Rainy Lake House by Theodore Catton

Author:Theodore Catton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2017-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

30

A Loathsome Man

In the spring of 1808, the Nor’ West trader Alexander Henry left Pembina after an eight-year residence. Another Nor’ Wester, Daniel McKenzie, occupied the post through the winter of 1808–9. Then, in the summer of 1809, the North West Company leadership decided to abandon the place and establish a new post at the Forks. The Nor’ Wester assigned to the task was John Wills. He arrived in the year 1810 with a force of twenty men and proceeded to build a large fort where the Assiniboine River flows into the Red, the site of today’s Winnipeg. This impressive installation, named Fort Gibraltar, consisted of a square palisade about fifteen feet high made from oak logs split in two, with a pair of bastions at opposite corners, and eight buildings arranged within the fort’s walls. The interior buildings included a residence for the trader, two houses for the engagés, a blacksmith shop, a stable, a kitchen, and an ice house. A watchtower rose from the roof of the ice house. The Red River Indians watched with interest as Wills superintended construction and the new fort took shape. As Wills was a very large man, the Indians nicknamed him “The Sail” for his wide beam.1

The North West Company had two purposes in view in establishing Fort Gibraltar at the Forks. One purpose was to support the movement of Métis into the area and thereby secure the company’s important provisioning trade in pemmican. Its second purpose was to prevent the Hudson’s Bay Company from making a southward advance up the Red River valley. Wills aimed to oppose the trader Hugh Heney, who was lately in charge of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Brandon House.

Wills returned from the Nor’ Westers’ rendezvous at Fort William in the fall of 1810 to find his anticipated rival absent. He assumed that the construction of Fort Gibraltar over the preceding months had convinced Heney and the Hudson’s Bay Company to abandon the area. Rashly, Wills took the opportunity to drive a hard bargain with his Indian trading partners and call in some of the Indians’ debt. While giving the Indians their customary “fall drink” when they gathered at his trading house before the winter, he used the occasion to announce a new limitation on credit: no material items would be provided to them until they brought in skins during the coming winter.2

Tanner avoided the Indians’ drinking bout according to his pattern, so he missed Wills’s announcement. At the onset of winter, he went to the newly occupied fort for his first encounter with the new trader. Ushered into the trader’s house, he asked for woolens to clothe his family. He was taken aback when the trader refused. Tanner pleaded on behalf of his children, saying that they were hungry and ill clothed and might die without the trader’s assistance. Wills rudely cut him off and told him to leave the house. Tanner then placed eight silver ornaments on the table. Having purchased these items a year before

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