Freshwater Passages: The Trade and Travels of Peter Pond

9. Back East

171 CHAPTER NINE Back East The Revolution and the North West Company Pond made his way down to Grand Portage during the summer of 1779 then continued on to Michilimackinac and probably Montreal that autumn. Along the way, as he encountered other traders, he would have boasted of his pathbreaking journey. He also would have caught up on world events. He had been in the interior for most of the past six years, and he had not gone out even as far as Grand Portage in more than two, so he had a lot to catch up on. Most significant would have been the latest news about the war and about plans for a new organization of the fur trade. He probably learned some year-old news from Booty Graves when they crossed paths on the Churchill, and at Cumberland House, William Walker would have shared information with him from the previous summer’s vessel from England. As he descended south of Lake Winnipeg and approached the last leg of his journey,he would have met traders coming north who perhaps even had letters from home or from his business associates in Michilimackinac and Montreal. Recent wartime developments would have been the most striking news. Word of the stunning defeat of General Johnny Burgoyne’s army by the rebelling American colonists at Saratoga, New York, in October 1777 would have come as something of a surprise to Pond and his men. Burgoyne’s army was heading south from Montreal toward the Hudson 172 ∙ back east River Valley via Lake Champlain when it was forced to surrender to American forces. Pond and his voyageurs may also have been surprised to learn about the new alliance between France and the United States. Of most immediate concern to Pond and his men would have been the fighting going on just south of Detroit and Michilimackinac.The previous February an American force under George Rodgers Clark had taken Fort Vincennes on the Wabash River in the Illinois Country, defeating British troops under Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton. Many thought that Detroit too might soon fall into the hands of the Americans.¹ At Grand Portage, Pond learned that the war was causing problems for traders. Not only had Montreal been briefly occupied by American troops during the winter of 1775–76, but British transatlantic shipping was threatened by American privateers, and frontier warfare threatened supply lines to the West. British Army officers at the Great Lakes posts feared attack by General Clark and his rebels in the Illinois Country, and officials in Montreal wanted to make sure that supplies sent west did not make their way into American hands. Passes to trade were harder to come by, and the private use of merchant vessels on the Great Lakes was prohibited.² Many of the woes of the merchants and traders concerned in the Northwest trade were spelled out in a letter a group of them sent to the governor of Quebec, General Frederick Haldimand, in the spring of 1780. The letter, signed by Joseph and Benjamin Frobisher, George McBeath, and Simon McTavish among others, was in response to Haldimand ’s reluctance to issue them passes to leave Montreal with supplies for the Northwest. They first pointed out that theirs was “an extensive and valuable Trade into the parts from whence the annual returns have some years been esteem’d at Fifty Thousand Pounds Sterling in Furrs.” This trade contributed to Britain’s economic health. They claimed that Haldimand’s reluctance to grant passes meant that their crews coming down from the Northwest would reach Grand Portage and find it unsupplied. Without supplies men could starve, packs of valuable furs would be abandoned, and the profitable trade between Canada and the Mother Country would be interrupted.³ back east ∙ 173 Wartime conditions and the need to lobby the government with a united voice were pushing merchants and traders toward greater mutual cooperation. As we have seen, the merchants and traders conducting business in the Northwest had formed several loose alliances as early as the mid-1770s. Wintering traders on the Saskatchewan were pooling goods and cooperating. Merchants with backgrounds in the Albany and Detroit trade, like McBeath and McTavish, had cemented alliances. Merchants operating through Montreal, particularly Todd, McGill, Paterson, and the Frobishers, had been coordinating their efforts for several years. By 1779 these different groups had come to see the need for a...