against the traffic. All the great companies north and south of the Canada line bewailed the necessity of dealing out alcohol, affirming that they would gladly discontinue it but for their competitors. Later, in 1850 and 1851, the Hudson Bay servants grew lax, for we find complaints by the Russians on the one side, and the American government on the other, of their lack of good faith in selling alcohol to the natives.13

The missionaries of the several denominations who played so prominent a part in the settlement of Oregon and of other sections of the Northwest Coast were, in the main, intelligent, honest, well meaning men, who sought to do the best for themselves, their families, their country, and their God. We should scarcely expect those who were inspired with sufficient enthusiasm to enable them to brave the hardships and dangers of pioneer missionary life, to be wholly free from partisanship or fanaticism. We should hardly expect the highest practical wisdom from persons educated in closets, and from books and teachers regarding all human affairs from a single standpoint. We should hardly expect to find the most evenly balanced minds among votaries of a religion which recognizes no higher rights than those belonging to its dogmas. Nevertheless I am prepared to do honor to the pioneer missionaries of the Northwest, Catholic and Protestant, for I believe them to have been single-hearted men and actuated by the purest motives, though I must be permitted to take excep

18 In 1795 the Hudson Bay Indians were enervated and debased by reason of the deadly drink. Winterbotham's Hist., iv. 21; E. Ellice testifies before the House of Commons, Rept. Hudson's Bay Co., 326, that from 1811 to 1821 liquor was used wherever rivalry existed, that is in territory occupied by both the great companies and on the United States border over which from either side Indians were enticed for hundreds of miles. See Schoolcraft's Per. Mem., 326-7; Victor's River of the West, 225-6; T. Rae, in House of Commons Rept. Hudson's Bay Co., 37, 43-4; R. King, id., 316; Evans' Hist. Or., MS., 173; White's Or., 78–9; Rocky Mountain Scenes, 28-9; U. S. Catholic Magazine, v. 20; Martin's Hudson's Bay, 68-71; Greenhow's Or. and Cal., 389; Gray's Hist. Or., 33-4; Or. Spectator, June 11 and 25, 1845; Kane's Wanderings, 97-8; Armstrong's Per. Nar., 151, 164; Richardson's Polar Regions, 298-330; Swan's Northwest Coast, 156.

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tions to such acts as appear to me unwise, impolitic, or unjust.

In looking back upon their early efforts we can but regret that those whose zeal in their great work was never wanting to carry them through any sufferings demanded, even unto death, and who bore their trials with a courage which claims our admiration, should not have met with the success which their meritorious services seemed to deserve.

Several causes united to bring about the result. First of all, impossibilities were attempted. Speaking generally, all missionary effort is a failure. Such history pronounces to be its fate. Missionary effort seeks to lift the savage mind from the darkness of its own religion, which God and nature have given it as the best for it, and to fix it on the abstract principles of civilized belief which it cannot comprehend. It seeks to improve the moral and material conditions. of the savage when its very touch is death. The greatest boon Christianity can confer upon the heathen is to let them alone. They are not ready yet to cultivate the soil or learn to read, or to change their nature or their religion. These ends the Almighty accomplishes in his own good time and way, unfolding their minds as from a germ of his own implanting into the clearer light as they are able to receive it. Then the religious civilizers became too quickly absorbed in the acquisition and cultivation of landed possessions, which at best were to reduce the inhabitants to a state of serfdom.

It was indeed a hard task thus imposed upon the poor missionary, a task whose innate difficulties he himself did not comprehend. Manfully he applied himself to the material as well as mental and moral improvement of the savage, all unconscious of the poisonous nature of the civilized atmosphere which environed him. As settlers came in, the bad examples of those of his color and faith tended to destroy his influence with the natives. The simple savage reasoned

within himself that if drunkenness, profligacy, and disgrace were the practical fruits of Christianity and civilization, they were better off without these blessings.

As regards the attitude of the fur companies toward the missionaries I should say, speaking broadly, that it has been indifferent or at least undemonstrative. The Hudson's Bay Company's charter required of it the encouragement of missionary effort. The company did not dare to throw impediments in the way of the missionary. And yet any interference of white men with their traffic or with the natives was unwelcome. Post commanders usually treated priests and preachers with politeness and consideration. If a missionary was stationed near a fort, he was usually installed as chaplain of the fort with a salary of fifty pounds per annum and free passage to and from the country. 19

We still read of the attendance of chaplains on the soldiers who go out to fight the natives, which calls to mind Cortés and Pizarro of old, who with their bloodhounds and Indian-killers carried their man of prayer to beseech the God who made the Indians, to give the white marauder the Indians' lands and join the invader in the extinction of this wild race whose creation must assuredly have been a mistake.

19 Douglas, Private Papers, MS., 1st ser., 82-7, gives some interesting information respecting the natives before their demoralization. Richardson, Journal, ii. 55-6, says that 'the Hudson's Bay Company aid the clergymen of all the persuasions by free passages, rations, and other advantages, besides granting salaries to those employed at their fur-posts, whether Protestants or Roman Catholics.' See also Ab-sa-ra-ka, 180; Mayne's Brit. Col., 305, 349; Holcombe's Stranger than Fiction, passim; Horetzky's Canada on the Pacific, 26, 138; Gray's Hist. Or., 100; Grant's Ocean to Ocean, 140-1; Mackenzie's Voy., v.; London Times, July 22, 1858.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE NORTHWEST COMPANY.

1783-1821.

CHARACTER OF THE MONTREAL ASSOCIATES-THE FRENCH RÉGIME REVIEWED-TRADE AT MICHILIMACKINAC-THE MONTREAL MERCHANTS PENETRATE NORTH-WESTWARD AND FORM A COMMERCIAL COPARTNERSHIP THE DISAFFECTIONISTS FORM THE X. Y. COMPANY-UNION OF THE TWO FACTIONS-INTERNAL REGULATIONS OF THE NORTHWEST COMPANYTHE GRAND PORTAGE-EARLY VOYAGES FROM MONTREAL TO LAKE SUPERIOR-FEUDAL GLORIES OF FORT WILLIAM-WARS BETWEEN THE NORTHWEST COMPANY AND THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY-THE RED RIVER AFFAIR-FUSION OF THE TWO COMPANIES.

Of all associations formed at any time or place for the purpose of obtaining the skins of fur-bearing animals, the Northwest Company of Montreal' was the most daring, dashing, audacious, and ultimately successful. Its energy was surpassed only by the apathy of its great chartered rival, which had been in existence one hundred and thirteen years. Canada had been twenty years in British possession when it was organized, without assistance, privileges, or government favors, by a few Scotch Canadians for the better prosecution of a business with which they were all more or less familiar.

Infusing into their traffic the spirit of enterprise, these associates pushed adventure beyond Lake Superior to Winnipeg, Saskatchewan, and Athabasca, and finally overspread the then wholly new Northwest. It was they who found the river Mackenzie,

1 Sometimes called the Canada Company, because it was organized in Canada, in contradistinction to the Hudson's Bay Company chartered in England.

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and followed it to the Frozen Ocean; it was they who ascended Peace River, crossed the Rocky Mountains, planted posts upon their western slope, and traversed the country to the Pacific; it was they who by their Scotch shrewdness and resistless energy, after absorbing the Canada trade, took possession of the Northwest Coast, swept Astor from the Columbia, and brought the monster monopoly itself upon its knees.

We have seen how under the French régime those forest pedlers, called coureurs des bois, obtained from the merchant, perhaps on credit, the necessary store of goods, and set out in their birch-bark canoes for the great lakes and regions beyond, whence after one or two years of successful traffic they returned richly laden with their annual harvests, followed perhaps by crowds of Indians with furs to sell. We have seen how after settling accounts with the merchants these rovers gave themselves up to dissipation which shortly left them with little of their hard-won earnings.

This licentiousness excited to jealous action the missionaries, who endeavored to suppress this prostituted traffic by requiring every man trading with Indians to procure a license from government, which license prohibited the sale of intoxicating drink to natives, and was to be given only to men of good character.

Pure men only were thus to be brought in contact with the tender savage. The church was to furnish its quota as well as the state. Men made holy by hunger, by filth and fasting, by sleepless vigils, coarse gowns and bead-tellings, should enter the forest only for good. In their trail there should follow no slimy serpents of civilization, no hissing flames of disease or deadly distillations; and more wonderful than all, honest servants of the government should be found who would deal fairly, humanely, with these rude and defenceless forest-dwellers. Saturn shoull supply them.