Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/503

Rh have invariably found aid and comfort, arms and supplies, from our brethren on the other side of that border. Had there been for a hundred years a rivalry between us for actual colonization of those vast wildernesses, we should certainly have found a Sitting Bull as well as John Bull formidable allies against us.

The Hudson Bay Company was for a long time the representative of the enterprise — wholly commercial and monopolizing — of Great Britain on this continent. A sketch of its plan and operations will show how different were the relations into which those concerned in it were thrown with the Indians, from those of our own people and Government.

The Hudson Bay Company had its origin in a charter given by Charles II. to Prince Rupert, under date of May 2, 1670, on the return of a party of adventurers in the bay from an enterprise under Captain Gillam, in the “Nonsuch” ketch. The charter conferred upon the Company the whole region whose waters empty into the Bay, with the right “to use and enjoy the whole, entire, and only trade and traffic, and the whole, entire, and only liberty, use, and privilege of trading to and from the territory, limits, and places aforesaid, and to and with all the natives and people inhabiting, or who shall inhabit, within the territories, limits, and places aforesaid,” etc.

Captain Butler, in 1870, when he travelled in the region, well described it in the title of his book, as “The Great Lone Land.” There is a grim significance in the motto of the chartered company, — “Pro pelle cutem.”

The enormous and vaguely bounded territory thus bestowed was called Rupert's Land. The Prince was its first governor; his associates, as a committee, were the Duke of Albemarle, Lord Craven, Lord Arlington, and other nobles. More than forty years before the date of this charter, Louis XIII. had made a similar grant to “La Compagnie de la Nouvelle France.” Rupert's rights were made rigidly