A Year Inland: The Journal of a Hudson’s Bay Company Winterer

Introduction

Introduction In 1754 Anthony Henday, employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company as a netmaker and general labourer at York Fort, set out with a group of Natives from the plains to winter with them and promote trade at the Bayside forts. Henday’s year inland, praised by York’s chief factor as fulfilling all its aims, set the main pattern of HBC inland trade for the next twenty years, and persisted as one of several policies for the rest of the century. Until 1793 ‘‘winterers,’’ who included the explorers Matthew Cocking, Samuel Hearne, David Thompson and Peter Fidler, worked to fend off rival traders and to bring more Native groups into direct relationship with the company. Geographical discoveries and the expansion of trade depended on the ability of these young men to fit in with aboriginal ways of life, to negotiate persuasively, and to keep a daily account of the places and people they met with. Their journals are the earliest empirical record of the geography, indigenous societies and trading arrangements to be found west of the Great Lakes.1 HBC decisions affecting contact with Native groups were based in large part on the winterers’ reports. Systematic coverage of Henday’s route, descriptions of waterways and prairie landscape , and repeated mention of meeting Native ‘‘strangers’’ and French rivals promise a detailed account of the continental interior. Yet Henday’s journal, the first of this series, is oddly uninformative, even though it adheres to the style and categories of observation recommended by the Royal Society. Nor is much known about Anthony Henday: documentation of his life is limited to records of his baptism and his service to the Hudson ’s Bay Company. Henday’s birth on the Isle of Wight is confirmed in the Shorwell parish register: he was christened on 24 December Notes to this section are on pp. 5-6. 1 1725, the third of eight children born to Anthony and Mary Hendy (née Welcombe), who were married in 1721. A Church of England ‘‘Visitation ’’ in 1725 described Shorwell as a ten-mile circuit of farmland with just over three hundred inhabitants, no papists, no dissenters, no gentlemen , no hospital, no school. Henday would have had a country upbringing in modest circumstances. His father leased property passed down in his wife’s family; this land was leased in turn to the eldest boy; as a younger son, Anthony was left to make his own way. Smuggling was a frequent occupation for islanders and promised adventure; according to Andrew Graham, under whom he served at two Bayside posts, Henday was ‘‘outlawed for smuggling’’ in 1748. The young man drifted to London, and joined the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1750. Henday travelled to York Fort on the company’s annual supply ship together with James Isham, its returning chief factor, who pronounced him ‘‘a Very Serviceable man.’’ After three unremarkable years as a labourer, paid at the rate of £10 a year, Henday volunteered to winter on the plains with a group of ‘‘trading Indians’’ and to meet with ‘‘strangers’’ who did not have direct contact with the Bay forts. When he reappeared at York a year later, journal and map in hand, Henday was offered a new contract at £15 a year for three years. The explorer insisted on double his former salary; accordingly he was awarded a £20 gratuity and £20 a year until 1757. He tried to return to the Saskatchewan region only a few days after his arrival at York in June 1755; this attempt failed because of his companion’s poor health. Henday spent a second year inland in 1759-60. No journal for this second trip is extant or even mentioned in the York Fort reports, but Henday’s name appears on a Native map copied by Moses Norton, chief factor at Churchill, in 1760. During the next two years Henday served at York Fort and at Severn House, where Andrew Graham was Master. Once more he insisted on a raise in salary, to £30 a year; this time the company’s directors refused. Henday sailed for England in September 1762. Having lived frugally at the Bay, to the point of irritating the supply-ship captains by his refusal to buy ‘‘Slops & Brandy’’ from them, Henday was able to claim most of the back pay due to him —a sum just under £113. Nothing is known of his life following his service to the HBC. The last records are of his family...