outcast inasmuch as he was an independent trader. Once was the time when Prince Rupert's Company of Adventurers of England trading in the Hudson's Bay had held the monopoly of the fur trade over all this territory, from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Coast; then to have been caught trapping or trading privately had meant almost certain death to the trespasser. Now that the powers of the Company had been curtailed, the only manner in which a Hudson Bay factor could show his displeasure toward the interloper was by ignoring his presence—a very real penalty in a land of loneliness, where, at the best, men can only hope to meet once or twice a year—and by rendering his existence as unbearable and silent as possible in every lawful and private way. In the art of ostracising, Robert Pilgrim, the factor at God's Voice, was a past master; during the two and a half years that Granger had been in Keewatin he had had direct communication with no one of the Company's white employees. On occasions certain of its Cree Indians and half-breed trappers had come to him stealthily, at dead of night, to see whether he would not offer them better terms for their season's catch of furs, or to inquire whether he would not give them liquor in exchange, the selling of which to an Indian in Keewatin is a punishable offence. These were usually loose characters who, being heavily in debt to the Company, were trying to postpone payment by selling to Granger on the sly; yet, even these men, when day had dawned, would pass him on the river without recognition, as if he were a stick or a block of ice. However, only by dealing with such renegades could he hope to pick up any profit for the proprietors of his store. His every gain was a loss to the factor,[8] and vice versa; therefore by Robert Pilgrim he was not greatly beloved.

[6]

[7]

[8]

Pilgrim was a man of conservative principles, who looked back with longing to the days when a factor was supreme in his own domain, holding discretionary powers over all his people's lives, who, after the giving of a third warning to an independent trader found poaching in his district, could dispose of him more or less barbarously according to his choice. Now that every man, whatever his company, had an equal right to gather furs in the Canadian North, he considered that he and his employers were being robbed; wherefore he made it his business to see that no friendship existed between any of his subordinates and the man at Murder Point. Hence it happened that in summer when the canoes and York boats, and in winter when the dog-teams and 

 Prev. P 7/235 next