Samuel Black

Flintlock Guns

Samuel Black was the oddest of all the HBC men. Black, born in 1780, was a young highlander of enormous size when he came to Canada and joined the fur trade of the XYCo. In the winter of 1804-5 Black was in the Peace River country, and in 1805 he went to Athabasca Lake and Fort Chipewyan. By this time the XYCo and the North West Company had merged, and at Fort Chipewyan Sam Black’s youth, size, and irresponsible character was given full reign. The violence that had always existed between the XYCo and the NWC was now focused on the small number of HBC employees at Nottingham House, under the charge of the HBC’s Peter Fidler. The NWC men knew that their competition were ordered to not retaliate against the aggressions of the NWC: that knowledge, and the fact that there were so few HBC men in the district, made Sam Black even bolder and more dangerous than he would ever have been.

My book, The HBC Brigades: Culture, Conflict, and Perilous Journeys of the Fur Trade, was published in July 2024 by Ronsdale Press. You can order the book now through your local bookstore, or via Amazon. For American booksellers, the distributor for Ronsdale Press in the United States is Independent Publishers Group.

Samuel Black and his NWC co-bullies began a reign of terror against the HBC men. They constantly harassed and threatened Peter Fidler and his men: they drove the animals away from the fort so the men starved; they set fire to the piles of wood so the HBC men could not warm themselves or build new houses; they chased the First Nations trappers away from Nottingham House. No act was too petty for Sam Black to ignore: anything that hurt, surprised, threatened, or kept the men at Nottingham House awake and aware, was tried, and tried again. Even after the HBC men negotiated a sort of peace, on condition they would leave the territory in the springtime, Sam Black would not stop, but continued his reign of terror.

Peter Fidler and his men left Nottingham House in June 1806, and after some time at York Factory Fidler was sent to Ile-à-la-Crosse, where he again faced the NWC intimidation tactics. This time, however, they were led by a young Peter Skene Ogden. Before long, Samuel Black came down from the Athabasca and joined Ogden in the terror campaign, and together they managed to bully Peter Fidler out of his fort after only one season. In June, 1811, as the HBC men paddled across the lake away from their abandoned fort, they looked back and saw the NWC men climbing over the fort’s walls and setting the post afire.

Samuel Black spent fifteen years in the Athabasca region. In 1817-18 he was on the Peace River once more. The future Governor, George Simpson, took over the Athabasca District and apparently terrorized the NWC men — in 1820, Black came face to face with the George Simpson, and found him a difficult foe — so difficult, it seems, that Sam Black escaped to the west side of the Rocky Mountains, appearing at McLeod’s Lake, Fort St. James, and spending the winter at Fraser’s Lake. (Peter Skene Ogden also fled to the west, and was for a while in charge of the Thompson River fort of Kamloops).

The wars between the two companies continued, as we know, until in 1821 the companies merged under the name of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Almost all the NWC men were employed in the HBC, but a few men were refused positions in the new company. Among these men were Sam Black and Peter Skene Ogden. Samuel Black’s letter shows his bitter disappointment:

The communication received by one from the agents of the late N.W.Co. dated at Fort William, 17th July 1821, upon the subject of the arrangement with the Hudson’s Bay Co, you will readily believe was most distressing to my feelings — That a termination of the various oppositions between the Companies was greatly to be wished for, and sooner or later to be expected, is certainly true; but I never conceived it possible that some of those whose zeal and exertion during the ‘conter’ brought about probably the necessity of negotiations on the part of our opponent, would be excluded from the benefits hoped for from that termination…” (North West Company Correspondence, 1800-1827, F.3/2, HBCA).

The two men returned to London, to argue in front of the HBC’s London Governor and Committee that they should have their jobs back. Their journeys out cannot have been pleasant: on their way to Canada, they had to travel out of their districts with the Hudson’s Bay Company men, who loathed them both.

Their argument in London was that they were only doing their jobs when they terrorized the HBC men: they were the instruments of terror and not the instigators of that terror. And that was true: they were the NWC bullies. They were doing their jobs, and their assigned job was to drive out the HBC men by any means possible. With this argument, both Samuel Black and Ogden were employed by the HBC in 1823, and both were given the worst jobs possible (Ogden was sent to the Snake River district, as we know). Both were employed as clerks, but both received a Chief Trader’s wage, which is interesting. Governor Simpson met Sam Black on his arrival at York Factory in July, and wrote that “Black could at first scarcely look me in the face, he recollected my Athabasca Campaign, and never will forget the terrors in which he was kept that Winter; we met and parted excellent Friends.” [All of this information above comes from the Introduction to Sam Black’s Journal of a Voyage from Rocky Mountain Portage in Peace River to the Sources of Finlays Branch and North West Ward in Summer 1824, HBRS.]

Ogden was sent to the Snake River District, and Samuel Black sent to explore the Finlay River, north of Peace River, his old stomping grounds. His report from that expedition was no dry-as-dust report, as we know. In 1822-23, Governor Simpson hoped that the HBC could expand into the Stikine River basin, where they would compete for furs with the Russian American Company. More importantly, however, he wanted to find “a water communication running parallel with McKenzie’s River,” that Alexander Mackenzie had written of. This river was not the Stikine River, but a river that flowed north, like the Mackenzie, but on the west side of the Mackenzie Mountains. This was the Yukon River, of course, or a combination of the Yukon River and the Porcupine.

The Governor first picked Peter Warren Dease to lead the expedition to find this new river, which was supposedly rich in beaver pelts and otter furs. Dease left his own exploring expedition too late in the year to be accomplishable, and when Samuel Black sailed into York Factory, Simpson immediately assigned him the charge of the expedition. It is clear in Black’s notes that he knew he would find the Stikine River, which would lead him west to the coast rather than east to the Mackenzie. He would also find the Liard River blocking his way: but as we see above, neither the Stikine nor the Liard were the real goal in this expedition. Samuel Black was not only expected to find the fur-rich Yukon River, but he was to return to the Peace River for the winter and then explore the Mackenzie River to its mouth over the following summer (1825). A huge order, that could never be accomplished.

Black began his expedition in mid-May 1824. by July 14 he had crossed the Finlay-Stikine River Divide and was on Carp Lake, at the headwaters of the Stikine. (The Finlay joins the Peace and flows north to the Arctic, while the Stikine flows west to the Pacific Ocean). On July 26 the party crossed the Stikine River itself and continued north. On August 13 he crossed mountains that separated the Stikine River system from the Liard River system (the Pacific/Arctic Divide). Samuel Black knew that the river he was now on might be a branch of the Liard, but it was August and he had no time to explore further. He named this river the Turnagain, and it bears that name today. The Turnagain River flows northward into the Kechika River, which flows north and east to join the Liard at modern-day Fireside, B.C. At the point where Samuel Black ended his expedition, he was about 125 miles from the Liard River itself.

Samuel Black sent his journal to George Simpson to read, and it survives today and has been published. Governor Simpson wrote of Black that he was “the Strangest Man I ever knew. So wary & suspicious that it is scarcely possible to get a direct answer from him on any point, and when he does speak or write on any subject, so prolix that it is quite fatiguing to attempt following him. A perfectly honest man and his generosity might be considered indicative of a warmth of heart if he was not known to be a cold-blooded fellow who could be guilty of any cruelty and would be a perfect Tyrant if he had power…” A perfect description of Samuel Black.

Sam Black spent the winter of 1824-25 on the Peace River, at Dunvegan, and travelled to York Factory with William Connolly’s New Caledonia canoes (as it is pre-York Factory Express they went out by the Peace River). He was appointed to Fort Colvile, in the Columbia district (a post that in 1825 was just being constructed), and travelled west with some interesting people: Edward and Francis Ermatinger. The Ermatinger brothers and Samuel Black walked over Athabasca Pass and then descended the Columbia River in one of the Columbia boats, to Spokane House. Sam Black’s journal of the descent of the Columbia survives and is in the BC Archives, but as much as I wanted to read the entire journal, I could only read a few words and even they were guesswork.

Samuel Black ended up not at Fort Colvile, which did not yet exist, but at Fort Nez Perces (Walla Walla). John McLeod Sr., who was in charge of Kamloops (the man who led out the first York Factory Express to Hudson Bay) can not have been happy to see Black there. In 1816-1817, McLeod was in charge at Ile-à-la-Crosse when Black drove them out, and the HBC men were forced to take shelter at Carlton House. This is the second time in this story that Samuel Back drove the HBC men away from the fort at Ile-à-la-Crosse!

In 1826, Aemilius Simpson had nothing personal to say of Samuel Black. In 1827, Edward Ermatinger does not mention Sam Black, either in his outgoing journal, or his incoming. Is he as unlikeable as that? He may have been! Sam Black was in charge of Fort Nez Perces in 1828, when the Fort Colvile Brigades came downriver in their Columbia Boats. John Work wrote, after his departure from Walla Walla, that “Nothwithstanding the want the men were in of refreshment, Mr. Black is of such an unaccommodating disposition that he would not give them a horse, after a great many evasions he offered a colt that was so small that it would not have furnished a meal for the people, & would not be accepted. However,” Work admits, “he gave us three bags of corn & pease & a little grease.”

In 1828, Edward Ermatinger delivered to Fort Nez Perces potatoes, butter and a ham, and “supplied also 1 keg Jamaica rum, I gallon out of the voyage stores, Mr. B being entirely destitute of that article.” He was also required by Samuel Black to take a Fort Nez Perces man into the boats, but was uncomfortable doing so as “this man had not given regular notice and was therefore liable to be detained another year, but Mr. Black says he gave him notice last year and that he is entitled to go out, this being the case I was obliged to give the above man for him. This I did with great reluctance, it not having been so settled by the Doctor [McLoughin].” I think Ermatinger had the opinion that Black was lying, but did not have the power to refuse this request. In 1831, when George Traill Allan went out, the man in charge of Fort Nez Perces was Pierre Pambrun, and Samuel Black had been transferred to the charge of the Thompson’s River (Kamloops) in 1830. Apparently Black was unable to get along with the First Nations, and was sent to Kamloops to keep him safe. George Simpson says he “has not the talent of conciliating Indians by whom he is disliked, but who are ever in dread of him, and well they may be so, as he is so suspicious that offensive and defensive preparations seem to be the study of his Life, having Dirks, Knives, and loaded pistols concealed about his Person and in all directions about his Establishment, even under his table cloth at meals and in his Bed.”

There are, of course, no Kamloops post journals of this time. In 1833, botanist David Douglas accompanied the New Caledonia Brigades north to Fort St. James, accompanying the HBC cattle drive north. At Kamloops, Samuel Black met Douglas, who stayed at the fort. In the course of an evening’s conversation, Douglas apparently stated that “there is not an officer in [the HBC] with a soul above a beaver-skin,” and Black took offence. He challenged Douglas to a duel, by pistol, at daybreak, but when dawn arrived, David Douglas was no where to be seen. I think Sam Black may have been amused, but I think, too, that he was still as impossibly dangerous as ever.

Alexander Caulfield Anderson met Samuel Black in 1835, when he travelled with the 1835 brigade into New Caledonia with Black’s good friend, Peter Skene Ogden. “Without having had the advantage of a critically correct education he was a man of great mental as well as literary attainments, and to the geology of the country he paid special attentions. The geography too of the then only partially explored regions received through him many important additions. Of enormous stature and with a slow and imposing style of address, Mr. Black, though he afforded possibly at times some amusement to his colleagues, commanded also their universal respect by his well recognized good qualities.” Anderson was right. It was Sam Black who discovered and opened up the all-important 1843 Brigade Trail north of Kamloops, that A.C. Anderson rode over many times.

In 1841, Samuel Black died at the hands of a First Nations person at Kamloops. In the late autumn of 1840, Black traded for goods with a local chief, Tranquille, a man who was given his name by the Canadiens for his quiet good nature and calm. Tranquille arrived at the fort to pick up a gun he had left behind, but Black refused to release it, and reprimanded Tranquille. Tranquille returned home, chagrined, but relations between the First Nations and the HBC fort remained in good standing. However, over the winter that followed, Tranquille died. During the funeral speeches, a woman accused Tranquille’s nephew of cowardice and urged him to revenge his uncle by killing Sam Black. The young man blackened his face and set out for Kamloops, arriving there to sit in front of the fire to warm himself. Black gave him a pipe to smoke, food, and tobacco, and left him alone. In the late afternoon, however, as Black was putting his hand on the door of his quarters, the nephew shot him in the back, killing him immediately.

The nephew made his escape, and John Tod came down from Fort Alexandria to take over the fort and deal with the murderer. Fort Vancouver men also came north to hunt for the murderer who had abandoned his village and was hidden in the hills near Cache Creek. The HBC closed the fort to all First Nations traders, causing anxiety and suffering among the people, who were now almost entirely dependent on the fort for their supplies.

After a few days the HBC men captured the murder, and bound his hands to bring him back to Kamloops. At the bottom of Kamloops Lake, the murderer upset the canoe he was travelling in, and floated down the river singing his war song. Chief N’Kwala, who stood with a group of tribesmen on the south bank of the river, ordered his men to kill the murderer, and the boy disappeared under the waters of the Thompson River.

Peter Skene Ogden wrote about his long-time friend, Samuel Black, in Traits of American-Indian Life (London: 1853). “B… was one of my oldest and worthiest friends. Our intimacy had commenced some twenty five years ago, and been ripened by time into the warmest friendship. We had shared in each other’s perils; and the narrow escapes we had so frequently experienced tended to draw still more closely the bond of family by which we were united. It was our custom to contrive an annual meeting, in order that we might pass a few weeks in each other’s company. This reunion naturally possessed charms for both of us; for it was a source of mixed joy, to fight like old soldiers “our battles o’er again,” over a choice bottle of Port or Madeira; to lay our plans for the future, and like veritable gossips, to propose fifty projects, not one of which there was any intention on either part to realize.”

I find it interesting that Ogden mentioned the bonds of family — how were they related, I wonder? I know that Black was related to the Leiths in the fur trade, and Ogden was also a Skene (which is why Anderson and Ogden got on so well). If anyone knows, I would like to hear the story.

Here ends the story of Samuel Black, the oddest and most contradictory of all the fur traders: the most violent of men; the bully, who had few friends. But those friendships were solid, it seems. Certainly Peter Skene Ogden liked and perhaps loved Sam Black.

Copyright, Nancy Marguerite Anderson, 2024. All rights reserved.

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