Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/172



98 THE CENTENNIAL HISTOKY OP OREGON

all were equal it follows that each partner had an equal interest no matter what the capital, or the profits. This Company was a voluntary organization without charter or Royal patent to legalize it. But it was for the purposes in view a very powerful organization. It was maimed and managed by men who had themselves threaded the forest and wilderness. It had the experience and energy of the great explorers. Alexander Mackenzie and Simon Praser, to guide it ; and it was a foe- man worthy of a princely competitor. The company was ably managed and made enormovis profits. The gross income was $200,000 in 1788, and on the same capital, ran up to $600,000 in 1799.

It is hut a faint idea the reader of history can get of the life of these fur hunters in the Great Northern wilderness one hundred years ago. The men, the times, the manners, the Indians, the wild animals,- and the wilderness itself have all passed away forever. Nowhere on the earth can that unique picture be again reproduced. To the general reader, that fur hunter life and adventure was raw, crude and barbarian. But it was only partly so. The trapper in the boundless woods and plains must of necessity rough it. He lay upon the ground at night under the shelter of some bushy tree or against the lea of a friendly rock. He must get his life from the animals he killed. He could pack little or nothing to eat in addition to his precious furs. Sometimes he had pack animals, or on a stream a frail bark canoe; and then life was a holiday. But the rendezvous brought to the full all the pleasures and happiness a fur hunter could conceive of. It might be once, or even t^^'ice, in the year; but it was sure to come. The " Ren- dezvous " saved the expense of building forts and keeping up an expensive estab- lishment, and was appointed for different places and seasons to suit the conven- ience of the trappers and the demands of the trade. The most noted rendezvous on the American side of the boundary line was in the heart of the Rocky Moun- tains in the North East corner of Utah, where Kit Carson, Ashle.y, Sublette, Lisa and other famous fur hunters would meet the Bannocks, Shoshones, Prench Ca- nadians, half breeds and other nondescripts, for barter and carousal. Here all were free to eat, drink, fight and kill, each man looking out for himself and for his own head. Pree trappers, hired men, and Indians, all, here brought their catch for the year and sold, or got their pay.

And here all had their chance to waste their earnings in a few days' riot of man's three consuming passions — intoxicating drink, women and tobacco. Vile whiskey was sold for four dollars a pint ; tobacco five dollars a pound, and the beauties of the forest came without persuasion to become the wives of the long haired trappers forever, or for a day. The trading, gambling, horse racing, dancing, courting and fighting was the limit of human endurance, and its like will never be seen again.

And this was the American hell-raiser fandango in the wilderness. But across the line at old Port William north of the head of Lake Superior, was a model of the same purpose rendezvous, but regulated by the sterner decrees of Scotch business formality and controlled by frowning cannon in a palisaded fortress. Port William was in fact a palisaded village ; within which was the great council house, store buildings, fur packing houses, armories, soldiers, rifles, cannon, offi- cers' quarters, servants' cottages, doctor's office, powder magazine, jail, work shops, and a garden. And in the midst of it all the council house towered, contain- ing a dining hall sixty by thirty feet, and the walls hung with the portraits of the