22 Mackenzie’s Voyages

‘The consequence was that the traders ruined one another,
the Indians were corrupted, and the English character was
brought into contempt. Mackenzie says: “With drinking,
carousing, and quarrelling with the Indians along the route
and among themselves, they seldom reached their winter
quarters, except by dragging their property on sledges, when
the navigation was closed up by the frost. Che object then of
each was to injure his rival traders in the opinion of the
natives as much as was in their power, by misrepresentation
and by presents, for which the agents employed were pecu-
liarly calculated. Towards the spring the rival parties found
it absolutely necessary to join and make one common stock
of what remained for the purpose of trading with the natives,
who could entertain no respect for persons who had conducted
themselves with so much irregularity and deceit.

“They were in a continual state of alarm and were even
frequently stopped to pay tribute on their route into the
country, though they had adopted the plan of travelling
together in parties of thirty or forty canoes and keeping their
men armed, which sometimes indeed proved necessary for
their defence.”

It was finally recognised that the trade should be regulated
by agreement among themselves. In 1771, therefore, nine
rival interests combined for one year. The results were so
satisfactory that the arrangement was continued for another
three years, but was renounced at the end of two years,
when violent competition again held sway, which con-
tinued until the murder of Ross and Wadin by Peter Pond,
and the poisoning of an Indian, and a threatened uprising,
once again brought the parties to their senses. In the winter
of 1783-4 they entered into a partnership under the name of
the North-West Company. Mackenzie was at this time
still in the counting-house of Gregory and MacLeod. The