Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival by Peter Stark Page B
Authors: Peter Stark
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the sprawling egalitarianism of the American trade, a strict sense of hierarchy prevailed in the Canadian fur trade. On its lowest rung stood the mangeurs de lard, or “pork-eaters,” so named because, subsisting on preserved or salted pork, they were mostly a waterborne porter service where newcomers started. They simply paddled the big freight canoes the hundreds of miles from Montreal to the main interior posts such as Mackinac Island on Lake Huron, or Fort William on Lake Superior. There they dropped off a load of trade goods and supplies brought from Montreal, picked up several tons of the ninety-pound packets of pelts, and paddled back to Montreal.
In contrast to the pork-eater, the higher-status hivernant, or “winterer,” lived off wild game while managing the remote wilderness fur posts of the interior throughout the winter, where he traded goods directly with the Indian hunters and trappers for furs. At the top of the hierarchy stood the bourgeois —or “proprietor” or “partner”—who actually owned part of the enterprise. Originally held by French Canadians, these proprietor roles were largely taken over by Scottish fur traders after Britain won Canada from France in 1763. For the ambitious Scots fur trader, usually a young immigrant from the Highlands, the system offered a vast hierarchy to climb to success and wealth, from apprentice, to clerk, to partner. For many of the French-Canadian voyageurs, however, the paddling life remained an end in itself:
“I could carry, paddle, walk and sing with any man I ever saw,” claimed one seventy-year-plus voyageur, as quoted by historian Grace Lee Nute, writing in the early 1900s. “I have been twenty-four years a canoe man, and forty-one years in service; no portage was ever too long for me. Fifty songs could I sing. I have saved the lives of ten voyageurs. Have had twelve wives and six running dogs. I spent all my money in pleasure. Were I young again, I should spend my life the same way over. There is no life so happy as a voyageur’s life!”
On July 22, 1810, about three weeks after leaving Montreal, Hunt and Mackenzie’s birch-bark freight canoe surged into the cove and toward the crescent of beach at Michilmackinac Island. Known as “Mackinac” for short (and pronounced “Mackinaw”), the strategically placed island sits where lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior converge. It thus served as a major waterway crossroads for the interior fur trade. Atop a bluff over the cove and its crescent beach stood an imposing fort. Strung out along the beachfront directly beneath its ramparts and cannon tumbled an array of shacks and cabins from which fiddle music drifted out over the chill, crystalline northern waters.
The steersman directed the canoe toward the beach, paddling at top speed, voyageurs singing at the top of their lungs, their finest feathers and sashes flying to impress spectators ashore. The canoe glided into the shallows of the gravelly beach and out of it stepped Wilson Price Hunt, determined to hire Americans for Mr. Astor’s West Coast empire. He walked into a scene such as he’d never witnessed before.
“Every nook and corner in the whole island swarmed, at all hours of the day and night, with motley groups of uproarious tipplers and whisky-hunters,” wrote one contemptuous Scots-Canadian observer. “[It] resembled a great bedlam, the frantic inmates running to and fro in wild forgetfulness.”
“That Canadians in general drink, sometimes to excess, must be admitted,” he continued, “but to see drunkenness and debauchery, with all their concomitant vices, carried on systematically, it is necessary to see Mackinaw. . . . [I]n the morning [the Americans] were found drinking, at noon drunk, in the evening dead drunk. . . .”
Mackenzie had warned Hunt. It was going to be tough to hire competent voyageurs or woodsmen once they’d reached the interior, and, in any case, the Americans they did find would make far inferior
In contrast to the pork-eater, the higher-status hivernant, or “winterer,” lived off wild game while managing the remote wilderness fur posts of the interior throughout the winter, where he traded goods directly with the Indian hunters and trappers for furs. At the top of the hierarchy stood the bourgeois —or “proprietor” or “partner”—who actually owned part of the enterprise. Originally held by French Canadians, these proprietor roles were largely taken over by Scottish fur traders after Britain won Canada from France in 1763. For the ambitious Scots fur trader, usually a young immigrant from the Highlands, the system offered a vast hierarchy to climb to success and wealth, from apprentice, to clerk, to partner. For many of the French-Canadian voyageurs, however, the paddling life remained an end in itself:
“I could carry, paddle, walk and sing with any man I ever saw,” claimed one seventy-year-plus voyageur, as quoted by historian Grace Lee Nute, writing in the early 1900s. “I have been twenty-four years a canoe man, and forty-one years in service; no portage was ever too long for me. Fifty songs could I sing. I have saved the lives of ten voyageurs. Have had twelve wives and six running dogs. I spent all my money in pleasure. Were I young again, I should spend my life the same way over. There is no life so happy as a voyageur’s life!”
On July 22, 1810, about three weeks after leaving Montreal, Hunt and Mackenzie’s birch-bark freight canoe surged into the cove and toward the crescent of beach at Michilmackinac Island. Known as “Mackinac” for short (and pronounced “Mackinaw”), the strategically placed island sits where lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior converge. It thus served as a major waterway crossroads for the interior fur trade. Atop a bluff over the cove and its crescent beach stood an imposing fort. Strung out along the beachfront directly beneath its ramparts and cannon tumbled an array of shacks and cabins from which fiddle music drifted out over the chill, crystalline northern waters.
The steersman directed the canoe toward the beach, paddling at top speed, voyageurs singing at the top of their lungs, their finest feathers and sashes flying to impress spectators ashore. The canoe glided into the shallows of the gravelly beach and out of it stepped Wilson Price Hunt, determined to hire Americans for Mr. Astor’s West Coast empire. He walked into a scene such as he’d never witnessed before.
“Every nook and corner in the whole island swarmed, at all hours of the day and night, with motley groups of uproarious tipplers and whisky-hunters,” wrote one contemptuous Scots-Canadian observer. “[It] resembled a great bedlam, the frantic inmates running to and fro in wild forgetfulness.”
“That Canadians in general drink, sometimes to excess, must be admitted,” he continued, “but to see drunkenness and debauchery, with all their concomitant vices, carried on systematically, it is necessary to see Mackinaw. . . . [I]n the morning [the Americans] were found drinking, at noon drunk, in the evening dead drunk. . . .”
Mackenzie had warned Hunt. It was going to be tough to hire competent voyageurs or woodsmen once they’d reached the interior, and, in any case, the Americans they did find would make far inferior
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