The White and the Gold (53 page)

The explanation for the diminution in pelts now came out. French traders were striking north from the St. Lawrence, some by way of the Saguenay, others following the route which Radisson had wanted to take, by way of Lake Winnipeg. They were thus cutting across the lines by which the Indians converged on the bay and were getting the major share of the furs. They could not cover the whole of this vast expanse of muskeg and snow, but they were getting enough to leave holes in the holds of English ships returning to London.

England and France were not at war, and so Bayly had to accept
the credentials of Father Albanel. He heard, however, of the letters which had been handed to Radisson and Groseilliers and his suspicions were aroused. Bayly, it appears, was a man of small tact. He summoned his two collaborators and charged them with being responsible for the irruption of French traders into the territory which the company now regarded as its own.

This was not true. The arrival of Father Albanel had been as much of a surprise to them as it had been to Bayly himself. It happened, moreover, to be a singularly inappropriate time to level such charges. The letters which the priest had conveyed to them contained proposals from Colbert for their return.

The upshot of Bayly’s charges was that the two Frenchmen returned to London at once to discuss this situation with the directors of the company. Protracted negotiations followed. It becomes clear enough that Radisson and Groseilliers would have remained in the service of the company if satisfactory terms had been offered them. They remained in London throughout the winter of 1673–74, pressing their claims during an interminable series of talks and conferences, the letters from Colbert burning holes in their pockets the while.

The company, however, remained adamant. The best they could do was to promise Radisson one hundred pounds per annum (this apparently was to be a joint fee, for no mention is made separately of Groseilliers) and “if it pleases God to bless the company with good success hereafter that they come to be in a prosperous condition that they will reassume considerations.”

Some authorities contend that the company had not been paying dividends and that this was the reason for the seeming niggardliness of their proposition. Others declare that the profits had been large and that dividends up to 100 per cent had been paid.

Radisson and Groseilliers slipped quietly across the Channel and paid a call on Colbert. He greeted them cordially and made it clear that the severity which had driven them to London in the first place was now regretted; as well it might be, for it had thrown the empire of the North into the hands of France’s great rival. He made them an offer: come back into the service of France and receive a salary three times as large as the Hudson’s Bay Company was offering. He wanted them for the navy, Colbert having been from the start the advocate of a powerful sea branch, even at the expense of the army.

A deal was made on that basis.

The attitude of the directors in London is hard to understand unless they had reasons, which have not come to light, for suspecting the intentions of the two Frenchmen. This does not seem likely in view of the resumption years later of a relationship with Radisson. What makes it difficult to understand is that they were already establishing the sound policies which were to remain in force up to modern times and to prove so extremely successful. They had a conception which can be described only as feudal. The charter which King Charles had granted to them gave the company a monopoly of all trade in the North, the right to build forts, to organize and equip ships of war, and to pass their own laws and duly enforce them. The people of the lands thus handed over to the company became their subjects. The company had the power of life and death over them.

A stern policy would slowly evolve as a result of these sweeping concessions. Free trading would not be tolerated and no one would be allowed to invade the territory, either as settler or transient trader, without the consent of the officers of the company. The rights which had been granted them would be maintained and the laws laid down would be sternly enforced. Under the iron hand of this autocracy the Indians of the North would live for nearly two hundred years. The power of the white gods of the trading posts would be respected and feared. There would be bloodshed occasionally and a succession of incidents, but in the main peace would reign in the North; for the directors also laid down the rule that, if they must be stern and unyielding, they must also be just.

The germs of other basic ideas were already blossoming. To make the rule in the North truly feudal, it must be conducted with pomp and splendor. The first indication of this was in the selection of governors. Prince Rupert filled the post in the early years. He was succeeded by the King’s brother James, Duke of York, later James II. The third was John Churchill, the great Duke of Marlborough.

The governors of the posts maintained a considerable amount of pomp. Their food might be plain and scarce, but it was served with great state, with much piping and drumming. They met the Indians in velvet capes and with swords clanking at their sides. The poor natives were properly impressed and remained that way for the two
centuries of company supremacy. Later the natives would begin to depend on the posts for the food they would need during the winters and would find themselves in an almost perpetual state of indebtedness.

This feudal policy was carried into the relationships with employees. If a man was injured he received “smart money,” or a pension if he had been permanently incapacitated. The widows of those who died in the service or were lost at sea were treated in like vein. It is strange that the effort to be fair did not extend to the relationship with Radisson and Groseilliers. If the two Frenchmen had been kept reasonably content, the company would have been spared much fighting and trouble and endless expense. This was, at the least, a serious error of judgment.

In the year 1680 an important conference was held in New France. Where it took place is not known, but it was probably at Montreal, for at least three of the men included in the group were of that town. It was not an official conference; none of those in attendance held posts in the royal service. They were, instead, the great figures of the colony, the bold and the farseeing, the wise and the courageous men. Among them were the Sieur de la Salle, about whose exploits much will be told later; Joliet, joint discoverer of the Mississippi; a successful fur trader of Quebec named Aubert de la Chesnaye. Then there was that brave and solid citizen of Montreal, Charles le Moyne. His seigneury at Longueuil was in a flourishing condition and his trading enterprises in Montreal were making a prosperous man of him. He now had six sons, all of them destined to play truly glorious roles in the tumultuous years ahead. And, to give point to the gathering, there were Radisson and Groseilliers.

These two stormy petrels of the North had been for many years in the employment of France. They had not been allowed a chance, however, to return to the bay. As long as the two countries were at peace a fiction of neutrality had to be maintained and, as the English were in possession there, nothing could be done to disturb them. Radisson had been with the navy and had spent one year in the West Indies. He had been unhappy, for his heart was always in the North. He had happened to encounter La Chesnaye, and the latter had urged him to fall in line with a plan which he himself had been
hatching. Radisson had agreed willingly enough, and this had carried with it the consent of his faithful partner as well.

The importance of this informal gathering can be judged by the fact that out of it came
La Compagnie du Nord
, the Company of the North, an organization which represented the will of the French-Canadian people to contest the lordship of the fur country with the Hudson’s Bay Company. La Chesnaye was persuasive and glib, and it is probable that he shared with Radisson the major role in the deliberations. Ordinarily it would have seemed strange to see the Sieur de la Salle and Charles le Moyne sitting by and allowing other men to monopolize anything as momentous as this. But the former’s mind was set on the South, and he was present largely for the weight of his name. Charles le Moyne would watch the proceedings with a wise and wary eye, even though he may not have much to say. He was getting a little too old and heavy to take a personal part in anything as exacting as this, but his oldest sons were ready.

The first step after reaching the decision to organize a company for the conquest of the North was to go to the Comte de Frontenac for the necessary permission. No one could have had more eagerness for the bold and the unusual than this great governor, but he was, after all, the King’s representative in New France and he had to consider that the King was at peace with England. It would have been a grave mistake to give the new organization an official blessing and the commission they asked. On the surface, therefore, he took an aloof attitude, refusing to issue the commission and withholding his approval of the plan.

His decision seems, however, to have been delivered with a wink. If they, the applicants, chose to send ships into Hudson’s Bay without official sanction, that clearly was their own business. He, Frontenac, must know nothing about it. They should understand that if they got into trouble they must get out of it themselves.

Frontenac was a shrewd man. He had, of course, heard a great deal about Radisson and Groseilliers, these legendary figures who were either loved very much or held up as renegades and hated. While the applicants were grouped about him in the citadel of St. Louis he cast many appraising glances in their direction. He could not fail to be impressed by them. Radisson, never a large man, was beginning to look actually rather small. Time, that shrinker of spines, had taken an inch from his stature at the same time that it sprinkled his hair with gray; but a penetrating observer would not miss the occasional
blaze of fire in his eye. Groseilliers, the older by some years, was growing heavy and slow. He had little to say, leaving the matter of spokesmanship to his more dexterous partner, but there was never any possibility of a mistake about this man who had taken his title from a patch of wild berry bushes in Three Rivers. He was always one to be reckoned with; a doer of deeds, a fighter who struck hard and often.

Having thus obtained a left-handed blessing from the governor, the little group got down to business. La Chesnaye, a great promiser, assured them that he could produce the necessary funds and the ships if Radisson and Groseilliers would take the command. Their consent was readily obtained. This was what they wanted to do more than anything else in the world: to see once more the strait of the icebergs, to cruise along the shores where the fast-flowing rivers brought down the Indian canoes piled high with pelts, to strike the blows which would redeem them forever in the eyes of their fellow countrymen.

It was decided, therefore, that Radisson and Groseilliers would go into semi-retirement for the winter. In the spring they would repair to Isle Percé, where the fishing fleets congregated, and there they would wait for the twin ships La Chesnaye had promised to fit out and man.

La Chesnaye, it developed, was better at making promises than in the fulfillment of them. The two ships which finally came heaving and pitching into Isle Percé like a pair of veteran porpoises were the smallest and oldest and the crankiest to handle that could have been produced by a search of the offcasts of all nations. They were called the
St. Pierre
and the
Ste. Anne
and they could hold no more than thirty men between them; which was perhaps just as well, because the men La Chesnaye had recruited were for the most part raw and inexperienced landlubbers. The rigging was rotten, the holds were unseaworthy, and there was a stench about these derelicts which only long service in the fishing trade could produce. Was it possible for even inspired leaders to accomplish anything under these circumstances? Could Radisson and Groseilliers win back the bay with ships redeemed from naval junk piles and with the culls and misfits who made up the crews?

They decided to try. Radisson took the
St. Pierre
. Groseilliers, having a grown-up son, Jean Chouart, with him, took the
Ste. Anne
. After suppressing a mutinous outbreak among the crew, who were
finding the service quite different from what they had expected, they finally reached Hudson’s Bay in September.

Dependence must be placed on Radisson’s narrative for the story of what happened after that, and it has to be avowed at the start that there was always a hint of vagueness and more than a tendency to exaggerate in everything he put down on paper. Briefly, therefore, what happened was as follows. The Frenchmen in their inadequate little tubs came limping into the waters where the Hayes and the Nelson rivers raced to the bay. They found there a ship, the
Bachelor’s Delight
, which had come from New England under the command of Ben Gillam, a son of the captain who had figured in the early years of the company. They were poaching, these bold colonials, and the delighted Radisson saw at once that he had a hold over young Ben Gillam which could be used to advantage. By his glib talk he had “come over” young Gillam and won his confidence when a vessel owned by the company, the
Prince Rupert
, completed the triangle. It sailed into the estuary of the Nelson with two men of some prominence on board, Governor Bridgar of the company and old Zachariah Gillam himself.

The newcomers should have sensed the situation at once because the directors of the company had made plans for just such an emergency as this. On sailing, the captains of company ships were given sealed orders which contained among other things the harbor signals. Ships on the bay which did not hoist the proper signals were to be fired on as poachers and interlopers. Neither Radisson nor Ben Gillam was in a position to fly the right signals—in fact, they did not dare fly any flag at all—and the
Prince Rupert
should have blown them out of the water.