The Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company: Including that of the French Traders of North-Western Canada and of the North-West, XY, and Astor Fur CompaniesBryce, George
History
The Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company: Including that of the French Traders of North-Western Canada and of the North-West, XY, and Astor Fur Companies
Bryce, George
Fur trade -- Northwest, Canadian; Hudson's Bay Company; North West Company; Northwest, Canadian -- History; XY Company
For eight long years Roderick McKenzie remained in the Indian country,
and came to Canada in 1797. Some two years afterward Sir Alexander
Mackenzie left the old Company and headed the X Y Company. At that
time Roderick McKenzie was chosen in the place of his cousin in the
North-West Company, and this for several years caused a coolness between
them.
His "Reminiscences" extend to 1829, at which time he was living in
Terrebonne, in Lower Canada. He became a member of the Legislative
Council in Lower Canada, and he has a number of distinguished
descendants. Roderick McKenzie closes his interesting "Reminiscences"
with an elaborate and valuable list of the proprietors, clerks,
interpreters, &c., of the North-West Company in 1799, giving their
distribution in the departments, and the salary paid each. It gives us a
picture of the magnitude of the operations of the North-West Company.
TALES OF THE NORTH-WEST.
Few of the Nor'-Westers aimed at collecting and preserving the folk-lore
of the natives. At the request of Roderick McKenzie, George Keith,
a bourgeois who spent a great part of his life very far North, viz.
in the regions of Athabasca, Mackenzie River, and Great Bear Lake,
sent a series of letters extending from 1807 onward for ten years
embodying tales, descriptions, and the history of the Indian tribes
of his district. His first description is that of the Beaver Indians,
of whom he gives a vocabulary. He writes for us a number of tales of
the Beaver Indians, viz. "The Indian Hercules," "Two Lost Women," "The
Flood, a Tale of the Mackenzie River," and "The Man in the Moon." One
letter gives a good account of the social manners and customs of the
Beaver Indians, and another a somewhat complete description of the
Rocky Mountains and Mackenzie River country. Descriptions of the Filthy
Lake and Grand River Indians and the Long Arrowed Indians, with a few
more letters with reference to the fur trade, make up the interesting
collection. George Keith may be said to have wielded the "pen of a ready
writer." We give his story of
THE MAN IN THE MOON.
_A Tale, or Tradition, of the Beaver Indians._
"In the primitive ages of the world, there was a man and his wife who
had no children. The former was very singular in his manner of living.
Being an excellent hunter, he lived entirely upon the blood of the
animals he killed. This circumstance displeased his wife, who secretly
determined to play him a trick. Accordingly one day the husband went
out hunting, and left orders with his wife to boil some blood in a
kettle, so as to be ready for supper on his return. When the time of his
expected return was drawing nigh, his wife pierced a vein with an awl
in her left arm and drew a copious quantity of blood, which she mixed
with a greater quantity of the blood of a moose deer, that he should not
discover it, and prepared the whole for her husband's supper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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