The Fur Trade Revisited: Selected Papers of the Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference, Mackinac Island, Michigan, 1991

Long’s Voyages and Travels: Fact and Fiction

Long's Voyages and Travels: Fact and Fiction Michael Blanar Wth an impressive "List of Subscribers" containing the names of the most distinguished persons connected with the Hudson's Bay Company and the fur trade, and a four-month advance notice of its impending publication, J. Long's Voyages and Travels ofan Indian Trader and Interpreter . .. was considered an important document from its very first appearance in February 1791.1 It was immediately translated into German (Forster 1791; von Zimmermann 1791), and then into French (Billecocq [1794]) and Swedish (Pfeiffer 1798), besides being reviewed and/or having parts reprinted at least fourteen times in the magazines and periodicals of the day. Through the years most critics and readers have accepted it as a very accurate and reliable source of information on North America, on the fur trade in Canada in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and on Indian social customs and language. The two modern editions of the work (Thwaites 1904; Quaife 1911) have merely reinforced that view. But who was J. Long? Was Voyages and Travels indeed a valuable account of the period, the people, and the places mentioned? It is the purpose of this paper to shed light on these questions and to determine the accuracy of some of the information presented. The three major voyages will be examined and, while establishing that Long was certainly in North America, the discrepancies, the inaccuracies, and in some cases, the impossibilities of the account will be discussed . But it is particularly the last years of Voyages and Travels, 1785-1788, that will be considered in the light of the documentation uncovered among the legal and administrative documents of Upper and Lower Canada. The first two expeditions, 1777-1778 and 1778-1779, took Long to the region north of Lake Superior and west of Lake Nipigon known as "Ie petit Nord" [the Little North] and Lac Ie Mort, but he was extremely vague about his movements. Very little had been written about this area; Long's account offered no additional information. However, it was Edward Umfreville's account, Nipigon to Winnipeg. A Canoe Voyage Through Western Ontario written eight years later, that provided directions and descriptions "in striking contrast to the elusive narrative of John Long, who traded west of Lake Nipigon ...."2 447 MICHAEL BLANAR VOYAGES AND TRAVELS OF AN INDIAN INTERPRETER AND TRADER, DESCRiBING Tbe Manners and Customs OF .THB NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS; WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE POSTS SITUAT&D ON THE R I V E R SAI N T L AU R ENe E, L A KEON 'l' ARIO, &c. TO WHICH II ADDZD, A VOCABULARY OF The Chippeway Language. Namrs oj Furs and SkillS, ill Englisb and Frencb. A LIS T 0 F WO R D S I H THB IROQYOIS, MOHEGAN, SHAWANEE. AND ESQYIMEAUX TONGUES. AND A TABLE, ,HaWINc Tbe Allalogy between tbe Algonkin and Cbijpeway Languages. BY 1. LONG. LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR; AND SOLD BY ROBSON. BOND-STREBT; DEBRETT. PICCADILi.y; T.AND J.EGERTON, CHARING-CROSS; WHITE AND SON, FLEETSTREET ; SEWELL, CORNHILL; EDWARDS, PALL-MALL; AND MESSRS. TAYLORS , HOLBORN. LONDON; FLETCHER, OXFORD; AND BULL. BATH. M,DCC,XCI. Figure 1. Title page of J. Long's Voyages and Travels, first published in London in 1791. 448 LONG'S VOYAGES AND TRAVELS: FAIT AND FIITroN These journeys raise other questions: would an inexperienced person, hired as "an interpreter to the north," be given the responsibility of a house and sixteen Canadians? Would he be likely to rescue an experienced trader like Alexander Shaw and then take control of both camps? Would he succeed in fishing and hunting on his first trip to the interior where there is evidence to indicate that others, travelling in the region at that time, spoke of privation in such words as "all the provisions that all the Indians about this part of the country would be able to find would not be Sufficient to last Seven Men a week __"?3 Indeed, Long's fellow trader, James Clark, had several men starve at Lake SavanlPoschocoggan Lake in 1777.4 An apparent discrepancy in Long's account of this first expedition becomes evident in his record of Jaques Santeron, "in the same employ as myself" (Long, 93). Long related how Santeron took his furs to the Hudson's Bay Company in April 1778; yet there was no record of such a defection in that year in any of the...