Museums spur sidearm of 18th-century explorer
In the late 1770s, explorer and trader Peter Pond (1740-1807) pushed northwest into the Mackenzie River basin — establishing a continental trading network that would lay the foundation for Canada as a nation from sea to sea.
“You could consider him to be in some sense a Father of Confederation,” said William Buxton, a professor emeritus of communication studies at Concordia University in Montreal.
Pond was the first non-Aboriginal person to traverse the Methye Portage in northern Saskatchewan and reach the Mackenzie River basin, flowing north to the Arctic Ocean.
“He presciently forecast a transcontinental Canada — linking the St. Lawrence with the Pacific — all based on trade and under the British flag,” said Barry Gough, author of The Elusive Mr. Pond: The Soldier, Fur Trader and Explorer who opened the Northwest (Douglas & McIntyre, 2013).
Pond’s explorations, which he depicted in famous maps, made trade across the continent possible, Buxton said.
“They started to trade across the country, which meant you had a whole network of trading settlements across Canada,” he said.
In April, Buxton, who has been researching Pond’s life, learned from a post on the Peter Pond Society’s website that an 18thcentury pistol engraved with Pond’s name was up for sale on an American auction site, listed at US$3,495.
He contacted several Canadian museums in hopes of bringing the artifact back to Canada for public display, but has met with total indifference.
Postmedia contacted four history museums with extensive Canadiana collections but officials at the McCord Museum, Stewart Museum (which merged with the McCord in 2013), Canadian Museum of History and Manitoba Museum all said they were not interested and declined interviews on the topic.
“I think it’s disappointing and surprising. I thought there’d be more interest in this. They don’t really know the significance of it as far as I’m concerned,” Buxton said.
Gough said the pistol is of national importance and should be accessible to the public, preferably at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, or the McCord Museum.
“Nothing like this exists elsewhere, so it is unique,” Gough said.
But in an era when museums compete for blockbuster exhibitions to get crowds through the turnstiles, objects from Canada’s past don’t seem to arouse a flicker of interest, Gough said.
“Eighteenth century Canadian history is sadly out of fashion nowadays. But for Canada that century was a defining epoch in so many ways,” he said.
By organizing independent traders in the northwest to pool resources instead of competing, Pond laid the foundations for the fur trading partnership that built the fortunes of famous Montrealers like Simon McTavish, after whom McTavish St. and the McTavish Reservoir are named, and James McGill, the benefactor of McGill University.
“He was the lead hand — indeed became the chosen leader — of a cluster of Montreal-based fur traders in setting up the famed North West Company of Canada,” Gough said.
A former soldier from Connecticut who was present at the surrender of Montreal in 1760, his experience in outfitting troops with supplies was invaluable in planning fur-trading expeditions.
With a reputation for a violent temper, Pond was suspected of murdering two other traders on the western frontier but never convicted. The aura of suspicion contributed to his status as an outsider in Montreal’s clannish, Scottish-dominated business establishment.
“He was the Nor’Wester par excellence, respected but unloved,” Gough writes in his biography.
Pond mentored explorer Sir Alexander Mackenzie, considered Canada’s greatest explorer.
“Pond taught Mackenzie the tricks of the trade and opened to him the prospects of the wealth of Athabasca and the greater Northwest. Sadly, and to Mackenzie’s discredit, he never gave Peter Pond the recognition or the thanks that he deserved,” said Gough, who also wrote a biography of Mackenzie, First Across the Continent: Sir Alexander Mackenzie (McClelland & Stewart, 1997).
The pistol offered for sale by Old World Guns in Camp Verde, Ariz., is a flintlock from approximately 1760-1790 that was later converted to percussion cap, said owner David Jonas.
The words “Peter Pond his pistol” are engraved on the barrel and the gun is decorated with silver beavers, snakes and turtles and bears the initials “NWC,” for North West Company.
The markings appear authentic and original, said Jonas, who is selling the gun on consignment.
“Fakes are common but fakes usually have a purpose,” he said in a telephone interview.
“Nobody would fake a pistol that says Peter Pond. You would put Kit Carson (a famous American frontiersman). He’s not a famous character around here,” he said.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Jonas said of the engraving and decoration.
“It shows extreme use,” he added. “You’d have to carry it for 50 years to get this kind of wear pattern.”
The wearing of ceremonial pistols by partners of the North West Company, who socialized in the legendary Beaver Club, is well documented.
“From the picturesque departure from La Chine to the ceremonious arrival at Fort William, the journey of the partners was a pageant of pride and power,” writes Charles Bert Reed in Masters of the Wilderness (University of Chicago Press, 1914).
“Voyageurs and hunters are dressed in buckskin with the gayest of silk bands around hair and neck, while pompous partners parade back and forth in ruffles and gold braid, with brass-handled pistols and daggers at belt,” Reed writes.
Buxton said it makes no sense that the Canadian Museum of History (formerly called the Canadian Museum of Civilization) is spurning Pond’s pistol when it spent $250,000 in 1989 to acquire “Champlain’s astrolabe” — a mariner’s navigational instrument that is highly unlikely ever to have belonged to the famous explorer.
“There’s much better evidence this pistol belonged to Peter Pond. I at least thought they would look into it and take it seriously but they didn’t even do that,” he said.
In a more recent museum controversy, the Quebec government announced in April it was classifying a painting by French artist Jacques-Louis David as provincial heritage to prevent it leaving Quebec after the National Gallery of Canada announced it was selling a masterpiece by Russian-French artist Marc Chagall to acquire the David work for $6.5 million.
Khan Rooney, a historical weapons specialist in Montreal, said that while he has not seen the actual pistol, photographs he has examined support its authenticity.
“I would definitely suggest it be kept in Canada,” he said.
“If it’s a fake, it’s a very, very good fake and an absolute waste of time (since there is no lucrative market for a gun owned by Peter Pond),” Rooney said.
The gun is emblematic of Canada’s early history and reveals much about the intriguing man who owned it, he said.
“To have a gun like that would certainly make it much more possible to tell the story of someone who is almost unknown and yet very important to Canadian history,” he said, noting that the possibility Pond killed two men only adds to its interest.
“That’s the thing about these objects. They are the bridge between modern-day people and the history.
“And when you have an object like this in your hands, and when you’re able to look at it and breathe it in, all of a sudden, history becomes much more real.”
He (Peter Pond) was the lead hand — indeed became the chosen leader — of a cluster of Montreal-based fur traders in setting up the famed North West Company.