Special History:
The Environment and the Fur Trade Experience in
Voyageurs National Park, 1730-1870

Chapter Two
The Fur Trade Experience in the Rainy Lake Region (continued)

Transportation

The speed of travel over the canoe routes in the Rainy Lake Region varied considerably depending on the type of canoes, the experience of the crews, the kind of weather encountered, and the current water levels. To make the trip from Rainy Lake to Lake Superior in ten days was to make good time, although it could be done in half that. Two weeks was perhaps an average time, and if conditions were unfavorable it could take much longer. When the Red River Expedition set out in 1870, each brigade was given no less than 60 days' rations for the trip from Lake Shebandenwa (near Fort William) to Fort Frances.

Experienced crews of voyageurs could propel the canoes at an amazing speed, but travelers had to allow for frequent interruptions. Portages were, of course, the biggest cause of delay along this route and were described in detail by many travelers. Since the many portages along the route lay east of Voyageurs National Park, they will not be described here. They are relevant inasmuch as the farthest west leg of the Fort William-Fort Frances route, where the traveler reached the big waters of Namakan and Rainy lakes, required little time and effort compared to the 150 miles preceding it.

Another source of delay involved the frequent need for gumming the canoes. Crews had to stop often to daub the birchbark canoes with pitch, which acted as a sealant and helped the canoes cut the water more cleanly. Crews might stop twice in a morning for gumming, and the job could take as much as half an hour. Often this chore would be combined with a stop for a meal. Gumming could not be done in the rain, nor in the heat of the day. If the gum was not boiled enough it would be too soft. Then, running through the waters, the gum would become still softer and rough, slowing the canoe or causing it to leak.

Delays also occurred whenever a canoe's lading got wet, for it became necessary to disembark the goods and lay them out on the ground to dry. If it was a cool day and the sun became hidden, or if it began to rain, the whole operation might have to be interrupted and resumed again later.

Bad weather not only caused delays, it could imperil the lives of the travelers. Although crews made better time on the big waters, especially if there was a fair breeze to hoist a sail, they had to put ashore when winds became too strong. A traveler described the Rainy Lake crossing in 1845:

Dame Fortune does not always persecute her friends; and although she had retarded us hitherto a good deal, with contrary winds and rain, she kindly assisted us when we commenced crossing Lac la Pluie next morning, by raising a stiff, fair breeze. Now, be it known, that a canoe, from having no keel, and a round bottom, cannot venture to hoist a sail unless the wind is directly astern–the least bit to one side would be sure to capsize it; so that our getting the wind precisely in the proper direction at the commencement, was a great piece of good fortune, inasmuch as it enabled us to cross the lake in six hours, instead of (as is generally the case) taking one, two, or three days.

Historian Grace Lee Nute estimates that voyageur crews could average four to six miles per hour without sail and up to ten miles per hour with a favorable wind in their sail. When strong winds forced them ashore, they called this delay a degradé.

Numerous sources describe the colorful crew members themselves, and the subject is covered in detail in Nute's The Voyageur (1955). A good example of a contemporary description is that of Nicholas Garry. Traveling in 1821–the year that the North West Company merged with the Hudson's Bay Company–Garry described the change in expedition style as his party left Fort William for Rainy Lake.

Travelling is now more expeditious than from Montreal. All is Life and Animation and Anxiety who shall lead the march. The men, who are now called North West Men, hold in great contempt the Pork Eaters, whose Journey finishes at Fort William, and are so called from their Food consisting of Pork to mix with their Indian Corn. The Canoe is now less, the Weight little more than 2 cwt. which is necessary from the numerous and long Portages which present themselves at every moment. The [Crew of the] Canoe consists of a Foreman or Guide, a Steersman and six Men. The Canoe is carried by two Men at the Bow and Stern and carried erect. In the morning before Daylight the Tent is struck and you are left without Covering to dress as well as you can. The Poles of the Tent being placed at the Bottom of the Canoe this Expedition is necessary.

In addition to bad weather, deadly rapids were another danger attending any journey by canoe. There were a number of fatal rapids on the route between Fort William and Rainy Lake; however, the only fatal canoe accident known to have occurred in the vicinity of Voyageurs National Park involved the trader Donald McPherson and an Indian boy, whose canoe capsized in Rainy Lake. This accident was blamed on the canoe having been overloaded with cargo.

Hudson's Bay Company trader Donald McKay survived a canoe accident but lost two of his men on his return trip from Rainy Lake to Osnaburgh in the spring of 1792. Although the accident occurred well north of Voyageurs National Park, McKay's account is so harrowing as to be worth quoting here:

About twenty yards from the Shore a tree happened to fall into the River on which we got foull which pushed us out into the Suction of the fall, in half a Second we was Irrecoverable, it was so suddent that our presence of mind was Stupifyed; but seeing death on both sides, I cryed to all hands to jump out towards Shore, which I did myself and providently my hands got hold of a Rock but my feet got no bottom, but the Strong Current thro me in on the rock from which I crawled a shore, the water that got in my mouth & eyes which blinded me so much that I do not Know how the rest got a Shore– John Sutherland Magnas Birdsay John Louttet & Louis Jolly Caurr got safe a Shore; the Unfortunate John Towers and James Taylor was in the boat, when I recovered I lookd & see the boat rested on a Rock at the very top of the fall and the poor Lads in it, I called to them to thro it to us & got hold of it and fasten it to a tree a Shore, John Towers with great Spirit put himself on the line and made two Successfull pushes on it, but [on] the third the line broke between his hands and [he] fell in the fall and was never seen again– I believe he was dashed to pieces before he got to the bottom of the fall– James Taylor had hold of the Oar Ring that Steered the boat in his hands when the boat went of[f] the Rock, the head was dashed to pieces before the [Stern?] went of[f]– in few Seconds we have seen James Taylor fast to a Small piece of the Stern of the boat below the fall & cryed for help, but it was not in our power to give him any Assistance as he would be down the next fall before we could Launch and unload the boat of John Richards which was the only boat in Company, the said John Richards did much exert himself on this unfortunate affair, he ran along Shore with a long Pole to try if he could come nigh James Taylor, and at the top of the other fall he got so near as to touch his shoulder but he was so much gone that he had not the sense to take hold of it.

Finally, cold temperatures and pan ice were a threat to the fragile birchbark canoes, rendering canoe travel in late fall or early spring both hazardous and problematic. When the lake surfaces were partially frozen, floating ice could tear a hole in a canoe and sink it. One party arrived at Fort Frances in late November 1834 terrified and exhausted after breaking through new ice the whole length of Rainy Lake. "The only thing that saved them from going to the bottom," the chief trader wrote, "was that their canoe with the cold was cased over both in and out with ice." Birchbark canoes were known to crack in the cold air when hauled out of water, too.

Besides annoying delays and worrisome dangers, the traveler also experienced physical discomforts on the journey. Occasionally an unhappy traveler complained of light rations or outright hunger, but in general the men seem to have been well-fueled while en route. Starvation may have been a regular feature of winters at the fort, but it was much less common other times of the year. Fatigue overtook the traveler much more often than hunger, especially when it was necessary to run against a head wind or endure a lot of rain. Mosquitoes were still another source of physical discomfort. Gabriel Franchere was "tormented" by the mosquitoes on the banks of the Rainy River. John Bigsby wrote that the mosquitoes on Rainy Lake were "ferocious, their bites being also much envenomed by our salt diet."

Despite these many hardships, most travelers seem to have regarded the journey in a positive light as an adventure. Certainly there is a positive theme of adventure in the many written accounts, and there is a sense of willingness on the part of the engagés to undertake local travel evident in the post journals as well. The songs and traditions of the voyageurs also reveal an appreciation for the journey.

What is less evident in the historical record is a sense of landscape appreciation. While the modern recreationist finds the landscape of the voyageurs' route appealing because of its wild character, travelers in the fur trade era were generally ambivalent, even indifferent, toward the landscape. There was so much wildness in it as to be monotonous or taken for granted. One suspects that Nicholas Garry's reaction to the scenery around Rainy Lake–that it was "very uninteresting, low Banks and stunted Fir Trees"–may have been typical.

Historians of landscape appreciation deal with a subject that is highly imprecise and subject to various interpretation. A number of seminal works in this field date from a period in American historiography when historians were intent on plumbing "the American mind," a theoretical construct that has lost favor in the past three decades. Nevertheless, several such studies remain influential; for example, Henry Nash Smith's Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (1950); Hans Huth, Nature and the American: Three Centuries of Changing Attitudes (1957); Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (1964); and Leo Marx's The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (1964). Nash, for example, develops the idea that harsh physical conditions largely fashioned pioneer attitudes toward wilderness. Frontiersmen tended to view wild landscapes negatively as long as they remained threatening. Marx depicts European influences on American attitudes toward land and progress, and reveals the widespread embrace of a "pastoral ideal" that placed select elements of the industrial age in a kind of middle landscape between city and wilderness. Curiously enough, even though the fur trade was largely at odds with the advance of settlement, those fur traders who were literate and committed their impressions to writing still appear to have embraced this "pastoral ideal." In the absence of any real traces of the industrial age in the Rainy Lake Region, travelers imagined future farms and towns and commerce where the landscape was most like the settled countryside of England with which they were familiar. Thus, numerous travelers commented on the "beauty" of the Rainy River, praising its strong, even current, its handsomely foliated banks, its likeness to rivers in England, and the "variety of delightful scenes which its banks disclose at every winding." Implicit in many of these recurring appreciative descriptions is the thought that the landscape would eventually be softened by signs of civilization. It is also worth noting that the Rainy River presented a safe and easy passage compared to the big waters and frequent portages to the east, and that ease and safety readily translated into beauty.

Table of Contents | Introduction | Rainy Lake Region | Fur Trade Experience | Material Culture | Natural Environment | Bibliography