With The Return Party Came A Canadian Creole Named Regis Brugiere
And An Iroquois Hunter, With His Wife And Two Children.
As these
two personages belong to certain classes which have derived their
peculiar characteristics from the fur trade, we deem some few
particulars concerning them pertinent to the nature of this work.
Brugiere was of a class of beaver trappers and hunters
technically called "Freemen," in the language of the traders.
They are generally Canadians by birth, and of French descent, who
have been employed for a term of years by some fur company, but,
their term being expired, continue to hunt and trap on their own
account, trading with the company like the Indians. Hence they
derive their appellation of Freemen, to distinguish them from the
trappers who are bound for a number of years, and receive wages,
or hunt on shares.
Having passed their early youth in the wilderness, separated
almost entirely from civilized man, and in frequent intercourse
with the Indians, they relapse, with a facility common to human
nature, into the habitudes of savage life. Though no longer bound
by engagements to continue in the interior, they have become so
accustomed to the freedom of the forest and the prairie, that
they look back with repugnance upon the restraints of
civilization. Most of them intermarry with the natives, and, like
the latter, have often a plurality of wives. Wanderers of the
wilderness, according to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the
migrations of animals, and the plenty or scarcity of game, they
lead a precarious and unsettled existence; exposed to sun and
storm, and all kinds of hardships, until they resemble Indians in
complexion as well as in tastes and habits. From time to time,
they bring the peltries they have collected to the trading houses
of the company in whose employ they have been brought up. Here
they traffic them away for such articles of merchandise or
ammunition as they may stand in need of. At the time when
Montreal was the great emporium of the fur trader, one of these
freemen of the wilderness would suddenly return, after an absence
of many years, among his old friends and comrades. He would be
greeted as one risen from the dead; and with the greater welcome,
as he returned flush of money. A short time, however, spent in
revelry, would be sufficient to drain his purse and sate him with
civilized life, and he would return with new relish to the
unshackled freedom of the forest.
Numbers of men of this class were scattered throughout the
northwest territories. Some of them retained a little of the
thrift and forethought of the civilized man, and became wealthy
among their improvident neighbors; their wealth being chiefly
displayed in large bands of horses, which covered the prairies in
the vicinity of their abodes. Most of them, however, were prone
to assimilate to the red man in their heedlessness of the future.
Such was Regis Brugiere, a freeman and rover of the wilderness.
Having been brought up in the service of the Northwest Company,
he had followed in the train of one of its expeditions across the
Rocky Mountains, and undertaken to trap for the trading post
established on the Spokan River.
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