Canada: the Empire of the North / Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom

by Agnes C. Laut

FROM 1812 TO 1846

Selkirk's colony—Troubles on passage—Winter on the bay—First winter on Red River—First conflict—Nor'westers rally to defense—The storm gathers—The Nor'westers victorious—Selkirk to the rescue—Banditti warfare in Athabasca—In Athabasca—Robertson escapes—Frobisher's death—The Pacific empire—Secede from Oregon

When Sir Alexander MacKenzie, the discoverer, went home to retire on an estate in Scotland, he found the young nobleman and philanthropist, Lord Selkirk, keenly interested in accounts of vast, new, unpeopled lands, which lay beyond the Great Lakes. A change in the system of farming, which dispossessed small farmers to turn the tenantries into sheep runs, had caused terrible poverty in Scotland at this period. Here in Scotland were people starving for want of land. There in America were lands idle for lack of people. Selkirk had already sent out some colonists to the Lake St. Clair region of Ontario and to Prince Edward Island, but what he heard from MacKenzie turned his attention to the new empire of the prairie. Then in Montreal, where he had been dined and wined by the Northwest Company's "Beaver Club," he had heard still more of this vast new land, of its wealth of furs, of its untimbered fields, where man had but to put in the plowshare to sow his crop. The one great obstruction to settlement there would be the claims of the Hudson's Bay Company to exclusive monopoly of the country; but as Selkirk listened to the descriptions of the Red River Valley given by Colin Robertson, who had been dismissed by the Nor'westers, he thought he saw a way of overcoming all difficulties which the fur traders could put in the way of settlement.

Owing to competition Hudson's Bay stock had fallen from two hundred and fifty to fifty pounds sterling a share. On returning to Scotland Lord Selkirk had begun buying up Hudson's Bay stock in the market, along with Sir Alexander MacKenzie; but when MacKenzie learned that Selkirk's object was colonization first, profits second, he broke in violent anger from the partnership in speculation, and besought William MacGillivray to go on the open market and buy against Selkirk to defeat the plans for settlement. What with shares owned by his wife's family of Colville-Wedderburns, and those he had himself purchased, Selkirk now owned a controlling interest in the Hudson's Bay Company.

Early in 1811 the Company deeds to Lord Selkirk the country of Red River Valley, exceeding in area the British Isles and extending, through the ignorance of its donors, far south into American territory. Colin Robertson, the former Nor'wester, who first interested Selkirk in Red River, has meanwhile been gathering together a party of colonists. Miles MacDonell, retired from the Glengarry Regiment, has been appointed by Selkirk governor of the new colony.

SELKIRK

What of the Nor'westers while these projects went forward? Writes MacGillivray from London, where he has been stirring up enmity to Selkirk's project, "Selkirk must be driven to abandon his project at any cost, for his colony would prove utterly destructive of our fur trade." How he purposed doing this will be seen. Writes Selkirk to the governor of his colony, Miles MacDonell: "The Northwest Company must be compelled to quit my lands. If they refuse, they must be treated as poachers." Selkirk believed that the Hudson's Bay Company charter to the Great Northwest was legal and valid. He believed that the vast territory granted to him was legally his own as much as his parks in Scotland. He believed that he possessed the same right to expel intruders on this territory as to drive poachers from his own Scotch parks. It was the spirit of feudalism. As for the Nor'westers, let us look at their rights. They disputed that the charter of the Hudson's Bay Company applied beyond the bounds of Hudson Bay. Even if it did so apply, they pointed out that by the terms of the charter it applied only to lands not possessed by any other Christian power; and who would dispute that French fur traders and Nor'westers, as their successors, had ascended the streams of the interior long before the Hudson's Bay men? It was the spirit of democracy. It needed no prophet to foresee when these two sets of claims came together there would be a violent clash.

It is evening in the little harbor of Stornoway, off the Hebrides, north of Scotland, July 25, 1811. Waning midsummer has begun to shorten the long days; and lying at anchor in the twilight a few yards offshore are the three Hudson's Bay Company boats, outward bound. For a week the quiet little fishing hamlet has been in a turmoil, for Governor Miles MacDonell and Colin Robertson have ordered the Selkirk settlers here—129 of them, 70 farmers, 59 clerks—to join the Hudson's Bay boats as they swing out westward on their far cruise to the north, and the atmosphere has literally been on fire with vexations created by spies of the Northwest Company. In the first place, as the settlers wait for the ships coming up from London, trouble makers pass from group to group scattering a miserable little sheet called "The Highlander," warning "the deluded people" against going to "a polar land of Indian hostiles." Besides, dark hints are uttered that the settlers are not wanted for colonists at all, but for armed battalions to fight the Nor'westers for the Hudson's Bay Company, in proof whereof the prophets of evil point ominously to the cannon and munitions of war on board the three old fur boats. Then there is too much whisky afloat in Stornoway that week. Settlers are taken ashore and farewelled and farewelled and farewelled till unable to find their way down to the rowboats, and then they are easily frightened into abandoning the risky venture altogether. On the settlers who have come as clerks to the Company Governor MacDonell can keep a strong hand, for they have been paid their wages in advance and are seized if they attempt to desert. Then the excise officer here is a friend of the Nor'westers, and he creates endless trouble rowing round and round the boats, bawling … bawling out … to know "if all who are embarking are going of their own free will," till the ship's hands, looking over decks, become so exasperated they heave a cannon ball over rails, which goes splash through the bottom of the harbor officer's rowboat and sends him cursing ashore to dispatch a challenge for a duel to Governor MacDonell. MacDonell sees plainly that if he is to have any colonists left, he must sail at once. Anchors up and sails out at eleven that night, the ships glide from shore so unexpectedly that one faint-heart, desperately resolved on flight, has to jump overboard and swim ashore, while two other settlers, who have been lingering over farewells, must be rowed across harbor by Colin Robertson to catch the departing ships. Then Robertson is back on the wharf trumpeting a last cheer through his funneled hands. The Highlanders on decks lean over the vessel railings waving their bonnets. The Glasgow and Dublin lads indentured as clerks give a last huzza, and the Selkirk settlers are off for their Promised Land.