FOUR PHYSICIAN-EXPLORERS OF THE FUR TRADE DAYS By J. MONROE THORINGTON, M.D. PHILADELPHIA THE four physicians, whose lives Fraser. After Waterloo, David took up I are here recounted, spanned praetice in Paris, while John, following I almost a century of the fur his training in Scotland, returned to ■ J*.. trade in Canada, roughly the Canada and became a partner in the period between the arrival of Lewis and North-West Company. We find him at Clark at the mouth of the Columbia Fort Duncan, Lake Nepigon, in 1807; River (1805) and the completion of the at Sturgeon Lake in the winter 1807- Canadian Pacific railroad (1885). 08, and at the capture of Fort William The successive thrusts of exploration in 1816. through the valley of the St. Lawrence The Hudson’s Bay Company ab- were largely concerned with a search sorbed the North-West Company in for a Northwest Passage to the spice 1821, thereby obtaining a monopoly islands of Asia, and were the forerun- of the fur trade. At this time John ners of Verendrye’s sighting of the McLoughlin was in charge of Fort Wil- Rockies in 1738, of Hearne’s reaching liam on Lake Superior. He reached the Coppermine delta in 1771, and of Rainy Lake House in 1823, en route to Alexander Mackenzie’s journey to Bella the Columbia district of which he was Coola inlet and the Pacific in 1793. made supervisor in 1824, and where he John Jacob Astor’s ship, the Ton- ruled during the critical times of the quin, established the Astoria post on Oregon country, 1824-46. the Columbia in 1811, shortly before There were no American traders David Thompson, geographer and ex- regularly established west of the Rocky plorer of the North-West Company de- Mountains when McLoughlin arrived scended that river from its source. The at Fort George. It was the policy of the war of 1812 left the Astoria post in Company to keep them out of Oregon. British hands, when it was renamed In 1827 the agreement between the Fort George. Our four physicians took United States and Great Britain for part in the Canadian Northwest’s sub- joint occupation of the territory was sequent years. renewed, and McLoughlin was able dr . joh n mc Loughl in was the eldest to give Americans material assistance, son of an Irishman of the same name, although discouraging their settling who met an early death by drowning, north of the Columbia River. When, and of Angelique Fraser, a Canadian of however, he became certain that the Scottish parents. He was born in the Forty-ninth Parallel was to become the parish of Riviere du Loup, province of boundary, he removed the company’s Quebec, on October 19, 1784. John and headquarters to Fort Vancouver. his younger brother, David, were edu- McLoughlin believed in law and cated in medicine by their grandfather order, and protected Americans and British alike against Indian depreda- Roman Catholic churchyard at Oregon tions. When he first came to Oregon, City. the Company's men were obliged to dr . Joh n rowan d , the third in suc- cession to bear this name, was born at Edmonton, Alberta, then known as Fort Augustus. His grandfather, Dr. John Rowand, had been a physician in Mon- treal. His father, John Rowand (2nd) entered the service of the North-West Company about 1800, being listed as a clerk on the upper Saskatchewan in 1804. David Thompson found him at Fort Augustus in 1808. and speaks of his house on Pembina River, in 1812. I he subject of this notice, John travel in large armed parties, a danger which his influence soon made a thing of the past. There were no Indian wars during his administration. To stop the sale of liquor to the Indians, he placed the whites under similar restriction. In 1846 he withdrew from the Com- pany and retired to Oregon City, be- coming a United States citizen in 1849. Like other traders he married a half- breed Indian, the widow of Alexander McKay of the Astoria party, by whom Rowand (3rd), was sent back to Lachine he had four children. He was always to be educated. He graduated in med- known as “Doctor McLoughlin,’’ al- icine at Edinburgh, and was in London though the Indians called him “White- and Paris. Headed Eagle’’ on account of his long When Sir George Simpson, governor white hair. He was a man of command- of the Hudson’s Bay Company, under- ing presence, six feet four inches tall; took his overland journey around the his justice and dignity merited the title world in 1841, Dr. Rowand rode from of “Father of Oregon.’’ He died on Sep- Edmonton to Red River to meet him, tember 3, 1857, and was buried in the being attached to the expedition as physician. Between Fort Pitt and Ed- the first white men on record to visit monton “Mr. Rowand’s horse, stepping that place. into a badger hole, gave him a very After fording Bow River (South Sas- katchewan) they continued to the Con- tinental Divide, traversing the pass now bearing Simpson’s name. “We were much surrounded by peaks and crags on -whose summits lay perpetual snow. About seven hours of hard work brought us to the height of the land, the hinge, as it were, between the east- ern and western waters. We breakfasted on the level isthmus, which did not ex- ceed fourteen paces in width, filling our kettles for this lonely meal at once from the crystal sources of the Columbia and the Saskatchewan.’’ They blazed a tree on the summit of the pass and regis- tered their initials and the year: G S J R 1841. More than half a century later an outfitter, turning over a fallen, crumbling tree trunk, found and saved this inscription. It may still be seen in James Brewster’s house at Banff. Arriving at Fort Vancouver late in August, they missed seeing Dr. McLoughlin, who was then absent at Puget Sound. They had crossed North America in twelve weeks of actual trav- heavy fall, by which his face was much eling. Dr. Rowand accompanied Sir cut and by which, as appeared some George Simpson to Fort Stikine, to Cali- months afterwards, his breast bone was fornia, and Honolulu, returning thence broken.’’ However, with the fortitude in the Hudson’s Bay ship Vancouver to resume his post. He settled in Quebec which characterized the times, Dr. in 1847, and died there in February, Rowand continued with the party 1889. when it left Edmonton -westbound with forty-five horses on July 28. dr . ja mes hecto r was born in Edin- “In the spring of the year,’’ one reads burgh on March 16, 1834. His father in Simpson’s narrative, “Mr. Rowand was a conveyancer of note and Writer had secured as guide to conduct us as to the Signet, a friend of Walter Scott, far as the Rocky Mountains, a man of for whom he transcribed and translated the name of Peechee, who was a Chief old manuscripts. His mother was a of the Mountain Crees.’’ From Edmon- niece of Dr. Barclay, founder of the ton they traveled past Gull Lake, Royal College of Surgeons’ Museum of crossed Red Deer River and passed Edinburgh, and teacher of many re- through the present site of Banff, being nowned surgeons and anatomists. Hector, being early attracted to through which the Canadian Pacific chemistry and natural science, left his railroad was later built. father’s office and matriculated in 1852 I’he name commemorates a mishap at Edinburgh University, the medical course being at the time the only ap- proach to scientific study. As there was no chair of geology in the university, he took extra-academic lectures under Macadam and others, supplementing this by field knowledge obtained in hol- iday walks through Ireland and the Scotch Highlands. He received his de- gree of m.d . in 1856, his graduation thesis on “The Antiquity of Man-' bear- ing a title which Lyell later chose for his famous book. For a short time after taking his de- gree Hector acted as assistant to Sir J. Y. Simpson, but this was the only definitely medical position he ever held. Sir Roderick Murchison. Director- General of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, selected Hector in March, 1857, to be surgeon and geol- ogist to the expedition, led by Captain John Palliser, to the western part of which nearly cost the doctor his life. British North America “to obtain cor- “One of our pack-horses,” he wrote, “to rect information with respect to the escape the fallen timber, plunged into facilities or difficulties of communica- the stream, luckily where it formed an tion between the Canadas and the eddy, but the banks were so steep that country west of Lake Superior and we had great difficulty in getting him north of the 49th Parallel.’’ out. In attempting to recatch my own The greater part of the scientific horse, which had strayed off while we work fell upon Dr. Hector. Besides were engaged with the one in the river, sharing the arduous work of the expe- he kicked me in the chest, but I had dition as a whole, he was also accus- luckily got close to him before he struck tomed, when the party went into winter out, so that I did not get the full force quarters, to take a man or two and, with of the blow. However, it knocked me Indian guides, to make long journeys down and rendered me senseless for on snowshoes and with dogsleds, under some time.” almost arctic conditions.