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[Draft version]

What Goes Around Comes Around:

The Early Theatre of Mackenzie Inuit Evangelization

1799-1859

Walter Vanast McGill University

Everything goeth, everything returneth . . .

For every Here rolleth the ball turning There . . .

Crooked is the path of eternity.

F. Nietzsche

Introduction

Four things had to happen to let the Inuit of the Mackenzie Delta first hear of Jesus. For a start,

fear between this tribe and whites had to end. Next, Hudsons Bay Companya

profit had to lag, which

made it look their way for new business. Then in London the Company had to be so hurt (by a former

employee who claimed it blocked missions), that it wished to be seen bringing God to distant tribes.

Lastly, the Inuit had to want a trade-post in their midst. Their 1859 delegation to that end reached Fort

Simpson within hours of an HBC-assisted cleric, who taught them them for a week and schooled a girl

they left behind. Evangelization, this story shows, was in large part theater, shaped by far-off events,

economic interests, and actors private lives.

Part I:

1899-1859

The Ends of the Earth,

the HBC, and the GWichin

To arctic-coast tribes in pre-contact days history was a circle, as newborns took the name of

someone recently deceased and thus became that person. But to whites who met them it was a very

straight line from Adam to Apocalypse, when the dead would all rise and go to heaven or hell. What

follows here is how that came to be told to the Inuit of the Delta.

aHBC or Company hereafter.


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Soon after Alexander Mackenzies 1786 journey on the stream that now carries his name, its

banks were plied by Montreal traders. Profit, however, stayed small, and after many tries they stayed

further south.b Then in 1821 they joined their competitor, the HBC, and posts were manned again.

Success seemed sure, for Britain gave the new group sole rights to the Indian or North West Territories,

which included the Mackenzie.

To the south and east the Company already held Ruperts Land, which stretched from the Rockies

to Ungava. But anxiety increasingly marked its nineteenth century rule, for the charter to that terrain

would expire in 1870, and renewal would have to be asked from Britain. Meanwhile the North West

licencec

needed extension each decade or two, which became harder to get as free trade gained favor.d

Other forces also worked against the HBC. Many in Britain held the Arctic close to heart and

blamed the Company for not defining its limits. And evangelicals thought it paid no heed to a bible text,

He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river until the ends of the earth,e

which they

saw as an order to tell of God in distant places. So at strategic times the Company sent employees to

explore the arctic coast, and somewhere on its land helped missions. As in theater-in-the-round, its acts

were hued by what Britons thought, and vice versa.

Shareholders, too, had to be kept on side, which meant Company worth must grow or at least be

kept stable. For that reason from the 1820s on it tried expansion from the Mackenzie toward Alaska, and

when that failed to raise profit it looked to the Delta. That this field had not been tapped before was due to

nearby Gwichin Indians, then known to whites as Loucheux.

b Working against them were the high cost of bringing trade goods by canoe all the way from Montreal, scant provisions, hostility from Indian

tribes, natural shifts in wildlife, and competition further south from the London-based HBC.

cin the early 1840s and late the next decade.

dMost famously those that fixed the price of corn

dand made landowners rich at the expense of other people.

ePsalms 72:8, King James Version; in the Vulgate the numbering is 77:11. The idea for this line came from Martha McCarthys From the Great

River to the Ends of the Earth, (McCarthy), a superbly researched, fluent account of Mackenzie missions south of the treeline. In quoting the

bible on the frontispiece page, McCarthy makes a perhaps intentional change in the biblical text. It is true, as she points out, that natives along

the Mackenzies more southerly reaches referred to it as the Great River (Decho), butneither the King James nor other English bibles include

the adjective great, and simply say from the river to the ends of the earth. It was John Franklin who was responsible for changing the rivers

name to one honoring a white male: In justice to the memory of Mackenzie, I hope the custom of calling this the Great River, which is in

general use among the traders and voyagers, will be discontinued, and that the name of its eminent discoverer may be universally adopted.

(Franklin 39-40) The term Mackenzie River rules throughout the public account of his 1825-27 expedition, and whites thereafter followed his

suggestion. What primarily motivated missions, of course, was the Great Commission from Jesus in Matthew 28:18-20, which in the KJV also

used phrasing that could be interpreted in the geographic sense: All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach

all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I

have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. More recent translations such as the New Century

Version translate the last words as the end of this age." For British fascination with the Arctic see the turgid, overly academic volume by David

(David).


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From the start of outsiders presence, Gwichin bought goods from them to sell to Inuit, and were

set on keeping that trade. Hence their use of force to keep Delta bands from meeting whites, and their

warning the latter of the danger of these peoplea strategy that worked remarkably well.

The Kukpugmiut:Residents of the Eastern Delta

Of the Inuit in that era little is known. Except for a strip near the Beaufort Sea, the Delta was

much of the year empty of people, and few from its western edge came upstream.f

Those from the eastern

side, however, went each spring to the Deltas southern tip, now known as Point Separation, hunting and

gathering along the way, and at journeys end bartering with the Gwichin.

What the latter told whites about the tribe was restricted to what suited their own purpose. And

though arctic explorers (and parties searching for them) saw the Delta every decade or two, they did so

only briefly.g So what traders put to pen about Delta bands was second-hand and concerned only their

southernmost travel.h As a result, what we know of their lives at this stage is mostly reconstructed from

from archeologistss works, and the writings of whites who stayed with them later.

The Deltas Eastern Channel at its downstream end turns wide, so a name some groups used for

themselves was Kukpugmiut, or People of the Large Water. For simplicitys sake that term is used here

for all from that side. Their number may have been as high as eight hundred, but fell over time.i

They were nomads, but in a particular sense, for each family had a permanent driftwood home in

one or more of half a dozen villages. These sites, of which Kittigazuit became the best known to whites,

had one to three halls, orkajigis, wheremen worked by day and at night with the women danced to

drums. Shamans at such events entered a trance and spoke at length with spirits.

fThere is no evidence until late in the nineteenth century of people from the northwest edge of the Delta and the Yukon coast coming south

through the Delta to the Mackenzie or the Peel, but some did in the 1850s come south on routes west of the mountains to La Pierres House,

and were referred to as the La Pierres House Eskimos. Confusingly, mid-19th

Century HBC letters often use the term Western Eskimo, to

distinguish the Eastern Delta people from tribes further east such as those at Cape Bathurst. In later usage the term was applied to tribes from

west of the Delta, or to those who had moved to the Delta from Alaska.

gIn 1826 (Richardson), 1848 (Richardson and Rae) , and 1850 (Capt. McClintock and the crew of the Investigator). In 1836 Dease and Simpson

did not go through the Eastern Delta, nor did Hooper and Pullen in 1850. Capt. Richard Collinson of the Enterprise on his way east through the

Beaufort Sea in 1850 did not stop at the Delta but on his way out in 1854 saw natives on the Yukon coast.

hSources such as Anglican missionary Isaac Stringer and ethnologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson, whose diaries date respectively from 1892-1901

and 1905-1916. Also Nuligak, a member of the tribe born around 1896 whose autobiography, edited by a Catholic priest, appeared in 1966.

[Nuligak]

iBy 1905 one hundred and twenty Kukpugmiut remained, and they with two hundred native immigrants from Alaska (then referred to as

Nunatagmiut) as well as descendants of white whalers and traders became what are today the Inuvialuit (Alunik, Kolausok, and Morrison;

Anonymous), a thriving first nation, as Canada terms regional aboriginal groups with common roots and goals.


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This happened nightly in August when small white whales (belugas) were speared off Kittigazuit

and similar shallow-water settings.j

Afterwards most families spent the winter northeast at Tuktoyaktuk

and beyond and from there made forays for food to the Eskimo Lakes.k Then in spring a large part of the

tribe turned south and took a month to reach Point Separation, where trade with the Gwichin occurred.

At times they got along well, at others there was war; meetings always held potential for danger.

Early contact, and lack of it, with Whites

At the time Europeans first reached their world, the Kukpugmiut looked unkindly on anyone

entering the Delta. This followed from conflict with the Gwichin, but also in part from religion, for the

sudden show of strange-featured persons meant shades in human shape were coming nearby. Death

followed sight of some, but grimaces, shouts, and leaps made others part. If intruders answered with

aggression, the Kukpugmiut killed them. And that held true even if opponents had guns, as arrows then

had about equal range.

Alexander Mackenzie in 1786 faced no such problem while in the Delta. Since he followed the

Central Channel he met not a soul, for it was August and the Kukpugmiut were hunting belugas further

east. But John Livingston, the next white man to enter here (in June 1799 at Point Separation) met an

awful death with his crew.l

Despite that loss, the Montreal tradersm five years later built the first Fort Good Hopen just two

days south from the killings. They still hoped to deal directly with Kukpugmiut, but gave it up when in

1809 on the only recorded try its officer John Clarke and his men were threatened near the Delta. 1 That

jKittigazuit became known to nineteenth century whites as the Eskimo Village. Beluga-hunting sites in early t o mid-ninetieth century included

Kopuk and Kangnirak, and when nature sanded these in new sites where started at Tununiak and Kittigazuit. From Roxy, a Kukpugmiuk, as told

to Stefansson around 1906 (see appendix). McGhee offers a vivid archeologic reconstruction of Kittigazuits beluga-hunting culture. (McGhee)

kThe Eskimo Lakes are a long, narrow extension of the Arctic Ocean that runs just southeast and closely parallel to the Eastern Delta; tides

make water at the juncture of the lakes rush back and forth, which keeps ice thin in places and makes for easy fishing. Nearby the Inuit

hunted caribou. For winter movement of Kokhlik, a Kukpugmiuk chief, in the late 1890s see Vanasts transcription of Isaac Stringers diary; of a

chief in the next decade, see Stefansson. For archeologic details about Kugaluk see Morrisons informative book, which surprised with its

suggestion about the prominence of some men (as opposed to prior egalitarian concepts of that culture).(Morrison)

lIn the most extant version of the story(Anonymous 77-81), all but three on the doomed clerks boat were killed when Livingstone while on a

trading trip entered the Delta. Head between an elders knees, the only white man to survive vainly sought mercy: his lack of wounds betrayeda spell, so he was drowned with a weight round the neck. Two Indians (who were from the South and worked for the NWC) escaped to the bush

and later told what they had seen. Gwichin heard the rest from Kukpugmiut and passed it on to traders. Keith (Keith xix, 14-15, 20-2,120-1,

127, 157-8, 354, 372-5, 383, 433, 470-1) details Livingstones NWC career, the prelude to his death, and five versions of how it was said he died.

At least one blamed Indians rather than Inuit.

mThen known as the North West Company.

nIts initial name was xxxx. It was also known as Fort de Nancy, presumably after the daughter of trader Peter Dease. Its Dene (North Slavey)

name in its later location is Radili Ko (rapids).


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let Gwichin continue as intermediaries in trade, a role they firmly protected. If Kukpugmiut thought of

passing them by they killed one or more and stopped it from coming about. And since each death brought

a cycle of revenge, they could always blame the other side. o

Whites were not all taken in, and the first HBC men at Good Hope saw Gwich'in themselves as

aggressive.2 Traders such as Peter Dease realized it was they who caused war and profited when it lasted,

for then they got bribes from the post to end it.p And even when they camped alongside Kukpugmiut, as

they did at times for weeks south of Point Separation, they let none get by to meet with whites.

Their obstruction showed in 1822, when a band from the coast hoped to befriend the Good Hope

trader. On hearing of this and asking help from the Gwichin, he found these Indians much displeased.

The fort would be thrashed, they warned, if Kukpugmiut came by. So no visit took place, and the

Gwichin kept their role in trade. q

Four years later British naval captain John Franklin and his assistant Dr. John Richardson

traversed the Delta (one on each side, with Richardson on the eastern) to explore the coast. On a prior

arctic journey they had almost starved and Franklin had gained fame as the man who ate his boots.3 [get

reference] This time, however, he was well prepared. Aware of Livingstons fate, he read widely about

contact with primitives elsewhere in the world and saw that whites often died because of harsh response

to what seemed aggressive gestures. So he chose to be passive. (Franklin 99).

The tactic worked well at the Deltas outer ends, as bands were startled by the arrival of strangers.

[see Richardsons illustration of the Kukpugmiut in the Eastern Branch ] Even when they lost fear and

plunder was tried, no one was hurt. (Franklin 99-112, 119-20;Richardson 193-202;Franklin and Davis)

Still, the assaults gave the world a dreadful sense of these people. Franklins account showed a horde of

men storming the boats with knives.

The Gwichin, by contrast, got nothing but praise. When Franklin told of their delight at his

visiting their land, the HBCs chief trader (who had come from another district and had no personal

experience of the tribe) showed no surprise, for they had always been hospitable to strangers.

oDene tribes other than the Gwichin also feared coastal people. Of the Hares Richardson wrote in 1851: They are, like the rest of the nation, a

timid race, and live in continual dread of the Eskimos, whom they suppose not only to be very warlike and ferocious, but also endowed with

great conjuring powers, by which they can compass the death of an enemy at a distance. The possession of fire-arms does not embolden the

Tinn to risk an open encounter with the Eskimo bowmen. (Richardson Vol. 1, 211-12)

pTo this purpose Dease twice at Good Hope (in 1817 and 1819) gave them presents. (Simpson 102)

qThe Inuit camp was in a N.E. direction from the House [the HBC Good Hope post, then still in its more northerly location], stationed in a large

river that falls into the Oceanthe distance overland being short, five or six days. Brisebois was a former NWC employee. (HBCAPF) His

original is in poorly spelled French: Monsieur McLeod mavait dit de leur donner parole pour aller voir les Esquimaux ce printemps. Je leurs ait

dit et ils paraissent pas trop content de cela car ils disent quils ne voudrait pas que les Esquimaux vient instances que nous somme ici, par

support quils pouvait detourn le fort. Vous alle etre bien tot ici et vous saurre vous meme ce quil dise ce sujet. Charles Brisebois to Edouard

Smith, Jan. 7, 1825, HBCA B200/b/1 (Brisebois) Charles Brisebois, GHJ, Oct. 16, 1822. B\80\a. Tape HBC IM 58, at NAC.


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Kukpugmiut, however, had again schemed to take advantage of the weakest. Given their lust for war,

there were worries for Good Hope.4

Still, HBC men were nearly placed even closer to the Delta. On hearing that Franklin at its

southwest edge had found a stream that supported fur-bearing creatures, and which he named Peels

River, the Company planned a fort on its bank. But it balked when Gwichin told of new danger from the

Kukpugmiut, a very treacherous and hostile tribe.r

By this time the Gwichin had reported Inuit nastiness so often that a younger generation of

whites, including John Bell (who had married Deases daughter), was entirely convinced. And since he

lacked contact with Delta bands, there was never reason to change his mind. If he heard something good

about them, he thought it deception.

This happened in 1828 when Kukpugmiut again camped at length with Gwichin.s This time, too,

they claimed to want a peaceful visit to Good Hope, but Bell put no faith in their word, and turned out to

be right.On meeting a youth alone, he was told, Kukpugmiut used the first opportunity to kill. War

flared, hunts diminished, and the post got few furs.5

The Gwichin chief still made his yearly trading trip to the Delta, but likely laid a trap. When

people he met began a rant he downed three with one shot. In revenge three Gwichin wives were

inhumanly butchered, and their families in turn planned to kill three people from the coast. Yet Bell

blamed the Kukpugmiut, who were always the aggressor. 6

The cycle might have gone on, but quiet reigned as the Kukpugmiut stayed home the next year.7

Also contributing to peace was Good Hopes move more than a hundred miles south. The Gwichin now

had to travel a week longer (and into Hare Indian land) to reach the post, but there was an advantage:

Kukpugmiut were even less likely than before to think of heading south to meet with whites.

As a result for a while there were no killings. And when they did occur it related to an extortion

scheme gone bad: a Delta band met a Gwichin for whose death they had long paid fines to his tribe, so

they killed him for good along with his companions. (Simpson 101) When in 1837 Peter Dease passed

through the Delta for an exploring trip,t matters had turned chilling. But because of his route he met no

Kukpugmiut, and he easily dealt with the tribe on the Deltas western side.

r It was Dease himself , by then a chief trader, who counselled against founding the post. Letters from Fort Simpson concerning this are among

many reproduced by W. Barr (Dease 10-11) in a exquisite volume with great commentary, for which I am most grateful. Barr says Peter Dease

was in charge at Good Hope in 1827, but this I have not yet confirmed. His brother Thomas Dease was there in 1825-26, and Bell was in charge

from 1827 on.

s

The location was between the Red and the Peel. The Peel skirts the Mackenzie Mountains before turning east to join the southern edge of the

Delta. Running parallel and somewhat to the south of it is the Red, which creates a landstrip between the two. Inuit and Gwichin met briefly

(or sometimes camped together for weeks) where that abuts the Mackenzie.

t

On arriving at Good Hope Dease rejoiced in seeing his daughter Nancy (married to Bell) and his grandchildren.


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The journey was in part triggered by the Companys need to burnish its image. The Territories

licence would expire before long, so Dease (by then chief trader in New Caledonia, now northern British

Columbia) had been sent to map the coast. In just three summers, assisted by Thomas Simpson, nephew

of HBC overseas governor George Simpson, (Dease), he mapped the Alaska shore to Point Barrow,

named new terrain in the Central Arctic (later found to be one of the worlds largest islands) after just-

installed Queen Victoria,and came close to locating the Northwest Passage.

As a result HBC prestige was raised, its London governor and George Simpson were knighted,

and the admiring atmosphere made for easy renewal of the licence.u

Equally important to the story told

here was Deases finding in Alaska of the supposedly beaver-rich Colville River, which led the HBC to

build a line of forts from the lower Mackenzie toward it.v

u

The point comes from W. Coates,(Coates 8-10) whose elegant wording is reproduced with further context in Barrs book on Dease.(Dease 6-7)

v

In the prior decade, efforts to build posts from Fort Simpson to Alaska had repeatedly been frustrated. Men had been killed by starvation, sites

destroyed by Indians, and competition faced from Russians. But recent reports described a large river west of the Rockies (which later turned

out to be the Yukon). Governor Simpson incorrectly agreed with Dease that it and the Colville were the same.


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Bitter Men:

Isbister and McLean

Though Deases expedition boosted Company fortunes, it spawned an event that over the next

twenty years later brought enormous harm. Its roots lie in his homeward passage in the 1839 fall, when heand his party spent months at Fort Simpson, headquarters of the Mackenzie District. It was there that

Thomas Simpson likely hastened the decision of Alexander Isbister, a fur-trade apprentice, to quit his

career and return to school. Peacock-like in his sense of self, Simpson crowed about winning honors at

the University of Aberdeen, from which he held an M.A. Afterwards he had been secretary to his uncle

George, which had not worked out. So he may have fanned the youths mounting dislike of his

employer.w

Once Isbister declared he would not extend his contract, of which another trade-year remained,

he received no further training. Instead, chief trader Murdoch McPherson just before leaving on furloughin June 1840 took him to Good Hope and handed him to John Bell as an extra man to start the new chain

of forts towards the Colville. [ref] Gwichin warnings of prior years were ignored, and the first was

placed on the Peel. (Briefly named Fort McPherson at the start and again decades later, it was most often

referred to simply as Peels River.x

)

In July Bell set out to found the post and was met near the Delta by kindhearted Gwichin.

Dancing in joy they escorted the boats to protect them from Kukpugmiut and their uniform hostility to

whites.(Isbister 332-45) Only later did he learn the Gwichin had just shot eleven Inuit men and

numerous women and children.8

After a winter at Peels River with absence of wildlife (part of a natural cycle) and severe famine

for Gwichin, Isbister started home by walking to Good Hope. It was good he made the trip then, for a

year later some Indian women were so famished they killed and ate two HBC men on the same trail. The

w

For Isbisters explanation to a parliamentary committee of his leaving the fur trade see Q+A 2397 of the 1859 parliamentary hearings

concerning the HBC: What induced you to leave the service of the Hudsons Bay Company? I wished to come to England to complete my

education; I was desirous of obtaining a university education, and of qualifying myself for a profession.

x

The post was always referred to as Peels River, rarely as Peels River post. Late in the century it became known as Fort McPherson, after the

chief trader who between 1838 and 1840 organized its founding. Its Gwichin name is nowTeet'lit Zhen (at the head of the waters). ElizabethTaylor, who visited the site in 1892, learned from the district manager the history of the posts naming: Talking with Mr. Camsell about various

matters; [including] name of Fort McPherson given to i t by Bell. It was the custom then to give the name of the Governor of the Company, or

the Chief Factor of the District. In this case, the advice or permission of Sir George Simpson was not asked and when he heard of it, he swept it

all aside and said, Call it Peels River Post and so it has been called from that time among the Co.s people. On some map, however, it found its

way as Fort McPherson, and it has been copied ever since. Elizabeth Taylor diary, Minnesota Historical Society, Dunn papers, 143 A.1.4 (F)

Volume 4, typed transcript, p. 80.


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miscreants were named, but Governor Simpson refused to have them hurt: whites would do the same, he

declared, if faced with such dreadful need.y

At the time the men became a meal, Isbister was living at one of the prettiest spots [ref? in the

Red River Settlement (now Winnipeg) at the Anglican school he had left three years before.z Still in

charge was his former teacher, John MacCallum, who held an M.A. from Kings College in Aberdeen,

hated Indians, and used sadistic rule of the sort inflicted on David Copperfield and other boys in the

novels of Charles Dickens. Yet he and Isbister got along well.

Concerned by Isbisters consuming anger toward the HBC, the teacher ascribed it to his half-

breed lot (his mother was mixed-blood, his grandmother Indian), which blocked promotion beyond

postmaster, the lowest officer rank. But he thought of a solution: the fierceness would turn to good if used

to spread Gods word. The student agreed, started training at once, and by summer was off to Kings

College for further study and ordination.aa

As he left the country Isbister met Augustus Peers, a just-arrived apprentice from England, who

would a decade later play a major role in effecting contact between whites and the Kukpugmiut. After a

winter at Hudsons Bay, he was in 1843 sent to the Mackenzie, where he proved his worth at once: when

the trader-in-charge shot off his own right hand, he tied the artery and saved the mans life.bb Too weak to

travel or do all his work, the victim needed a seasoned man to assist him, and for that reason the HBC

diverted one of its longtime employees, John McLean, as he returned from furlough overseas.

ySuch [illegible] are thank God of rare occurrence in any country, but they have been known to take place even in civilized society, under

circumstances so [illegible] and distressing as in a certain degree to justify the measure however revolting to humanity and of which no legalcognizance could be taken. George Simpson to Lewes, June 5, 1843, HBCA B200/b/17. For Lewes original report see Lewes to Simpson, Nov.

17, 1842, HBCA B200/b/ 15.

zThe school had been founded with HBC help for officers offspring and was linked to the Anglican Church. It is often referred to as Rev. Jones

school, after the minister in charge until 1838. His wife ran the girls part of the establishment. After she died he left in 1838. The HBC then

bought the property from the church and put Jones assistant Macallum in charge. Isbister was at the school from 1834 to 1838. On returning

for the 1841-42 year, he may have taught.

aaI singled him out from the mass of his countrymen as a fit instrument to proclaim the glad tidings of salvation to the children of the desert.

He cordially embraced my views, devoted himself to the ministry of the altar, and proceeded to England to complete his studies and obtain

ordination. Rev. Macallum, quoted by Cooper. (Cooper 138)

bbThe story is from L. Hargrave (Hargrave 181). J. H. Lefroy, who arrived at Fort Simpson in March 1844, detailed the treatment in his

Autobiography,(Lefroy), of which few copies are extant. Editor F. G. Branley in Magnetic North quotes it in full (Lefroy 98n34), but provides nopage for the original: It was a terrible accident to happen far from surgical aid, but he had as an assistant a young fellow of nerve and decision,

named, I think, Pears, who tried to dress the stump. To stop the bleeding he tied up every vein and artery he could get at; he then bathed the

wound with a decoction of epinette, which is much used in the country for external applications; and although much reduced by loss of blood,

Lewiss strength of constitution enabled him to gradually recover. His chief suffering at this time was from cold, to guard against which he w ore

a sheath of warm furs up to the elbow. On the other hand, he entirely lost his neuralgia [a form of headache], from which he had suffered much

before the accident.


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McLean had once been engaged to one of the daughters of Chief Factor Donald Ross and his

European wife at Norway House, but had dropped her for a mixed-blood bride an affront that may have

invoked the ire of Rosss friend, HBC Governor George Simpson. Sent to Ungava shortly after, the

newlyweds had a boy, but the mother died in childbirth. The wife of a sea-captain from the St. Lawrence

(who each summer brought supplies) adopted the child, and in 1842, after a visit to his own mother

overseas, McLean stopped in to see it. At the same time he paid a visit to his longtime friend Murdoch

McPherson, with whom he had worked as a clerk in New Caledonia when Dease was in command.

The two had gone their separate waysMcLean eventually to Ungava, and McPherson to the

Mackenzie, where he had been chief trader till 1840, when (right after handing Isbister to Bell) he left on

a break. He expected to come back, but was instead put in charge of posts on the outer St. Lawrence,

where he was not happy. McLean saw him there before continuing on to the Northwest, stopping at

Norway House before proceeding to York Factory on Hudsons Bay. It was there he received orders to go

at once to the Mackenzie; so he passed once more through Norway House and made his way to Fort

Simpson.

At the time it seemed a boost in McLeans career, as he expected full command when the

wounded chief trader went home. But he was crushed the next spring on learning that McPherson was

about to return and would again take charge. He himself was to run but a single post, Fort Resolution,

which had had just been transferred with his support to the Mackenzie District. cc

The blow may have been caused by McLeans intent to marry Clarissa, teenage daughter and only

child of Wesleyan missionary James Evans, whom he had met at Norway House on his way north. The

governor had placed the minister there a few years before, just ahead of the first expiry of the Northwest

licence, but his overbearing ways had rubbed the wrong way, as had his stress on Sabbath quiet and

insistence Indians leave the woods and live by his church. Also disruptive were social missteps by his

wife and Clarissa. So Sir George may not have wanted her as leading lady of the Mackenzie. As Evans

was closely (too much so, one suspectsdd) attached to the girl, the governor may have feared he would

insist on being with her.

When news of the non-promotion arrived, McLean began a jeremiad against the HBC. He had

long sought its higher ranks, but now hated its all; conversion to public critic could not have been swifter.

In 1845, manuscript in hand, he left the North

and settled in Ontario with Clarissa, whose departure from

ccJohn McLean to Sir George Simpson, Apr. 27, 1844, B200/b/19 and b/17

ddJohn Lefroy on returning from York Factory to Norway House in August 1843 saw father and daughter together, Mrs. Evans...has a fine

handsome daughter whom I met with her father near the Painted Stone portage on their way with a brigade of boats to York Factory. They had

pitched their little tent near the ice of a great rock, sparingly covered with small pines. (Lefroy 51) Wilfong-Pritchard found copies of Evans

love poems (the words longing, the poetry dreadful) to Clarissa written after she left the North. (Wilfong-Pritchard) [get page number]


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home caused new problems for her father. He continued having young native women live with him and

his wife in the mission house, but his physical contact (play) with them now reached a point where

several went public. ee Called to Britain, he died there soon after Wesleyan leaders vetted the charges.ff

There were those, of course, who blamed the HBC. Since the settling of natives near a mission

lowered intake of fur, they accused it of scheming Evans fall.gg He died of a broken heart, as McLean

put it in his tome. [ref?] Whether prior to its 1849 London publication he contacted Isbister is not clear,

but he certainly did so thereafter (Cooper 245), and the works shrill attack against the HBC matched tales

the former apprentice had been spreading for years. For despite the hopes of his Red River teacher,

Isbisters bile still flowed.

The Aborigines Protection Society

Soon after his 1842 arrival in Aberdeen, Isbister had lost the urge to serve God. He studied for a

while, including, he claimed, two years of medicine, but earned no degree. After a few months at the

University of Edinburgh,hh

[reference] he dropped out again, and began a frenzy of tries for all sorts of

employ in London and overseas. Several were with the Company, and two involved medical posts for

which he lacked papers. (see appendix 1).

Rejected everywhere, he became a schoolteacher, a position for which no degree was required

and which, as in Dickens tales, was held in low esteem.ii But means to boost respect presented itself just

then, as residents of the Red River Settlement asked him ( at least, so he put it) to present their

complaints about the HBC to parliament in Britain. Gladly taking the bit, he became the Companys most

rabid public critic, and succeeded because he piggy-backed the story to issues such as slavery, monopoly,

eeEvans deflected charges by exposing his supposed victims loose morals, giving as example that one had relations with Bernard Rogan Ross,

then a Norway House HBC apprentice.(Shirritt-Beaumont 85, 85n40) Note that this is the Bernard Rogan Ross who in the late 1850s was trader

in charge of the Mackenzie).

ffEvans recall had already been arranged by Governor Simpson because of conflicts with the HBC. Wesleyan leaders doubted the accusations--

to them Mrs. Evans presence in a nearby bed meant the evil deeds could not have been done. While Evans was in Britain the HBC determined

that prior to his accidental shooting of an assistant the year before, he had seduced the victims wife. Namier singled out a historical sense as

the crowning achievement of long study in that field, and defined it as an intuitive understanding of how things do not happen. (Clive 196)

Even to part-time dabblers in history, Evans story as pictured by his supporters repeatedly brings that sense to the fore.

ggJames Hargrave to Donald Ross, LHL appendix, p. 291.

hhHe was matriculated to study literature (whatever that meant) [reference?]

iiE. N. Smith has summarized the incompetent teachers and their establishments in Dickens s fictionOther than Davids initial school, Salem

House, and its owner-instructor, Mr. Creakle (in David Copperfield, published in 1850), they include Wackford Squeers and Do-the-Boys Hall (

Nicholas Nickleby, published in serialized form in 1838-39), Dr. Blimbers Forcing Establishment and Old Lady Pinchin, the child-queller (both in

Dombey and Son) , the fact-storing methods of the Grandgrind-McChoakum child-factory (Hard Times), and school-principal Seth Pecksniff

(Martin Chuzzlewit). On p.15 he lists fifteen abuses addressed in Nickolas Nicklebyalone. (Smith)


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and impeding of missions, that roused the British mind. Thus he claimed the HBC did worse than make

natives slaves, for in contrast to plantation owners, it blocked them from hearing of Christ. Moreover, it

brought famine, cannibalism, disease, and death while trading fur for trifles.9

To raise pressure Isbister joined the Aborigines Protection Society,jj a London group with Quaker

roots that at times made joint appeals with Wesleyan missions. Years before it had tried to help Upper

Canada Indians kk who had been forced from their forests to barren ground. At issue was not the move

itself, but absence of arable land, for tilling was thought crucial to conversion. Natives who farmed, it was

also held, were spared the dying off that elsewhere followed whites presence. As proof the APS quoted

Wesleyan cleric James Evans, then at work near the Great Lakes at many sequential sitesin retrospect

another item of suspicion.

Though this had nothing to do with the HBC, Isbister applied similar lines to his former

employer. The only means to save natives (the last of a noble race) on its terrain was to make them

farm and teach them the bible. To prevent further wrong their nomadic ways must stop, and the

Companys charter must end. [ ] Irony was that at that very time Peers was trying to tell the Kukpugmiut

of the benefits of trading at Peels River.

Drawing in the Kukpugmiut:

1847-1853

Peers had become a skilled trader, trusted by whites and natives alike (MacFarlane 12-15), and to

test his mettle he was in 1847 placed in charge at Peels River, by then the Mackenzies most strategic

site. It was there he initiated the sending of goods across the mountains to just-founded Fort Yukon, llthe

second post in the chain toward the Colville.

Problem was, the better the transport worked, the more hides Fort Yukon could buy. And that

meant less remained for bands who had till then brought them to the Peel. So profit at Peerss post

dropped a lot.mm

The only means to raise it was to draw in the Kukpugmiut, trade with them directly, and

cut out the Gwichin. The need to make money sped conversion of the HBC view of the Delta people.

jjAPS at times hereafter. Founded after slavery had been abolished, it sought to ban other ills of colonization.

kkThe removal to the top of the Bruce Peninsula was from what are now Western Ontario counties such as Kincardine and xxxx).

llLocated at the junction of the Porcupine and Yukon rivers, on what later turned out to be Alaskan terrain. In subsequent decades it was twice

moved east until at last it was properly on British terrain.

mmThe result for Fort Yukon and Peels River combined was no better than when the latter had been there alone.


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The change occurred despite an attack on whites in the Eastern Channel that again involved Dr.

Richardson. His friend and former commander Sir John Franklin had disappeared while searching for the

Northwest Passage, so in 1848 he came to look for him on the coast. As assistant the HBC gave him John

Rae, long its surgeon on James Bay, and a seasoned arctic traveler. nn

As before, the Kukpugmiut tried to seize what was in the boats, and again, no one was hurt.

Richardson saw this benignly and published to that effect. Rae, by contrast, took an unhappy view but

kept it to himself, at least for then. To the Kukpugmiut it was surely a big event: despite native

aggression, whites had stayed calm, and trade had taken place.

The contact occurred just as Peers was trying to show good will at the Deltas southern end.

When his hunter Ghendong brought gifts to a group of Kukpugmiut near the mouth of the Peel, they

promised to meet him in fall. But they did not turn up, and given what later occurred, it is hard to know

what was really said and what role Ghendong played.

It was the Kukpugmiuts habit as they came south to have able-bodied males, each in a kayak,

travel well ahead of the womens boats (umiaks), which held families and belongings. They hunted and

acted as scouts in terms of routes to follow, choice of camping site, and early detection of danger. In 1850

near Separation Point six men engaged that way met an HBC boat returning to Peels River.

None of the HBC crew had met Kukpugmiut before or spoke their language. One wanted to invite

them to the post; another, Manuel, feared them very much. Having just passed Ghendong and other

Gwichin they called them to the scene, and what happened then was pitiless murder.oo The Gwichin

offered trade while surrounding their prey, shot the unsuspecting victims, and ritually sliced the bodies.

Manuel, too, fired his gun.pp

The killing was like prior ones inflicted to block Delta people from meeting with whites, but this

was the first the latter had witnessed. And since Ghendong headed the assault, it was all the more

necessary to explain it in terms that made sense to Peers, qq So given what the latter knew of their beliefs,

nnQuartermaster was John Bell, formerly at Peels River.

ooEach spring as soon as the ice left the Mackenzie, a boat with supplies left Good Hope for Peels River.

ppSee p. 140. B.239/g/30, fo. 33, outfit 1850-1, lists Jean Hebert dit Manuel as a steersman in the Mackenzie River District. He came from Three

Rivers, Quebec, was thirty-seven years of age and had served the Company for twenty-one years. [Rae Correspondence, 171n1]. Peers, thoughnot present, may have contributed to his act. The year before, on learning that Kukpugmiut had promised to meet his boat, the words he used

made employees aware that despite his efforts at making peace he still feared these people. If they came, he wanted them kept at a

respectable distance. Should there be mischief, It would be proper and fit to fire. [citation?]

qqThis sentence relies on both primary and secondary date. In the Peels River journal of July 4, 1849, Peers describes Ghendongs role in

drawing the Eskimos to him: Ghendong etc. returned from their visit to the Esquimaux of the Mackenzie River. They found a party of six at the

mouth of the Peel (the remainder being encamped at the usual rendez-vous on opposite shore of McKR). Although the Esquimaux are not on

such unfriendly terms with the McKR Indians as with those of the Peel, they did not, however, choose to come too close, exchanging their ideas

out of arrow range. Knowing Ghendong's intention I gave him on starting a few trifles to present to the Esquimaux in the name of the w hites--


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the Gwichin told that a tribesman had died due to a spell sent from the Delta, and that hence the murders

were correct.10

What the Kukpugmiut thought of the attack we can only surmise, but an encounter on the

coast later that year showed that whites could be quite benign.

In August a large British naval vessel, the Investigator, sailed east along the coast searching for

Franklin. With it as translator was Moravian cleric Johannes Miertsching, who had worked among

Labrador Inuit and always wore their clothes. When officers landed near Tuktoyuktuk, natives shrieked

and shouted until he fired his revolver, when they abruptly turned friendly. A chief took them in and

showed his house and ailing son. But the visitors could do nothing for him, nor was there time to tell of

God, for the tide was going out, so they rushed aboard.rr

The meeting surely warmed the Kukpugmiuts view of whites. Though arriving on a giant,

terrifying vessel, they had payed a pleasant visit. Their spokesman, moreover, was dressed like

themselves, and used words they could grasp. All this was likely retold in homes and kajigis in winter.

And it prepared the ground for new attempts to have the Kukpugmiut come to Peels River.

When in 1851 a Gwichin with gifts was well received at a Delta camp, Peers rushed to the site

but found it empty. Worried the emissary might bring others to do them in, all had fled.ss Still, the work

paid off as next year Fort McPherson was visited by a chief and two men. First to enter a traders post,

they were most taken up with everything they saw. 11 Then death again intervened.

Peers, who had rarely been ill, passed away in the course of several days. [citation?] To whites it

seemed strange, as did the loss of his will. Natives may have thought a Gwichin spell had made it happen

to stop HBC contact with the Delta people. But of that, or poisoning, or any other malfeasance there

these were given and accepted but the feelings of those rascals towards us are I fear anything but friendly. They still allege that we furnish the

Loucheux with firearms and ammunition on purpose to kill them. Ghendong tells me that it is the intention of the Esquimaux to come in great

force in the fall (about the time of the return of the boat from Simpson) to Red River, but with what motive he does not know. If they muster

strong enough they may put off to visit us en passantby the assistance of Nuyey (leader of McK Indians) whom I will pick up on my return.

[HBC, Peel R. journal, NAC reel H2341, MG19, D12] Sheppard Krech II, who has read Peerss official report (which I have not), tells of

Ghendongs primary role in the killings the next year. (Krech III 52-59)

rr

The sighting of people on the coast took place at lat. 69 43'; long. 131 57, which according to Neatby is Tuktoyaktuk.(Neatby 53n1) That

village in its present location is at lat. 6927; long. 133 02. Perhaps the coordinates refer to the ships position in early morning as it sailed

along the coast eastward, and not to coordinates for events told here. In the chiefs tent order and cleanliness reigned, and waiting for trade

to tribes to the west lay furs that included bear, wolf, and wolverine. The latter do not live north of the treeline, so may have been obtained via

barter with Gwichin. (Neatby 52-53) A long description of this same encounter in a book by ships surgeon Alexander Armstrong describes the

Inuits terror on seeing the ship and their attempts through hostile conduct to make whites leave, but makes no mention of a shot in the air by

Miertsching that stopped the Inuits initial wild gestures. The page numbering in the original is incorrect, as it begins with 158-160 a nd

continues with 145-156. (Armstrong Ch. 6) The coast in outer portions of the Deltas Eastern Branch is shallow for a long distance off shore, and

as the tide goes out, a ship can easily ground. Near Tuktoyuktok itself the waters are deep and today ocean-going vessels can come into port

without hazard.

ss

The encounter involved a camp of seven at the foot of the lowest mountains, possibly the southern tip of the Caribou Hills. PRJ, Nov. 11,

13, and 19, 1851. HBCA B157/Z/1.


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nothing in the archives. In public all regretted the young traders demise. Had he lived, wrote Governor

Simpson, he would soon have got a more responsible and conspicuous position.12

An assistant of whom

he had spoken well,tt took over the post and his three young children and wife (the daughter of John Bell).

[HBCPS] Yet Peers, as we will see, had not entirely left the scene.

Theater in Britain: Charles Dickens paints Inuit

as man-eating primitives

John Rae was not among the whites who soon after seeing the Delta wrote a public account of the

experience, and had he done so it would have hurt his cause and that of the HBC. While on the coast with

Richardson he was made a chief factor, and after a brief bout in charge of the Mackenzie (1849-1850)

was sent on other arctic explorations. On the first he named a large strait after the queen, and on the next

he heard from Inuit that Franklins men had not survived, despite eating the flesh of fellow sailors.

Rushing to England he expected praise for having learned the expeditions fate, but faced hostile words

instead. Since cannibalism was an unspeakable offence, and injured Franklins image, the honor of the

Empire, as well as Christian concepts of bodily ascent to heaven,uu

the news could not be believed.

When Franklins widow set out to discredit Rae,vv

Charles Dickens proved an ally. In his widely

read journal Household Words hehad in the past drawn Inuit in noble light, but now depicted them as

savage, and by analogy to African tribes proved their taste for human meata concept of primitives long

held by whites: when two centuries earlier the first image of Inuit appeared in Europe, the text explained

they were entirely wild people and cannibals who lived like cattle.ww

Raes depiction of the Kukpugmiut as they swarmed his boat entirely fit that picture. Stout, and

broad-shouldered, with great strength of arm and hand, they were worse than South Sea pirates. One

could not imagine a more fierce, daring, and truculent-looking set. [reference?] Had this been published

shortly after the trip, rather than much later, Dickens would surely have used it. Even so, he raised doubt

about Rae and his account of the final days of Franklins men.

tt

Alexander Mackenzie, promoted from labourer to postmaster some time before. He had been at nearby La Pierres House for several years.

Peers to J. A. Anderson, July 28, 1852, HBCA B200/b/29

uu

Anthropophagy had been abhorred since Christianitys early days not only because of the loss of life, but because the consumed became part

of the consumer. It was feared difficulty would arise on judgment day, when the body of both was to rise.

vv

Ken McGoogans book about Lady Franklin, (McGoogan), with the subtitle A True Story of Ambition, Obsession, and the Remaking of

History, describes her role in starting and sustaining the Franklin theater, which is easier to follow if one skips her travels outside England.

ww

The picture was of a mother and child brought there without the husband, who had been killed during their capture.The caption also

thanked God for his enlightenment of whites, and hoped he would do the same for the Arctics people. (Oswalt 166-67, figure 7-3)


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To prove Brits could not have eaten companions, Dickens wrote a tale in which a shipwrecked

group avoid cannibalism by telling each other stories. (Trodd 201-25) He also created a play, The Frozen

Deep, in which two starving naval men escape the Arctic. The stronger one instead of consuming the

other, gives up his life to deliver him to the young woman, Clara, for whom both had longed (and who

had miraculously made her way from England to a cave at which they happened to land). The plot

brought many tears as Dickens himself played the heros role and gasped his last on stage.

(Brannan;Nayder 1-24)

Production started in 1857, just as hearings began in parliament on extending extend the

Northwest Territories licence. When the queen saw the play she was deeply touched, (Brannan 67-68) and

the more that was so the more it hurt the HBC. As Rae later put it, the truth did not matterwhat was

said about the North was mostly balderdash.[(Bunyon et al.)[that citation is incorrect]

When the licence first needed renewal, Deases arctic travels had smoothed the way, but now that

renewal was sought a second time, Raes were having the opposite effect.xx

The table had turnedit was

no longer the Company that set perception, but others who did it very well. Surprisingly, the picture of

Inuit as a kindly people was at that very time also being spread in Britain and it, too, hurt the HBC.

Inuit as a Noble People

What Richardson wrote of the Kukpugmiut in his 1851 book unwittingly raised anti-HBC feeling,

for his glowing words showed that traders contact with them could should have been easy. Stories that

accused them of slaughter, treachery, and very bad character, he explained, were due to distortion by

Gwichin.yy It was the latter who were mean in their ways, using ambush to attack, whereas Kukpugmiut

fought in the open. And though lacking guns, they came south each year to engage the Gwichin in trade.

Hardy travelers, brave and resolute, they deserved admiration like Norsemen.

Some of this came from his quartermaster, John Bell, who in 1846 had left Fort McPherson to

prepare for and assist Richardson-Rae expedition. Soon after his founding of the post he had realized that

the Gwichin were not at all the peaceloving people he had thought. Chronic accusers of the Delta people,

where themselves an unpleasant lot. Short of provisions and upset with the new forts effect on barter

within their tribe, they threatened full assault. Bell learned as well that they had shot several Kukpugmiut

xx

In 1852 the HBC given the tactic a try by sending Chief Factor [xxx] Anderson, then in charge of the Mackenzie, on coastal exploration.

Governor Simpson told him how much the Company depended on his finding evidence of Franklin, [ ] but the trip brought no new information.

yyTo show Inuit violence was no block to contact, Richardson told how fierce postures and intrusive acts were mainly show and could easily be

stopped. In 1826 a word from him had instantly stopped plunder, and in 1848 there was no ill will when sailors oars hit hands that grasped the

boats. All acknowledged that breaking a rule brought pain, and soon with a smile returned to barter.


17/33

when a large body of them started up the Peel to deal directly with him. zz Richardson took this in,

whereas Rae, who disliked Bell intenselyaaa

, did not. And though the two leaders traveled the Eastern

Channel together, their views of the Delta people could not have been more different.

Given Richardsons fine depiction of the Kukpugmiut, it was all the more chilling to find in a

book that came out two years later (by a naval officer who was in the region when it occurred) a lurid

second-hand telling of the 1850 massacre at Point Separation. The words evoked horror, especially in

terms of Manuel, the Company servant who had fired his gun: Alas the day that so foul and bloody an

act of treachery could be perpetrated! and alas, shame and degradation that a white man could be found

worse fiend than the untutored savage!bbb

The consequence would be extensive and irremediable. Exploration would be more difficult,

for whites were now included in the Inuits undying vengeance, and staff at Peels River would be

killed by a people so cruelly wronged. (Hooper 373) The public did not know that when this appeared

the Kukpugmiut had visited the fort and established good rapport with its trader. But none of that

mattered to Isbister and his friends.

Isbisters role in the Aborigines Protection Society had by then advanced to being a member of its

board, whose stance against the HBC he directed.ccc In an 1856 appeal to Secretary of Colonial Affairs

Henry Labouchre, the Society (i.e. Isbister) used a legal pirouette to show the Company had betrayed its

seventeenth-century charter, and rather than argue from that parchment did so from orders to colonies of

around the same time. These directed that natives receive no provocation, and that no British subject,

nor any of their servants, do them harm. Should they suffer violence, governors must severely punish

the perpetrators. The quotes and their assembly could not have been put in a way that more closely

applied to Manuels part in the Point Separation killings.

The orders also insisted salvation reach all tribes thoughnever so remote. Italicized in the APS

pamphlet, the words proved the HBC had failed to meet obligations and must forfeit its hold. (Aborigines

Protection Society Appendix I, 19, 23 )

zz(Richardson 216) To be fair to the Gwichin, it should be said that Bell also told of an occasion when men from both sides danced and Inuit

suddenly killed three Indians; others died in the subsequent melee. (Richardson 214-15)

aaa

Rae and Bell spent parts of the 1849-1850 trade year together at Fort Simpson, where Bell looked after the districts routine operations. Itwas then that Richardson wrote a disparaging note about him to the governor, which may have caused his not being promoted. [refer.?]

bbbIndians might be forgiven, for in their world revenge was a duty sweet to their nature. But for HBC men no excuse would do. Innate

wantonness and reckless bloodthirstiness had driven Manuel, the fiendish miscreant who shared their hellish plot. White skin, Hooper

blushed to say, was eternally dishonoured in his person. (Hooper 366-72)

cccMore likely than not, its publications were also printed by someone to whom he was connected.


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Isbister ensured appearance of the Societys appeal in many newspapers, including leading ones

in Upper Canada.(Aborigines Protection Society 11), and fed them stories that triggered comment against

the HBC. Much stoking also came from his uncle William Kennedy, a few years older than him. Having

grown up in the Isbister household, he was more like a brother. (Cooper 242)

For a while a trader in Ungava, his time there overlapped with that of McLean, and when he

became disgruntled and moved to Upper Canada, the two men lived but a short ride from each other.

From there he led a campaign to have whites seize Company lands. Overbearing in faith (religious cant,

as Sir George called it)(Cooper 242), he was sure of his cause. But he knew the best way to gain support

was through promise of worldly gain.

To Toronto merchants Kennedy spoke of gold and other riches easily to be had on Company land.

Much of his talk concerned the Mackenzie, where he had never been, and details of which he likely got

from Isbister and McLean: coal abounded, a vast supply of tar served only to seal traders boots, and

copper lay above ground. Whales sported at the rivers mouth, though given HBC apathy it would fall to

San Francisco people to get them.(Aborigines Protection Society 11-12)

As editors responded with criticism of the HBC, Isbister packed their lines into an APS pamphlet

and added his comment. Material he had planted now held force because it had appeared a second time in

print. Thus, he quoted The Economist, which had quoted McLeans 1849 book and his enthusiastic

depiction of converted Indians living on their farms, grouped round their Protestant Pastor [i.e. James

Evans]. (Aborigines Protection Society 6) But instead of becoming Christians in such settings, natives

were left to degradation. Tens of thousands perished while alcohol and syphilis wrecked their lives.

What it boiled down to again was that Indians must be made to stop nomadic travel. More importantly,

parliament must end HBC rule, and open its land to immigration.(Aborigines Protection Society 3,5)

What next came into play was a report from HMS Investigator. After passing the Delta in 1850 it

had been locked by ice in the Central Arctic, and from there its crew eventually trekked to rescue on the

Atlantic side. Only after further delays did they get back home, so the public did not read their reports

until years after the actual events.

Miertschings diary was lost, reconstituted by himself, and not published till a century later. But it

shows what sentiment he conveyed to others aboard. As he saw it, tribes on the coast were ripe for the

message of Jesus. Delta natives put Christians to shame by their thrift and hard work; others further east

were amazed when he told them of God. Why, he cried, has the Lord banished these folk here where

no missionary can reach them?(Neatby 54,63)

The 1857 book by ships surgeon Alex Armstrong reflected these thoughts. Lauding Inuits

ingenuity and endurance, he thought them unequalled to any other race on the face of the globe. Most


19/33

striking was their kindness and civility towards whites. (Armstrong 198, 167) That made it all the more

deplorable to find in the Empire a people so utterly neglected.

We dont know Armstrongs contacts before or after his arctic journey, but his stance exactly

matched that of Isbister and the APS. That no one had lifted heathen darkness did not surprise, for

monopoly blocked progress. Parliament, it followed, must destroy the one consisting of the HBC. Only

when its grip was gone would Inuit be able to use the North to their own permanent advancement and

happiness. (Armstrong 156, 198-9) By such reasoning the Company did as much wrong where it was not

as where it had long been.

In a last-minute footnote, Armstrong told how pleased he was that Colonial Secretary Labouchre

had raised the matter in the House of Commons. Its committee was now digesting the sad information as

it deliberated what to do about the HBC licence. (Armstrong 198)ddd

dddAs had Isbister, Armstrong called the HBC charter invalid because of nonfulfillment of the conditions on which it was originally granted.

And that referred to failure to foster conversion.


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The 1857 Parliamentary Hearings

At the 1857 hearings Isbister was among several star witnesses who had spent time in the

Mackenzie, and answered more questions than anyone else. His style had changed from that of an attack-

dog; the tone was calm, the wording moderate, the reasoning confident, though he had not seen theNorthwest in fourteen years. There was tactical retreat as he claimed to have had nothing to do with

wording of the Red River petition a decade earlier, and that his role had merely been to present it. And

evasion showed when he was asked if opening Company land to colonists would harm natives.

That he took this approach had to do with several factors. For one, his campaign against the HBC

had born fruit and he knew most committee members were allies. In fact he met with some after hours to

prepare them for sessions. So he himself could now use a more subdued tone. Moreover, these hearings

were themselves a means to raise the respect he had long craved and which would boost his career.

There was also impending academic recognitionan honorary M.A. from the faculty of arts atthe University of Edinburgh. Somehow he had arranged to have it bestowed, and in the meantime had to

be on best behavior, showing himself worthy of the laurel. One might speculate that the sponsor was a

former professor from Aberdeen with whom he had had a private relationship, or a politician grateful for

his help in being well prepared for the licence-renewal sessions.

Also a candidate is Lady Jane Franklin, who might have wanted to thank Isbister for his work

against the HBC. Perhaps, too, she wished to show in this way her gratitude to William Kennedy, who

had for a while left his business in Upper Canada and, despite knowing nothing of sailing, led an arctic

expedition to search for her husband. Whoever or whatever was behind it (Edinburgh records tell neither)

the degree was formalized exactly a year after the start of the interrogations.

The one time Isbister used abusive language before the committee was in discussing the Anglican

church and its failure to complain of HBC tactics towards missions. This was so, he claimed, because the

Company paid preachers at each post for teaching school: the money was a sop to halt critique of its

dreadful treatment of natives and its blocking of conversion.

The Rev. Corbett, an Anglican cleric and physician at odds with his colleagues in the Red River

Settlement (he was funded by the high wing of his church, rather than the evangelical one to which the

others belonged) backed the charge. But the Anglican bishop of the Northwest dismissed it entirely,

pointing out that had the HBC not done so, the church itself would have paid its men for giving class.eee

eeeIsbisters 1986 hagiographer Barry Cooke was apparently so blinded by the desire to make data go his way, he explicitly made the point that

the bishop had notbeen asked.


21/33

Sir George Simpson testified in a session that took up parts of two days. And since Isbister

attended, it gave him the evening between to speak to committee members and help focus their questions.

These were often posed as if on HBC terrain there was no such thing as Machiavellis necessitevents

that happen no matter what humans do and which cannot be changed. There was no understanding that

the Far North supported but a very sparse human population, and that vagaries of climate or wildlife often

brought disaster. So all misery was laid at the Companys feet, including natives eating of human flesh.

To all present it was clear Sir George was lying when he said cannibalism never occurred, for the

committee had copies of letters giving time and place, including one from Bell in the early 1840s about

such activity by Gwichin outside the gates at Peels River. Another take on it would be that his memory

was failing. That may also be why he did not bring up the incident on the trail between Peels River and

Good Hope, when two of his men were killed and pounded into pemmican,as one author had put it,13

because of the disappearance of rabbits and its many effects, a cyclic event no one could alter.

Isbister also had the committee primed to get at the Point Separation killings and Manuels

participation. Here Simpson was either foxy or short of recall, for he managed to turn the attention of his

interrogators, who could not grasp fine distinctions of sites and tribes, to an incident decades earlier

further south where HBC servants had killed Indians to gain access to women. One had been sent to

Montreal for trial.

When it came to questions about shabby treatment of retired servants, Simpson failed to mention

that the Company often gave long-term help to workers after injury and to native widows of its men. Only

after a reminder from his staff did he tell the committee the second day. There, too, memory loss may

have been a factor. But rear action of that sort made it seem he did not know enough of HBC rule or was

hiding it from view.

The sense of deception was heightened by Rae, who because of his report of cannibalism by

Franklins men had become a widely known figure. In the public mind it was he more than anyone else

who represented the HBC. That his witness could not be trusted was evident from Dickenss play the

Frozen Deep, which was showing as he appeared before the committee. So it did not help when he

claimed that Company barter might look unfair, but that it served tribal peoples interests.

By paying too little for luxury furs, Rae explained, and too much for those least wanted, the

Company ensured certain creatures did not become extinct, and thereby remained a source of income to

natives. And if the latter paid extravagant sums for items such as needles, there was ample compensation

through their being able to buy other things at rates that, given the cost of bringing them from Britain,

were remarkably cheap.

The argument might have held except that Rae used his brief experience as trader-in-charge of the

Mackenzie (1849-1850) to back it up. At that time, Governor Simpson had become concerned about ugly


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publicity in London, where Isbister was circulating the list of exchange in use during his stay at Peels

River. By showing trifles high price he was proving abuse, so Simpson had told Rae to lower their cost.

Rae told the committee of these instructions, but then volunteered he had ignored them, feeling

that matters were fine as they were. To make matters worse, when asked to explain the made beaver

system of trade he botched it badly and then admitted he had never understood it. So instead of defending

the Company, he inflicted major wounds. As effectively as Dickens, and while meaning to do the

opposite, he created doubt about the integrity of himself and his employer.

What also preoccupied the hearings was the agricultural potential of the Mackenzie. This

followed from Isbisters drive to tie his mission of revenge to Christian views about farming and

conversionand to colonists desire for Company land. If it were shown the Mackenzie was capable of

supporting farms, then there would be several good reasons to end HBC rule. It would prove that Indians

could have been moved from the woods to till land and learn of Jesus. And it would show there need be

no economic loss if the HBC was no longer present, for colonists could remove the trees, plant crops, and

feed great amounts of livestock.

If this held true for the Mackenzie, all land south of it, presumably warmer, could also be devoted

that purpose. The potential for immigration was immense. Feeding that thought were prior comments by

Isbister, McLean, and others about potatoes and barley produced at the HBCs farm at Fort Simpson.

That the concept of farming in the Far North was mostly myth no one on the committee grasped.

So, time and again members probed to make it seem feasible. When Rae was asked about gardening at

James Bay, where he had long worked, he replied that nothing had come of it, as fields were prepared and

natives handed potatoes, but that after a first planting they never came back. [see mission engraving of

potato fields at Moose Factory].

The person most suited to puncturing the agricultural dream was General John Lefroy, an expert

on nature, who in the 1844 spring when still a junior army officer had spent months at Fort Simpson

(while Peers and McLean were there) to study magnetic force. He pointed out that it sat on an island of

alluvial soil, i.e. brought by the river, in a spot where warm winds from the Rockies sometimes reached

its shore. But elsewhere frost pervaded the ground, and crops would be next to nil.

Unfortunately, as he ended his testimony Lefroy told how on a Company boat north of Fort

Simpson he had shared space with a cow (many posts then had one or two, and some a bull as well). That

made it seem husbandry of all sorts might easily be achieved in that distant location. It added another

blow to HBC prospects, and gave credence to what HBC enemies had said all along.


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Missionaries on the Mackenzie

At the very time HBC prestige was slipping in London, Anglican Rev. James [xxx] Hunter in

1857 asked the Church Missionary Society for leave from his Red River Settlement parish. He yearned to

go north to convert the Inuit of the Delta.

Thirteen years earlier, he had come from Britain to Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan

(west of the upper end of Lake Winnipeg) an important post since it was there brigades turned toward the

Mackenzie.When his wife died shortly after, leaving him an infant son, he quickly married againthis

time to Jean, daughter of Chief Factor Donald Ross at Norway House. The young woman, who had once

been betrothed to John McLean, spoke fluent Cree and provided much help in her husbands work.fff In

1849, he was promoted to archdeacon.

Five years later the couple moved to the Red River Settlement, with its high social stress: the

Rev. xxxx Corbett, Anglican clergyman in an adjacent church, fostered rabid anti-Company views amongthe English-speaking mixed-breed population. Still, there was hope for improving Hunters life. The

bishop14 was aging, and he may have thought to gain the prelates post. One way to raise the chance of

that was to scout far terrain and blaze a path for missions.

Hunter also had religious motives. Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the shock-troops of their faith,

had bypassed Anglican sites to reach Great Slave Lake and Fort Resolution.ggg He planned to push further

north right through their ranks to Fort Simpson and Peels River. Papal darkness would still hold the

center, but rays of the Protestant truth would rule the far side. The trip meant absence from home and

wife (a fourth child had just arrived), but he looked forward with pleasure to planting the cross on the

coast. 15 [also HBC personnel sheet]

That prospects were good was shown by Peter, an Inuk who with his master, an Anglican cleric,

had just arrived from Ungava. Remarkable in honesty and truthfulness . . . faithful, unsophisticated and

diligent, he showed the hopeful nature of his people. It affirmed what Rae had told him (apparently prior

to the latters 1848 trip to the Delta) of the Inuit: that they were the countrys fairest tribe and the

fffUnlike girls born to other traders, she had been removed from the Red River school and sent to class es in England. Their first children were

named after her parents: Donald Ross was born early 1852, Mary Arabella, who lived just half a decade, the next year. Hunters boy by his first

wife was in Sept. 1851 sent to England for education. (Hargrave) [page number?]

gggRobert Choquette s recent history of their work, The OblatesAssault on Canadas Northwest, uses military terms throughout: the duty of

true Catholics was to become Christs soldierstroops dedicated to conquering a world being driven to Hell.[p.2] Thus, an entire section on

Training the Catholic Soldiers, [p. 11-15] and the explanation that This book will be couched in a military analogy of conquest. [p. 21] The

chapter Deployment in Athabasca-Mackenzie begins with the following line: Having established their beachheads in each of the four regions

of the greater Northwest, the Oblate conquerors did not so much as pause before proceeding to deploy their main forces throughout each of

these regions. [p. 51] (Choquette)


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easiest to bring under Christian instruction.16 But nothing came of plans to learn Peters tongue and take

him on the journey, for he drooped and passed awayit was said because of the climate.17

The death did lessen Hunters drive, for in addition to Inuit he hoped to convert the Mackenzies

Indians. As he told the CMS, they well disposed toward the gospel and must at once be brought to the

Protestant fold. Delay meant yielding them to Rome, for once priests converted them it could not be

reversed. Hence his rush to get possession of Fort Simpson. Success was likely, as Bernard Rogan

Ross, chief trader of the district, had asked him in.18 They knew each other well from time both had spent

at posts on the Saskatchewan. More than that, they were brothers-in-law, for Bernard had also taken one

of Chief Trader Donald Rosss daughters as partner. [ ]

Hunter left for the blessed work on an HBC brigade in June 1858. 19 As he passed certain posts,

he wistfully thought of the two young Oblates who had opened missions there and had already been

promoted to bishop.hhh

At Fort Resolution he met Father Henri Grollier, a man of sharp words and

fanatical views who was making his mark. In winter he had formally married Charles Gaudet, a young

Catholic trader born in Montreal, and his mixed-blood wife. (Payment 1-14) As it pained him to see the

enemy advance, he decided to leave his work and travel north on the boats with Hunter.iii

The minister feared the priest would gain souls, for Oblates had the support of French-speaking

half-casts (descendants of fur-trade servants born in Quebec) and native wives, all adherent to Rome. 20

Meanwhile Grollier felt certain God wanted it that way: it was his happy role to take possession of the

Mackenzie, which the machinations of fanatical Orangism, (i.e. Bernard Ross, raised in Northern

Ireland) would otherwise have handed to Hunter. [citation?] That Ross hated Rome was clear, for when

Indians at Fort Simpson flocked to the priest, he sent him back at once.

That winter on a visit west of there to Fort Liard, Hunter was stalled by a half-breed Catholic

woman (baptized years earlier in the South) who told everyone the difference between priest and

minister. Indians now understood the minister was lhomme dune femme, a man linked to a wife,

while Oblates belonged to God. For making that point Grollier thought she deserved limitless

recognition. [ref.?] But her tone in 1858-9 may have been especially sharp, for her daughter was the wife

of Gaudet, who had just renounced his Catholic faith and adopted that of Hunter.jjj

hhh Bishops Tach and Grandin. Hunter did not hear of Grandins promotion until he reached Fort Resolution. Hunter to CMS Aug. 12, 1858.

iiiWhile telling Hunter this over supper at the HBC post, Father Grollier also revealed (without truth at the time) having received Sir Georges

nod to start a mission at Good Hope, near the edge of the Arctic Circle. Hunter journal for CMS, Aug. 11, 1858, CMS Reel A91, NAC.

jjjMr. Gaudet was last year admitted into the Church of England by Archdn Hunter. W. W. Kirkby to CMS Aug. 20, 1859. I a m not sure of the

exact date of Gaudets conversion, or when his mother-in-law knew of it, so linking it to her behavior may be unjust.


25/33

Peer pressure likely caused the move, for Oblate advance had angered HBC staff, especially

Bernard Ross.kkk

Now that a priest had arrived on the Mackenzie, Gaudet may have feared that being a

Papist would stall his career. His switch that winter was Hunters only success, for natives, except a few

who did so briefly, would not come his way. Grollier gleefully wrote that in July the minister left in

shame to rejoin his dear other half. [ref.?]

Hunters view of the Delta people had by now greatly changed. Rather than peaceful and eager to

learn, they were a very treacherous and blood thirsting race.21 A Gwichins recent murder of his wife, a

member of their tribe, had made them vow revenge, so given the risk he had not gone past Good Hope.

The threat was overblown, for that very year an HBC clerk22

visited the Kukpugmiut on the coast.

Well received, he found them anxious for a settled intercourse with whites. Still, given the hatred

between them and Gwichin, Bernard Ross felt they must not come to Peels River. And he dared found

no post in the Delta without a competent translator.

If some Gwichin were capable of speaking with the Kukpugmiut, they seem to have lost that

skill on strategic occasions. Having failed to keep physical space between whites and the people of the

coast, they may have used language as a barrier. Whether true or not, Ross was angry at not being able to

have his plans and needs explained to the Inuit. Why, he impatiently asked Sir George, was it not possible

to get a translator from Ungava or Hudsons Bay, where the HBC had long dealt with these people? 23

The need was strong because he had sent another clerk, Roderick MacFarlane, to the tribe at the

mouth of the Anderson, east of the Mackenzie. If a post were put there, it would serve not only nearby

bands but those of the Delta. The latter, he predicted, would soon turn docile through frequent contact

and another post, just for them, could then be built. The site had already been pickedlll

mmm

From the Kukpugmiuts point of view a fort on the Anderson lacked attraction. If it came about,

they would share whites attention with other tribes. Travel there would be mainly overland, and besides

would not fit their spring migration through the Delta. Fortunately (as they may have seen it)

MacFarlanes two forays to the coast did not go as well as hoped. nnn The presence of Indians in his party

caused problems. [reference?]

kkkRoss had long been stationed at Fort Resolution, the southernmost post in the Mackenzie, where the Oblates reached first.

lllLockharts report is not included with the transcript of the B.R. Ross letter in the HBC correspondence book. I have not yet searched for it

elsewhere.

mmmThe letter also advised that people from Cape Bathurst (very friendly) would shield the new post from damage by those from the Delta.

Ross to Simpson, 1858, 11, 29. HBCA B200/b/33.

nnnThe problem had to do with Indians in his party. In future, as MacFarlane reported, they must be entirely dispensed with. [reference?]


26/33

To avoid such issues, MacFarlane asked for a boy to take south for training as an interpreter.

Though he failed, Ross hoped a similar request by Gaudet (who had taken over at Peels River) would

bring success. His stay with the Kukpugmiut in 1858 boosted HBC fortunes, as he enjoyed their

hospitality and got many pelts.24 But it seems his suggestion to let a youth go needed time for discussion.

On average, families on the coast consisted of four people: an adult couple, and two childrena

formula that changed in tandem with the number of wives a man possessed. Other offspring were left to

die or given up for adoption. By age ten a boy helped with hunts, and girls with chores; giving one up

meant loss of labor in the present, and of security in the future. Besides, bonds of love were tight.

On the other hand, some children were miserably unhappy. For those who past the infant stage

were orphaned or given away, the relation with adoptive parents was often that of slaves. Though worked

the hardest, they were last to be fed, and wore decrepit clothes. [reference from Nuligak]

In winter the following may have happened: the Kukpugmiut decided to let two children go, but

in return, they wanted a post in the Delta. On hearing their wish in spring, Gaudet advised it would carry

more weight if posed directly to Ross. Then he arranged for one of the chiefs, Tiktik, and two other adults

to accompany the children and him to Fort Simpson a few months later.

Gaudet did not know it, but the scheme fit perfectly with new pressure from Sir George, who

wanted a fort near the coast built at once. You will apply yourself with energy he ordered Ross, to the

early accomplishment of that object. The Company could send no interpreter from the East, as none were

in its employ, so the only remedy was to offer sufficient inducement to the Esquimaux to allow one or

two or more children to be raised among staff. For both this and the fort there was no limit to cost.25

Ross got the letter in July 1859 when, as happened each year, he took the Mackenzies furs on a

six-week brigade journey to Portage La Loche and exchanged them there for new trade goods brought by

another brigade from the South. Debarking at that point was Hunter who was returning to the Red River

Settlement (where his daughter Mary would die before he got home) and coming aboard was his

replacement, the Rev. William Kirkby. The new mans role was to stay in the North and start a mission

and school at Fort Simpson.ooo

The governors missive also told that the licence to the Far Northwest had not been renewed. So

the Companys role in helping Anglicans was no longer as governing body, but as private individuals.

That applied as well to Father Grollier, who (so Simpson advised) would join Rosss brigade as it made

its way north and stay at Fort Simpson until boats from the Lower Mackenzie posts went home. He was

on his way to start a mission at Good Hope.

oooKirkby brought a mixed- blood teacher trained at the school at the Red River Settlement (the same one Isbister had attended).


27/33

Implicit in all this was HBC concern for its hold on Ruperts Land, whose charter would be up for

review in a decade. After the nasty things said about the Mackenzie District at the 1857 parliamentary

hearings and in prior years, it was here that the Company had to show its willingness to trade with Arctic

Coast people. As well, it had to be seen supporting churches in the endeavor to teach them of Christ. And

that held true even though the Mackenzie was not part of Ruperts Land.

Sir George, as a result, ordered the Mackenzies chief trader to avoid all conflict with clerics and

help them to the extent local conditions permitted. [ ] He had already rapped Ross for shipping Grollier

south the prior year, [ref.] after his bishop had complained.[reference?] The effect was that whites at Fort

Simpson might shun Father Grollier while he was at the post, but he was free to roam around.

Perfect Kneeling

At each Mackenzie District post, the clerks summer departure was timed to reach Fort Simpson

just as the chief trader returned there from with new goods from the Portage. That way the crews (whose

total number approached a hundred) only briefly strained local supplies. Gaudet arrived from Peels River

on August 15, less than twenty four hours after the Portage brigade. With him was James Flett, a

postmaster from La Pierres Houseppp, along with his family. But what made for excitement was the

presence on board of Tiktik and his companions: a man and wife and their boy, and a nine-year-old girl,

Attingarek, who had come without her parents.26

The crowd was thrilled by their height, intelligence, good nature, exotic dress, and remarkably

fine looks. The children would pass among a number of Europeans without notice. Kirkby was beside

himself with joy. Here, he wrote in his journal, is a new tribe to the Redeemer. May his glorious

Kingdom be speedily established among them.27

The promise seemed especially strong because these people spent part of the year

theatre 9 short

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