Freshwater Passages: The Trade and Travels of Peter Pond

13. Athabasca, 1785–1788

246 CHAPTER THIRTEEN Athabasca, 1785–1788 Lachine, 1785 In the spring of 1785,when he was not meeting with Lieutenant Governor Hamilton or working on the new map, Pond was preparing to return to the Northwest. The arrival of warmer weather saw the typical scene at Lachine as crews readied canoes and cargoes for their annual departure for the Upper Country. There were the usual brigades bound for Detroit, Michilimackinac, Grand Portage, and regions beyond. The goods departing Lachine would end up throughout the Great Lakes; the Mississippi country; the “little north” above Lake Superior; the Assiniboine, the Saskatchewan, and Churchill Rivers; and, of course, Athabasca. During these weeks Pond was kept busy getting his outfit together, hiring and supervising voyageurs and guides, and making sure all was in order for the long trip west. Besides his concern for inventories, canoemen, and packing, Pond also took on the role of health care provider to the men. This season he had to make sure that none of his voyageurs was suffering from the “St. Paul’s Bay malady,” a new disease resembling syphilis then spreading in the parishes along the St. Lawrence River. Lieutenant Governor Hamilton was concerned that the illness not be allowed to spread to the interior and had medicines sent to Pond via Benjamin Frobisher. Frobisher returned Pond’s thanks, but assured Hamilton in early May athabasca ∙ 247 that he did not “believe the Company has one person in the Service in the North-West afflicted with that disorder.”¹ A bigger concern than a new venereal disease for Pond and his partners was new competition. Frobisher’s efforts to gain a monopoly had not succeeded, and the company faced a worrisome threat from Pangman and Ross, who had found new backers. They would be joined by the Montreal firm of John Gregory and Normand McLeod, merchants previously active in the Detroit trade. These four would be joined by a fifth partner, a former clerk of Gregory and McLeod’s named Alexander Mackenzie. Gregory and McLeod would handle the Montreal affairs of the “New Concern,” as it was called by Nor’westers, while Pangman, Ross, and Mackenzie would winter in the Northwest. Pangman would go back to the Saskatchewan, Mackenzie would winter at Île à la Crosse Lake, and Ross would take charge in the Athabasca country. Pond and his associates certainly would have eyed this new venture with wariness. The competition would be fierce in the years to come. The spring and summer of 1785 saw signs of other changes. Alexander Mackenzie was at the forefront of a new generation of traders entering the business in the mid-1780s. These young men, most of whom were from the Highlands of Scotland, would one day come to dominate the Canadian fur trade. Mackenzie turned just twenty-one years old that year. He was young and inexperienced, so his elevation to partner seems premature, but he had a bright future ahead of him. He had been a clerk in Detroit for about five years but had never before ventured into the backcountry. Evidently he had impressed his employers as a capable, energetic, and dependable young man, and undoubtedly, coming from a good family helped his rapid elevation. There were other capable young men entering the trade around this time as well. Besides Alexander Mackenzie, there was his first cousin Roderick Mackenzie, who had arrived in Canada in 1784 and became a clerk in Gregory and McLeod in 1785. In the North West Company, Simon McTavish’s twenty-one-year-old nephew William McGillivray had joined as a clerk in 1784 and was now heading off to a post in the Red River district. Pond’s clerk at the time was also a Highlander, though 248 ∙ athabasca Cuthbert Grant may not have been new to the fur trade that year. He was likely a younger brother of Robert Grant, the holder of two shares in the company, and perhaps a little older than the two Mackenzies and McGillivray. Before this crop of young Scots arrived on the scene,most clerks in the backcountry had been French-speaking New Subjects, while wintering partners came from various backgrounds.During Pond’s time Scots were most often found in Montreal, Niagara, Detroit, and Michilimackinac as merchants supplying traders. Now a new system was emerging. A period serving at an inland post as a clerk became a form of apprenticeship for promising young...