Under the Gun
An Excerpt from
The Long Road to Little Canada
Context for the excerpt below the break:
During the summer of 1818, Genevieve Laurence traveled west by canoe in a brigade unlike any that had made the journey before. She and her widowed mother and older sister joined other French-Canadian women, children, and families bound for Lord Selkirk's struggling Red River Settlement. For the Laurence family, the journey had already brought the birth and death of a child, an emotional breakdown that nearly shattered them, and an unprovoked attack by a rival North West Company crew who tried to capsize another of the brigade's canoes. Now, as the settlers reached the western shore of Lake Superior, they approached the heart of the North West Company's power in the west.
Fort William on Lake Superior, painting by Robert Irvine, ca. 1811. Library and Archives Canada, Acquisition Number R9266-290, Canadiana Collection, Peter Winkworth
Under the Gun
Bodies bustled along shore as the settler brigade entered the Kaministiquia River on July 28. For Genevieve, it must have been a bittersweet moment. Crossing Lake Superior had been a cold, nightmarish ordeal for her and her family, but they were safely across. In the open field to her right, Genevieve could see the porkeater encampment from the North West Company rendezvous. The camp was still busy with activity as the grand affair wound to a close and crews prepared to depart on their return to Montreal. Genevieve’s father had camped here, and it was probably the source of several stories she had heard as a little girl.
Fort William stood guard a few hundred yards beyond the encampment. Tension hung in the air as the brigade approached. The settlers could see the post’s impressive new fortifications, and they couldn’t help but notice that the battlements were manned for defense. North West Company guards—and several small cannons—peered down at the canoes from two corner blockhouses and from a new blockhouse above the main gate. This “stout” gate, which a contingent of de Meuron soldiers had captured in a surprise charge two years earlier, now featured a portcullis, which could be dropped quickly by a single guard. Both the gate and portcullis were shut tight as the settlers passed. With Selkirk’s men, including military officers like Matthey, returning west, the North West Company was prepared for anything.[1]
As we have seen, mistrust was mutual. In fact, Captain Matthey had initially planned to take the settlers up the old Grand Portage trail (as a few other HBC boats had done that summer) rather than risk confrontation with the North West Company at Fort William or elsewhere on the main trade route.[2] He had reconsidered while out on the lake. Appearances mattered. Wrote Matthey, “I did not like to have even the appearance of avoiding the fort, which would have been given out to the servants and Indians very numerous now at the fort, as a sign of fear, shame or guilt.”[3] In addition, Matthey did not want to miss any intelligence he might gain from HBC men coming down from the interior. The old Grand Portage route was much less traveled. If he had taken the brigade that way, he would have been left in the dark about potential dangers ahead.
Instead of avoiding the North West Company, Matthey had the settlers put on a magnificent performance designed to overawe them. The women were the stars of the show. As they paddled by the many watchful eyes at Fort William, Matthey directed the brigade “to pas[s] the usual way, in line of Battle, like a Squadron of Cavalry the flag in the center—the canoes within 1 or 2 yards of one another—paddling in perfect good time[.] On one good Voyageur song [sang] onlythe female[s] in their best atours [finest attire][,] most of them Paddling.”[4] Picture Genevieve and her mother and sister taking up paddles and demonstrating their canoeing and singing skills while an audience of men looked on from shore in silence. We cannot know exactly what song the women chose, but perhaps they sang an early version of “Vive la Canadienne.” Or maybe it was a variation of “C’est l’Aviron,” an old French folk song all the Canadians on shore would have known by heart and which would have reminded them of their homes and families.
...
This scene, this moment, was utterly unique in the history of the fur trade, and Genevieve, as a fourteen-year-old girl, helped create it. I suspect she sensed that she was taking part in something special, but she was too young and too in-the-moment to fully comprehend its significance.
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[1] Matthey to Selkirk, 01 Aug 1818, Selkirk Papers, C-5, 5231. Matthey called the portcullis a “Horse,” which “may be let down in case the gate could not be shut quick enough.” See also Major Joseph Delafield’s diary entry for Sunday, July 6, 1823, published in McElroy and Riggs, The Unfortified Boundary, 401, in which Delafield writes, “The gate is now secured by a portcullis & block house.”
[2] Matthey to Selkirk, 10 Jul 1818, Selkirk Papers, C-5, 5155. Matthey wrote that by taking the Grand Portage route, he wished to “avoid all the new Road Portages and the contact with our antagonists, as well as to gain a few days.”
[3] Matthey to Selkirk, 01 Aug 1818, Selkirk Papers, C-5, 5227.
[4] Ibid.