Concerning John Long, but little is known further than what he himself relates in his book. Coming from England to North America in 1768, he passed nearly twenty years upon this continent, chiefly consorting with the Indians — learning their languages, wearing their garb, living their life. An expert woodsman, fur-trader, and explorer, he penetrated into regions north and west of Canada, that are still practically unexplored.
At first an articled clerk in Canada, he later was apprenticed to a Montreal fur merchant. Having displayed an adaptability for Indian philology, Long was sent to the neighboring mission colony at Caughnawaga, where he remained seven years, becoming an adept in the arts and occupations of savage life. His term of service having expired, the excitements of army life attracted him. The American Revolution had just broken out, and volunteering for service with the British he was detailed to lead Indian parties to hang upon the flanks of the invading American army — one of these expeditions captured the famous Ethan Allen. After a year and a half of this service, in which — dressed as an Indian, and scalping his prisoners in their fashion — he could scarcely be distinguished from a brave, Governor Guy Carleton appointed Long a midshipman in the navy. But when his vessel sailed for England, he left the sea in order to enter upon the more lucrative business of fur-trading.
In May, 1777, Long left Montreal for Mackinac, engaged as a bourgeois to lead a party of voyageurs into the far Northwest, and trade with the Indians on their own hunting grounds. The independent Canadian merchants of this period were endeavoring to maintain the old French connections with the Indians of the "upper country," and at the same time to undermine the trade of the Hudson's Bay Company, by intercepting the natives before they reached the posts of the latter. Long was assigned to the Nipigon district north and northeast of Lake Superior — a region early occupied by the French, and the scene of their hardy and audacious enterprises against the Hudson Bay trade.
Into this watery wilderness Long and his voyageurs pushed their way, literally subsisting on the country. The bourgeois's chief qualification for the enterprise was his familiarity with the Indian life and language, and the fact that he had undergone the ceremony of adoption by one of the most noted chiefs of the Chippewa nation.
In June, 1780, he joined a party of Canadians and Indians who were sent from Mackinac to Prairie du Chien to secure the deposits of furs at the latter place, and prevent them from falling into the hands of the emissaries of George Rogers Clark from the Illinois, and the Spaniards from St. Louis.
The interest of the work, aside from incidental historical references to expeditions in Canada and Wisconsin during the Revolution, the Loyalist settlements, and the retention of the Northern posts, lies in the author's intimate knowledge of Indian life and customs, especially those of the more primitive and savage tribes of the North; and in the light he incidentally throws on the history of the fur-trade.
Of their aboriginal customs, Long's notices of totemism, religious rites and beliefs, courtship and marriage, social customs — games, dances, food, dwellings — habits of hunting, and physical and mental characteristics, are valuable because original and the result of immediate observation.
Long's narrative, therefore, portrays conditions during the period of the free trader, responsible to no authority, exploiting the country and the natives for the largest immediate returns, without reference to the preservation of the hunting grounds or the protection of the hunters. The frightful debauchery of the Indians by means of traders' rum, and the necessity for the use of laudanum to control their drunken excesses, are shown in full by Long in his simple narrative of events.
At first an articled clerk in Canada, he later was apprenticed to a Montreal fur merchant. Having displayed an adaptability for Indian philology, Long was sent to the neighboring mission colony at Caughnawaga, where he remained seven years, becoming an adept in the arts and occupations of savage life. His term of service having expired, the excitements of army life attracted him. The American Revolution had just broken out, and volunteering for service with the British he was detailed to lead Indian parties to hang upon the flanks of the invading American army — one of these expeditions captured the famous Ethan Allen. After a year and a half of this service, in which — dressed as an Indian, and scalping his prisoners in their fashion — he could scarcely be distinguished from a brave, Governor Guy Carleton appointed Long a midshipman in the navy. But when his vessel sailed for England, he left the sea in order to enter upon the more lucrative business of fur-trading.
In May, 1777, Long left Montreal for Mackinac, engaged as a bourgeois to lead a party of voyageurs into the far Northwest, and trade with the Indians on their own hunting grounds. The independent Canadian merchants of this period were endeavoring to maintain the old French connections with the Indians of the "upper country," and at the same time to undermine the trade of the Hudson's Bay Company, by intercepting the natives before they reached the posts of the latter. Long was assigned to the Nipigon district north and northeast of Lake Superior — a region early occupied by the French, and the scene of their hardy and audacious enterprises against the Hudson Bay trade.
Into this watery wilderness Long and his voyageurs pushed their way, literally subsisting on the country. The bourgeois's chief qualification for the enterprise was his familiarity with the Indian life and language, and the fact that he had undergone the ceremony of adoption by one of the most noted chiefs of the Chippewa nation.
In June, 1780, he joined a party of Canadians and Indians who were sent from Mackinac to Prairie du Chien to secure the deposits of furs at the latter place, and prevent them from falling into the hands of the emissaries of George Rogers Clark from the Illinois, and the Spaniards from St. Louis.
The interest of the work, aside from incidental historical references to expeditions in Canada and Wisconsin during the Revolution, the Loyalist settlements, and the retention of the Northern posts, lies in the author's intimate knowledge of Indian life and customs, especially those of the more primitive and savage tribes of the North; and in the light he incidentally throws on the history of the fur-trade.
Of their aboriginal customs, Long's notices of totemism, religious rites and beliefs, courtship and marriage, social customs — games, dances, food, dwellings — habits of hunting, and physical and mental characteristics, are valuable because original and the result of immediate observation.
Long's narrative, therefore, portrays conditions during the period of the free trader, responsible to no authority, exploiting the country and the natives for the largest immediate returns, without reference to the preservation of the hunting grounds or the protection of the hunters. The frightful debauchery of the Indians by means of traders' rum, and the necessity for the use of laudanum to control their drunken excesses, are shown in full by Long in his simple narrative of events.
