Alexander Henry

Alexander Henry the Elder

Alexander Henry (born August 1739 in New Brunswick in the US state of New Jersey , † April 4, 1824 in Montréal ) was a fur trader , but also operated a copper mine, auctioneer and land speculator. Despite several setbacks, he made considerable fortunes and at times challenged the Hudson's Bay Company . He was one of the traders who made Montréal the North American stronghold of the fur trade. His maps made it easier for the British to gain access to western Canada, and his records are of the greatest ethnological value about an era that was otherwise rather sparse in written sources.

When Alexander Henry was born, his homeland was still part of the British Empire . As a young man he fought on the British side against France. In 1760 he led three supply boats during Jeffrey Amherst's voyage along Lake Ontario to Montreal. Henry lived in Albany , later in the state of New York, and took care of the British troops. When Montreal had to be ceded by the French to the British on September 8, 1760, he hurried to Albany and sold some of his goods in Fort William Augustus, east of today's Prescott , then went to Montreal, now British, in January 1761.

After meeting the former fur trader Jean-Baptiste Leduc , he became a fur trader like many of his contemporaries and went west in 1761, to Fort Michilimackinac in Michigan . A few days after Henry Bostwick, who was the first, he was the second to receive a license. Via the Ottawa River - Lake Nipissing - French River route , he reached his destination together with his guide and assistant Étienne-Charles Campion in early September 1761. However, there were Indians allied with France, and the war was not yet over. One of the local war chiefs named Minweweh realized that the Brit who posed as French was a liar. When he was 60 warriors, he threatened Henry, but then Minweweh offered him his friendship. When Charles-Michel Mouet de Langlade handed the fort over to the British, Henry and two other British traders were able to identify themselves.

In the winter of 1761/62 he was adopted by an Anishinabe chief (also called Ojibwa or Chippewa) named Wawatam . In 1762 Henry met the trader Jean-Baptiste Cadot in Sault Ste Marie , whose knowledge, language skills and contacts made trading much easier for him. But in December a fire destroyed the fort and the two men had to make their way through deep snow to Fort Michilimackinac. Henry traveled to the burned down fort again the next year and met Sir Robert Davers, who was hunting on Lake Superior .

In the spring of 1763, the Pontiac uprising began under the leadership of the eponymous chief of the Odawa . On June 2, Anishinabe, led by Madjeckewiss and Minweweh, attacked the British garrison in Michilimackinac. Henry hid in Langlade's house, but was discovered and imprisoned. Wawatam could save his life. Henry lived with his fatherly friend the following summer, autumn, and winter. He hunted with him in western Michigan and collected maple syrup , which provided a significant part of the nutrients. In April 1764, Wawatam and his house group came to Michilimackinac to sell furs. However, some Anishinabe from Saginaw Bay wanted to kill Henry, so Wawatam preferred to allow him to go to Sault Ste Marie. Cadot was able to dissuade Madjeckewiss, who followed him there, from his plan. On the contrary, Henry went with the Anishinabe to a peace conference in Fort Niagara (near Youngstown in New York). Henry, wanting to have his property back, accompanied Colonel John Bradstreet from Niagara to Detroit , to join Captain William Howard's troops that captured Michilimackinac on September 22nd. Henry again obtained a license, formed a company with Cadot and other dealers, and in 1768 joined Alexander Baster to run a copper mining company. In 1770 they tried to operate a sailing ship on the dangerous Upper Lake, but the costs and the small number of orders forced the operators to abandon the project in 1774.

Henry, who never gave up the fur trade, moved northwest with Cadot and four large and twelve small canoes. This society also included Peter Pond and Thomas Frobisher as rowers . They challenged the Hudson's Bay Company . On October 14, the group was at Cumberland House , Saskatchewan . They set up a trading post at Amisk Lake , and in January Henry went to Fort des Prairies (Fort-à-la-Corne) on the Saskatchewan River . He bought some furs from the Assiniboine there; in the spring he went to the Churchill River , where he received an additional 12,000 beaver pelts from Anishinabe, which were believed to be on their way to Hudson Bay . He returned to Beaver Lake (Amisk Lake) again, then forced a Hudson's Bay Company dealer to give him his skins. In July, Henry went to Montreal with thousands of furs. He presented Governor Sir Guy Carleton with a large map of the western territories.

In the autumn of 1776, Henry sailed to England and proposed to his competition to recruit Canadian canoeists for the HBC. With a letter of recommendation from the fur trader Luc de La Corne to his brother Abbé Joseph-Marie de La Corne de Chaptes, he even managed to get an audience with Queen Marie-Antoinette in France . In the spring of the following year he returned to America. With his partner Jean-Baptiste Blondeau he again ran a trading post at Michipicoten . But in autumn he sold it to Jean-Baptiste Nolin. Together with his partner John Chinn he traded in 1778 in Sault Ste Marie, where he worked again with Cadot.

In the autumn of 1778 Henry sailed again to England, again in 1780. On October 18, 1781, on his return from his third trip to England, he sent Sir Joseph Banks a detailed plan for an overland expedition to the Pacific.

Henry now went to Montreal, where he became a dealer, although he occasionally went to Detroit or Michilimackinac on fur matters. In 1784 he planned to move to the USA, but the evacuation was too slow for him, so he stayed in Montreal.

In Montreal he was one of the founders of the Beaver Club , which he and 18 other traders founded in February 1785. Like many of the fur traders, Henry had an Indian wife who gave birth to a number of children. Through her Native American wives, Henry was related to Simon McTavish , founder of the North West Company . At the same time he dealt with John Jacob Astor , who was often a guest in Henry's house on his travels. But Indian women were often reluctant to be seen at the level of society Henry was now living in. On June 11, 1785, he married the widow Julia Calcutt Kittson (1756-1835), whose ancestors came from Limavady and Dublin . They had a daughter named Julia since October 1780. Between 1782 and 1786 there were four sons, namely Alexander, William, Robert and John.

In the spring of 1785, however, Henry suffered considerable losses, probably due to economic changes in the USA and wars between the tribes. Therefore, he went to Michilimackinac again from 1785 to 1790. There he was a representative of the General Company of Lake Superior and the South (or simply the General Society ) in the summer of 1788 at a court that investigated the abuse of licenses.

He encouraged a friend in New York, William Edgar, to enter the fur trade with China. He presented this plan to John Jacob Astor. In the 1790s, the two men promoted the North West Company in shipping trade with China.

Together with John Askin, Henry tried speculative land trade in Ohio , such as the Cuyahoga Purchase . But the Indians refused to present their land claims in the Treaty of Greenville (1795) and Henry's claims and those of his partners were invalidated. Henry complained: “We have lost a fortune of at least one million dollars”.

On September 14, 1792, Henry and his nephew Alexander Henry the Younger acquired a six-year equity interest in the North West Company. Although Henry sold his stake in William Hallowell, he continued to sell furs to England. He suffered serious damage again when one of his uninsured ships was hijacked by a French ship in 1801. To make up for the losses, Henry now hired William Lindsay as a commission dealer and auctioneer , but he was extremely dissatisfied with this activity. In the army he served as a captain and he was justice of the peace from 1794 to 1821 . In 1807 the Beaver Club was reactivated, of which he was a senior member.

In 1809 Henry published his memories of his adventurous life in New York. His Travels and adventures in Canada and the Indian territories, between the years 1760 and 1776 are still considered the best of the early descriptions of Indian life in the West. Henry kept trading and became the chief auctioneer in the Montreal District. Now he worked with his nephew and partner Norman Bethune , who lived in his house at 14 rue Saint-Urbain. Henry died there at the age of 85.

His travelogues, the Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories between the Years 1760 and 1776 , were reprinted in 1901. In it he reports on his trading activities and his adventures. However, his descriptions of the events in and after Michilimackinac are particularly valuable. They describe processes and conditions that otherwise do not appear in the sources.

Web links

• Henry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online