Where Voyageurs Dared To Go
The HBC brigades almost defy belief in their historic treks across unforgiving mountains, treacherous rivers, vast bogs and deserts. Nancy Marguerite Anderson tells their story.
September 10th, 2024
Nancy Marguerite Anderson, a Métis Nation BC member, is herself the descendant of a voyageur.
Some First Nations had long working relationships with the HBC men. Others were wary, if not hostile. But time and again, the HBC men relied on Métis and First Nations guides and local knowledge to survive.
Review by Tom Hawthorn
This book is exhausting—but not for the reason you might expect. Make no mistake. The HBC Brigades: Culture, Conflict, and Perilous Journey of the Fur Trade (Ronsdale $24.95) is a fine book with crisp writing nicely balanced between the author’s voice and the journals of Hudson’s Bay Company men. It’s the subject that is exhausting because the journeys almost defy belief.
To get valuable furs from New Caledonia, the vast interior of what is now British Columbia, to the Pacific Coast and onwards to markets in Britain and elsewhere, hardy HBC men faced a grueling task. They needed to get heavy loads of furs out and supplies in by improving historic trails used by Indigenous inhabitants. They often were also blazing new trails over unmapped and inhospitable lands.
In their way was some of the most unforgiving geography this continent has to offer. Impassable mountains. Treacherous rivers. Vast bogs. Heavy forest. Inhospitable desert.
Lawrence H. Sitwell leading a pack train up the hill from the Kettle River in 1902. Mikan 3194139, LAC PA-111926
George Simpson, the HBC governor and one of the world’s great travelers, successfully journeyed down the Fraser River to the company’s trading post at Fort Langley in light canoes with skillful bowmen, but he recognized in his writings that the rapids, the projecting rocks and the looming canyon walls made “the passage down, to be certain Death, in nine attempts out of Ten. I shall therefore no longer talk of it as a navigable stream.”
The HBC Brigades describes the annual tribulations of the Scottish, French-speaking Canadiens and Métis voyageurs, as well as First Nations guides, who struggled to bring their cargo to the sea. The need for new routes became more urgent after the international border was extended along the 49th Parallel from the Rocky Mountains to Point Roberts on Georgia Strait. The newly settled border placed the HBC’s Fort Vancouver, located on the Columbia River, well inside American territory. To avoid taxes, the HBC needed the brigades to travel within British territory.
The author, Nancy Marguerite Anderson, a member of Métis Nation British Columbia, is herself the descendant of a voyageur. Her previous book, The York Factory Express (Ronsdale, 2020), described the epic 4,200-kilometre return journey of fur traders from Fort Vancouver to York Factory on the west shore of Hudson Bay.
Her latest work is filled with fascinating characters such as Alexander Caulfield Anderson, who is influenced by the romantic writings of James Fenimore Cooper; the violent Peter Skene Ogden; the First Nations guide and trader, “Black-eye;” and the future colonial governor, James Douglas, an unyielding boss whose diplomacy averts slaughter and a racial war.
We also get hints of life in the isolated forts and trading posts. Among the HBC clerks, the Métis are known for their passions, whether voyaging or arriving with their shipments. No matter how tired, one clerk noted, “if he but hear a discordant jingling of an ill-tuned fiddle he must be up and capering with ever and anon an inspiring ‘Hi! Hi! Hi!’ inviting others to join in the dance.”
The harshness of the landscape and a life upcountry is expressed in the naming of geographic features. A Fraser River canyon might be a terrific fishing ground for the local Indigenous people, but for anyone in a laden canoe or boat it is a deadly trap known as Hell’s Gate. The Rivière de Trepannier is named for an emergency medical operation conducted on its banks—a trepanation (the drilling of a hole in a skull) on an Okanagan man who had survived a bear attack.
A constant concern was the supply of horses. Once purchased for as little as a blanket, a growing demand led to a steep rise in price. As pack animals, horses endured terrible conditions. The belts used to hold their loads chafed and cut through their flesh. Their unshod hooves were cut by jagged rocks. Horses drowned while fording rivers or fell off steep cliffs. Grass on which to feed was scarce, and the nomadic nature of the trade meant no one was growing feed for the winters.
In the harsh winter of 1848-49, 150 horses died at Ford Alexandria in the North Cariboo, while another 250 of 400 horses starved in Kamloops. Local Indigenous Peoples suffered great deprivations and starvation, too, though their numbers went unrecorded.
Some First Nations had long working relationships with the HBC men, including the Similkameen, Secwepemc (Shuswap) and Stó:lō. Others were wary, if not hostile. Time and again, the HBC men relied on Métis and First Nations guides and local knowledge to survive.
The discovery of gold shocked the economics of the colony. More money was to be made in supplying prospectors than in running furs, so the HBC bought a store in Barkerville and built new ones in Hazelton and Quesnel. Gold also lured Americans north into British territory. Alexander Caulfield Anderson sold thousands of copies of his Hand-book and Map to the Gold Regions of Frazer’s and Thompson’s Rivers. The violent, lawless interlopers disrupted the salmon fishery, raped Indigenous women and seemed eager to wage a bloody war. The invasion of foreigners into their territory led the Nlaka’pamux to take up arms to defend themselves and their territory. The short, bloody Fraser Canyon War, which included miners killing every man, woman and child in some villages, ended with a brokered truce.
About a week later, Governor Douglas arrived in the Fraser Canyon with 35 red-jacketed Royal Engineers and a handful of militiamen to keep the peace and assert British sovereignty.
Some of the locations cited in the old journals can no longer be pinpointed. The old trails to a resting place known as Manson’s Camp were obliterated by logging roads, while the site of the original camp can no longer be placed after the area was logged.
Yet, remnants remain of those bold adventurers who once wandered through the wilderness. In 1971, some hikers decided to follow an old trail on Manson’s Mountain. Walking from east to west, they spotted the slashed bark of deep, century-old blazes, the mark easily visible though bark was growing back over the damaged, grey core wood.
Other evidence remains more visible and easily visited, including the Fort Langley National Historic Site. On Government Street in Victoria, you can look down on the sidewalk to see a brick outline showing the borders of Fort Victoria.
Once the trails were established, those with local knowledge of the backcountry began to lead pack trains. This task was taken up by former Royal Engineers; by Mexicans from the California gold fields who brought with them hardy mules; by Chinese storekeepers; and by Nora Yakumtikum, an Upper Similkameen woman who ran trains from Fort Hope to Kamloops. Perhaps the most famous packer was Jean Caux, known as Cataline, a Frenchman who gained nearly mythical status. He led his last pack train in 1912, dying a decade later. History is always closer than you think. 9781553807018
Tom Hawthorn’s most recent book is The Year Canadians Lost Their Minds and Found Their Country: The Centennial of 1967 (D&M, 2017).
The publication of HBC Brigades is a wonderful achievement for Nancy Marguerite Anderson and Ronsdale Press. Her Internet publications introduced me to the grandfather of two Nicola Valley cowboys and Great War soldiers. His name was Henry Hardinge Digby Shuttleworth (1834 – 1900) and he led his first HBC horse brigade across the North Cascades in the company’s 1856/57 “outfit” year, to Fort Langley from Fort Colville, and back. He led men and women and their beasts and their burdens up and down the Hope-Princeton trail for another thirty or so years after that first crossing. “Fixed income” me has alerted the Vancouver and Thompson-Nicola libraries to this book.