Researching Fort St James
Canoe on Moose Lake, BC, image 0098.0005, Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History, used with their permission.
My book, The HBC Brigades: Culture, Conflict, and Perilous Journeys of the Fur Trade, was published by Ronsdale Press in July 2024. You can order it now through your favorite bookstore, or via Amazon. For booksellers in USA, the American distributor for Ronsdale Press’s books is Independent Publishers Group. Thank you!
Researching Fort St James is an enormous proposition, and if you had to do it all by yourself, it would impossible to do. Fortunately, we have help. This is a continuation of a look at the work that Jamie Morton did, when he was researching Fort St James’s history. As I have said before, you can locate and download his complete microfiche report at parkscanadahistory.com/series/mf/367.pdf.
In this blogpost I am looking at the years 1824 and beyond, and maybe will get as far as the early York Factory Express. At the time we are speaking of, William Connolly is the Chief Factor in charge of New Caledonia district, and John Stuart has left to work on the east side of the Rocky Mountains, at Carlton House. We will find him later at Lesser Slave Lake, as everyone who read my book, The York Factory Express: Fort Vancouver to Hudson Bay, 1826-1849, knows. By the way, you can still order The York Factory Express here: https://ronsdalepress.com/york-factory-express-the/
For its first few years, Fort St. James was considered, by Governor George Simpson, as an extension of the Athabasca District (which included the nearby Peace River). In 1824, Simpson’s plan involved the reduction of the heavy cost of importing provisions into northern New Caledonia via the Peace, and he connected it with the Columbia District. Fort St. James would again be made the headquarters of the New Caledonia district, and the McLeod’s Lake post, which had acted as Stuart’s home post in years past, became just another post in the district. As we know, Simpson made these decisions over the winter of 1824-25, and so James McDougall resided in the soon-to-be secondary post of Fort St. James, while William Connolly must have lived at McLeod’s Lake post.
In the spring of 1825, Governor Simpson advised William Brown of his intentions for the New Caledonia district — Fort George [Astoria] was to be the headquarters of all the posts west of the Rocky Mountains, until such time as a new headquarters was built in the lower waters of Fraser’s River. This would be built in the fall of 1826, or spring of 1827. There is, of course, another story connected to this plan, as we know from this earlier series of posts, beginning here: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/fraser-river/ Do you begin to see how all these stories are tied together???
However, until such time as a new headquarters was built on the Fraser River, Simpson decided that the new headquarters for district west of the Rocky Mountains should be constructed on the Columbia River, ninety or so miles from Fort George [Astoria], at the river’s mouth. It would be a year or so before the New Caledonia Brigades would come south to Fort Vancouver, but all these plans would come together in time.
In the meantime, Fort St. James was being rebuilt, and new canoes were under construction. Dog sledges were used for transportation of trade goods and furs in the territory over winter, but for the summer transportation William Connolly wanted thirty packhorses available at Fort St. James and McLeod’s Lake. Did he get them? He must have done, as in 1828, Governor Simpson crossed the portage between McLeod’s Lake and Fort St. James on horseback. But he didn’t get them immediately, and I wonder if Simpson eventually realized that if he did not get horses to McLeod’s Lake, he himself would be travelling across the portage on foot! [It seems, however, that Fort St. James had as many as 23 horses outside the fort as early as 1823, and the HBC men were cutting hay to feed them. However, it also seems that they might have escaped their pen, and the stallion led the mares away and they were lost. In November 1823, Fort St. James had only 10 horses and mares, and one colt.]
But where did they get these horses? I don’t have the answer to that yet. Although the NWC had apparently known about the horses in the Chilcotin, the HBC men were apparently unaware they existed. A look at Wayne McCrory’s book, The Wild Horses of the Chilcotin: their History and Future, may or may not give me the answer to that question!
So, McCrory tells us that the early NWC explorer, Alexander Mackenzie, saw no horses west of the Rocky Mountains. Then Simon Fraser came to the west in spring, 1806. He learned that there were horses among the First Nations near Quesnel, and also further south. As he made his way downriver, Simon Fraser also learned the the Tsilhquot’in [Chilcotin] people had horses. “The natives make use of horses. Near the end of this course [Soda Creek Rapids] is a considerable river, Waccans [the Chilcotin River] on the right, with an Island at its mouth… It [the river] is likewise the residence of the Chilcotins, a tribe of the Carriers [Dakelh] and by all accounts is very rapidous and full of Chutes, Mossu [Moose?], Red Deer [elk], and Chevreuil, and Beaver are likewise said to be numerous in that quarter, and the natives have horses.” [Notice below that Jean-Baptiste Boucher, the enforcer, is also called Waccan — I wonder what the word actually means?]
So Simon Fraser knew about the horses among the Chilcotin people. But let’s get back to researching Fort St. James: In 1826, the New Caledonia brigades went out to Fort Vancouver for the first time, while William Brown and James McDougall went out with the outgoing Factory men via the Peace River. It all took a lot of planning: over the summer some men had to go up the Fraser River to pick up the leather at Tete Jaune’s Cache (I presume), near the headwaters of the Fraser River: the enforcer, or Bully, Jean-Baptiste [Waccan] Boucher, was sent on that job. Simpson also wanted 80 to 100 horses sent north to Fort Alexandria from Kamloops, for the use of the 1826 Brigades: as we know, most of them died of starvation over the winter of 1825-26. At Fort Okanagan, four boats were to be provided to the New Caledonia men. And James McMillan (yes, the same man who had led the Fraser River Expedition in 1824), was sent to explore the country “between the Athabasca and heads of the Frasers River.” At the time this was known as Tete Jaune Pass, and it would become known as the HBC’s Leather Pass.
So, James McMillan explored Tete Jaune Pass in 1825, and approved of its use by the men of the York Factory Express. James McDougall was the leader of the first group of New Caledonia men who used this passage across the mountains in 1826, and that journey was successful. But as we also know, in 1827, George McDougall led out the first group of men to leave Fort St. James and travel over the pass on their way out. This venture proved a disaster, and Yellowhead Pass (as Tete Jaune Pass is known today) was never used again for the outgoing York Factory Express.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves: Let’s get back to researching Fort St. James, the supposed centre of this story. The story of the 1826 Brigade is on my website, beginning here: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/brigade-one/
So, this information has brought us up to 1826, when the first York Factory Express came in by the Athabasca and Fraser River, and the Brigade also made its first journey to Fort Vancouver and return. The New Caledonia district now had little to do with the Athabasca District, except they probably got their leather from the Peace in some years. That would end, when in 1830 deep snow in the Peace district killed many of the large animals along the river. But we are not there yet.
In 1827 there were many changes to the New Caledonia district: William Connolly remained in charge, and Joseph McGillivary replaced William Brown, who was sick. Pierre Pambrun, James Murray Yale, John McDonnell, John Tod, James Douglas, George McDougall and Charles Ross [later of Fort McLoughlin and Fort Victoria] were the clerks who did much of the work of managing the posts in the territory. The council also decided that the Saskatchewan District should provide leather to New Caledonia, which would be delivered to Tete Jaune Cache by the Athabasca River and Jasper’s House. And so, Leather Pass was born.
In 1827, the New Caledonia men received higher wages than the Columbia men, partly because of the poor provisions, but also because of the additional work of bringing out the furs every year. In 1828, the Columbia District was given the responsibility of providing horses to the New Caledonia men: a job that rested on the shoulders of the gentleman in charge of Fort Nez Perces. Immediately after the 1828 Council meeting, Governor Simpson set off in his canoe to visit the New Caledonia district for the first time, and he also explored the Fraser River to its mouth. That story begins here: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/two-canoes-one/ This is a long thread. You will be kept busy for a while!
As we know, at the end of this expedition, Governor Simpson decided that the Fraser River could “no longer be thought of as a practicable communication with the interior. I shall therefore no longer talk of it as a navigable stream, altho’ for years past I had flattered myself with the idea, that the loss of the Columbia would in reality be of very little consequence to the Honble Companys interests on this side of the Continent; but to which I now, with much concern find, it would be ruinous, unless we can fall upon some other practicable route.”
Fort Vancouver would remain the company’s headquarters on the Pacific Ocean, and Fort St. James would be its headquarters in New Caledonia. There were changes in the district, of course, as a result of the June 1829 Council meeting. Connolly was instructed to open posts to the west, to prevent furs from falling into the hands of the Russian American Fur Co. The Council sent 10 Canadiens into the district, considerably adding to the number of men who worked there. The leather came from the Peace River district, instead of from the Athabasca River via Tete Jaune Pass. Chief Factor William Connolly remained in charge of New Caledonia, with Chief Traders Alexander Fisher and John Edward Harriott — how interesting: I hadn’t known Harriott worked west of the Rockies. Of course we are more familiar with him as an employee at Edmonton House, and an important character in The York Factory Express. Nevertheless, he was at Fort St. James, and in the Columbia, until 1832!
And the Council of July 1830 would replace Chief Factor William Connolly with Peter Warren Dease. He would arrive in the district in the fall of 1830, and take charge following spring of 1831. William Connolly would leave the district in spring, 1831, to attend the Council. Both Fort George [Prince George] and the Babine Lake post were re-established in the fall of 1830, while the Chilcotin post was to be abandoned in the spring because of a shortage of Gentlemen to manage it. Things were always changing in this territory west of the Rockies, but somehow, they managed to muddle through the massive amount of work needed to run the territory.
To find the beginning of this thread, go here: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/fort-st-james-2/
To read the next post, when it is published, see here: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/peter-warren-dease/
Copyright, Nancy Marguerite Anderson, 2024. All rights reserved.
Some digging in online sources suggests that “Waccan” was Boucher’s Cree name.
Yes… I was just interested that the two names were in the same territory. Is it his name, or a nickname? It could be that Waccan is the Cree name for the Chilcotin River (whatever Waccan might mean), and most of the Metis had Cree ancestry. I mean, just imagine if the Cree word, Waccan, meant (say), “Turbulent..”