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The Elusive Mr. Pond: The Soldier, Fur Trader and Explorer who Opened the Northwest
The Elusive Mr. Pond: The Soldier, Fur Trader and Explorer who Opened the Northwest by Barry Gough (D&M $34.95)
The late 18th-and early 19th-century explorer and fur trader Peter Pond fought for the British in the Seven Years War, won a duel, was implicated in two murders but evaded prosecution.
These adventures alone would have been enough to merit a biography but Barry Gough tells a bigger story in The Elusive Mr. Pond: The Soldier, Fur Trader and Explorer who Opened the Northwest (D&M $34.95).
Gough reveals how Pond "opened Canada's and North America's greatest fur preserve, the vast untamed Athabasca,"; and even "lit the way,"; for famed explorer Alexander Mackenzie, but Pond "holds no secure place in American history and no firm place in Canada's either.";
Peter Pond was born in Milford, Connecticut in 1740, of Puritan heritage, the third of 11 children. He received a rudimentary education. Barely literate, he fought in the Seven Years War and was present for the fall of Montreal.
After travelling to the West Indies and marrying, he followed in his father's footsteps and commenced trading for six years in present-day Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
At one point, Pond recorded he was abused "in a Shamefull manner."; Pond challenged the man to a duel. "We met the next morning eairley,"; he writes, "and Discharged Pistels in which the Pore fellow was unfortennt.";
Pond moved to Saskatchewan in the 1770s and took control of an Athabasca River trading venture in 1778. He left for Grand Portage a year later with his furs and took one of 16 shares in the newly-founded North West Company. Not long after, Pond would be accused of murder.
The North West Company sent Jean-Etienne Waden to the Athabasca region to take over the fur trade that Pond had opened. He created a post at Lac la Ronge, about 250 kilometres north of present-day Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. We know Pond joined him there in 1781. Somebody shot Waden in early March of 1782 and he was buried the following morning, in frozen ground.
"An absence of details,"; clouds the shooting, according to Gough, who believes Waden was shot by either his clerk, Toussaint Lesieur, or Pond. Word of the killing travelled east to Waden's widow, Marie-Josephte who pressed charges against the two men. Historians disagree whether Pond ever stood trial.
When the North West Company was reorganized in 1783, Pond refused to take a share and returned for his third winter at the Athabasca Post. In 1784, he returned to Grand Portage and Montreal and began drawing maps of the northwest. One year later, he joined the prestigious Beaver Club and even presented his map and a memorandum to the U.S. Congress.
A former North West Company trader named John Ross was the second alleged murder victim of Pond. Ross had been dropped when the company re-organized in 1783. He joined another firm connected with Alexander Mackenzie: Gregory, MacLeod and Company. "His job was to draw off his rival's traffic,"; and "brazenly, he set up a post under Pond's nose,"; writes Gough.
Competition escalated to a point in 1786 and 1787 that a scuffle with Pond's men broke out, and Ross was shot. News of the murder reached Grand Portage by the summer of 1787, and then travelled east to Montreal. So significant was Ross' death, says Gough, that the North West Company and Gregory, MacLeod and Company united. The incident led to Pond's withdrawal or forced retirement from the fur trade in 1790 at the age of 50.
Alexander Mackenzie once provided this description of Peter Pond:
"Pond stalked into the hall, a pack of dogs at his heels. The gray-haired giant had not shaved in weeks, his buckskins were stained, and he was badly in need of a bath.
But his natural dignity was overwhelming. He ate a large venison steak, a platter of bear-bacon, and a moose liver. He insisted his dogs be given fresh meat, too.";
History books tend to skip over the fact that it was Pond who disclosed to the world the general features of the river system that would one day bear Alexander Mackenzie's name. As Gough puts it, it was Peter Pond who "sprang open the secrets"; of the northwest.
"His greatest gift, however, was to the ungrateful and selfish Alexander Mackenzie. His findings fire the young Scot with the possibilities of discovery in the north and the lure of glory that led him to follow the course of the great river to its mouth in 1789 and overland to the Pacific in 1793.";
In 1789, Pond had presented his findings to the governor of Quebec, findings that became the subject of talks in London the next year. A map of his discoveries was first published in Gentleman's Magazine, a London periodical.
Pond started writing a memoir in 1793 and he died in the town of his birth in 1807.
About two centuries later Barry Gough began the difficult task of piecing together Pond's story when the editors of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography handed him a file and asked him to "take a fresh look at Pond.";
Harold Innis had written a "pioneering biography"; called Peter Pond: Fur Trader and Adventurer in 1930 and Gough had access to Pond's 36-sheet memoir but the trader's early letters on Great Slave Lake had disappeared and the records of the North West Company and its rivals are "furtive and fragmentary.";
Much of his research focused on The English River Book, a surviving journal of the North West Company kept during Pond's latter years in the Athabasca, and edited by Barry Duckworth, as well as maps that Pond drew.
It's not a light read. Gough has declined the seduction of engaging in creative non-fiction to flush out the details, "save where I have speculated on Pond's appearance.";
Pond is mentioned only a few times in chapter 3, "Wilderness Tangles: Robert Rogers, Jonathan Carver, and the Northwest Passage,"; and a few more maps or illustrations could have eased the way for people who aren't scholars. But these are minor points when considering Gough's purpose.
Barry Gough accomplishes what he sets out to do, and he does it in a way that merits our curiosity and time.
It is reassuring to see that a serious work such as this one can be nominated for the Roderick Haig-Brown Prize for best book about B.C.
978-1-77162-039-0
Keven Drews is a full-time journalist who is concurrently pursuing a Master's degree in creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma.
The late 18th-and early 19th-century explorer and fur trader Peter Pond fought for the British in the Seven Years War, won a duel, was implicated in two murders but evaded prosecution.
These adventures alone would have been enough to merit a biography but Barry Gough tells a bigger story in The Elusive Mr. Pond: The Soldier, Fur Trader and Explorer who Opened the Northwest (D&M $34.95).
Gough reveals how Pond "opened Canada's and North America's greatest fur preserve, the vast untamed Athabasca,"; and even "lit the way,"; for famed explorer Alexander Mackenzie, but Pond "holds no secure place in American history and no firm place in Canada's either.";
Peter Pond was born in Milford, Connecticut in 1740, of Puritan heritage, the third of 11 children. He received a rudimentary education. Barely literate, he fought in the Seven Years War and was present for the fall of Montreal.
After travelling to the West Indies and marrying, he followed in his father's footsteps and commenced trading for six years in present-day Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
At one point, Pond recorded he was abused "in a Shamefull manner."; Pond challenged the man to a duel. "We met the next morning eairley,"; he writes, "and Discharged Pistels in which the Pore fellow was unfortennt.";
Pond moved to Saskatchewan in the 1770s and took control of an Athabasca River trading venture in 1778. He left for Grand Portage a year later with his furs and took one of 16 shares in the newly-founded North West Company. Not long after, Pond would be accused of murder.
The North West Company sent Jean-Etienne Waden to the Athabasca region to take over the fur trade that Pond had opened. He created a post at Lac la Ronge, about 250 kilometres north of present-day Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. We know Pond joined him there in 1781. Somebody shot Waden in early March of 1782 and he was buried the following morning, in frozen ground.
"An absence of details,"; clouds the shooting, according to Gough, who believes Waden was shot by either his clerk, Toussaint Lesieur, or Pond. Word of the killing travelled east to Waden's widow, Marie-Josephte who pressed charges against the two men. Historians disagree whether Pond ever stood trial.
When the North West Company was reorganized in 1783, Pond refused to take a share and returned for his third winter at the Athabasca Post. In 1784, he returned to Grand Portage and Montreal and began drawing maps of the northwest. One year later, he joined the prestigious Beaver Club and even presented his map and a memorandum to the U.S. Congress.
A former North West Company trader named John Ross was the second alleged murder victim of Pond. Ross had been dropped when the company re-organized in 1783. He joined another firm connected with Alexander Mackenzie: Gregory, MacLeod and Company. "His job was to draw off his rival's traffic,"; and "brazenly, he set up a post under Pond's nose,"; writes Gough.
Competition escalated to a point in 1786 and 1787 that a scuffle with Pond's men broke out, and Ross was shot. News of the murder reached Grand Portage by the summer of 1787, and then travelled east to Montreal. So significant was Ross' death, says Gough, that the North West Company and Gregory, MacLeod and Company united. The incident led to Pond's withdrawal or forced retirement from the fur trade in 1790 at the age of 50.
Alexander Mackenzie once provided this description of Peter Pond:
"Pond stalked into the hall, a pack of dogs at his heels. The gray-haired giant had not shaved in weeks, his buckskins were stained, and he was badly in need of a bath.
But his natural dignity was overwhelming. He ate a large venison steak, a platter of bear-bacon, and a moose liver. He insisted his dogs be given fresh meat, too.";
History books tend to skip over the fact that it was Pond who disclosed to the world the general features of the river system that would one day bear Alexander Mackenzie's name. As Gough puts it, it was Peter Pond who "sprang open the secrets"; of the northwest.
"His greatest gift, however, was to the ungrateful and selfish Alexander Mackenzie. His findings fire the young Scot with the possibilities of discovery in the north and the lure of glory that led him to follow the course of the great river to its mouth in 1789 and overland to the Pacific in 1793.";
In 1789, Pond had presented his findings to the governor of Quebec, findings that became the subject of talks in London the next year. A map of his discoveries was first published in Gentleman's Magazine, a London periodical.
Pond started writing a memoir in 1793 and he died in the town of his birth in 1807.
About two centuries later Barry Gough began the difficult task of piecing together Pond's story when the editors of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography handed him a file and asked him to "take a fresh look at Pond.";
Harold Innis had written a "pioneering biography"; called Peter Pond: Fur Trader and Adventurer in 1930 and Gough had access to Pond's 36-sheet memoir but the trader's early letters on Great Slave Lake had disappeared and the records of the North West Company and its rivals are "furtive and fragmentary.";
Much of his research focused on The English River Book, a surviving journal of the North West Company kept during Pond's latter years in the Athabasca, and edited by Barry Duckworth, as well as maps that Pond drew.
It's not a light read. Gough has declined the seduction of engaging in creative non-fiction to flush out the details, "save where I have speculated on Pond's appearance.";
Pond is mentioned only a few times in chapter 3, "Wilderness Tangles: Robert Rogers, Jonathan Carver, and the Northwest Passage,"; and a few more maps or illustrations could have eased the way for people who aren't scholars. But these are minor points when considering Gough's purpose.
Barry Gough accomplishes what he sets out to do, and he does it in a way that merits our curiosity and time.
It is reassuring to see that a serious work such as this one can be nominated for the Roderick Haig-Brown Prize for best book about B.C.
978-1-77162-039-0
Keven Drews is a full-time journalist who is concurrently pursuing a Master's degree in creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma.
Submitted on June 16, 2015 in By David.
