, Indian hunters, and
vagabond hangers-on who feasted sumptuously without on the crumbs
that fell from their table, and made the welkin ring with old
French ditties, mingled with Indian yelps and yellings.
Such was the Northwest Company in its powerful and prosperous
days, when it held a kind of feudal sway over a vast domain of
lake and forest. We are dwelling too long, perhaps, upon these
individual pictures, endeared to us by the associations of early
life, when, as yet a stripling youth, we have sat at the
hospitable boards of the "mighty Northwesters," the lords of the
ascendant at Montreal, and gazed with wondering and inexperienced
eye at the baronial wassailing, and listened with astonished ear
to their tales of hardship and adventures. It is one object of
our task, however, to present scenes of the rough life of the
wilderness, and we are tempted to fix these few memorials of a
transient state of things fast passing into oblivion; for the
feudal state of Fort William is at an end, its council chamber is
silent and deserted; its banquet hall no longer echoes to the
burst of loyalty, or the "auld world" ditty; the lords of the
lakes and forests have passed away; and the hospitable magnates
of Montreal where are they?
CHAPTER II.
Rise of the Mackinaw Company. Attempt of the American Government
to Counteract Foreign Influence Over the Indian Tribes. John
Jacob Astor. His Birth-Place. His Arrival in the United
States. What First Turned His Attention to the Fur Trade. His
Character, Enterprises, and Success. His Communications With the
American Government. Origin of the American Fur Company
THE success of the Northwest Company stimulated further
enterprise in this opening and apparently boundless field of
profit. The traffic of that company lay principally in the high
northern latitudes, while there were immense regions to the south
and west, known to abound with valuable peltries; but which, as
yet, had been but little explored by the fur trader. A new
association of British merchants was therefore formed, to
prosecute the trade in this direction. The chief factory was
established at the old emporium of Michilimackinac, from which
place the association took its name, and was commonly called the
Mackinaw Company.
While the Northwesters continued to push their enterprises into
the hyperborean regions from their stronghold at Fort William,
and to hold almost sovereign sway over the tribes of the upper
lakes and rivers, the Mackinaw Company sent forth their light
perogues and barks, by Green Bay, Fox River, and the Wisconsin,
to that areas artery of the West, the Mississippi; and down that
stream to all its tributary rivers. In this way they hoped soon
to monopolize the trade with all the tribes on the southern and
western waters, and of those vast tracts comprised in ancient
Louisiana.
The government of the United States began to view with a wary eye
the growing influence thus acquired by combinations of
foreigners, over the aboriginal tribes inhabiting its
territories, and endeavored to counteract it. For this purpose,
as early as 1796, the government sent out agents to establish
rival trading houses on the frontier, so as to supply the wants
of the Indians, to link their interests and feelings with those
of the people of the United States, and to divert this important
branch of trade into national channels.
The expedition, however, was unsuccessful, as most commercial
expedients are prone to be, where the dull patronage of
government is counted upon to outvie the keen activity of private
enterprise. What government failed to effect, however, with all
its patronage and all its agents, was at length brought about by
the enterprise and perseverance of a single merchant, one of its
adopted citizens; and this brings us to speak of the individual
whose enterprise is the especial subject of the following pages;
a man whose name and character are worthy of being enrolled in
the history of commerce, as illustrating its noblest aims and
soundest maxims. A few brief anecdotes of his early life, and of
the circumstances which first determined him to the branch of
commerce of which we are treating, cannot be but interesting.
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