CHAPTER IV.
Two Expeditions Set on Foot.- The Tonquin and Her Crew.- Captain Thorn, His
Character.- The Partners and Clerks - Canadian Voyageurs, Their Habits,
Employments, Dress, Character, Songs- Expedition of a Canadian Boat and Its Crew by
Land and Water.- Arrival at New York.- Preparations for a Sea Voyage.- Northwest
Braggarts. -Underhand Precautions- Letter of Instructions.
IN prosecuting his great scheme of commerce and colonization, two expeditions were
devised by Mr. Astor, one by sea, the other by land. The former was to carry out the
people, stores, ammunition, and merchandise, requisite for establishing a fortified
trading post at the mouth of Columbia River. The latter, conducted by Mr. Hunt, was to
proceed up the Missouri, and across the Rocky Mountains, to the same point; exploring
a line of communication across the continent and noting the places where interior
trading posts might be established. The expedition by sea is the one which comes first
under consideration.
A fine ship was provided called the Tonquin, of two hundred and ninety tons burden,
mounting ten guns, with a crew of twenty men. She carried an assortment of
merchandise for trading with the natives of the seaboard and of the interior, together
with the frame of a schooner, to be employed in the coasting trade. Seeds also were
provided for the cultivation of the soil, and nothing was neglected for the necessary
supply of the establishment. The command of the ship was intrusted to Jonathan Thorn,
of New York, a lieutenant in the United States navy, on leave of absence. He was a
man of courage and firmness, who had distinguished himself in our Tripolitan war, and,
from being accustomed to naval discipline, was considered by Mr. Astor as well fitted to
take charge of an expedition of the kind. Four of the partners were to embark in the
ship, namely, Messrs. M'Kay, M'Dougal, David Stuart, and his nephew, Robert Stuart.
Mr. M'Dougal was empowered by Mr. Astor to act as his proxy in the absence of Mr.
Hunt, to vote for him and in his name, on any question that might come before any
meeting of the persons interested in the voyage.
Besides the partners, there were twelve clerks to go out in the ship, several of them
natives of Canada, who had some experience in the Indian trade. They were bound to
the service of the company for five years, at the rate of one hundred dollars a year,
payable at the expiration of the term, and an annual equipment of clothing to the
amount of forty dollars. In case of ill conduct they were liable to forfeit their wages and
be dismissed; but, should they acquit themselves well, the confident expectation was
held out to them of promotion, and partnership. Their interests were thus, to some
extent, identified with those of the company.
Several artisans were likewise to sail in the ship, for the supply of the colony; but the
most peculiar and characteristic part of this motley embarkation consisted of thirteen
Canadian "voyageurs,"who had enlisted for five years. As this class of functionaries will
continually recur in the course of the following narrations, and as they form one of
those distinct and strongly marked castes or orders of people, springing up in this vast
continent out of geographical circumstances, or the varied pursuits, habitudes, and
origins of its population, we shall sketch a few of their characteristics for the information
of the reader.
The "voyageurs" form a kind of confraternity in the Canadas, like the arrieros, or
carriers of Spain, and, like them, are employed in long internal expeditions of travel and
traffic: with this difference, that the arrieros travel by land, the voyageurs by water; the
former with mules and horses, the latter with batteaux and canoes. The voyageurs may
be said to have sprung up out of the fur trade, having originally been employed by the
early French merchants in their trading expeditions through the labyrinth of rivers and
lakes of the boundless interior. They were coeval with the coureurs des bois, or
rangers of the woods, already noticed, and, like them, in the intervals of their long,
arduous, and laborious expeditions, were prone to pass their time in idleness and
revelry about the trading posts or settlements; squandering their hard earnings in
heedless conviviality, and rivaling their neighbors, the Indians, in indolent indulgence
and an imprudent disregard of the morrow.
When Canada passed under British domination, and the old French trading houses
were broken up, the voyageurs, like the coureurs des bois, were for a time
disheartened and disconsolate, and with difficulty could reconcile themselves to the
service of the new-comers, so different in habits, manners, and language from their
former employers. By degrees, however, they became accustomed to the change, and
at length came to consider the British fur traders, and especially the members of the
Northwest Company, as the legitimate lords of creation.
The dress of these people is generally half civilized, half savage. They wear a capot or
surcoat, made of a blanket, a striped cotton shirt, cloth trousers, or leathern leggins,
moccasins of deer-skin, and a belt of variegated worsted, from which are suspended
the knife, tobacco-pouch, and other implements. Their language is of the same piebald
character, being a French patois, embroidered with Indian and English words and
phrases.
The lives of the voyageurs are passed in wild and extensive rovings, in the service of
individuals, but more especially of the fur traders. They are generally of French
descent, and inherit much of the gayety and lightness of heart of their ancestors, being
full of anecdote and song, and ever ready for the dance. They inherit, too, a fund of
civility and complaisance; and, instead of that hardness and grossness which men in
laborious life are apt to indulge towards each other, they are mutually obliging and
accommodating; interchanging kind offices, yielding each other assistance and comfort
in every emergency, and using the familiar appellations of "cousin" and "brother" when
there is in fact no relationship. Their natural good-will is probably heightened by a
community of adventure and hardship in their precarious and wandering life.
No men are more submissive to their leaders and employers, more capable of enduring
hardship, or more good-humored under privations. Never are they so happy as when
on long and rough expeditions, toiling up rivers or coasting lakes; encamping at night
on the borders, gossiping round their fires, and bivouacking in the open air. They are
dextrous boatmen, vigorous and adroit with the oar and paddle, and will row from
morning until night without a murmur. The steersman often sings an old traditionary
French song, with some regular burden in which they all join, keeping time with their
oars; if at any time they flag in spirits or relax in exertion, it is but necessary to strike up
a song of the kind to put them all in fresh spirits and activity. The Canadian waters are
vocal with these little French chansons, that have been echoed from mouth to mouth
and transmitted from father to son, from the earliest days of the colony; and it has a
pleasing effect, in a still golden summer evening, to see a batteau gliding across the
bosom of a lake and dipping its oars to the cadence of these quaint old ditties, or
sweeping along in full chorus on a bright sunny morning, down the transparent current
of one of the Canada rivers.
But we are talking of things that are fast fading away! The march of mechanical
invention is driving everything poetical before it. The steamboats, which are fast
dispelling the wildness and romance of our lakes and rivers, and aiding to subdue the
world into commonplace, are proving as fatal to the race of the Canadian voyageurs as
they have been to that of the boatmen of the Mississippi. Their glory is departed. They
are no longer the lords of our internal seas, and the great navigators of the wilderness.
Some of them may still occasionally be seen coasting the lower lakes with their frail
barks, and pitching their camps and lighting their fires upon the shores; but their range
is fast contracting to those remote waters and shallow and obstructed rivers unvisited
by the steamboat. In the course of years they will gradually disappear; their songs will
die away like the echoes they once awakened, and the Canadian voyageurs will
become a forgotten race, or remembered, like their associates, the Indians, among the
poetical images of past times, and as themes for local and romantic associations.
An instance of the buoyant temperament and the professional pride of these people
was furnished in the gay and braggart style in which they arrived at New York to join
the enterprise. They were determined to regale and astonish the people of the "States"
with the sight of a Canadian boat and a Canadian crew. They accordingly fitted up a
large but light bark canoe, such as is used in the fur trade; transported it in a wagon
from the banks of the St. Lawrence to the shores of Lake Champlain; traversed the lake
in it, from end to end; hoisted it again in a wagon and wheeled it off to Lansingburgh,
and there launched it upon the waters of the Hudson. Down this river they plied their
course merrily on a fine summer's day, making its banks resound for the first time with
their old French boat songs; passing by the villages with whoop and halloo, so as to
make the honest Dutch farmers mistake them for a crew of savages. In this way they
swept, in full song and with regular flourish of the paddle, round New York, in a still
summer evening, to the wonder and admiration of its inhabitants, who had never before
witnessed on their waters, a nautical apparition of the kind.
Such was the variegated band of adventurers about to embark in the Tonquin on this
ardous and doubtful enterprise. While yet in port and on dry land, in the bustle of
preparation and the excitement of novelty, all was sunshine and promise. The
Canadians, especially, who, with their constitutional vivacity, have a considerable dash
of the gascon, were buoyant and boastful, and great brag arts as to the future; while all
those who had been in the service of the Northwest Company, and engaged in the
Indian trade, plumed themselves upon their hardihood and their capacity to endure
privations. If Mr. Astor ventured to hint at the difficulties they might have to encounter,
they treated them with scorn. They were "northwesters;" men seasoned to hardships,
who cared for neither wind nor weather. They could live hard, lie hard, sleep hard, eat
dogs! - in a word they were ready to do and suffer anything for the good of the
enterprise. With all this profession of zeal and devotion, Mr. Astor was not
overconfident of the stability and firm faith of these mercurial beings. He had received
information, also, that an armed brig from Halifax, probably at the instigation of the
Northwest Company, was hovering on the coast, watching for the Tonquin, with the
purpose of impressing the Canadians on board of her, as British subjects, and thus
interrupting the voyage. It was a time of doubt and anxiety, when the relations between
the United States and Great Britain were daily assuming a more precarious aspect and
verging towards that war which shortly ensued. As a precautionary measure, therefore,
he required that the voyageurs, as they were about to enter into the service of an
American association, and to reside within the limits of the United States, should take
the oaths of naturalization as American citizens. To this they readily agreed, and
shortly afterward assured him that they had actually done so. It was not until after they
had sailed that he discovered that they had entirely deceived him in the matter.
The confidence of Mr. Astor was abused in another quarter. Two of the partners, both
of them Scotchmen, and recently in the service of the Northwest Company, had
misgivings as to an enterprise which might clash with the interests and establishments
protected by the British flag. They privately waited upon the British minister, Mr.
Jackson, then in New York, laid open to him the whole scheme of Mr. Astor, though
intrusted to them in confidence, and dependent, in a great measure, upon secrecy at
the outset for its success, and inquired whether they, as British subjects, could lawfully
engage in it. The reply satisfied their scruples, while the information they imparted
excited the surprise and admiration of Mr. Jackson, that a private individual should
have conceived and set on foot at his own risk and expense so great an enterprise.
This step on the part of those gentlemen was not known to Mr. Astor until some time
afterwards, or it might have modified the trust and confidence reposed in them.
To guard against any interruption to the voyage by the armed brig, said to be off the
harbor, Mr. Astor applied to Commodore Rodgers, at that time commanding at New
York, to give the Tonquin safe convoy off the coast. The commodore having received
from a high official source assurance of the deep interest which the government took in
the enterprise, sent directions to Captain Hull, at that time cruising off the harbor, in the
frigate Constitution, to afford the Tonquin the required protection when she should put
to sea.
Before the day of embarkation, Mr. Astor addressed a letter of instruction to the four
partners who were to sail in the ship. In this he enjoined them, in the most earnest
manner, to cultivate harmony and unanimity, and recommended that all differences of
opinions on points connected with the objects and interests of the voyage should be
discussed by the whole, and decided by a majority of votes. He, moreover, gave them
especial caution as to their conduct on arriving at their destined port; exhorting them to
be careful to make a favorable impression upon the wild people among whom their lot
and the fortunes of the enterprise would be cast. "If you find them kind," said he, "as I
hope you will, be so to them. If otherwise, act with caution and forebearance, and
convince them that you come as friends."
With the same anxious forethought he wrote a letter of instructions to Captain Thorn, in
which he urged the strictest attention to the health of himself and his crew, and to the
promotion of good-humor and harmony on board his ship. "To prevent any
misunderstanding," added he, "will require your particular good management." His
letter closed with an injunction of wariness in his intercourse with the natives, a subject
on which Mr. Astor was justly sensible he could not be too earnest. "I must recommend
you," said he, "to be particularly careful on the coast, and not to rely too much on the
friendly disposition of the natives. All accidents which have as yet happened there
arose from too much confidence in the Indians."
The reader will bear these instructions in mind, as events will prove their wisdom and
importance, and the disasters which ensued in consequence of the neglect of them.