PART III THE SITUATIONS
III. 3. b A Touch of Pond: 1777 to
No doubt, the men who organized and funded Frobisher and Henry’s trip to Île-à-la- Crosse were pleased with their investment.279 Still, as rumours about Lake
Athabasca’s bounty continued to grow, these investors wanted someone to cross Methye on their behalf ‒ and quickly, before the HBC managed to do so.280 As
Frobisher and Henry seemed very capable of exploring other areas close and far away from Île-à-la-Crosse, partners deliberated about whom to send. How these investors learned of Peter Pond’s interest in getting to the Athabasca region cannot be confirmed.281 But when those same investors asked Pond if he had any interest in
portaging on their behalf, Pond jumped at the chance and guaranteed that he would bring a Pedlar presence to Lake Athabasca quickly, easily, and in an acceptable fashion.282
279 Innis, Peter Pond, Fur Trader and Adventurer (Toronto: Irwin and Gordon, 1930), 79 and for even more details about how the success created an actual “trading Post” see Innis, Peter Pond, 80.
280 Innis, Peter Pond, 82.
281 “Peter Pond’s Search for Fortune: Peter Pond (c.1739-1807),” Pathfinders and Passageways: The Exploration of Canada, Library and Archives Canada, accessed July 10, 2015. http://epe.lac- bac.gc.ca/100/206/301/lac-bac/explorers/www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/explorers/h24-1620- e.html. Some other men might have mentioned an interest in exploring to Athabasca, such as Louis Primeau. Pond claimed, however, Primeau would not have crossed the portage. B.42/b/11 (1753-1780) Fort Churchill, Manitoba Correspondence Books, HBCA, n.d., 7.
Pond believed he knew full well why his two predecessors had not completed this task themselves. For one thing, Pond concluded, Frobisher and Henry did not prepare themselves well enough for Île-à-la-Crosse before they arrived at the village. As a result, they needed more time to establish trusting relationships when they got there and they ran out of time to learn about and then cross Methye. As a way to prevent this mistake himself, Pond decided he would stop at Cumberland House, and get information about Methye from Hearne or his successor without any HBC worker realizing Pond’s actual reason for such chatter. Second, thought Pond, Frobisher and Henry did not establish useful relationships when they were in Île-à- la-Crosse. Their claim of good results was therefore an exaggeration. Pond would, he believed, be better from the get-go and show how Pedlars could achieve much more.283
Pond did stop at Cumberland House and he did apparently learn about Methye. While there, he believed that he learned information about Methye Frobisher and Henry should have ascertained.284 With such apparent resounding success even
before getting there, Pond was adamant that the Pedlars’ failure to get to Athabasca was self-induced, and sloppily so.285 With all this self-confidence about his own
283 Barry Gough, The Elusive Mr. Pond: The Soldier, Fur Trader and Explorer who Opened the Northwest (Madiera Park, BC: Douglas and McIntyre, 2014), 84-85, 87 and 91.
284 In 1776, Pond had in fact visited Hearne soon after Frobisher and Henry continued on past Cumberland House. B.49/a/11 (1774-1784) Cumberland House, Saskatchewan Post Journals, HBCA, n.d., 81. Various views exist about how this interaction went. Morton, A History of the Canadian West, 303.
285 By discussing conditions with locals, Pond became aware Île-à-la-Crosse was used by “annual brigades” as their starting point for travelling across Methye. He claimed his predecessors did not understand this point. Ross, Beyond the River and the Bay, 116.
ability to achieve what his predecessors did not,286 Pond reached Île-à-la-Crosse
beaming with ambition, a capacity to meet strangers and form bonds with them, and a great physical dexterity that would help him achieve much acclaim for himself personally and his employer.287
But a closer look at Pond’s specific activities around Île-à-la-Crosse shows something else. With a tendency toward moodiness, over-confidence in his own abilities, and an under-confidence in Indigenous perspectives, Pond became the Pedlar who conquered Methye but at the same time the Pedlar who jeopardized his company’s entire presence in the North West. 288
286 Frederick J. Alcock, “Past and Present Trade Routes to the Canadian Northwest,” 65, Innis, “A Note on Recent Publications in the Fur Trade,” 571. In 1777 Pond arrived at Cumberland House on May 26 with five large canoes loaded with goods. Apparently Hearne wrote: "He is going to concentrate into the Athopuskow country as far as he can possibly go and there to stay this next winter."
287 Harold Innis wrote a helpful biography about Pond. See Harold A. Innis, Peter Pond, Fur
Trader and Adventurer. A. S. Morton also started work on a biography, but the document only appeared in manuscript form. A. S. Morton, Peter Pond (Ottawa: Library and Archives Canada, 1930). See also generally David Chaplen, Freshwater Passages: The Trade and Travels of Peter Pond. (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 2014).
288 Sir Alexander Mackenzie’s A General History of the Fur Trade from Canada to the North West (London: publisher unknown, 1801) pinpoint is probably accurate since Mackenzie gained this information during the winter of 1777-8 with Pond in Lake Athabasca territory. Mackenzie’s view reads: "The success of this gentleman (Thomas Frobisher in 1777 at Isle à la Crosse) induced others to follow his example and in the spring of the year 1778 some of the traders on the Saskatchiwine river finding they had a quantity of goods to spare agreed to put them into a joint stock, and gave the charge and management of them to Peter Pond, who, in four canoes, was directed to enter the English river, so called by Mr. Frobisher, to follow his track, and proceed still further; if possible to Athabaska, a country hitherto unknown but from an Indian report. In this enterprise he at length succeeded, and pitched his tent on the banks of the Elk River by him erroneously called the Athabaska River “about forty miles from the lake of the Hills into which it empties itself."
During Pond’s first attempt to portage, he came across “plateau after plateau,” and stated he had “little awareness of this fact.”289 This annoyance shows he had actually
not consulted Frobisher and Henry’s notes as he claimed, since both men had recorded this difficult feature of the portage. Moreover, it suggests Pond did not make any better contacts with locals that might have helped him overcome this challenge. Upon arrival back in the village, Pond blamed his failure upon his guides. Locals soon learned about how he did not succeed, and also got word of how the men who accompanied Pond either quit midway or were fired by the Pedlar himself.290 Despite his bombast, it was an inauspicious beginning.
A few weeks after the initial debacle, Pond attempted a second portage. During this effort, Pond used the maps he had made on his first attempt. Much to his frustration, Pond found them nearly useless. Showing little cartographic appreciation for how Methye changed and what natural fixtures stayed the same,291 Pond regularly found
himself lost and without much sympathy from a new set of guides for this second
289 Ross, Beyond the River and the Bay, 116. See also Lawrence J. Burpee, The Search for the Western Sea: The Story of the Exploration of North-Western Canada (London: Alston Rivers, 1908), 1: xxvii–xxix, 317–26; D.N. Sprague and R.P. Frye, The Genealogy of the First Métis Nation: The Development and Dispersal of the Red River Settlement, 1820–1900 (Winnipeg: Pemmican, 1983), 19.
290Edward J. McCullough and Michael Maccagno, Lac La Biche and the Early Fur Traders (Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, 1991), 23.
291 On this point of mapmaking, Gough considers criticisms of Pond often “harsh and ahistorical” and his maps instead “tributes to his time”. However, if Pond’s contemporaries succeeded to know more about Methye than Pond did in early stages, I consider criticism of Pond less historically inaccurate than Gough suggests. See Gough, The Elusive Mr. Pond, 5.
trip. No one was fired, and no records describe how any guides quit, but he returned again to the village without being able to say he had crossed Methye.292
Eventually, Pond did make it across the portage,293 but not until the late autumn of
1778, and it was more like a string of many short and exhausting junkets than one continuous trip.294 With his refusal to accept local guidance early and fully,295 it
should come as no surprise that Pond’s attitudes and actions damaged the Pedlars’ reputation amongst original inhabitants with links to Île-à-la-Crosse.296 Although
Pond wrote in his 1779 report that Henry was correct about Île-à-la-Crosse’s
292Pond seemed less aware of the potential “hazards of early ice in the rivers and shortages of food” that could happen easily if underprepared at the start of a trip. See Marjorie Wilkins Campbell, The North West Company (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1957), 8.
293 At the most northern end of the portage, a location became given the name “Portage La Loche” starting around 1778. Pond frequented this spot more than Île-à-la-Crosse after he crossed Methye. See Ernest Voorhis, Historic Forts and Trading Posts of the French Regime and of the English Fur Trading Companies (Ottawa: Department of the Interior, 1930).
294 Morton, Peter Pond, 303, 335. In Henry R. Wagner, Peter Pond: Fur Trader and Explorer (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Library Western Historical Series, 1955), 37-38, Dorchester's letter regarding Pond explains: "Quebec 23rd November 1790....Mr. Pond proposing some advantage to himself from publishing it hereafter with a detailed account, had requested care may be taken to prevent its getting into other hands...I am told he has quitted this province somewhat dissatisfied with the Trading Company.” This point is well detailed in Ken G. Brealey’s “Mapping Them ‘Out’: Euro-Canadian Cartography and the Appropriation of the Nuxalk and Ts’ilhqot’in First Nations’ Territories, 1793-1916,” The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien 39, no. 2 (Summer 1995), 140-156. Perhaps one of the most inaccurate portrayals of Pond’s mistakes appears in Ronald Searle and Kidare Dobbs’ The Great Fur Opera: Annals of the Hudson Bay Company, 1670-1970 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1970), especially at 93. See also Library and Archives Canada, “Peter Pond’s Search for Fortune: Peter Pond (c.1739-1807)” accessed July 10, 2015, http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/206/301/lac-bac/explorers/www.collectionscanada. gc.ca/explorers/h24-1620-e.html.
295 J. G. MacGregor, Peter Fidler, Canada’s Forgotten Surveyor, 1769-1822 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1966), 23, Brealey,”Mapping them ‘Out’” 99, and Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton, The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000 (New York: Penguin, 2005), xvii and 52.
296 Some historians also contend Pond must have taken credit for certain maps likely created by
the Frobisher brothers which damaged his reputation within the NWC. See Lawrence Burpee, The Search for the Western Sea, 316. See the modern remarks that accompany, MIKAN no. 4125136 (March 1, 1785) “Copy of a Map presented to the Congress by Peter Pond, a native of Milford in the State of Connecticut,” series 700 – General maps, Northwest Territories: Provinces and districts R12567-186-3-E, Library and Archives Canada, accessed July 10, 2015.
http://collectionscanada.gc.ca/ourl/res.php?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&url_tim=2015-07-
15T18%3A55%3A42Z&url_ctx_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Actx&rft_dat=4125136 &rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fcollectionscanada.gc.ca%3Apam&lang=eng.
multicultural and peaceful state,297 and he agreed with his predecessors’
recommendation that the village be the Pedlars’ headquarters in Rupert’s Land,298
he ultimately did not successfully reinforce the work Frobisher and Henry had done to create bonds of trust amongst those who could ensure the Pedlars’ survival in the Île-à-la-Crosse fur trade.299 Thanks to Pond, and because he made the visitors’
reputation worse, the Pedlars who followed him would need to work even harder than Henry and Frobisher had done to (re)establish trusting relationships that would solidify trading ties.
As Pond continued his sojourn in the North West, his trip’s investors mulled over their options. Should they cease having any interest in the village unless or until the HBC reached Île-à-la-Crosse? Were they right to presume the village was indeed a key location? In 1783 when the Pedlars finally announced their official birth as a business called the “North West Company,” they determined a permanent presence at Île-à-la-Crosse was an immediate necessity.300 But because of Pond’s arrogance,
the NWC had to strategize even more than would have been necessary before his activities there. The company needed someone entrepreneurial, diplomatic, and capable of determining exactly how deep Pond’s damage had actually gone. With all these serious concerns in mind, the NWC hired the charismatic Patrick Small to
297 MacGregor, Peter Fidler, Canada’s Forgotten Surveyor, 1769-1822, 28. 298 R. Jarvenpa, “Intergroup Behavior and Imagery,” 285.
299 Residents were disappointed in Pond when he refused to help them organize responses to small pox in 1779 and 1781 – particularly because of their belief Pond’s efforts likely contributed to the disease’s spread. Yerbury, “The Post-Contact Chipewyan,” 250.
300Some evidence suggests the name “NWC” appeared earlier in 1779. Whether the coalition of men that formed that year can be described as an actual “company” depends upon a
venture to Île-à-la-Crosse, live there permanently, and re-build the trust Pond had destroyed.301 With his own reputation as an intelligent politico and profiteer at
stake, Small was eager to show his employer that he was perfect for the job.302