Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1907-01-04
FUR TRADERS OF TODAY.
How Valuable Skins Are Collected
From Trappers,

1t Is Slgnlncant tnat just q nunQreQ
years from the last great contest wag-
ed by the Hudson Bay Fur company
against rivals to the vast game pre-
serve of northern Canada the old COM
pany should be called upon to face
new and powerful opposition. And
for the third time In the record of its
warfares that opposition is French.
Since Charles Stuart granted the re-
gion inland from Hudson bay to 'the
! Gentlemen Adventures" headed by
Prince Rupert. the whole history. of
the Adventures" has been one of
strenuous struggles against rivals.
Their territory in itself was equal in
area to the whole Russian empire.
Including furs taken by free traders
l-pedlers, the company called them
the fur country Of the north yielded
pelts to the value of more than ST.
100000 a year. Such prize was
worth fighting for, says Agnes c. Lent
in the Youths Companion, and like
lion the old company has fought
from the beginning.
First there were the French poach-
ers, tramping a thousand miles
through the painless forests, from the
st. Lawrence to the Ottawa, up the
Ottawa and overland to the bay; or
sailing around Labrador with a fleet
of men Of war, like Iberville and La
Perouse, to sweep the English from
the bay and sail away with cargo Of
half million dollars worth Of furs,
When New France passed into the
hands of the English an enemy as per-
sistent as a hornet swarmed into the
northern domain. This was the North
west company. made up of Scotch
merchants, who hired the hordes of
castoff French hunters-bush lopers,
voyageurs, traders-set adrift from
the old French companies.
Pushing up the Ottawa in their bri-
gades of ninety foot birch bark ca
noes, their voyageur songs keeping
time to the rhythm Of their paddles,
across the Great Lakes, UP the Sas-
katchewan, down the Mackenzie riv-
er to the Arctic, down the Columbia
to the Pacific, these free lances Of a
wild world warfare camped under the
noses of the cannon bristling through
the walls of the Hudson Bay peoples
palisaded fur posts. They allied them
selves with the Indians and laughed
to scorn the worst that the old lady,
as they called the company, could do
with her monopoly Of royal grant.
The end Of this all the world knows
the drugged whisky, the stab Of the
assassin's dagger on the dark wooded
trail, ambushed raids on each others
posts, starving each other out Of GER
tain regions by stealing outgoing furs,
open massacre of Hudson Bay men at
Red river, open destruction of the
Northwesters' fort at Lake Superior
the banditti warfare of the lords of
the north continued till out Of sheer
exhaustion the two companies were
compelled to amalgamate.
When the rivals united peace pre-
vailed. So passed almost hundred
years. Even when the company sur
rendered its monopoly of the fur trade
it's peaceful prosperity was unaffect-
ed, for after 1871 when colonists be-
gan to pour into Manitoba, the COM
pany still had the territory Of the Sas-
katchewan. in area one-third greater
than Germany; and the basin Of the
Mackenzie river, which is half the size
Of Russia; and the Yukon region,
which may be compared to Spain; and
northern British Columbia, a third
greater than Germany; and all the
region encircling the Coppermine on
the west.
Colonists might keep pouring in for
hundred years and the fur trader
retreating before them, yet there
would remain a game preserve larger
than European Russia.
The company could bring goods in
to the country cheaper than the indi-
vidual trader, and offer better terms
to the Indian hunter. Besides, every
Indian Of every district was PERSONAL
ly known to the chief factor. The
company man could speak the In
dams language; the free trader had
to learn it. In the language Of the
campfire, the free trader was either
run out of the country" or went
broke" and was compelled to sue for
provisions from his rivals.
For a hundred years all the free
traders who poached on the COM
pany's domain had very little effect on
the Hudson Bay fur traders than to
drive the game farther afield, from
the Red river to the Saskatchewan,
and from the Saskatchewan to the
Athabasca. Only recently has the
scattered guerrilla warfare of the free
traders opposition been concentrated
and mustered into what may be con-
sdered a serious rival to the ancient
Adventures"
The newcomer is known as the
French company. 1t Is backed by the
capital of Paris. London and New
York fur traders, and has gathered
into its ranks the disorganlZed forces
of the opposition, rich Independent
traders, French trappers from Quebec,
frontiersmen from the Missouri and
Texas and Pacific coast, descendants
from the old Northwesters, who re-
fused to go into the union a hundred
years ago. All know the Indian Ian
gauge. All have been born and bred
to the life Of the hunter. The major
ity know the field as well as the Hud-
son Bay men. For the first time In a
century the English company is even
ly matched in its rival.
How the French company first gain
ed footing among the Indian hunt
ers Of the north is a story that will
probably remain untold. 1t Is a story
of the Individual and single handed
courage of men who, year after year,
went alone into the snow padded for
ests west Of the Saskatchewan and
Peace rivers with nothing but the