The Invasion of Canada

by Pierre Berton

  He is a man of commanding presence, a massive and genial six-footer with a flaming shock of red hair and a ruddy face to match. Everybody likes him, for there is an easy sociability about Dickson, a dignity, a sense of honour and principle. Men of every colour trust him. He is of a different breed from Elliott, McKee, and Girty. Highly literate, he is also humane. He has tried to teach the Indians not to kill and scalp when they can take prisoners; the greatest warriors, Dickson tells his people, are those who save their captives rather than destroy them. The infrequent explorers who cross the empty continent are attracted by Dickson. Zebulon Pike, the young army officer who has given his name to the famous peak, writes of his open, frank manner and his encyclopaedic knowledge of the country. Another, William Powell, reports that the Indians reverence and worship Dickson, who is “generous to a fault.”

  What is he doing out here in this lonely land? Living often in great squalor, existing for weeks on wild rice, corn, and pemmican or sometimes on nothing but melted snow, going for months without hearing his native tongue, trudging for miles on snowshoes or struggling over long portages with back-breaking loads, he is a man never at rest, like the Cut Head Yanktonais, the roving Sioux with whom he travels, knowing no real home but moving ceaselessly along his string of trading posts like a trapper tending a trapline.

  His two brothers, who have also emigrated from Dumfriesshire, prefer the civilized life. One is a rising barrister and future politician at Niagara, the other a well-to-do merchant and militia colonel at Queenston. But Robert Dickson has spent twenty years in Indian country. Why? Certainly not for profit, for he has little money; the fur trade is a risky business. Nor for glory, for there is no glory. For power? He could have more in the white man’s world. The answer seems to be that he is here, like so many of his countrymen, for the adventure of the frontier, the risks, the dangers, the excitement, and now, perhaps, because after two decades these are his people and this wild, untravelled country is his home. Who else but Dickson has trekked alone across that immense tract – larger than an American state – that lies west of the Mississippi between the Des Moines and the Missouri? He is a man of extraordinary energy and endurance; nowhere else, perhaps, can he feel fulfilled. In the Canadian Northwest, beyond the Great Lakes and the great bay, there are others like him, living among the Indians, exploring the land. Most are Scotsmen.

  Dickson likes the Indians for themselves. He is faithful to his Indian wife, prides himself that he is educating his half-Indian children, is angered by the treatment his people receive from American frontiersmen who see the Indian as a dangerous animal to be exterminated. Added to these grievances against the Americans are the strictures enforced against British traders who still insist on flying the Union Jack over American territory. To evade the recent NonImportation Act, by which the Americans have tried to prevent British traders from bringing goods into the United States, Dickson has been forced to become a smuggler. So incensed was he over this outrage that he knocked down the customs officer at Michilimackinac who tried to make him pay duty on his trade goods. His patriotism needs no fuelling. He is more than delighted to aid his countrymen.

  He loses no time. This very day he dispatches a reply to Brock and sends it to Fort Amherstburg with thirty Menominee warriors. Then, with 130 Sioux, Winnebago, and Menominee, he sets off for St. Joseph’s Island at the western entrance to Lake Huron, arriving as promised on the dot of June 30.

  St. Joseph’s Island, in the words of a young ensign exiled there for satirizing the lieutenant-governor, is “the military Siberia of Upper Canada.” It is so remote that its garrison has trouble getting supplies and pay. Quarters are primitive. Rain, snow, and wind pour through the gaps between the blockhouse logs. The troops have shivered all winter for want of greatcoats. They turn out on parade wearing a short covering tailored from blankets intended for the Indians. These blanket coats are not named for St. Joseph’s but acquire the phonetic name of the American fortress, forty miles away. As Mackinac or “Mackinaw” coats, created out of necessity, they are destined to become fashionable.

  St. Joseph’s unpopularity is understandable. Officers almost on arrival begin to think about requesting a transfer. For the troops, the only way out is through desertion. There have been several attempts: in April, 1805, twelve men took off in the garrison’s boat; in March, 1810, two privates of the 100th Regiment attempted to escape on foot. Their pursuers found them, one half-dead of cold (he eventually lost both legs), the other a corpse. An investigation uncovered a plan for a mutiny involving a quarter of the garrison.

  The fort’s commander, Captain Charles Roberts, a twenty-year veteran of the British Army in India and Ceylon, has been in charge since September, 1811. He has, in effect, been pensioned off for garrison duty along with the newly formed ioth Royal Veteran Battalion, a new idea of Brock’s for making use of men too old to fight. Brock has been too optimistic about the value of these veterans. In Roberts’s words, they are “so debilitated and worn down by unconquerable drunkenness that neither fear of punishment, the love of fame or the honour of their Country can animate them to extraordinary exertions.” There are only forty-four of them defending a crumbling blockhouse armed with four ancient and nearly useless six-pound cannon. Roberts himself is experienced, incisive, and eager for action, but he is also mortally ill with a “great debility of the stomach and the bowels.”

  It is the Indians, then, and the clerks and voyageurs of the North West Company who will form the spearhead of the attack on Michilimackinac. In addition to the members of Dickson’s native force, already chafing for action, there are the neighbouring Ottawa and Chippewa tribesmen under John Askin, Jr., a member of the sprawling Askin family, whose patriarch, John, Sr., lives at Sandwich across the river from Detroit. Askin, whose mother is an Ottawa, is interpreter and keeper of the Indian stores at St. Joseph’s. His people have blown hot and cold on the subject of war with the Americans. There was a time after the Chesapeake incident, when Tecumseh and the Prophet were rallying the tribes, when they were filled with ardour for the old way of life. Sixty, to Askin’s astonishment, even refused a gift of rum. But now that ardour has cooled; no one can keep the Indians in a state of animation for long. That is Roberts’s problem as the days move on without word from Brock. Dickson’s men are becoming restless, but the attack on Mackinac cannot begin without a specific order. If there is going to be a war at all, Roberts wishes it would begin at once.

  BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, June 18, 1812. John Jacob Astor is hurrying toward Washington, his ample rump rising and falling as he posts his horse. He has come in haste from New York to try to stop the damnfool war. No doubt he feels he has the clout to do just that, but here in Baltimore he learns that he is too late. The war is on – a war that Astor needs as much as he needs a case of smallpox.

  He is not a pacifist, merely a businessman. His South West Company straddles the border, the first of the multinational corporations. He has a fortune in trade goods tied up at St. Joseph’s on the Canadian side, another fortune in furs at Mackinac on the American side. What will become of these investments? It has apparently not occurred to Astor that the country might actually go to war. As late as February he wrote, in his semi-literate style: “We are happey in the hope of Peace and have not the Smalest Idia of a war with england.” He is neither pro-British nor anti-British, merely pro-business, pro-profit. He has been in Canada the past winter, tendering successfully on government bills of specie to support the British army, too preoccupied to sense what is coming. Only at the last moment, as the debates in Congress grow shrill, does he become uneasy and so decides to put his personal prestige on the line and gallop out of New York to reason with the politicians. But now, with war declared, the best he can do is to try to mend his imperilled fortunes.

  He determines to get the news as swiftly as possible to his Canadian partners in the South West Company. It does not occur to him that this may be seen as an act approaching treason any more than it occurs to him that his
news will travel faster than the official dispatches. The South West Company is owned jointly by Astor and a group of Montreal fur “pedlars,” which includes the powerful North West Company. Astor engages in a flurry of letter writing to his agents and partners. Thus the British are apprised of the war before the Americans on the frontier, including General Hull en route to Detroit and Lieutenant Hanks at Michilimackinac, realize it. Brock gets the news on June 26 and immediately dispatches a letter to Roberts at St. Joseph’s Island. But a South West Company agent, Toussaint Pothier, based at Amherstburg, has already had a direct communication from Astor. Pothier alerts the garrison, leaps into a canoe, and paddles off at top speed. He beaches his canoe at St. Joseph’s on July 3.

  Roberts puts his men and Indians on the alert. Lewis Crawford, another South West employee, organizes 140 volunteer voyageurs. A twelve-day interval of frustration follows. Brock’s message, which arrives by canoe on July 8, simply advises that the war is on and that Roberts should act accordingly. Roberts requisitions stores and ammunition from the South West Company (the very stores that concern John Jacob Astor, who will, of course, be paid for them), takes over the North West Company’s gunboat Caledonia, impresses her crew, and sends off a message by express canoe to the North West Company’s post at Fort William, asking for reinforcements.

  Just as he is preparing to attack Mackinac, a second express message arrives from Brock on July 12. The impetuous general has had his enthusiasm curbed by his more cautious superior, Sir George Prevost. The Governor General is hoping against hope that the reports of war are premature, that the Americans have come to their senses, that a change of heart, a weakness in resolve, an armistice – anything – is possible. He will not prejudice the slightest chance of peace. Brock orders Roberts to hold still, wait for further orders. The perplexed captain knows he cannot hold the Indians for long – cannot, in fact, afford to. By night they chant war songs, by day they devour his dwindling stock of provisions.

  Then, on July 15, to Roberts’s immense relief, another dispatch arrives from Brock which, though equivocal, allows him to act. The Major-General, with an ear tuned to Sir George’s cautionary instructions and an eye fastened on the deteriorating situation on the border, tells Roberts to “adopt the most prudent measures either of offense or defense which circumstances might point out.” Roberts resolves to make the most of these ambiguous instructions. The following morning at ten, to the skirl of fife and the roll of drum – banners waving, Indians whooping – his polyglot army embarks upon the glassy waters of the lake.

  Off sails Caledonia loaded with two brass cannon, her decks bright with the red tunics of the regulars. Behind her follow ten bateaux or “Mackinac boats” crammed with one hundred and eighty voyageurs, brilliant in their sashes, silk kerchiefs, and capotes. Slipping in and out of the flotilla are seventy painted birchbark canoes containing close to three hundred tribesmen – Dickson, in Indian dress, with his fifty feathered Sioux; their one-time enemies, the Chippewa, with coal-black faces, shaved heads, and bodies daubed with pipe clay; two dozen Winnebago, including the celebrated one-eyed chief, Big Canoe; forty Menominee under their head chief, Tomah; and thirty Ottawa led by Amable Chevalier, the half-white trader whom they recognize as leader.

  Ahead lies Mackinac Island, shaped like an aboriginal arrowhead, almost entirely surrounded by 150-foot cliffs of soft grey limestone. The British abandoned it grudgingly following the Revolution, realizing its strategic importance, which is far more significant than that of St. Joseph’s. Control of Mackinac means control of the western fur trade. No wonder Roberts has no trouble conscripting the Canadian voyageurs!

  They are pulling on their oars like madmen, for they must reach their objective well before dawn. Around midnight, about fifteen miles from the island a birchbark canoe is spotted. Its passenger is an old crony from Mackinac, a Pennsylvania fur trader named Michael Dousman. He has been sent by Hanks, the American commander, to try to find out what is taking place north of the border. Dousman, in spite of the fact that he is an American militia commander, is first and foremost a fur trader, an agent of the South West Company, and an old colleague and occasional partner of the leaders of the voyageurs and Indians. He greets Dickson, Pothier, Askin, and Crawford as old friends and cheerfully tells Roberts everything he needs to know: the strength of the American garrison, its armament (or lack of it), and – most important of all – the fact that no one on the island has been told that America is at war.

  Dousman’s and Roberts’s concerns are identical. In the event of a struggle, they want to protect the civilians on the island from the wrath of the Indians. Dousman agrees to wake the village quietly and to herd everybody into the old distillery at the end of town where they can be guarded by a detachment of regulars. He promises not to warn the garrison.

  At three that morning, the British land at a small beach facing the only break in the escarpment at the north end of the island. With the help of Dousman’s ox team the voyageurs manage to drag the two six-pounders over boulders and through thickets up to the 300-foot crest that overlooks the fort at the southern tip. Meanwhile, Dousman tiptoes from door to door wakening the inhabitants. He silently herds them to safety, then confronts the bewildered Lieutenant Hanks, who has no course but surrender. The first objective in Brock’s carefully programmed campaign to frustrate invasion has been taken without firing a shot.

  “It is a circumstance I believe without precedent,” Roberts reports to Brock. For the Indians’ white leaders he has special praise: their influence with the tribes is such that “as soon as they heard the Capitulation was signed they all returned to their Canoes, and not one drop either of Man’s or Animal’s blood was Spilt.…”

  Askin is convinced that Hanks’s bloodless surrender has prevented an Indian massacre: “It was a fortunate circumstance that the Fort Capitulated without firing a Single Gun, for had they done so, I firmly believe not a Soul of them would have been Saved.… I never saw so determined a Set of people as the Chippawas & Ottawas were. Since the Capitulation they have not drunk a single drop of Liquor, nor even killed a fowl belonging to any person (a thing never known before) for they generally destroy every thing they meet with.”

  Michilimackinac Island

  Dickson’s Indians feel cheated out of a fight and complain to the Red-Haired Man, who keeps them firmly under control, explaining that the Americans cannot be killed once they have surrendered. To mollify them, he turns loose a number of cattle, which the Sacs and Foxes chase about the island until the bellowing animals, their flanks bristling with arrows, hurl themselves into the water.

  They are further mollified by a distribution of blankets, provisions, and guns taken from the American commissariat, which also contains tons of pork and flour, a vast quantity of vinegar, soap, candles, and – to the delight of everybody–357 gallons of high wines and 253 gallons of whiskey, enough to get every man, white and red, so drunk that had an enemy force appeared on the lake, it might easily have recaptured the island.

  These spoils are augmented by a trove of government-owned furs, bringing the total value of captured goods to £10,000, all of it to be distributed, according to custom, among the regulars and volunteers who captured the fort. Every private soldier will eventually receive ten pounds sterling as his share of the prize money, officers considerably more.

  The message to the Indians is clear: America is a weak nation and there are rewards to be gained in fighting for the British. The fall of Mackinac gives the British the entire control of the tribes of the Old Northwest.

  Porter Hanks and his men are sent off to Detroit under parole: they give their word not to take any further part in the war until they are exchanged for British or Canadian soldiers of equivalent rank captured by the Americans – a device used throughout the conflict to obviate the need for large camps of prisoners fed and clothed at the enemy’s expense. The Americans who remain on the island are obliged to take an oath of allegiance to the Crown; otherwise they must return to
American territory. Most find it easy to switch sides. They have done it before; a good many were originally British until the island changed hands in 1796.

  Curiously, one man is allowed to remain without taking the oath. This is Michael Dousman, Hanks’s spy and Roberts’s prisoner. Dousman is given surprising leeway for an enemy, being permitted to make business trips to Montreal on the promise that he will not travel through U.S. territory. He is required to post a bond for this purpose but has no trouble raising the money from two prominent Montreal merchants.

  Dousman’s business in Montreal is almost certainly John Jacob Astor’s business. All of Astor’s furs are now in enemy territory. But the South West Company is still a multinational enterprise, and Astor has friends in high positions in both countries. Through his Montreal partners he manages to get a passport into Canada. In July he is in Montreal making arrangements for his furs to be forwarded from Mackinac Island (which has not yet fallen). These furs are protected in the articles of capitulation; over the next several months, bales of them arrive in Montreal from Mackinac. Astor’s political friends in Washington have alerted the customs inspectors at the border points to pass the furs through, war or no war. Over the next year and a half, the bullet-headed fur magnate manages to get his agents into Canada and to bring shipment after shipment of furs out to the New York market. A single consignment is worth $50,000, and there are many such consignments. For John Jacob Astor and the South West Company, the border has little meaning, and the war is not much more than a nuisance.