Boundaries
September 2007

Finan
by Jack Nisbet

One of the great characters of the early fur trade days in the Columbia District was Finan McDonald, whose 20-year career here began at initial contact and ended just after Fort Colvile was established at Kettle Falls. Because McDonald never rose above the level of a company clerk, today we know him mostly through other people's terse trade journal entries and romanticized reminiscences, which make it hard to get a clear idea of what the man might actually have been like. But Finan could wield a pen himself, and a handful of remarkably misspelled letters plus one turn at a house journal reveal aspects of someone who has to be included on any list of early shapers of the North Columbia country.

Born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1782, Finan's family emigrated to Glengarry County, a Scottish enclave near Montreal, when he was four years old. Nothing else is known of his early life until 1804, when at the age of 22 he entered the service of the North West Company. There were a lot of McDonalds in the fur trade at that time, but one of them, entered on the pay sheets as "McDonald le Borgne" because of a blind eye, was apparently Finan's big brother John.

Within two years Finan had been posted to Rocky Mountain House, far up the Saskatchewan River. Between 1807-1812 he served as David Thompson's second-in-command as the Nor'Westers established a circle of trade houses that stretched from the source lakes of the Columbia River south into western Montana and eastern Washington. Thompson's brief mentions of "Mr. McDonald" show him carrying supplies and letters back and forth over the mountains, losing a bag of musket balls along the trail, and paddling upstream with Thompson's wife Charlotte in the spring of 1808. By that fall Thompson had enough faith in Finan's abilities to dispatch him down the Kootenai River to establish a winter post among the Lower Kootenai. Despite harsh winter conditions that stopped him short of his destination, McDonald did make good trade at a "Hangard" east of present-day Libby, Montana.

In fall 1809 it was Finan who hung the door at the newly completed Kullyspel House on Lake Pend Oreille and made a profitable trade with Coeur d'Alene people who brought in their furpacks. He spent the next three winters between the Kullyspel or Saleesh House near modern Thompson Falls. At some point he lived with a Kalispel country wife; tradition has it that she was the daughter of a chief named "Chin-Chay-Nay-Whey."

In the fall of 1810 McDonald accompanied a Salish party east of the Divide to hunt buffalo, where they skirmished with some Blackfeet. Some of the casualties were attributed to Finan, and fear of retribution might have led him to retreat west to Kullyspel and then the new Spokane House.

While David Thompson made his historic run from Kettle Falls downstream to the Pacific Ocean in summer 1811, Finan was charged with scouting the Columbia River from Kettle Falls upstream to Boat Encampment. He may have been the first white fur trader to travel those 250 river miles, but left no records that survive of this or any of his other treks.

After David Thompson retired the Columbia country in spring 1812, a wee Irish clerk named Ross Cox appeared on the scene. In his narrative The Columbia River, written years after the fact, Cox wrote more about Finan McDonald than any other observer. The book includes Cox's famous physical description of the man.

His appearance was very striking: in height he was six feet four inches, with broad shoulders, large bushy whiskers, and red hair, which for some years had not felt the scissors, and which sometimes falling over his face and shoulders gave a wild and uncouth appearance...To the gentleness of a lamb he united the courage of a lion. He was particularly affectionate to men of small size, whether equals or inferiors, and would stand their banterings with utmost good-humour...

In his book, Cox related several stories that portrayed Finan as a hot-tempered fighting man, often shooting savage tribal people during epic battles. Although it's hard to tell how much Cox inflated the truth of these tussles, the two did work together with the North West Company for several years, and a letter from agent Donald Mackenzie to Cox posted from the Snake River country in February of 1817 confirms that relationship: "I passed an agreeable time with our friend Finan. He is certainly a most worthy mortal and desires to be remembered to you."

Finan's own letters reveal more of the everyday trials of a working man. In an 1815 dispatch from Fort Kamloops, he describes his trip upriver from Fort Vancouver, the trade of the year, the hiding he gave a horse thief, and personal complaints about the food and unjust treatment he seems to be receiving from his fellow furmen -- Finan appears to have grown weary of his fellows' constant banterings. The handwriting is reasonably clear, and if the lack of punctuation and phonetic spelling make the letter difficult to read, Finan's expressive phrasing make his intentions absolutely clear. I am pretty sure he is the only fur trader who ever used the word "football" in an official business document.

I have nosion in my heade to Leave this part of the Cuntre I am trierd of Eating Rottin Salmon since 4 years ago that I am in this Cursed part of the Cuntre Besides other things that laying on me which Mr. McMimllin will tell you I only say that I am averey one's foot Bole if it was in another part of the World they wood dar not doe it as here we must take the warld as it Comes -- it will be day to drow accounts and a day to pay.

[TRANSLATION: I have a notion in my head to leave this part of the country. I am tired of eating rotten salmon since the four years I have been in this cursed part of the country. Besides other things laying on me, which Mr. McMillan (the chief agent) will tell you, I only say that I am everyone's football. If it was in another part of the world they would not dare to do it, but here we must take the world as it comes. There will be a day to draw accounts, and a day to pay.]

Similar warm greetings, gossip, and business news, as well as more vernacular sayings and personal complaints, have survived in letters written by Finan from Spokane House that we will explore in some future Boundaries column. He remained a clerk in the Hudson's Bay Company until 1827, when he retired back to his beginnings in Glengarry County.

The botanist David Douglas, part of the fur brigade on McDonald's last journey east, wrote that Finan was in the company of his wife and four children, but exactly which wife and how much of his family Finan took back to eastern Canada with him remains unclear. According to the McDonald family bible, in June of 1811 Finan's country wife gave birth to a daughter they named Eleanor, also known as Helene or Helen. When she grew up, Helene married well-known fur agent William Kitson, who died at Fort Vancouver in 1841. Four years later she married another trader named Richard (Captain Johnny) Grant at the same place. They soon moved back to Helene's tribal homeland, and in time became important early citizens in Missoula, Montana. Helene is buried at St. Ignatius Mission, and there are still people on the Kootenai-Salish Reservation who recognize Finan as a not-so-distant ancestor. His legacy, both exaggerated and real, uncouth and poignant, remains not in Glengarry County but right here in the Columbia country -- an integral part of the dynamic mixed blood culture left in the wake of the fur trade.

Jack Nisbet is the author of The Mapmaker's Eye, Sources of the River, Purple Flat Top, Singing Grass, Burning Sage and Visible Bones.

Illustration by Emily Nisbet.

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