The Great Company : $b being a history of the honourable company of merchants-adventurers trading into Hudson's BayWillson, Beckles
History
The Great Company : $b being a history of the honourable company of merchants-adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay
Willson, Beckles
Fur trade -- Canada; Hudson's Bay Company; Northwest, Canadian -- History
A trader, William Corrigal, in the service of the Company, was
stationed, in May, 1806, with a few men at a place called Bad Lake,
not far from Albany Factory. Near this post was another occupied by a
much larger number of men in charge of a partner in the North-West
concern named Haldane. Five of the Canadians in his service watching
their opportunity broke into Corrigal's house about midnight when he
and his men were in bed. The ruffians immediately secured all the
loaded guns and pistols they could find, and one of them seizing the
Company's trader and presenting a pistol at his breast swore to shoot
him if he made any resistance. In the meantime the others rifled the
storehouse and took away furs to the number of 480 beaver. On their
departure Corrigal dressed himself and went immediately to Haldane,
whom he found up, and fully attired, to complain of the conduct of his
servants and to demand that the stolen property be restored. The
answer of the Northman was that "He had come to that country for furs,
and furs he was determined to have." The robbers were permitted to
carry away the stolen peltries to the Grand Portage where they were
sold, and formed part of the returns of the North-West concern that
year. A robbery of the same character took place at Red Lake a little
later in the year. This trading house was also under the charge of
Corrigal, and was forcibly entered by eight of the Northmen, armed
with pistols and knives; under threats to murder the servants of the
Hudson's Bay Company they carried off furs to the amount of fifty
beaver. Not long after this they forcibly broke open the same
warehouse and robbed it of a large quantity of cloth, brandy, tobacco
and ammunition.
[Sidenote: Violence and robbery by the North-West Company.]
In the year 1808 Mr. John Spence, of the Hudson's Bay Company,
commanded a post fitted out from Churchill's Factory at Reindeer Lake,
in the neighbourhood of which there was a station of the North-West
Company commanded by Mr. John Duncan Campbell, one of the partners. In
the course of the spring, William Linklater, in the service of the
Hudson's Bay Company, was sent out to meet some Indians, from whom he
traded a parcel of valuable furs. He was bringing them home on a hand
sleigh, and was at no great distance from the house, when Campbell
came out with a number of men, stopped him, demanded the furs, and on
being refused drew a dagger, with which he cut the traces of the
sledge, while at the same time one of his men took hold of Linklater's
shoes, tripped him up, and made him fall on the ice. The sledge of
furs was then hauled away to the North-West concern's house. Campbell
offered to Mr. Spence to send other furs in exchange for those which
he had thus robbed him of; but they were of very inferior value, and
the latter refused the compromise. The furs were carried away, and no
compensation was ever made.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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