The Traders

April 27, 2020

This article was done in partnership with the Lac du Bonnet & District Historical Society. It appeared in the May 21, 2020 edition of the Lac du Bonnet Clipper.

By the time spring came in 1808, Hudson Bay Company clerk, Thomas Miller, and his ten men, were glad to leave. They had arrived at “Lake du Bonnet” eight months earlier with two boats and a winter’s worth of provisions and trade goods to establish a post.

Their journey began at Osnaburgh House (Lake St. Joseph, Ontario) on August 5, 1807. For twenty-two days, they travelled inland, through Lac Seul, along the English River, to the Winnipeg River, and gave alcohol and tobacco to the Indigenous people they met to entice them to trade at Lac du Bonnet.

Upon arrival at the lake on August 27, three Indigenous men showed Miller where to build the winter post. No surviving historical records provide the location. Indigenous knowledge of the local geography would have put the post at the top of the lake near Galet du Bonnet (McArthur Falls) at the confluence of the Winnipeg, Pinnawas and Oiseau (Bird) Rivers to maximize trade opportunities. Construction started on a “small house to put the goods” the next day.

Four days after the Orkneymen arrived at Lac du Bonnet, Alexander McKay of the North West Company, and twenty-two men stopped at the fledgling post for an hour before continuing to their base, Pointe au Foutre, at the mouth of the Winnipeg River. The following morning, Miller discovered four NWC men stayed to build their own post nearby. Five days later, NWC clerk, John Cribisas, arrived with a large canoe loaded with goods and provisions for the winter.

Bas de la Riviere (or Pointe au Foutre as it was briefly known by the HBC) was established by the NWC in 1792 as their supply post in the Winnipeg River basin. This location near Lake Winnipeg was strategic for the NWC (and later the HBC) as they stopped here to rest and repair boats after their journey on the Winnipeg River.

Within two days, the HBC post at Lac du Bonnet was finished and goods moved inside. Doors, chimneys, floor and beds were completed over the next month. With the post operational, attention turned to survival. Throughout the fall, the men netted hundreds of fish and snared countless rabbits. As winter wore on, they relied on the Indigenous people to provide meat.

Proximity to the NWC meant conflict. First, the Canadians stole fishing nets and harassed the HBC men. In the midst of winter, the Canadians robbed Indigenous people carrying furs to the HBC post. By mid-March 1808, the drunken threats of the Canadians escalated, causing Miller and his men to arm themselves in anticipation of an attack, which never came.

Thomas Miller summed up this winter with one line on April 30, 1808: “Thank God the lake is open.”

The HBC men left Lac du Bonnet on May 28, 1808. This winter post did not operate again until 1856, thirty-five years after the two companies merged.

References:

Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Archives of Manitoba, Lac du Bonnet post journal, 1807-1808, B.103/a/1.