Volume 1

FORT WILLIAM—RODERIC M'KENZIE. 223
everything complete and in good order before our arrival
next year. Mr. R. McKenzie" has charge during the
absence of the agents.
^^
Implying Roderic McKenzie, of which identical name were two persons.
One Roderick McKenzie was still a clerk of the N. W. Co. after the fusion of
1804, in the Nepigon district, and wintered 1807-08 at Fort Duncan, on Lake
Nepigon. The early life of the other may be outlined as follows :
Not only among the many McKenzies or Mackenzies who were in the furtrade,
but also among all the persons of the N. W. Co. and other organizations
apart from the H. B. Co., the name of Roderic or Roderick stands out with a
prominence second only to that of his famous cousin, Sir Alexander. He came
from Scotland to Canada in 1 784, and was apprenticed for three years as
clerk
to Gregory, McTavish & Co. He left St. Anne for Grand Portage in the
summer of 1785, and was again at the latter place in the summer of 1786. He
went with his cousin to English r. this year, and is found at Lac des Serpents,
Isle a la Crosse, etc., 17S6-87. He built old Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca,
in the fall of 1788 ; came in, 1789 ; returned to winter there 1789-90,
and remained in charge of that post when Sir Alexander left it en route to the
Pacific, Oct. loth, 1792. He appears to have stayed out continuously for eight
years of which I have made no memoranda ; for he was in Canada in 1 797,
" after a long absence." Thompson met him on the Missinipi June 13th, 1797,
en route for Grand Portage, and this was the year in which he, first of the Northmen,
reached that place from Lac la Croix by the " new" (old French) Kaministiquia
route, thus re-opening a long-abandoned and half-forgotten way.
Thompson, July 22d, 1797, speaks of him as at Grand Portage that day, and
names him as agent of the N. W. Co. "for Montreal" (McTavish, Frobisher
& Co.). He came to Grand Portage again July ist, 1798, left July loth for the
Athabasca region, was found about Isle a la Crosse that fall, and wintered there
1798-99. He came in again in 1799, the year so critical in the history of
the N. W. Co., when the rivalry between Sir Alexander Mackenzie and
Simon McTavish culminated in the withdrawal of the former, amidst angry
dissensions at Grand Portage between the wintering bourgeois and the agents
of the company, during the summer of 1799 ;
Roderic took Sir Alexander's
place, and thus became an agent : see Masson, I. p. 72. Sir Alexander went
to England, published his work, received his title, and returned in 1801, to
become the head of the "New N. W. Co.," also known as " Sir Alexander
Mackenzie & Co.," but still better as the "X. Y. Co.," and also styled
" Little Company" (whence probably the nickname " Potties,"
in derision the
by Indian conniption of F. Les Petits, "Little Ones"). Roderic went to
Montreal soon, for he was en route thence to Grand Portage in May, 1800.
He is found on the Kaministiquia route in Aug., 1804, and his name appears
among the signatures of the Montreal agreement of Nov. 5th, 1804, which
finished the X. Y. Co. by absorption into the N. W. Co. See further. Reminiscences
of Hon. Roderic McKenzie, etc., extending to 1829, in Masson, I.
pp. 7-66, pub, 1889.