THREE COMPANIES IN CONFLICT 19 



a birch canoe, Hunt and MacKenzie crossed the lake 

 to Michilimackinac. 



Here the hand of the North-West Company was 

 again felt. Tattlers went from man to man telling 

 yarns of terror to frighten engages back. Did a man 

 enlist ? Sudden debts were remembered or manufac 

 tured, and the bill presented to Hunt. Was a voyageur 

 on the point of embarking? A swarm of naked brats 

 with a frouzy Indian wife set up a howl of woe. Hunt 

 finally got off with thirty men, accompanied by Mr. 

 Ramsay Crooks, a distinguished Nor Wester, who af 

 terward became famous as the president of the Amer 

 ican Fur Company. Going south by way of Green Bay 

 and the Mississippi, Hunt reached St. Louis, where 

 the machinations of another rival were put to work. 



Having rejected Mr. Astor s suggestion to take part 

 in the Pacific Company, Mr. Manuel Lisa of the Mis 

 souri traders did not propose to see his field invaded. 

 The same difficulties were encountered at St. Louis in 

 engaging men as at Montreal, and when Hunt was 

 finally ready in March, 1811, to set out with his sixty 

 men up the Missouri, Lisa resurrected a liquor debt 

 against Pierre Dorion, Hunt s interpreter, with the 

 fluid that cheers a French-Canadian charged at ten 

 dollars a quart. Pierre slipped Lisa s coil by going 

 overland through the woods and meeting Hunt s party 

 farther up-stream, beyond the law. 



Whatever his motive, Lisa at once organized a 

 search party of twenty picked voyageurs to go up the 

 Missouri to the rescue of that Andrew Henry who had 

 fled from the Blackfeet over the mountains to Snake 

 River. Traders too often secured safe passage through 

 hostile territory in those lawless days by giving the 



