Disappointment River

by Brian Castner

  And in the small hours of the morning, when Madeira ruled, came the grand voyage, when the tables were pushed aside to create a mock canot de maître, the behemoths in which they had earned their fortunes. Stripped to his shirtsleeves, each man knew his place and swung canes and fireplace pokers like paddles, shooting the rapids, the brigade charging forward as the gouvernail bore the rudder and the devant called the line. They rode kegs of wine from table to floor, swimmers tossed about. That it was their voyageurs and Chipewyan guides who had actually done this work in the wild northwest mattered little. Alexander himself was famous for leading the war whoops, like the Iroquois on their way to battle, and they sang the bawdy hymns of the voyageur:

  Ah! taisez-vous, méchante femme,

  Je n’vous ai laissé qu’un enfant,

  En voilà quatr’ dès à présent!

  Oh, wicked woman, be you still!

  I left two children in your care,

  I see that four are playing there!

  Alexander Mackenzie was the colossus, known for the enthusiasm of his song and quantity of liquor held. One night the club members averaged twelve bottles of wine each, and Alexander held on as the last and only man standing in the early morning. Mackenzie was the proposer of toasts, the heart of the effort, the emptier of cups.

  Reading the log, imagining that night, I had so many questions. Sir John Johnson was there when Corc Mackenzie died; I wondered if Alexander ever asked about his dad. I wondered if they missed their wives and children, abandoned in the north. And I wondered how the other men treated Mackenzie’s disappointment. Would they have asked him about it? Alexander considered the whole endeavor a failure until the day he died. He was looking for the Northwest Passage, after all, and he didn’t know he had found it. Maybe these gentlemen were too polite to bring it up?

  No, with so much alcohol, someone’s tongue would have been loosed. And these bourgeois were rivals as well as comrades, so whether out of affection or derision someone would have asked. In 1808, Meriwether Lewis was the toast of Philadelphia, and had just been named governor of Louisiana in recognition of his travels and success. It was a subject at hand.

  It was Christmas Eve, just past the shortest day of the year, the darkness like a blanket in the Montreal winter. Maybe Roderic, his lifelong confidant, would have said it. During a lull in the festivities, a break from swimming the rapids of the English River or dodging the Porte de l’Enfer, with an elbow to his cousin’s ribs.

  “Sir Alex!” Roderic called. “Tell us all the story again of the first time you saw the midnight sun.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It would be a grave injustice if I did not first acknowledge my paddle mates: David Chrisinger, Jeremy Howard Beck, Landon Phillips, and Anthony Sennhenn. I could not have taken my trip, and thus written this book, without your generosity, labor, and good humor. Thank you for spending part of your summer with me, doing something intrinsically difficult and potentially foolhardy. And doubly, thank you to Ashley, Will, Megan, and Katie, for holding down the fort at home while your man embarked on this adventure. You had the far larger job.

  Similarly, thank you to Michelle Swallow, the author of the invaluable Mackenzie River Guide I looked at every day, and to Doug Swallow with Canoe North in Hay River, who endured near-daily texts about weather and logistics and life on the river. Doug will rent you a canoe to run the Mackenzie River as well, dear reader, and even drive out a stove if you happen to lose yours in Fort Providence. Thanks to Kylik and Gerry Kisoun of Tundra North Tours, for providing peace of mind for months and coming through in the end to get us on time. Kylik and Gerry can take you all over the delta, summer or winter, and tell many a story besides.

  I am also indebted to a brigade’s worth of historians and archivists who assisted in my research of the voyageur world. Thank you to Shawn Patterson at Fort William Historical Park, Carolyn Podruchny at York University, Douglas Hunter, Harry Duckworth, Wick Walker, Germaine Warkentin, Claude Ferland, Jan Peter Laurens Loovers, Jeremy Ward at the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Heather McNabb at the McCord Museum archives in Montreal, Nicolas Bednarz at the Archives de Montréal, Monique Voyer at the archives at the University of Montreal, Paul-André Linteau and Robin Philpot at Baraka Books, Alan Stewart with the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Heather Beattie at the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives in Winnipeg, and to the staffs of the Francophone Museum, Musée de la Place Royale, and Morrin Centre in Quebec, Château Ramezay and Pointe-à-Callière in Montreal, and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. More thank-yous to my first readers, Matthew Komatsu and Phil Klay and Elizabeth Burns, to Sherill Tippins, Kenneth Cobb, and Professor Edward Knoblauch, for assistance in navigating the public archives in New York City and London, to Andrew McKenzie, for sharing portions of his genealogical opus May We Be Britons?, to Ben Busch, for bear-wrestling advice, to Matt Cook and Jason Briner, for letting me borrow essential gear, and to Jeremiah Grisham, for literary inspiration and paddler-broker services.

  Just after my journey, I wrote several climate change dispatches and features about the trip. Thank you to Brian Anderson and Kate Lunau at Vice Motherboard and Siddhartha Mahanta at The Atlantic for editing and publishing my stories, and to Tom Hundley at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting for providing travel funds to support the project. I’m grateful to the journalists Meagan Wohlberg, Eva Holland, and Karen McColl, for the connections and advice on reporting in Canada’s north, and to all the people we met on the river who were so generous with their time, especially Wilfred Jackson, Jonas Antoine, and Ron and Wendy Oe.

  My editors at Doubleday and McClelland & Stewart, Gerry Howard and Doug Pepper, are the best a writer could ask for. So too my agent, Bob Mecoy, who manages somehow to simultaneously fill the roles of first reader, promoter, interventionist, and friend. Thank you, gentlemen.

  To my boys, Virgil, Martin, Sam, and Eli, who put up with a dad who was gone, again. You can paddle with me next time, if you want to.

  And always, to my brilliant and beautiful bride: Jessie, I love you.

  NOTES

  My narrative of Alexander Mackenzie’s life was primarily drawn from his own words, the journals he kept from his voyages and the few letters that survive. The definitive portfolio, The Journals and Letters of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, was edited by W. Kaye Lamb and published by Cambridge University Press for the Hakluyt Society in 1970.

  Unfortunately, Lamb had less than a full archive to work with, because Mackenzie’s estate in Avoch burned soon after his death and the majority of his papers with it. The letters kept by Roderic were collected in the “Reminiscences,” a portion of the sprawling and unorganized two-volume Les bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest published by Louis R. Masson, Roderic’s grandson-in-law, in 1889–90. A few other papers remained with other organizations, such as the Hudson’s Bay Company archives. But Mackenzie’s record is thinner than that of other major historical figures of the period.

  For the general culture of the voyageurs, Carolyn Podruchny’s Making the Voyageur World is definitive. Harry Duckworth has done yeoman’s work tracing the arc of individual mid-1780s voyageurs in The English River Book. I found Harold Innis’s Fur Trade in Canada to still be the authoritative and exhaustive text. Two biographies of Peter Pond were published in the last few years, by Barry Gough and David Chapin, and I found both very useful. Samuel Hearne remains the best source of information on Matonabbee, and so too Mackenzie on Awgeenah, whom he always called Nestabeck or the English Chief. Recently, many First Nations have begun publishing the collected oral histories of their elders, and I quote them as often as possible.

  In the following notes, I have tried to stay as concise as possible, for quoted text, for obscure facts, or to explain specific conclusions I drew from the historical record.

  PROLOGUE

  Deh Cho: Helm, People of Denendeh, 8. Helm uses “Dehcho” as an alternate spelling, but throughout the book I will use “Deh Cho.”

  Nagwichoonjik: Heine et
al., Gwichya Gwich’in Googwandak, 400.

  Kuukpak: Conversation with Gerry Kisoun.

  Great Slave Lake: The Dene name for the lake is Tucho, meaning Big Lake. There is a movement among the First Nations of Canada to remove many colonial names and officially restore the original names for such places. See Curtis Mandeville, “Goodbye Great Slave Lake? Movement to Decolonize N.W.T. Maps Is Growing,” CBC News, June 21, 2016, accessed June 26, 2017, www.cbc.ca.

  CHAPTER 1: THE NORTH WEST COMPANY

  tying up ships in a gam: Podruchny, Making the Voyageur World, 173.

  of greatest esteem: Ibid., 25.

  Voyageurs tended to be short: MacGregor, Canoe Country, 102.

  They sang to synchronize: Podruchny, Making the Voyageur World, 86, 114.

  “We are voyageurs”: Nute, Voyageur, 45.

  “Fence builders”: Conversation with Shawn Patterson, collections manager at Fort William Historical Park.

  the northmen had nothing to do: Newman, Caesars of the Wilderness, 41.

  His partners thought him: Lamb, Journals and Letters of Mackenzie, 16.

  He was the youngest partner: Innis, Fur Trade in Canada, 200. Using Innis’s complete list of who held what shares, Nicholas Montour was only six years senior, but most were much older.

  “a small adventure of goods”: Lamb, Journals and Letters of Mackenzie, 78.

  Indian mixed-blood families: Today, they are known as métis and recognized as First Nations in Canada.

  “drinking, carousing, and quarrelling”: Lamb, Journals and Letters of Mackenzie, 71.

  “contemplated the practicability”: Ibid., 57.

  “Roderic Mackenzie, if he will”: Ibid., 437.

  “by Order of the N.W Company”: Ibid., 163.

  CHAPTER 2: INTO THE NORTH

  one-fifth of the planet’s supply: Frequently Asked Questions, Environment and Climate Change Canada, www.ec.gc.ca.

  “Comes over one an absolute necessity”: Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, 7.

  1998 attempt of Tibet’s Tsangpo gorge: See Wick Walker’s own travelogue, Courting the Diamond Sow (Washington, D.C.: Adventure Press, National Geographic, 2000), and Todd Balf’s Last River (New York: Crown, 2000).

  CHAPTER 3: SCOTLAND

  His father was Kenneth: For Alexander’s early life, I relied most heavily on Gough’s First Across the Continent and Wade’s Mackenzie of Canada.

  family lore says: Lamb, Journals and Letters of Mackenzie, 2.

  “It must be confessed”: All Samuel Johnson references in this section are from Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, in Johnson, Works, vol. 2.

  speculative “futures” of every kind: The great chronicle of late eighteenth-century Scottish immigration to America is Bailyn’s Voyagers to the West. I relied heavily on his work in this chapter, unless otherwise noted.

  “As Captain McKenzie’s Character”: Irish Emigration Database, accessed June 26, 2017, www.dippam.ac.uk.

  McKenzie dropped a load: David Dobson, Ships from Ireland to Early America, 1623–1850 (Baltimore: Clearfield, 1999), 1:114.

  Wyllie had recruited another ship full: National Archives of the U.K., T47/12, pp. 1–3.

  he fired his gun into the air: Ibid.

  only fifty-eight fellow passengers: Stornoway Historical Society, accessed June 26, 2017, www.stornowayhistoricalsociety.org.uk.

  CHAPTER 4: NEW YORK

  Eighteen languages were commonly: For the scenes of Revolutionary War–era New York City, I relied on Ketchum’s Divided Loyalties, Schecter’s Battle for New York, and Van Buskirk’s Generous Enemies.

  one in ten New Yorkers: Bailyn, Voyagers to the West, 575.

  “Ready Money John”: Wade, Mackenzie of Canada, 19.

  replacing them with kin: Bailyn, Voyagers to the West, 576.

  Johnson clothed Hendrick: Sleeper-Smith, Rethinking the Fur Trade, 346.

  Johnson painted his face: Ibid., 344.

  a 160-year-old physical embodiment: Ibid., 121.

  apprenticed to the firm of Finlay & Gregory: Lamb, Journals and Letters of Mackenzie, 3.

  CHAPTER 5: MONTREAL

  Montreal attracted Loyalists: Morton, Short History of Canada, 32.

  twenty feet high and almost as thick: Pointe-à-Callière Museum in Montreal, visited in Feb. 2017.

  Along rue St.-François-Xavier: For property maps of late eighteenth-century Montreal, I am indebted to Alan Stewart at the Canadian Centre for Architecture.

  a Scot named Mr. James Finlay: Innis, Fur Trade in Canada, 170.

  Mackenzie heard that in 1768: Lamb, Journals and Letters of Mackenzie, 70.

  “Most of the clerks”: Irving, Astoria, 6.

  The standard joke: Herman, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, 363.

  Cotton Mather and the other: For an entertaining overview of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, try Vowell’s Wordy Shipmates.

  No more than a couple hundred: Sleeper-Smith, Rethinking the Fur Trade, 220.

  “We rove about with them”: Innis, Fur Trade in Canada, 25.

  several thousand Iroquois: These were St. Lawrence Iroquois, a separate nation not part of the famous Iroquois confederacy to the south, though archaeology has only discovered this in the last hundred years.

  “frightful and ill-shaped”: Brody, Other Side of Eden, 219.

  When Étienne Brûlé, the French youth: Innis, Fur Trade in Canada, 30.

  “several acres of snow”: Morton, Short History of Canada, 31.

  “In truth, my brother”: Innis, Fur Trade in Canada, 28.

  Algonquin were forced to the north: Skinner, Upper Country, 49.

  “In the canoes of the savages”: Innis, Fur Trade in Canada, 20.

  took along a Chinese silk damask: Gough, Elusive Mr. Pond, 59.

  “The water here is so swift”: Innis, Fur Trade in Canada, 20.

  named Lachine, for China: Chapin, Freshwater Passages, 69.

  Hemmed in by the Appalachians: Sheppe, First Man West, 6.

  only 50,000 white habitants: Garreau, Nine Nations of North America, 368.

  to New Englanders the French and Indians: Middleton, Colonial America, 177.

  “People must be of the profession”: Dictionary of Canadian Biography, s.v. “Wolfe, James,” accessed June 26, 2017, www.biographi.ca.

  dressed in the coat of an Englishman: Despite the implied authority of the painting, note that Sir William Johnson was not actually present at the battle.

  easier to work with: Garreau, Nine Nations of North America, 370.

  “A constitution and frame”: Lamb, Journals and Letters of Mackenzie, 57.

  “coarse woollen cloths”: Ibid., 82.

  “forty-two months after the goods”: Ibid., 81.

  Thirty-six feet long: Morse, Fur Trade Canoe Routes of Canada, 5.

  It was an Algonquin design: MacGregor, Canoe Country, 212.

  each voyageur’s home parish: Podruchny, Making the Voyageur World, 30.

  devant, the guide in the nose: Ibid., 121.

  Each man was provided: Sleeper-Smith, Rethinking the Fur Trade, 330.

  Castor gras, the French called them: Innis, Fur Trade in Canada, 94.

  “Twice as many furs”: Lamb, Journals and Letters of Mackenzie, 73.

  “You would be amazed”: Irving, Astoria, 3. Also note, an East Indiaman is an Englishman who worked for the East India Company, not a native of East India.

  scurvy in his sickbed: Lamb, Journals and Letters of Mackenzie, 3.

  closed the waters to commercial traffic: Vexler, Detroit, 82.

  His Majesty’s military vessels: Innis, Fur Trade in Canada, 181.

  CHAPTER 6: DETROIT

  “This trade was carried on”: Lamb, Journals and Letters of Mackenzie, 71.

  windlasses and farm labor: Innis, Fur Trade in Canada, 177.

  boarded a new brig of war: Vexler, Detroit, 82.

  Montreal to Detroit: In 1800, a canoe set a record of seven and one-quarter days for transit from Detroit to Montreal. Podr
uchny, Making the Voyageur World, 101.

  Major William Ancrum: Vexler, Detroit, 3.

  beat the man with his bare fists: History of Detroit, accessed Feb. 22, 2016, historydetroit.com.

  a flotilla of twenty-five canoes: Lewis, Detroit, 3.

  “timid deer and faun”: Bragg, Hidden History of Detroit, 32.

  “They are an exceedingly industrious”: Skinner, Upper Country, 140.

  whom he meant to pacify: Martelle, Detroit, 2.

  “All the villages of our savages”: Skinner, Upper Country, 94.

  “Casting my eyes toward the woods”: Ibid., 98.

  diverted to government soldiers: Foxcurran, Bouchard, and Malette, Songs upon the Rivers, 156.

  Rules for Ranging: Rogers’s Rules for Ranging are still used by U.S. Army rangers today.

  “moral certainty”: Gough, Elusive Mr. Pond, 43.

  “Christino”: Chapin, Freshwater Passages, 76.

  “We will soon see that half”: Foxcurran, Bouchard, and Malette, Songs upon the Rivers, 156.

  “a lazy, idle people”: Chapin, Freshwater Passages, 46.

  “It is not uncommon to see”: Sleeper-Smith, Rethinking the Fur Trade, 543.

  “careless and very ignorant”: Bragg, Hidden History of Detroit, 53.

  “Though he knew from the King’s”: Ephraim Douglass and His Times, accessed June 27, 2017, archive.org.

  one man in ten was an African slave: Martelle, Detroit, 35.