Alexander Mackenzie (explorer)

Normand MacLeod, born on the Isle of Skye, in Scotland, about 1731, had at age sixteen joined the Forty Second Highlanders (Black Watch) Regiment, and had gone with his unit to the Netherlands and what is now Belgium.

By 1756, he was an ensign as the regiment went to New York to fight in the French and Indian War.

In 1760, Macleod had won promotion to captain lieutenant and transferred to the Eighteenth Regiment.

The following year, Macleod attended the Niagara Conference held between Sir William Johnson and Pontiac.

Macleod had heard a rumor that Pontiac was being paid ten shillings a day by the British and this was creating resentment among other natives which would "end in his ruin." (O'Toole, Fintan. White Savage: William Johnson and the Invention of America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005, p. 266)

Soon after this Macleod and one hundred and twenty men took food and supplies to Detroit, and when he returned he took command of the British fort at Fort Oswego, New York, on Lake Erie, where his title was "Commissary of Indian Affairs”.

He continued working as an agent between Johnson and the Michigan natives for several years.

Macleod had sent Johnson a bottle of oil from a lake which the natives thought had curative powers; he had negotiated a peace between the Seneca and Mississauga tribes.

In 1774, MacLeod had moved to Detroit, where he set up a general store with nineteen investors.

Three years later he was "town major," a military form of mayor.

In 1778, he had accompanied Henry Hamilton on the attack of Vincennes, Indiana, but went back to Detroit before Vincennes was captured by George Rogers Clark in February 1779.

By 1782, Macleod was still in Detroit and was father to one child.

He bought interest in a fur trading company with John Gregory and called their company Gregory, Macleod and Co.

Alexander Mackenzie, by invitation, becomes a partner in 1785.

Peter Pangman and John Ross become partners as well, and Alexander's cousin, Roderick Mackenzie, serves as apprentice clerk.

Alexander Mackenzie, born at Luskentyre House in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, was the third of the four children born to Kenneth 'Corc' Mackenzie (1731–1780) and his wife Isabella MacIver, from another prominent mercantile family in Stornoway.

When only fourteen years old, Mackenzie's father served as an ensign to protect Stornoway during the Jacobite rising of 1745.

He later became a merchant and held the tack of Melbost; his grandfather being a younger brother of Murdoch Mackenzie, 6th Laird of Fairburn.

Educated at the same school as Colin Mackenzie, Alexander had sailed to New York City with his father to join an uncle, John Mackenzie, in 1774, after his mother died in Scotland.

In 1776, during the American War of Independence, his father and uncle had resumed their military duties and joined the King's Royal Regiment of New York as lieutenants.

By 1778, for his safety as a son of loyalists, young Mackenzie had either been sent, or was accompanied by two aunts, to Montreal.

By 1779 (a year before his father's death at Carleton Island), Mackenzie had secured an apprenticeship with Finlay, Gregory & Co., one of the most influential fur trading companies at Montreal, which is later administered by Archibald Norman McLeod.

The North West Company had expanded in 1787 to include Gregory, McLeod and Company, and in 1788 sends Alexander Mackenzie to Alberta, where he is one of the founders of Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca.

On behalf of the North West Company Mackenzie travelled to Lake Athabasca where, in 1788, he was one of the founders of Fort Chipewyan.

Mackenzie had been sent to replace Peter Pond, a partner in the North West Company.

From Pond, he had earned that the First Nations people understand that the local rivers flowe to the northwest.

Acting on this information, he sets out by canoe on the river known to the local Dene First Nations people as the Dehcho, (Mackenzie River) on July 10, 1789, following it to its mouth in the hope of finding the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean.

As he ends up reaching the Arctic Ocean on July 14, it is conjectured that he named the river "Disappointment River" as it did not lead to Cook Inlet in Alaska as he had expected.

The river will later be renamed the Mackenzie River in his honor.

Mackenzie returns to Fort Chipewyan by September 12, having covered nearly three thousand miles (forty-eight hundred kilometers) by canoe in one hundred and two days.

Simon Fraser, the son of a Loyalist who died in prison during the American Revolution and a resident of Canada since the war, joins the North West Company in 1792.

Born on May 20, 1776 in the village of Mapletown, Hoosick Township, New York, Simon is the eighth and youngest child of Simon Fraser, descended from the Frasers of Culbokie and Guisachan, a cadet branch of the Frasers of Lovat, and Isabella Grant, daughter of the Laird of Daldregan.

His parents had immigrated from Scotland in 1773.

His father, not to be confused with the general of the same name, was a loyalist captain who died in prison after being captured during the Battle of Bennington.

Fraser's mother had moved the family to Canada after the war ended, settling near present-day Cadillac, Quebec.

Fraser had moved to Montreal at the age of fourteen, and, after receiving some additional schooling, had been apprenticed to the North West Company two years later.

Two of Fraser’s uncles are active in the fur trade, which is a major part of the commercial life of Montreal at this time, and the Frasers are related to Simon McTavish, a leading figure in the North West Company.

Between 1792 and 1805, it would appear that Fraser has spent most of his time working in the company's Athabasca Department.

While little is known of his activities during this time, Fraser seems to have done well, as he was made a full partner of the company in 1801 at the relatively young age of twenty-four.

The North West Company had commissioned Alexander Mackenzie in 1789 to find a navigable river route to the Pacific Ocean.

The route he discovered in 1793—ascending the West Road River and descending the Bella Coola River—had opened up new sources of fur but proved to be too difficult to be practicable as a trading route to the Pacific.

Fraser is thus given responsibility for extending operations to the country west of the Rockies in 1805.

Mackenzie’s expeditions had been primarily reconnaissance trips, while Fraser’s assignment, by contrast, reflects a definite decision to build trading posts and take possession of the country, as well as to explore travel routes.

Fraser begins ascending the Peace River in the autumn of 1805, establishing the trading post of Rocky Mountain Portage House (present day Hudson's Hope) just east of the Peace River Canyon of the Rocky Mountains.

John Jacob Astor, with the permission of President Thomas Jefferson, establishes the American Fur Company on April 6, 1808.

Astor had immigrated to New York City at twenty-one, and after working at his brother's butcher shop for a time, had began to purchase raw hides from natives, prepare them himself, then resell them in London and elsewhere at great profit.

He had opened his own fur goods shop in New York in the late 1780s and served also as the New York agent of his uncle's musical instrument business.

Astor had taken advantage of the Jay Treaty between Great Britain and the United States in 1794, which opened new markets in Canada and the Great Lakes region.

In London, Astor had at once made a contract with the North West Company, who from Montreal rivaled the trade interests of the Hudson's Bay Company, also based in London.

Astor had imported furs from Montreal to New York and shipped them to Europe.

By 1800, he had amassed almost a quarter of a million dollars, and had become one of the leading figures in the fur trade.

His agents work throughout the western areas and are ruthless in competition.

Astor had joined in on two Northwest Company voyages charted to sail to the Qing Dynasty during the 1790s, and in 1800, following the example of the Empress of China, the first American trading vessel to China, Astor traded furs, teas, and sandalwood with Canton in China.

These were done with American vessels to bypass British commercial law, which at the time prohibited any company besides the British East India Company from commerce with China.

These had been financially profitable ventures, enough so that Astor had offered to become the NWC agent for all shipments of furs destined for Guangzhou.

However, Alexander Mackenzie denies his offer, making Astor consider financing voyages to China without the Canadian traders.

Now a fully independent international merchant, Astor begins to fund trading voyages to China along with several partners.

Cargoes often amount to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in otter and beaver pelts, in addition to needed specie.

Astor had ordered the construction of the Beaver in 1803 to expand his trade fleet.

By 1808, Astor having established an international trading empire, has begun to court diplomatic and government support of a fur trading venture to be established on the Pacific shore in this same year.

In correspondence with the Mayor of New York City, DeWitt Clinton, Astor had explained that a state charter would offer a particular level of formal sanction needed in the venture.

He in turn had requested the Federal government grant his operations military support to defend against British citizens and control these new markets.

The bold proposals had not been received official sanction however, making Astor to continue to promote his ideas among prominent governmental agents.

Astor had given a detailed plan of his mercantile considerations to President Jefferson, declaring that they had been designed to bring about American commercial dominance over North American fur trade.

This is to be accomplished through a chain of interconnected trading posts that will stretch across the Great Lakes, the Missouri River basin, the Rocky Mountains, and ending with a fort at the entrance of the Columbia River.

Once the pelts are collected from the extensive outposts they are to be loaded and shipped aboard ships owned by Astor to the Chinese port of Guangzhou, where furs are sold for impressive profits.

Chinese products like porcelain, nankeens, and tea are to be purchased; with the ships then to cross the Indian Ocean and head for European and American markets to sell the Chinese wares.

The U.S. Embargo Act in 1807, however, had disrupted Astor's import/export business because it had closed off trade with Canada.

Sir Alexander Mackenzie, after retiring from the North West Company, had served in the Legislature of Lower Canada from 1804 to 1808.

In 1812, he had married and returned to Scotland, where he retires and writes an account of his travels called Voyage from Montreal on the River St. Lawrence, through the Continent of North America, to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans, in the Years 1789 and 1793.

Thomas Douglas, 5th earl of Selkirk, had in 1811 obtained from the Hudson’s Bay Company an extensive grant of land in Canada’s valley of the Red River of the North (the area around present-day Winnipeg, Manitoba).

Selkirk had become interested in the concept of settling the area after reading Alexander Mackenzie's 1801 book on his adventures in what is today the west of Canada.

At the time, social upheaval in Scotland due to the introduction of sheep farming and the ensuing Highland and Lowland Clearances have left a number of Scots destitute.

In purchasing a controlling interest in the Hudson's Bay Company and setting up the land grant, his objective is to gain control of the area to take control of the West from the company's rival, the Montreal-based North West Company.

Selkirk had sent out a small group of Scots to the area in 1811, but they were forced to pause for the winter in York Factory.

When they finally arrived in 1812, they built Fort Douglas, but by the time it was done, the growing season was over.

When farming started the next spring, the results were less than expected.

In 1814, Miles MacDonell, Governor of the Red River Colony, had issued the Pemmican Proclamation, which prohibited the export of pemmican from the colony for the next year.

This may have been to ensure food for the colony, or a business move to cut off the Nor'Westers.

Either way, the move touched off the Pemmican War.

The Nor'Westers, who rely on pemmican supplied to them by local Métis, were so upset that they destroy Fort Douglas and burned down all the buildings around it.

The fort was later rebuilt and relations settled down for a time.

Later in 1815, after several conflicts and apparently suffering from "severe emotional instability", MacDonell had resigned as governor of the Red River Colony.

Selkirk, hearing of the problems, has sent out a new governor, Robert Semple, an American businessman with no previous experience in the fur trade.

In 1816, a band of mostly Métis but including some French-Canadians, English, and Native American employees, led by Cuthbert Grant and working for the North West Company, seizes a supply of Hudson's Bay Company pemmican (that was stolen from the Métis) and are traveling to a meeting with traders of the North West Company to whom they intend to sell it.

They are met by Semple and a group of HBC men and settlers south of Fort Douglas along the Red River at a location known to the English as Seven Oaks, or la Grenouillière (Frog Plain) by the Métis.

The North West Company sends a French-Canadian, François-Firmin Boucher, to speak to Semple's men.

He and Semple argue, and a gunfight ensues when the English try to arrest Boucher and seize his horse.

Semple and his men have no chance against the Métis, who are skilled sharpshooters and outnumber Semple's forces by nearly three to one.

The Métis repulse the attack, killing twenty-one men, including Governor Semple.

Although early reports will state that the Métis had fired the first shot and begun the fray, Royal Commissioner W.B. Coltman will determine with "next to certainty" that one of Semple's men had fired first. (The Metis: Memorable Events and Memorable Personalities, by George and Terry Goulet, published 2006)