The Story of the Trapper
()
About this ebook
Agnes C. Laut
Agnes C. Laut was born in Huron County, Ontario, in 1871. She became a reporter and editorial writer for the Manitoba Free Press in the 1890s, then a wide-ranging travel writer. Her books include Lords of the North, Heralds of Empire, The Story of the Trapper, Pathfinders of the West, Vikings of the Pacific, Canada at the Crossroads, and The Romance of the Rails. She died in 1936.
Read more from Agnes C. Laut
Pioneers of the Pacific Coast: A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Cariboo Trail: A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThrough Our Unknown Southwest Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Freebooters of the Wilderness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLords of the North Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCanada: the Empire of the North: Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cariboo Trail: A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Canadian Commonwealth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeralds of Empire: Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVikings of the Pacific: The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPioneers of the Pacific Coast: A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Story of the Trapper
Related ebooks
Between Earth and Paradise: An Island Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOcean Notorious: Journeys to Lost and Lonely Places of the Deep South Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ecorse: Along the Detroit River Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWyoming Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Rock With A View. Hiking, Biking and Skiing the Shawangunk Mountains Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTo Conserve Unimpaired: The Evolution of the National Park Idea Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUp the Winds and Over the Tetons: Journal Entries and Images from the 1860 Raynolds Expedition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ithaca: A Brief History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Village of Grosse Pointe Shores Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Watchful Gods And Other Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Larry Doby in Black and White: The Story of a Baseball Pioneer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAcross the Continent: The Union Pacific Photographs of Andrew Joseph Russell Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEmilio Comici: Angel of the Dolomites Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEarly Glenwood Springs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLivingstone’s Tribe: A Journey From Zanzibar to the Cape Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAlong the Ohio River: Cincinnati to Louisville Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe WPA Guide to Nevada: The Silver State Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTragedies of Cañon Blanco: A Story of the Texas Panhandle Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Dispatches from the High Country: Essays on the West from High Country News Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeaded into the Wind: A Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIslands of the Evening: Journeys to the Edge of the World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInto The Arena: The World of the Spanish Bullfight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cincinnati Parks and Parkways Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Personal Record Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Where the West Begins: Debating Texas Identity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Chouteaus: First Family of the Fur Trade Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPortage Paths Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSouthlake Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLizards on the Mantel, Burros at the Door: A Big Bend Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cheney Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
History For You
The Secret History of the World Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Grief Observed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Richest Man in Babylon: The most inspiring book on wealth ever written Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5100 Things You're Not Supposed to Know: Secrets, Conspiracies, Cover Ups, and Absurdities Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Library Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Whore Stories: A Revealing History of the World's Oldest Profession Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Happiest Man on Earth: The Beautiful Life of an Auschwitz Survivor Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters--And How to Get It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lessons of History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Awakening: Defeating the Globalists and Launching the Next Great Renaissance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Story of the Trapper
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Story of the Trapper - Agnes C. Laut
Agnes C. Laut
The Story of the Trapper
EAN 8596547219507
DigiCat, 2022
Contact: [email protected]
Table of Contents
PART I
CHAPTER I
GAMESTERS OF THE WILDERNESS
CHAPTER II
THREE COMPANIES IN CONFLICT
CHAPTER III
THE NOR' WESTERS' COUP
CHAPTER IV
THE ANCIENT HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY WAKENS UP
CHAPTER V
MR. ASTOR'S COMPANY ENCOUNTERS NEW OPPONENTS
CHAPTER VI
THE FRENCH TRAPPER
CHAPTER VII
THE BUFFALO-RUNNERS
CHAPTER VIII
THE MOUNTAINEERS
PART II
CHAPTER IX
THE TAKING OF THE BEAVER
CHAPTER X
THE MAKING OF THE MOCCASINS
CHAPTER XI
THE INDIAN TRAPPER
CHAPTER XII
BA'TISTE, THE BEAR HUNTER
CHAPTER XIII
JOHN COLTER—FREE TRAPPER
CHAPTER XIV
THE GREATEST FUR COMPANY OF THE WORLD
CHAPTER XV
KOOT AND THE BOB-CAT
CHAPTER XVI
I
II
III
IV
CHAPTER XVII
THE RARE FURS—HOW THE TRAPPER TAKES SAKWASEW THE MINK, NEKIK THE OTTER, WUCHAK THE FISHER, AND WAPISTAN THE MARTEN
I
II
III
IV
CHAPTER XVIII
UNDER THE NORTH STAR—WHERE FOX AND ERMINE RUN
I
II
CHAPTER XIX
WHAT THE TRAPPER STANDS FOR
APPENDIX
PART I
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
Table of Contents
GAMESTERS OF THE WILDERNESS
Table of Contents
Fearing nothing, stopping at nothing, knowing no law, ruling his stronghold of the wilds like a despot, checkmating rivals with a deviltry that beggars parallel, wassailing with a shamelessness that might have put Rome's worst deeds to the blush, fighting—fighting—fighting, always fighting with a courage that knew no truce but victory, the American trapper must ever stand as a type of the worst and the best in the militant heroes of mankind.
Each with an army at his back, Wolfe and Napoleon won victories that upset the geography of earth. The fur traders never at any time exceeded a few thousands in number, faced enemies unbacked by armies and sallied out singly or in pairs; yet they won a continent that has bred a new race.
Like John Colter,[1] whom Manuel Lisa met coming from the wilds a hundred years ago, the trapper strapped a pack to his back, slung a rifle over his shoulder, and, without any fanfare of trumpets, stepped into the pathless shade of the great forests. Or else, like Williams of the Arkansas, the trapper left the moorings of civilization in a canoe, hunted at night, hid himself by day, evaded hostile Indians by sliding down-stream with muffled paddles, slept in mid-current screened by the branches of driftwood, and if a sudden halloo of marauders came from the distance, cut the strap that held his craft to the shore and got away under cover of the floating tree. Hunters crossing the Cimarron desert set out with pack-horses, and, like Captain Becknell's party, were often compelled to kill horses and dogs to keep from dying of thirst. Frequently their fate was that of Rocky Mountain Smith, killed by the Indians as he stooped to scoop out a drinking-hole in the sand. Men who brought down their pelts to the mountain rendezvous of Pierre's Hole, or went over the divide like Fraser and Thompson of the North-West Fur Company, had to abandon both horses and canoes, scaling cañon walls where the current was too turbulent for a canoe and the precipice too sheer for a horse, with the aid of their hunting-knives stuck in to the haft.[2] Where the difficulties were too great for a few men, the fur traders clubbed together under a master-mind like John Jacob Astor of the Pacific Company, or Sir Alexander MacKenzie of the Nor' Westers. Banded together, they thought no more of coasting round the sheeted antarctics, or slipping down the ice-jammed current of the MacKenzie River under the midnight sun of the arctic circle, than people to-day think of running from New York to Newport. When the conflict of 1812 cut off communication between western fur posts and New York by the overland route, Farnham, the Green Mountain boy, didn't think himself a hero at all for sailing to Kamtchatka and crossing the whole width of Asia, Europe, and the Atlantic, to reach Mr. Astor.
The American fur trader knew only one rule of existence—to go ahead without any heroics, whether the going cost his own or some other man's life. That is the way the wilderness was won; and the winning is one of the most thrilling pages in history.
About the middle of the seventeenth century Pierre Radisson and Chouart Groseillers, two French adventurers from Three Rivers, Quebec, followed the chain of waterways from the Ottawa and Lake Superior northwestward to the region of Hudson Bay.[3] Returning with tales of fabulous wealth to be had in the fur trade of the north, they were taken in hand by members of the British Commission then in Boston, whose influence secured the Hudson's Bay Company charter in 1670; and that ancient and honourable body—as the company was called—reaped enormous profits from the bartering of pelts. But the bartering went on in a prosy, half-alive way, the traders sitting snugly in their forts on Rupert and Severn Rivers, or at York Factory (Port Nelson) and Churchill (Prince of Wales). The French governor down in Quebec issued only a limited number of licenses for the fur trade in Canada; and the old English company had no fear of rivalry in the north. It never sought inland tribes, but waited with serene apathy for the Indians to come down to its fur posts on the bay. Young Le Moyne d'Iberville[4] might march overland from Quebec to the bay, catch the English company nodding, scale the stockades, capture its forts, batter down a wall or two, and sail off like a pirate with ship-loads of booty for Quebec. What did the ancient company care? European treaties restored its forts, and the honourable adventurers presented a bill of damages to their government for lost furs.
But came a sudden change. Great movements westward began simultaneously in all parts of the east.
This resulted from two events—England's victory over France at Quebec, and the American colonies' Declaration of Independence. The downfall of French ascendency in America meant an end to that license system which limited the fur trade to favourites of the governor. That threw an army of some two thousand men—voyageurs, coureurs des bois, mangeurs de lard,[5] famous hunters, traders, and trappers—on their own resources. The MacDonalds and MacKenzies and MacGillivrays and Frobishers and MacTavishes—Scotch merchants of Quebec and Montreal—were quick to seize the opportunity. Uniting under the names of North-West Fur Company and X. Y. Fur Company, they re-engaged the entire retinue of cast-off Frenchmen, woodcraftsmen who knew every path and stream from Labrador to the Rocky Mountains. Giving higher pay and better fare than the old French traders, the Scotch merchants prepared to hold the field against all comers in the Canadas. And when the X. Y. amalgamated with the larger company before the opening of the nineteenth century, the Nor' Westers became as famous for their daring success as their unscrupulous ubiquity.
But at that stage came the other factor—American Independence. Locked in conflict with England, what deadlier blow to British power could France deal than to turn over Louisiana with its million square miles and ninety thousand inhabitants to the American Republic? The Lewis and Clark exploration up the Missouri, over the mountains, and down the Columbia to the Pacific was a natural sequel to the Louisiana Purchase, and proved that the United States had gained a world of wealth for its fifteen million dollars. Before Lewis and Clark's feat, vague rumours had come to the New England colonies of the riches to be had in the west. The Russian Government had organized a strong company to trade for furs with the natives of the Pacific coast. Captain Vancouver's report of the north-west coast was corroborated by Captain Grey, who had stumbled into the mouth of the Columbia; and before 1800 nearly thirty Boston vessels yearly sailed to the Northern Pacific for the fur trade.
Eager to forestall the Hudson's Bay Company, now beginning to rub its eyes and send explorers westward to bring Indians down to the bay,[6] Alexander MacKenzie of the Nor' Westers pushed down the great river named after him,[7] and forced his way across the northern Rockies to the Pacific. Flotillas of North-West canoes quickly followed MacKenzie's lead north to the arctics, south-west down the Columbia. At Michilimackinac—one of the most lawless and roaring of the fur posts—was an association known as the Mackinaw Company, made up of old French hunters under English management, trading westward from the Lakes to the Mississippi. Hudson Bay, Nor' Wester, and Mackinaw were daily pressing closer and closer to that vast unoccupied Eldorado—the fur country between the Missouri and the Saskatchewan, bounded eastward by the Mississippi, west by the Pacific.
Possession is nine points out of ten. The question was who would get possession first.
Unfortunately that question presented itself to three alert rivals at the same time and in the same light. And the war began.
The Mackinaw traders had all they could handle from the Lakes to the Mississippi. Therefore they did little but try to keep other traders out of the western preserve. The Hudson's Bay remained in its somnolent state till the very extremity of outrage brought such a mighty awakening that it put its rivals to an eternal sleep. But the Nor' Westers were not asleep. And John Jacob Astor of New York, who had accumulated what was a gigantic fortune in those days as a purchaser of furs from America and a seller to Europe, was not asleep. And Manual Lisa, a Spaniard, of New Orleans, engaged at St. Louis in fur trade with the Osage tribes, was not asleep.
CHAPTER II
Table of Contents
THREE COMPANIES IN CONFLICT
Table of Contents
If only one company had attempted to take possession of the vast fur country west of the Mississippi, the fur trade would not have become international history; but three companies were at strife for possession of territory richer than Spanish Eldorado, albeit the coin was beaver
—not gold. Each of three companies was determined to use all means fair or foul to exclude its rivals from the field; and a fourth company was drawn into the strife because the conflict menaced its own existence.
From their Canadian headquarters at Fort William on Lake Superior, the Nor' Westers had yearly moved farther down the Columbia towards the mouth, where Lewis and Clark had wintered on the Pacific. In New York, Mr. Astor was formulating schemes to add to his fur empire the territory west of the Mississippi. At St. Louis was Manuel Lisa, the Spanish fur trader, already reaching out for the furs of the Missouri. And leagues to the north on the remote waters of Hudson Bay, the old English company lazily blinked its eyes open to the fact that competition was telling heavily on its returns, and that it would be compelled to take a hand in the merry game of a fur traders' war, though the real awakening had not yet come.
Lisa was the first to act on the information brought back by Lewis and Clark. Forming a partnership with Morrison and Menard of Kaskaskia, Ill., and engaging Drouillard, one of Lewis and Clark's men, as interpreter, he left St. Louis with a heavily laden keel-boat in the spring of 1807. Against the turbulent current of the Missouri in the full flood-tide of spring this unwieldy craft was slowly hauled or cordelled,
twenty men along the shore pulling the clumsy barge by means of a line fastened high enough on the mast to be above brushwood. Where the water was shallow the voyageurs poled single file, facing the stern and pushing with full chest strength. In deeper current oars were used.
Launched for the wilderness, with no certain knowledge but that the wilderness was peopled by hostiles, poor Bissonette deserted when they were only at the Osage River. Lisa issued orders for Drouillard to bring the deserter back dead or alive—orders that were filled to the letter, for the poor fellow was brought back shot, to die at St. Charles. Passing the mouth of the Platte, the company descried a solitary white man drifting down-stream in a dugout. When it was discovered that this lone trapper was John Colter, who had left Lewis and Clark on their return trip and remained to hunt on the Upper Missouri, one can imagine the shouts that welcomed him. Having now been in the upper country for three years, he was the one man fitted to guide Lisa's party, and was promptly persuaded to turn back with the treasure-seekers.
Past Blackbird's grave, where the great chief of the Omahas had been buried astride his war-horse high on the crest of a hill that his spirit might see the canoes of the French voyageurs going up and down the river; past the lonely grave of Floyd,[8] whose death, like that of many a New World hero marked another milestone in the westward progress of empire; past the Aricaras, with their three hundred warriors gorgeous in vermilion, firing volleys across the keel-boat with fusees got from rival traders;[9] past the Mandans, threatening death to the intruders; past five thousand Assiniboine hostiles massed on the bank with weapons ready; up the Yellowstone to the mouth of the Bighorn—went Lisa, stopping in the very heart of the Crow tribe, those thieves and pirates and marauders of the western wilderness. Stockades were hastily stuck in the ground, banked up with a miniature parapet, flanked with the two usual bastions that could send a raking fire along all four walls; and Lisa was ready for trade.
In 1808 the keel-boat returned to St. Louis, loaded to the water-line with furs. The Missouri Company was formally organized,[10] and yearly expeditions were sent not only to the Bighorn, but to the Three Forks of the Missouri, among the ferocious Blackfeet. Of the two hundred and fifty men employed, fifty were trained riflemen for the defence of the trappers; but this did not prevent more than thirty men losing their lives at the hands of the Blackfeet within two years. Among the victims was Drouillard, struck down wheeling his horse round and round as a shield, literally torn to pieces by the exasperated savages and eaten according to the hideous superstition that the flesh of a brave man imparts bravery. All the plundered clothing, ammunition, and peltries were carried to the Nor' Westers' trading posts north of the boundary.[11] Not if the West were to be baptized in blood would the traders retreat. Crippled, but not beaten, the Missouri men under Andrew Henry's leadership moved south-west over the mountains into the region that was to become famous as Pierre's Hole.
Meanwhile neither the Nor' Westers nor Mr. Astor remained idle. The same year that Lisa organized his Missouri Fur Company Mr. Astor obtained a charter from the State of New York for the American Fur Company. To lessen competition in the great scheme gradually framing itself in his mind, he bought out that half of the Mackinaw Company's trade[12] which was within the United States, the posts in the British dominions falling into the hands of the all-powerful Nor' Westers. Intimate with the leading partners of the Nor' Westers, Mr. Astor proposed to avoid rivalry on the Pacific coast by giving the Canadians a third interest in his plans for the capture of the Pacific trade.
Lords of their own field, the Nor' Westers rejected Mr. Astor's proposal with a scorn born of unshaken confidence, and at once prepared to anticipate American possession of the Pacific coast. Mr. Astor countered by engaging the best of the dissatisfied Nor' Westers for his Pacific Fur Company. Duncan MacDougall, a little pepper-box of a Scotchman, with a bumptious idea of authority which was always making other eyes smart, was to be Mr. Astor's proxy on the ship to round the Horn and at the headquarters of the company on the Pacific. Donald MacKenzie was a relative of Sir Alexander of the Nor' Westers, and must have left the northern traders from some momentary pique; for he soon went back to the Canadian companies, became chief factor at Fort Garry,[13] the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company, and was for a time governor of Red River. Alexander MacKay had accompanied Sir Alexander MacKenzie on his famous northern trips, and was one Nor' Wester who served Mr. Astor with fidelity to the death. The elder Stuart was a rollicking winterer from The Labrador, with the hail-fellow-well-met-air of an equal among the mercurial French-Canadians. The younger Stuart was of the game, independent spirit that made Nor' Westers famous.
Of the Tonquin's voyage round the Horn—with its crew of twenty, and choleric Captain Thorn, and four[14] partners headed by the fussy little MacDougall in mutiny against the captain's discipline, and twelve clerks always getting their landlubber clumsiness in the sailors' way, and thirteen voyageurs ever grumbling at the ocean swell that gave them qualms unknown on inland waters—little need be said. Washington Irving has told this story; and what Washington Irving leaves untold, Captain Chittenden has recently unearthed from the files of the Missouri archives.
The Tonquin sailed from New York, September 6, 1810. The captain had been a naval officer, and cursed the partners for their easy familiarity with the men before the mast, and the note-writing clerks for a lot of scribbling blockheads, and the sea-sick voyageurs for a set of fresh-water braggarts. And the captain's amiable feelings were reciprocated by every Nor' Wester on board.
Cape Horn was doubled on Christmas Day, Hawaii sighted in February, some thirty Sandwich Islanders engaged for service in the new company, and the Columbia entered at the end of March, 1811. Eight lives were lost attempting to run small boats against the turbulent swell of tide and current. The place to land, the site to build, details of the new fort, Astoria—all were subjects for the jangling that went on between the fuming little Scotchman MacDougall and Captain Thorn, till the Tonquin weighed anchor on the 1st of June and sailed away to trade on the north coast, accompanied by only one partner, Alexander MacKay, and one clerk, James Lewis.
The obstinacy that had dominated Captain Thorn continued to dictate a wrong-headed course. In spite of Mr. Astor's injunction to keep Indians off the ship and MacKay's warning that the Nootka tribes were treacherous, the captain allowed natives to swarm over his decks. Once, when MacKay was on shore, Thorn lost his temper, struck an impertinent chief in the face with a bundle of furs, and expelled the Indian from the ship. When MacKay came back and learned what had happened, he warned the captain of Indian vengeance and urged him to leave the harbour. These warnings the captain scorned, welcoming back the Indians, and no doubt exulting to see that they had become almost servile.
One morning, when Thorn, and MacKay were yet asleep, a pirogue with twenty Indians approached the ship. The Indians were unarmed, and held up furs to trade. They were welcomed on deck. Another canoe glided near and another band mounted the ship's ladder. Soon the vessel was completely surrounded with canoes, the braves coming aboard with furs, the squaws laughing and chatting and rocking their crafts at the ship's side. This day the Indians were neither pertinacious nor impertinent in their trade. Matters went swimmingly till some of the Tonquin's crew noticed with alarm that all the Indians were taking knives and other weapons in exchange for their furs and that groups were casually stationing themselves at positions of wonderful advantage on the deck. MacKay and Thorn were quickly called.
This is probably what the Indians were awaiting.
MacKay grasped the fearful danger of the situation and again warned the captain. Again Thorn slighted the warning. But anchors were hoisted. The Indians thronged closer, as if in the confusion of hasty trade. Then the dour-headed Thorn understood. With a shout he ordered the decks cleared. His shout was answered by a counter-shout—the wild, shrill shriekings of the Indian war-cry! All the newly-bought weapons flashed in the morning sun. Lewis, the clerk, fell first, bending over a pile of goods, and rolled down the companion-way with a mortal stab in his back. MacKay was knocked from his seat on the taffrail by a war-club and pitched overboard to the canoes, where the squaws received him on their knives. Thorn had been roused so suddenly that he had no weapon but his pocket-knife. With this he was trying to fight his way to the firearms of the cabin, when he was driven, faint from loss of blood, to the wheel-house. A tomahawk clubbed down, and he, too, was pitched overboard to the knives of the squaws.
While the officers were falling on the quarter-deck, sailors and Sandwich Islanders were fighting to the death elsewhere. The seven men who had been sent up the ratlins to rig sails came shinning down ropes and masts to gain the cabin. Two were instantly killed. A third fell down the main hatch fatally wounded; and the other four got into the cabin, where they broke holes and let fly with musket and rifle. This sent the savages scattering overboard to the waiting canoes. The survivors then fired charge after charge from the deck cannon, which drove the Indians to land with tremendous loss of life.
All day the Indians watched the Tonquin's sails flapping to the wind; but none of the ship's crew appeared on the deck. The next morning the Tonquin still lay rocking to the tide; but no white men emerged from below. Eager to plunder the apparently deserted ship, the Indians launched their canoes and cautiously paddled near. A white man—one of those who had fallen down the hatch wounded—staggered up to the deck, waved for the natives to come on board, and dropped below. Gluttonous of booty, the savages beset the sides of the Tonquin like flocks of carrion-birds. Barely were they on deck when sea and air were rent with a terrific explosion as of ten thousand cannon! The ship was blown to atoms, bodies torn asunder, and the sea scattered with bloody remnants of what had been living men but a moment before.
The mortally wounded man, thought to be Lewis, the clerk,[15] had determined to effect the death of his enemies on his own pyre. Unable to escape with the other four refugees under cover of night, he had put a match to four tons of powder in the hold. But the refugees might better have perished with the Tonquin; for head-winds drove them ashore, where they were captured and tortured to death with all the prolonged cruelty that savages practise. Between twenty and thirty lives were lost in this disaster to the Pacific Fur Company; and MacDougall was left at Astoria with but a handful of men and a weakly-built fort to wait the coming of the overland traders whom Mr. Astor was sending by way of the Missouri and Columbia.
Indian runners brought vague rumours of thirty white men building a fort on the Upper Columbia. If these had been the overland party, they would have come on to Astoria. Who they were, MacDougall, who had himself been a Nor' Wester, could easily guess. As a countercheck, Stuart of Labrador was preparing to go up-stream and build a fur post for the Pacific Company; but Astoria was suddenly electrified by the apparition of nine white men in a canoe flying a British flag.
The North-West Company arrived just three months too late!
David Thompson, the partner at the head of the newcomers, had been delayed in the mountains by the