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Updated: June 25, 2025
I heard the soldiers' steps reverberating through the empty passages, and was alone in a sort of prison-room, used during the régime of the petty tyrant McDonell. It was cold enough to cool any hot-head, and mine was very hot indeed. I knew the apartment well. Nor'-Westers had used it as a fur storeroom.
The annual gathering of the Nor'-Westers was held at Grand Portage, the terminus of a road nine miles long, built to avoid the rapids of the Pigeon River which flows into Lake Superior some thirty or forty miles southwest of where Fort William now stands. This concourse was a notable affair.
From the time that the North-Westers gratuitously poured their secrets into the ears of Lord Selkirk, and Lord Selkirk shrewdly got control of the Hudson's Bay Company and began to infuse Nor'-Westers' zeal into the stagnant workings of the older company, there arose such a feud among these lords of the north as may be likened only to the pillaging of robber barons in the middle ages.
These gales are evidently the greatest annoyance which Cape Colonists have to endure; and although everybody kindly suggests that I ought to see one, just to understand what it is like, I am profoundly thankful that I only know it from their description and my own distinct recollection of the New Zealand "nor'-westers."
I knew very well my comrade, with the rough-and-ready methods of traders, had gone out to do what was not right; and I hung back in the tent, balancing the end against the means, our deeds against Louis' perfidy, and Nor'-Westers' interests against those of the Hudson's Bay. It is not pleasant to recall what was done between the cedars and the shore. I do not attempt to justify our conduct.
Ah! reader, poor human beings have many and many a time in the past been brought to this terrible condition. God grant that we and ours may never know what it is to tremble on the brink of madness because of the combined influence of gross injustice and horrible cruelty. To do the Nor'-westers justice, they were unaware of the intensity of the pain they were inflicting.
We camped on the south side of the Assiniboine a few miles from the Red, and Little Fellow went to some neighboring half-breeds for a canoe. And a strange story he brought back! A great man, second only to the king so the half-breeds said had come from England to rule over Assiniboia. He boasted the shock of his power would be felt from Montreal to Athabasca. He would drive out all Nor'-Westers.
"Do you remember John Bourke?" "Yes, yes. I remember him, but I care not for him. My own sorrows are too great." "Do you recollect," continued Dan, regardless of this despairing remark, "that a good while ago the Nor'-westers took him prisoner, when he was wounded after a skirmish with them, and carried him to Canada treating him with great barbarity on the way.
The course was his own and fully did he afterwards pay the price for his aggressions. The last acts of Governor Semple as the report of them was carried westward and repeated over the camp fires of the Nor'-Westers and their Bois-brulés horsemen and voyageurs caused the most violent excitement. The Metis claimed a right in the soil from their Indian mothers.
"Hudson's Bay is not the highest bidder." "Not unless you happen to have information they want." "Oh! That's the way of it, is it?" So the boy was selling Nor'-Westers' secrets. "You can bet your last beaver-skin it is! Do you think I was old Cam's private secretary for nothin'? Not I! I say get your wares as you may and sell 'em to the highest bidder.
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