Tag Archives: Simon Fraser

Les Anciens Canadiens/Cameron of Lochiel

09 Wednesday Jun 2021

Posted by in Quebec, Scotland, the Fur Trade, Voyageurs

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Cameron of Locheil by H. C. Edwards (EBook#53154)
Manoir de Philippe Aubert de Gaspé à Saint-Jean-Port-Joli (Patrimoine culturel du Québec)

Les Anciens Canadiens (ebooksgratuits.com). FR
Cameron of Lochiel (Archive.org ), Sir Charles G. D. Roberts, translator. EN
Cameron of Lochiel is Gutenberg [EBook#53154], Sir Charles G. D. Roberts, translator. EN

Last weekend, I worked on Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé‘s Anciens Canadiens. The novel can be read online. It was translated twice by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts, an excellent Canadian writer, but Mr Roberts’s second and finer translation, published in 1905, is entitled Cameron of Lochiel [EN]. I had never looked for a translation of Les Anciens Canadiens [1] and this English title intrigued me. Upon due reflexion, the title Sir Roberts gave Les Anciens Canadiens seemed altogether legitimate. As the events of the Anciens Canadiens unfold, Jules d’Haberville becomes Cameron of Lochiel. Scotland fell to England at the Battle of Culloden (1746), which is discussed in Les Anciens Canadiens. As for New France, it will also fall to England, but it will have a glorious past.

After our friends complete their studies, Jules joins the French army and Arché, the British army. Archie serves in North America during the Seven Years’ War, called the French and Indian War. Ironically and tragically, Arché, a soldier, is ordered to set ablaze his friends’ manoir. Nouvelle-France is conquered by the British. Therefore, the defeat of Nouvelle-France mirrors the defeat of Scotland, a more important country, and, by the same token, it puts Jules and Arché / Archie on an equal footing. They are the two sides of the same coin. So, metaphorically, Jules has become Cameron of Lochiel. His country has been defeated and, despite the role Arché / Archie plays during the war, the friends are reunited. In 1759, the French in Canada fell to England as did the Scots, in 1746.

After the “conquest,” Blanche d’Haberville will not marry Roberts’s Cameron of Lochiel, whom she loves, but Jules will marry an Englishwoman, thereby giving himself a second and redeeming identity, an instance of the collaborator’s ideology. He is the conquered and the conqueror. As for Aubert de Gaspé, the author and a Seigneur, he will use Arché’s guided tour of a Seigneurie to consign New France to a réel absolu, that of fiction, the life and customs of anciens Canadiens. Jules familiarizes Arché with the life of a Seigneur and that of the inhabitants of a seigneurie, not to mention the life of New France’s humbler subjects and its Amerindians.

Missing are New France’s voyageurs, river drivers (draveurs), and bûcherons. Their life and their songs are chronicled elsewhere. Les Anciens Canadiens nevertheless memorializes and mythologizes the presence of the French in North America. France will live forever on the shores of the St Lawrence River because it is remembered, an anamnesis.

La Patrie littéraire

When John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham wrote his Report on the Rebellions of 1837-1838, he described the French in Canada as a people lacking a history and a literature: un peuple sans histoire ni littérature. The French set about proving him wrong. Two literary schools were instituted, one in Montreal and one in Quebec City. The people of New France quickly built a patrie littéraire,[2] a literary homeland.  

Our colleague Derrick J. Knight was correct in suggesting a link between the Scots and the French in Canada. Matters would change when Confederation occurred. However, the spirit of the Auld Alliance would persist. Our Scottish explorers worked at an early point after the Conquest of Canada, formalized by the Treaty of Paris,1763. The Battle of Culloden took place less than two decades before the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, fought on 13 September 1759.

Canada’s bon Anglais is Scottish, he is both John Neilson and Cameron of Locheill. John Neilson stated that there could be a blend, un amalgame, of the two “races” in Canada, the French-speaking race, and the English-speaking race: the two sides of the same coin. There was an amalgame. Simon Fraser left Montreal accompanied by 19 voyageurs and 2 Amerindians. Explorers were guided by voyageurs and Amerindians whom they trusted.

Patriotism, devotion to the French-Canadian nationality, a just pride of race, and a loving memory for his people’s romantic and heroic past—these are the dominant chords which are struck throughout the story. Of special significance, therefore, are the words which are put in the mouth of the old seigneur as he bids his son a last farewell. The father has been almost ruined by the conquest. The son has left the French army and taken the oath of allegiance to the English crown. “Serve thy new sovereign,” says the dying soldier, “as faithfully as I have served the King of France; and may God bless thee, my dear son!”
Sir Charles G. D. Roberts’s Cameron of Lochiel (Preface)

An incident in the rebellion of 1745, David Morier (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Montcalm blessé à la bataille des plaines d’Abraham et ramené à Québec (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

RELATED ARTILES

Sources and Resources

______________________________
[1] There are four: The Canadians of Old, Georgina Pennée (1864); Charles G. D. Roberts (1890), and Jane Brierley (1997). There are anonymous translations.
[2] Bourbeau-Walker, M. (2002). La patrie littéraire : errance et résistance.
Francophonies d’Amérique,(13), 47–65. https://doi.org/10.7202/1005247ar

Love to everyone 💕

Philippe Aubert de Gaspé (1786-1871)
(Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

© Micheline Walker
9 Juin 2021
WordPress

The Scots as Explorers

04 Friday Jun 2021

Posted by in Explorers, France, Québec, Scots in Canada, the Fur Trade

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Sir Alexander Mackenzie painted by Thomas Lawrence (c. 1800 – 1801), courtesy National Gallery of Canada (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

—ooo—

Sir Alexander Mackenzie (1764-1820): first to cross North America north of Mexico on 22 July 1793.
Simon Fraser (1776-1862): first to go down the Fraser River, 1808. The Fraser River leads to the Pacific.
David Thompson (1770-1827): a cartographer (British).
Alexander MacKay (1770-1811): Alexander Mackenzie’s cousin. He died on 15 June 1811 (the Tonquin ).
Alexander Ross (1783-1856): Oregon Settlers. (Franchère’s voyageurs).
Gabriel Franchère (1786-1863): took voyageurs from New York to the mouth of the Columbia River (the Tonquin).
the Fraser River.
the Columbia River.
the Tonquin (1807-1811).

In my last post, I noted that voyageurs and Amerindians worked for explorers. When beavers were nearing extinction fur traders became explorers in the hope of finding precious pelts west of a formidable obstacle: the Rocky Mountains.

The first European to cross the continent

Alexander Mackenzie (1764-1820) was the first European to cross the North American continent north of Mexico. In 1788, the North West Company sent him to Lake Athabasca, in Northern Saskatchewan, where he was a founder of Fort Chipewyan. In 1789, he navigated the Mackenzie River, named after him, and reached the Arctic Ocean. Such was not his goal. He then turned around and travelled the Mackenzie River south, but he did not go as far as the Pacific Ocean. The Mackenzie River is extremely long. In 1793, Alexander Mackenzie again sought a passage to the Pacific. He was advised not to travel down the Fraser River, but to use instead the Bella Coola River, which took him to the Pacific Ocean. Alexander Mackenzie reached the Pacific on 22 July 1793. He did so 13 years before the Lewis and Clark expedition (see Alexander Mackenzie, Wikipedia). Alexander Mackenzie is the first person to cross the continent north of Mexico, but he was not alone. Alexander Mackenzie was

[a]ccompanied by two native guides (one named Cancre), his cousin, Alexander MacKay, six Canadian voyageurs (Joseph Landry, Charles Ducette, François Beaulieu, Baptiste Bisson, François Courtois, Jacques Beauchamp) and a dog simply referred to as “our dog”, Mackenzie left Fort Chipewyan, in Northern Saskatchewan, on 10 October 1792, and traveled via the Pine River to the Peace River. From there he traveled to a fork on the Peace River arriving 1 November where he and his cohorts built a fortification that they resided in over the winter. This later became known as Fort Fork.

See Alexander Mackenzie, Wikipedia

Had so shrewd an investor as John Jacob Astor (1763-1848) not suspected that there were pelts to harvest on the West Coast of the current United States, he would not have established the Pacific Fur Company (1810-1813), a subsidiary of the American Fur Company (1808). Nor would he have asked Gabriel Franchère (1786-1863) to recruit voyageurs in Quebec and to take them aboard the Tonquin around Cape Horn and past the Columbia Bar, called the “Graveyard of the Pacific.” Eight men died. The Tonquin left New York on 8 September 1810. It arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River on 22 March 1811. Aboard were Alexander MacKay and Alexander Ross. However, Fort Astoria would not survive because the United States was losing the War of 1812. John Jacob Astor sold the Pacific Fur Company to the North West Company and Fort Astoria was renamed Fort George. I have told the story of the Tonquin in earlier posts (see RELATED ARTICLES). Moreover, we have a page containing a list of posts on the voyageurs.

One may therefore suggest that it was in the best interest of the North West Company to ask Alexander Mackenzie to find a passage to the Pacific Ocean. However, Alexander MacKay had accompanied his cousin on his expedition west of the Rocky Mountains. After the demise of Fort Astoria, MacKay sailed north on the Tonquin and died (15 June 1811) when the ship was attacked by chief Wickaninnish and then blown apart by James Lewis, a clerk who was seriously wounded and could not escape.

Alexander Mackenzie was the first European to cross the continent north of Mexico, but, as we have seen, he was not alone. Moreover, in 1808, Simon Fraser would also reach the Pacific Ocean, or nearly so. Simon Fraser’s task, however, was to settle forts past the Rocky Mountains. He was a settler. Both Alexander Mackenzie and Simon Fraser were Nor’Westers. The Hudson’s Bay Company played a lesser role in promoting the fur trade west of the Rockies.

Alexander Ross, who travelled on the Tonquin, can also be considered a settler. He helped Gabriel Franchère‘s stranded voyageurs settle in the Oregon Country. Many married Amerindian women. So did Alexander Ross. He married the daughter of an Okanagan Chief. Alexander Ross left precious accounts of his travels. Ross’s Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River, 1810-1813, written in 1849, chronicles life on the Tonquin and the settling of voyageurs in the Oregon Country. Alexander Ross was associated with the Pacific Fur Company, the North West Company, and the Hudson’s Bay Company, in that order.

The Oregon Country, however, was a disputed area. The British felt entitled to the territory down to the 42nd parallel. As for the United States, it claimed all territory extending north to the 54th parallel. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 settled matters. In other words, in New Caledonia, the future British Columbia, the border was defined several years after the War of 1812.

Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser & David Thomson (Photo credit: The Canadian Encyclopedia)
Pre-1825 portrait of Simon Fraser (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Simon Fraser: twenty-four men in four canoes…

Rivers (fleuves) flow into the sea. So, west coast rivers flow into the Pacific Ocean. However, the Fraser River, is unnavigable. Simon Fraser and his crew canoed through turbulent and, all too often, narrow passages between mountain ranges. Portages were necessaries, but explorers and their crew had to walk down the side of mostly perpendicular cliffs. Simon Fraser knew about the rapids and also knew about the cliffs of the Fraser River. As well, hostile Amerindians lived along the Fraser River. Yet, on 28 May 1808, twenty-four men in four canoes left Fort George, settled by Simon Fraser. Simon Fraser lost one canoe and would have lost a man, had it not been for an agile native, Métis, or voyageur.

Alexander Mackenzie was the first to reach the Pacific Ocean by land. However, Simon Fraser (1764-1862), who canoed down the turbulent Fraser River in 1808, is not the lesser hero. On the contrary, he was the first to “establish permanent settlements in the area” (see Simon Fraser, Wikipedia). He secured Britain/Canada’s claim to territory north of the 49th parallel. Moreover, he provided proof that fur could be harvested west of the Rocky Mountains. Fraser sent a winter’s harvest of fur to Dunvegan (Alberta).

Just before leaving Rocky Mountain Portage, Fraser sent the winter’s harvest of furs to Dunvegan (Alta). It included 14 packs from Trout Lake – the first furs traded west of the mountains. Fraser was delighted with their quality. “The furs are really fine,” he noted in his journal. ” They were chiefly killed in the proper season and many of them are superior to any I have seen in Athabasca…

See Simon Fraser, The Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Conclusion

Scots were everywhere in the fur trade. But explorers did not acquire wealth. However, what is most significant is the blend of individuals who worked peacefully finding a passage by land to the Pacific Ocean. Moreover, they worked in teams and teams included Amerindians, Métis, and voyageurs. François Beaulieu II, a Métis and a Yellowknife chief. He was a guide to Alexander Mackenzie and, as we have seen, Alexander Mackenzie was accompanied by his cousin Alexander MacKay when he crossed the North American continent. When John Neilson had a conversation with Alexis de Tocqueville, he was mostly right. A blend of the two “races,” French-speaking and English-speaking Canadians, was possible. We have a bad Anglais in Jonathan Thorn, the Tonquin’s captain. He mistreated aboriginals who then killed nearly all the men aboard the Tonquin.

The Scots who came to Canada had fallen to England at the Battle of Culloden, in 1746. So had the French, in 1763, a mere 17 years later. Travel accounts, including L. R. Masson’s Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest (Volume II), an Internet Archive publication, name partners who are Scots, but have French and Amerindian friends, or interact with the French and the Amerindians. These are good years, if not a mythical past. Quebec’s music has Celtic roots and its literature features un bon Anglais who is a Scot. He is Les Anciens Canadiens‘s Archibald Cameron of Locheill, a Scot. Jules d’Haberville, a seigneur‘s son, befriends Arché, a Scot and a Catholic.

Next, we read Philippe Aubert de Gaspé‘s Les Anciens Canadiens (see Sources and Resources)

RELATED ARTICLES

Sources and Resources

—ooo—

Love to everyone 💕

The Descent of the Fraser River, 1808, by C. W. Jefferys

© Micheline Walker
4 June 2021
WordPress

The Singing Voyageurs

31 Saturday Mar 2018

Posted by in Art, Canadian History, Voyageurs

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Expedition Doubling Cape Barrow, July 25, 1821, by Sir George Back

Expedition Doubling Cape Barrow by Sir George Back, 25 July 1821, (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

More on the voyageur’s personality

The explorers left testimonials about the voyageur’s personality. According to Sir John Franklin, they were “creatures of the moment.” Sir George Simpson writes that they loved to eat and that, if a piece of equipment was good, they said that it came from France or “la vieille France de Londres,” London’s old France, and were “witty.” [i]

Sir George Back (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As for the explorers, they knew the name of every single one of their voyageurs. Most of these explorers came from Scotland. Obviously the Scots and the voyageurs got along very well. By the way, the gentleman who lost so many of his voyageurs was Admiral Sir George Back, FRS [Fellow of the Royal Society] (6 November 1796 – 23 June 1878). I have therefore edited my last post accordingly and, in doing so, I discovered that Sir George Back was an excellent artist.

When they were working for explorers, the voyageurs may have transported pelts. However, when employed by explorers such as Simon Fraser and Sir Alexander MacKenzie, they did not. They were simply finding their way, dangerously, to the Pacific. At that time, they also worked for travellers who were gathering information on Canada.

HMS Terror Thrown up by Ice by Sir George Back

The Singing Voyageur

The voyageurs did sing. We know for certain that they sang mostly old French songs and that their favourite song was “À la claire fontaine.” During the ten years he was in the employ of the Hudson’s Bay Company (1819-1829), Edward Ermatinger (1797-1876) collected eleven voyageur songs. They are traditional folksongs.

As for songs composed by the voyageurs, we know of three:

  • Épouser le voyage (To Wed the Voyage),
  • Les Bois-Brûlés (The Brullis), (Pierre Falcon),
  • Le Six mai de l’année dernière (Last Year on the Sixth of May).

The Bois-Brûlés were Dakota Amerindians.  As for the Sixth of May, that was the date on which the voyageurs left for “les pays d’en-haut,”  the north or, literally, the countries above.

These were published in the Beaver, a Canadian journal, by Marius Barbeau, the “founder of Canadian anthropology.” There can be no doubt that these songs are authentic voyageur songs.

Moreover, Grace Lee Nute lists voyageur songs. For the most part, the songs she discusses are well-known traditional folksongs. There are two exceptions:

  • C’est dans la ville de Bytown [Ottawa] (It’s in the town of Ottawa)
  • Parmi les voyageurs (Among the Voyageurs)

Parmi les voyageurs is unquestionably a voyageur song. However, loggers also left from Ottawa. They too had to find a living and left for the winter to work as lumberjacks.  As a result, C’est dans la ville de Bytown could be a forestier song or both a voyageur and forestier song. Forestiers worked in the lumber industry. They were lumberjacks or river drivers, riding the wood down riverways.

Sadly, W. F. Wentzel’s collection of voyageur songs has been lost. W. F. Wentzel, a  Norwegian trader of the far North West, was also a fine musician. He therefore transcribed voyageur songs that could have been an extremely valuable source to later generations of collectors and ethnologists.

Let us read Grace Lee Nute:

“It is a great pity nevertheless, that Wentzel’s large collection of these songs has not survived. His musical gifts added to his unusual command of languages would surely have made the collection invaluable. Moreover, he collected the songs of the voyageurs, and “mentions the indecorous quality of some of their [the voyageurs’] songs.” [ii]

Also lost are the songs of Pierre Falcon, except Les Bois Brûlés, an account of the Battle of Seven Oaks. Falcon wrote canoe songs that have probably been destroyed due to their ‘smutty’ character. Métis called themselves Bois Brûlés. They were not as dark as Amerindians.

Fortunately, we still have the eleven songs that Edward Ermatinger collected.

____________________

[i] Quoted by Nute in The Voyageur (St. Paul, Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987 [1931]), pp. 244 and 255.

[ii] “Mr W. F. Wentzel, Letters to the Hon. Roderic McKenzie, 1807-1824,” in Masson, Les Bourgeois, 1:71. Quoted in Nute’s The Voyageur, p. 155.

I am including, below, Blanche comme la neige, a folksong. Sir Ernest MacMillan composed a choral setting of this song. I do not have Sir Ernest’s setting, but we have the song. Blanche comme la neige is featured as a Christmas song, but it could be a song about winter and purity. It tells the story of a young woman who feigned death not to be raped. She is placed in a coffin and discovered, three days later, by her father. She tells him she has preserved her virginity: “pour mon honneur garder,” (to keep my honour).

One of the McGarrigle sisters died in 2010. It saddens me to know that they are now forever separated. Besides, it is difficult to find good renditions of folksongs.  I do not know the origin of Ce matin.

Portage

expedition_doubling_cape_barrow_july_25_18212

© Micheline Walker
18 January 2012
WordPress
 
 
 

The Voyageur & his Canoe

26 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by in Canadian History, Folksongs, Métis, Voyageurs

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“Voyageurs at Dawn” by Frances Anne Hopkins, (1871) (1838–1919)

Grace Lee Nute, a pioneer

Several books have been written about the voyageurs, but Grace Lee Nute is our pioneer. She published her The Voyageur in 1931 (D. Appleton and Company). That book is still one’s best reference.

The Voyageur‘s clothes

At the beginning of her second chapter, Nute quotes missionnary Sherman Hall:

[m]y man dresses himself in the habit of a voyageur, that is, a short shirt, a red woolen cap, a pair of deer skin leggins which reach from the ancles a little above the knees and are held up by a string secured to a belt about the waiste, the aziōn [breech cloth] of the Indians, and a pair of deer skin moccasins without stocking on the feet. The thigh are left bare.  This is the dress of voyageurs in summer and winter.[i]

As Grace Lee Nute writes, there are missing items: “a blue capote, the inevitable pipe, a gaudy sash.” The gaudy sash is “une ceinture fléchée,” a wool belt with an arrow (une flêche) design, made by French Canadians. It resembles the Irish woven belt but is wider and features the arrows.

Nute adds that the voyageur also wore a “gay beeded bag or pouch hung from the sash,” quite similar to the Scottish Highlander’s hair horse sporran. The voyageur stood out in a crowd.

Dr Bigsby, whom we will meet in my next voyageur post,

was disappointed and not a little surprised at the appearance of the voyageurs. On Sundays, as they stand round the door of the village churches, they are proud dress fellows in their parti-coloured sashes and ostrich-feathers; but here they were a motley set to the eye: but the truth was that all of them were picked men, with extra wages as serving in a light canoe [ii]

“Quetico Superior Route, passing a Waterfall“ by Frances Ann Hopkins (The Canadian Encyclopedia)

A Hierarchy among Voyageurs

There was a hierarchy among voyageurs. We had:

  • hivernants (winterers): they stayed during the winter, trading and manning the “fort;”
  • hommes du Nord (northern men): outstanding voyageurs who travelled further inland and opened up Forts from Athabasca to Fort Vancouver, established by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821. Sometimes these voyageurs accompanied explorers such as Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye (17 November  1685 – 5 December 1749) and his four sons and Simon Fraser (20 May 1776 – 18 August 1862), an employee of the North West Company until its merger with the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821.
  • mangeurs de lard (pork-eaters), who went back and forth between Montreal and trading posts such as Grand-Portage.

The Canoes

One voyageur song is entitled “Épouser le voyage,” or to marry the voyage. The voyageur saw his work as a profession. As for the canoe, it was his home. Voyageurs travelled in their canoe and the canoe was the voyageur’s roof for the night. He slept underneath his upside-down canoe.

Origins of the Canoe

A voyageur learned how to make a canoe from what he could find in the wood. The birchbark canoe was of course borrowed from the Amerindians, but it was pointed out to me that there is a resemblance between the Longships used by Vikings and the York boat. However, the York boat was a boat, not a canoe. Yet the canoe resembled the Longships, except that it was relatively small. Europeans have long fished off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. There is a pre-history to history (recorded history) just as there is an oral tradition preceding the written tradition.

In Newfoundland, there is a town named Port aux Basques, which would indicate that Basques fishermen probably fished nearby or used the channel located close to Port aux Basques. The Trans-Canada highway ends, or begins, at Port aux Basques.

Voyageurs used birchbark canoes:

Making a Birch Bark Canoe (Photo credit: The Canadian Encyclopedia)

“In building a canoe, bark is stripped from the birch, placed inside a staked frame, sewn and attached. Ribs are fixed in position and seams sealed with spruce gum (artwork by Lewis Parker).” [iii]

—ooo—

There were several types of canoes used by voyageurs, but the first two were the most important.

  • “The famous canot du maître or canot de Montréal, on which the fur trade depended, was up to 12 m long and carried 6 to 12 crew and a load of 2300 kg over the route from Montréal to Lake Superior.” [iv]
  • “The smaller canot du nord  or North canoe carried a crew of 5 or 6 and a cargo of 1360 kg over the smaller lakes, rivers and streams of the Northwest.” [v]
  • The canot bâtard or bastard canoe was a mid-size canoe.

However, voyageurs also used Amerindian canoes.

  • “The birchbark canoe of the Algonkian peoples was ideal for travel by rivers and lakes separated by narrow watersheds or portages (artwork by Lewis Parker).” [vi]
  • “The Kootenay-Salish canoe was built for the rapid rivers of southern BC, with both ends extending out under the water (artwork by Lewis Parker).” [vii]

The Algonkian Canoe, Lewis Parker (Photo credit: The Canadian Encyclopedia)

The York Boat was named after the Hudson’s Bay Co’s York Factory. “It was one of 3 types of inland boats (the others being scows and sturgeon-heads) used by the HBC, and the most suitable for lake travel.” [viii]

 

York Boats on Lake Winnipeg by W. J. Phillips (Photo credit: The Canadian Encyclopedia [courtesy Glenbow/4615])

Love to everyone ♥

_________________________
[i] Grace Lee Nute, The Voyageurs (St Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1987 [1931]), p. 13.

[ii] Op. cit., p. 15.

[iii] “Birchbark Canoes,” The Canadian Encyclopedia. <http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/en/article/birchbark-canoe/>

[iv] loc. cit.

[v] loc. cit.

[vii] loc. cit.

[viii] “York Boat,” The Canadian Encyclopedia <http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/en/article/york-boat/>

—ooo—

The Tonquin, 1811

The Tonquin, 1811

© Micheline Walker
14 January 2012
WordPress

The Singing Voyageurs

18 Wednesday Jan 2012

Posted by in Art, Canadian History, Voyageurs

≈ 9 Comments

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Expedition Doubling Cape Barrow, July 25, 1821, by Sir George Back

Expedition Doubling Cape Barrow, 25 July 1821, by Sir George Back (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

More on the voyageur’s personality

The explorers left testimonials about the voyageur’s personality. According to Sir John Franklin, they were “creatures of the moment.” Sir George Simpson writes that they loved to eat and that, if a piece of equipment was good, they said that it came from France or “la vieille France de Londres,” London’s old France, and were “witty.” [i]

Sir George Back (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As for the explorers, they knew the name of every single one of their voyageurs. Most of these explorers came from Scotland. Obviously the Scots and the voyageurs got along very well. By the way, the gentleman who lost so many of his voyageurs was Admiral Sir George Back, FRS [Fellow of the Royal Society] (6 November 1796 – 23 June 1878). I have therefore edited my last post accordingly and, in doing so, I discovered that Sir George Back was an excellent artist.

When they were working for explorers, the voyageurs may have transported pelts. However, when employed by explorers as Simon Fraser and Sir Alexander MacKenzie, they did not. They were simply and dangerously finding their way to the Pacific.  At that time, they also worked for travellers who were gathering information on Canada.

HMS Terror Thrown up by Ice, by Sir George Back

The Singing Voyageur

The voyageurs did sing. We know for certain that they sang mostly old French songs and that their favourite song was “À la claire fontaine.” During the ten years he was in the employ of the Hudson’s Bay Company (1819-1829), Edward Ermatinger (1797-1876) collected eleven voyageur songs. They are traditional folksongs.

As for songs composed by the voyageurs, we know of three:

  • Épouser le voyage (To Wed the Voyage),
  • Les Bois-Brûlés (The Brullis),
  • Le Six mai de l’année dernière (Last Year on the Sixth of May).

The Bois-Brûlés were Dakota Amerindians.  As for the Sixth of May, that was the date on which the voyageurs left for “les pays d’en-haut,”  the north or, literally, the countries above.

These were published in the Beaver, a Canadian journal, by Marius Barbeau, the “founder of Canadian anthropology.” There can be no doubt that these songs are authentic voyageur songs.

Moreover, Grace Lee Nute lists voyageur songs. For the most part, the songs she discusses are well-known traditional folksongs. There are two exceptions:

  • C’est dans la ville de Bytown [Ottawa] (It’s in the town of Ottawa)
  • Parmi les voyageurs (Among the Voyageurs)

Parmi les voyageurs is unquestionably a voyageur song. However, loggers also left from Ottawa. They too had to find a living and left for the winter to work as lumberjacks.  As a result, C’est dans la ville de Bytown could be a forestier song or both a voyageur and forestier song.

Sadly, W. F. Wentzel’s collection of voyageur songs has been lost. W. F. Wentzel, a Norwegian trader of the far North West, was also a fine musician. He therefore transcribed voyageur songs that could have been an extremely valuable source to later generations of collectors and ethnologists.

Let us read Grace Lee Nute:

“It is a great pity nevertheless, that Wentzel’s large collection of these songs has not survived. His musical gifts added to his unusual command of languages would surely have made the collection invaluable. Moreover, he collected the songs of the voyageurs, and “mentions the indecorous quality of some of their [the voyageurs’] songs.” [ii]

Also lost are the songs of Pierre Falcon, a Métis who wrote canoe songs that have probably been destroyed due to their ‘smutty’ character.

Fortunately, we still have the eleven songs that Edward Ermatinger collected.

____________________

[i] Quoted by Nute in The Voyageur (St. Paul, Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987 [1931]), p 244 and p. 255.

[ii] “Mr W. F. Wentzel, Letters to the Hon. Roderic McKenzie, 1807-1824,” in Masson, Les Bourgeois, 1:71. Quoted in Nute’s The Voyageur, p. 155.

I am including, below, Blanche comme la neige, a folksong. Sir Ernest MacMillan composed a choral setting of this song. I do not have Sir Ernest’s setting, but we have the song. Blanche comme la neige is featured as a Christmas song, but it could be a song about winter and purity. It tells the story of a young woman who feigned death not to be raped. She is placed in a coffin and discovered, three days later, by her father. She tells him she has preserved her virginity: “pour mon honneur garder,” (to keep my honour).

One of the McGarrigle sisters died in 2010. It saddens me to know that they are now forever separated.  Besides, it is difficult to find good renditions of folksongs.  I do not know the origin of Ce matin.

Portage

(please click on title to hear the songs)

expedition_doubling_cape_barrow_july_25_18212

© Micheline Walker
18 January 2012
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The Voyageurs: from Sea to Sea

16 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by in Canadian History, Folksongs, Métis, United States, Voyageurs

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fort_george

Fort Astoria (also called Fort George) (Photo credit: Fort Astoria, Wikipedia)

Grace Lee Nute writes that “[t]hey [the voyageurs] named the lakes and Rivers, prepared the Indians for the incursion of the white, and made it possible for missionaries to go among the tribes and convert and civilize them. They were humble, unassuming men, but this fact should not obscure their services and importance in American and Canadian history.” [i]

They may indeed have been “humble, unassuming men.” Ramsay Crooks, John Jacob Astor’s employee and then his successor, was also of this opinion, to the point that an exception was made to the Embargo Act of 1807. John Jacob Astor was allowed to hire British subjects.Truth be told, John Jacob Astor would have trusted Gabriel Franchère with his life. He had so much confidence in him that he asked him to take voyageurs around Cape Horn and back up to the west coast of the current United States. So there had to be more to men who jumped the rapids recklessly than mere recklessness.

Trapper’s Bride, Marriage Between an Amerindian and a Voyageur by Alfred Jacob Miller (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Voyageur and the Amerindians

If we were to draw a portrait of the voyageur, his relationship with the Amerindians would be an important factor. The hivernants or winterers, sometimes Métis, who signed a three-year contract and manned, first, the one fort and, later, the many forts as fur traders and explorers moved further and further into the interior learned the language of Amerindians and married Amerindians. Others would have killed them or exploited them. 

The voyageurs were indeed very capable men. They woke at three in the morning, washed, shaved, loaded the canoes and put them in the water in less than forty-five minutes. They travelled a reassuring distance before having breakfast. However, they depended on the Amerindians for guidance and they also depended on Amerindians and Métis for food. That kept the voyageurs humble.

Pemmican: food

The mangeurs de lard or ‘pork-eaters,’ the voyageurs who went back and forth between Montreal and a trading post ate “dried peas or beans, sea biscuit salt pork” and maize. (Wikipedia).  But the hommes du Nord, or North men, and the élite among them, the Athabasca men (North West Company), who went further and further west, did not have time to prepare food. They therefore ate pemmican. It was brought to the forts first by Amerindians and, later, by Amerindians and Métis. The pemmican trade grew in importance as forts were built that soon reached what is now northeast Alberta.

Jumping or “shooting” the Rapids: disobedience

Besides, they so wanted to avoid portages that they were not as docile as portrayed by Ramsay Crooks. In his diary, Nicholas Garry reports that his crew disobeyed orders. “A few minutes paddling brought us to the Portage de Petite Roche which is a dangerous Rapid but the Water being high we run it, which was great Folly…” Garry goes on to speak about Portage de l’Isle. “This is a very dangerous Rapid, and so many fatal Accidents have attended the Sauting [sic] of it that it has been interdicted [forbidden] to the Servants of both Companies [the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company  before the merger in 1821]. Our Men forgetting Orders and wishing to avoid the Trouble of carrying the Canoe run it and we escaped, though an Absolution of Sin in a severe Ducking would not have justified this Rashness. . . . In half an Hour we arrived at a Décharge* but our Steerman preferred running it and we had a narrow escape having just touched. A harder Knock would have broken our Canoe.”[iii]  

*at a décharge, the cargo could be left in the canoe and the men pulled the canoe with ropes, walking on each side of a river or channel.

Garry then speaks about an accident. A huge hole was made in the canoe. “It became necessary to consider how we should get on but the Canadian Voyageur soon find a Remedy and our Men were immediately occupied in repairing the Hole. The Wood furnished the material. Bark from the Birch Tree Wattape from the Root of the Pine, Splints made from the Cedar Tree and the Crossbars. In the Evening all was ready to start in the morning.”[iv]

I had imagined that the Canadians who accompanied me were the most expert canoe-men in the world. (Alexander MacKenzie)

From Coast to Coast

Were they disobedient or simply stretching their ability in preparation for travelling the River, the afore-mentioned Fraser River. They knew that they would face the worst possible conditions for canoeing. Before the trains, there had to be voyageurs to trace the path to the Pacific coast. Sir Alexander MacKenzie (1764 [Scotland] – 12 March 1820 [Scotland]), his voyageurs and Amerindians did reach the Pacific: “Here two canoes and seven natives took them down the river. In a few days the mouth of the stream and the sea came into sight. The great feat had been accomplished: North America had been crossed in northern latitudes from coast to coast for the first time.”[v] (See South Pass (Wyoming), Wikipedia.)

Simon Fraser travels down the River: the Fraser River  

The River is named the Fraser River, after Simon Fraser (20 May 1776 – 18 August 1862) a fur trader and an explorer. However, when reading and account of their descent, one is amazed at the feats of the voyageurs.  

“His [Fraser’s] name still attaches to the river he explored in 1808 at the greatest hazard to himself, his nineteen voyageurs, and four other companions.” Fraser writes that at one point “The nature of our situation . . . left us no choice, we were under the necessity, either of running down the Canoes, or of abandoning them: we therefore unloaded and provided each of them with five men.”[vi] 

Fraser also writes that they “were obliged to pass on a declivity which formed the border of a huge precipice, on loose stones and gravel which constantly gave way under their feet.”[vii]

According to Nute, one voyageur lost his way and got stuck among the rocks because of the material he was carrying on his back. Fraser writes that he “got so engaged among the rocks that he could neither move forward nor backward, nor yet unload himself, without imminent danger.” He was saved by the “leader of the party himself who crawled to the poor wretch’s assistance and by cutting the load loose and allowing it to be lost over the precipice saved his canoeman’s life.”[viii]

An Incident: the gun taken away

A little later, they met Amerindians who had never seen white men. One took a gun away from a voyageur and was about to shoot another Amerindian, not knowing the consequences, when a voyageur rushed to push the gun up so no one would be killed. “Once, when a curious Indian took the interpreter’s gun, one of the voyageurs saved the situation by knocking up the muzzle, which was aimed directly at some of the Indians, when the would-be investigator pulled the trigger.” Nute writes that “[t]he men had to be eternally vigilant standing guard at night, keeping the natives from the luggage, and yet convincing them of the friendliness of the whites.”[ix]

—ooo—

Making sense of the voyageurs is rather difficult. Yes, they were docile but, at times, they did not pay attention to orders. They were the canoemen and probably measured the risks, terrible risks. Most of the men who accompanied Admiral Sir George Back, FRS (6 November 1796 – 23 June 1878) died of exposure, scurvy or hunger. However, from the very beginning of New France, they relied on North-American Indians, as they would not otherwise have survived. They were attacked by Amerindians, Iroquois in particular, and eight Jesuit missionaries, the Canadian martyrs, were the victims of Iroquois, also called Mohawks.   

Moreover, the habitants’ thirty acres started to shrink before Nouvelle-France was ceded to Britain. Families were large and the farms were divided among sons and could not be divided anymore. Voyageurs had a job, so families were proud when a boy did not grow too tall for the canoes. There had to be room for supplies and pelts under their seat.  As for the singing, it was better than feeling pity for oneself. These men found their happiness where they could. They were proud, so they turned obstacles into challenges and their singing entertained those who travelled with them. I like to compare them with the sailors who sang shanties while they toiled.

Canoe by Frances Anne Hopkins (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Frances Anne Hopkins

Among explorers, we can name: Radisson, La Vérendrye, Lahontan, Pierre Le Sueur, Du Lhut, Perrot, La Salle, Nicolet; Alexander Henry, Jonathan Carver, Peter Pond, Sir Alexander MacKenzie, Simon Fraser, Sir John Franklin, Sir George Back and, to a lesser extent, Sir George Simpson and Norwegian W. F. Wentzel. Yet, we could also name the voyageur.

Love to everyone ♥

_________________________

[i] Grace Lee Nute, The Voyageur (St. Paul, Minneapolis: Minnesota Historical Society, 1987 [1931]), p.10.

[ii] Nute, Op. Cit., p. 236.

[iii] Nute, Op. Cit., p. 69, quoting the “Diary of Nicholas Garry,” p. 129, p.133.

[iv] Nute, Op. Cit., pp. 70-71, quoting Garry, pp. 149-150.

[v] Nute, Op. Cit., p. 236, quoting “Mr. Simon Fraser, Journal of a Voyage from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast 1808,” in L. R. Masson, Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest, vol. 1 (London, 1824), pp. 157-221. 

[vi] Ibid. 

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Nute, Op. Cit., p. 239.

[ix] Nute, Op. Cit., p. 240.

[x] Wikipedia, Sir Alexander MacKenzie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Mackenzie_(explorer)

—ooo—

Johannes Brahms: Händel Variations, op. 24 -01
Grigory Sokolov  (born 1950)
 

c2b0d568-0be0-4798-8c58-d3ef0bc673e8© Micheline Walker
16 January 2012
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The Voyageur & his Canoe

14 Saturday Jan 2012

Posted by in Art, Canadian History, Folksongs, Métis, United States, Voyageurs

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“Voyageurs at Dawn” by Frances Anne Hopkins, (1871) (1838–1919)

Grace Lee Nute, a pioneer

Several books have been written about the voyageurs, but Grace Lee Nute is our pioneer. She published her The Voyageur in 1931 (D. Appleton and Company). That book is still one’s best reference.

The Voyageur‘s clothes

At the beginning of her second chapter, Nute quotes missionnary Sherman Hall:

[m]y man dresses himself in the habit of a voyageur, that is, a short shirt, a red woolen cap, a pair of deer skin leggins which reach from the ancles a little above the knees and are held up by a string secured to a belt about the waiste, the aziōn [breech cloth] of the Indians, and a pair of deer skin moccasins without stocking on the feet. The thigh are left bare.  This is the dress of voyageurs in summer and winter.[i]

As Grace Lee Nute writes, there are missing items: “a blue capote, the inevitable pipe, a gaudy sash.” The gaudy sash is “une ceinture fléchée,” a wool belt with an arrow (une flêche) design, made by French Canadians. It resembles the Irish woven belt but is wider and features the arrows.

Nute adds that the voyageur also wore a “gay beeded bag or pouch hung from the sash,” quite similar to the Scottish Highlander’s hair horse sporran. The voyageur stood out in a crowd.

Dr Bigsby, whom we will meet in my next post,

was disappointed and not a little surprised at the appearance of the voyageurs. On Sundays, as they stand round the door of the village churches, they are proud dress fellows in their parti-coloured sashes and ostrich-feathers; but here they were a motley set to the eye: but the truth was that all of them were picked men, with extra wages as serving in a light canoe [ii]

“Quetico Superior Route, passing a Waterfall,“ by Frances Ann Hopkins*

*Frances Anne Hopkins in The Canadian Encyclopedia

A Hierarchy among Voyageurs

There was a hierarchy among voyageurs. We had:

  • hivernants (winterers): they stayed during the winter, trading and manning the “fort;”
  • hommes du Nord (northern men): outstanding voyageurs who travelled further inland and opened up Forts from Athabasca to Fort Vancouver, established by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821. Sometimes these voyageurs accompanied explorers such as Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye (17 November  1685 – 5 December 1749) and his four sons and Simon Fraser (20 May 1776 – 18 August 1862), an employee of the North West Company until its merger with the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821.
  • mangeurs de lard (pork-eaters), who went back and forth between Montreal and trading posts such as Grand-Portage.

The Canoes

One voyageur song is entitled “Épouser le voyage,” or to marry the voyage. A  voyageur was his profession. As for the canoe, it was his home. Voyageurs travelled in their canoe and the canoe was the voyageur’s roof for the night. He slept underneath his upside-down canoe.

Origins of the Canoe

A voyageur learned how to make a canoe from what he could find in the wood. The birchbark canoe was of course borrowed from the Amerindians, but it was pointed out to me that there is a resemblance between the Longships used by Vikings and the York boat. However, the York boat was a boat, not a canoe. Yet the canoe resembled the Longships, except that it was relatively small. Europeans have long fished off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. There is a pre-history to history (recorded history) just as there is an oral tradition preceding the written tradition.

In Newfoundland, there is a town named Port aux Basques, which would indicate that Basques fishermen probably fished nearby or used the channel located close to Port aux Basques. The Trans-Canada highway ends, or begins, at Port aux Basques.

Voyageurs used birchbark canoes:

Making a Birch Bark Canoe*

(Photo credit: The Canadian Encyclopedia)

“In building a canoe, bark is stripped from the birch, placed inside a staked frame, sewn and attached. Ribs are fixed in position and seams sealed with spruce gum (artwork by Lewis Parker).” [iii]

—ooo—

There were several types of canoes used by voyageurs, but the first two were the most important.

  • “The famous canot du maître or canot de Montréal, on which the fur trade depended, was up to 12 m long and carried 6 to 12 crew and a load of 2300 kg over the route from Montréal to Lake Superior.” [iv]
  • “The smaller canot du nord  or North canoe carried a crew of 5 or 6 and a cargo of 1360 kg over the smaller lakes, rivers and streams of the Northwest.” [v]
  • The canot bâtard or bastard canoe was a mid-size canoe.

However, voyageurs also used Amerindian canoes.

  • “The birchbark canoe of the Algonkian peoples was ideal for travel by rivers and lakes separated by narrow watersheds or portages (artwork by Lewis Parker).” [vi]
  • “The Kootenay-Salish canoe was built for the rapid rivers of southern BC, with both ends extending out under the water (artwork by Lewis Parker).” [vii]

The Algonkian Canoe, Lewis Parker

(Photo credit: The Canadian Encyclopedia)

The York Boat was named after the Hudson’s Bay Co’s York Factory. “It was one of 3 types of inland boats (the others being scows and sturgeon-heads) used by the HBC, and the most suitable for lake travel.” [viii]

*W. J. Phillips  (Photo credit: The Canadian Encyclopedia [courtesy Glenbow/4615]).

_________________________
[i] Grace Lee Nute, The Voyageurs (St Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1987 [1931]), p. 13.

[ii] Op. cit., p. 15.

[iii] “Birchbark Canoes,” The Canadian Encyclopedia. <http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/en/article/birchbark-canoe/>

[iv] loc. cit.

[v] loc. cit.

[vii] loc. cit.

[viii] “York Boat,” The Canadian Encyclopedia <http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/en/article/york-boat/>

—ooo—

The Tonquin, 1811

The Tonquin, 1811

© Micheline Walker
14 January 2012
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