The conquest of the great Northwest, Volume 2 (of 2) /

by Agnes C. Laut

Spring came at last, tardy and cold with blustering winds that jammed the ice at the river mouths and flooded the flats with seas of floating floes. Day after day, week after week, all the month of May, until the 21st of June, the ice float swept past endlessly on the swollen flood. MacDonell ordered the cabins evacuated and baggage taken to Hayes River round the submerged marsh. At York, four large boats—twenty-eight feet long and flat-bottomed—were in readiness to convey the people. While the colonists camped, there came sweeping down the Hayes on June the 29th, in light birch canoes, the spring fur brigade of Saskatchewan, led by Bird and Howse. All rivers were reported free of ice. MacDonell marshaled his colonists to return with the brigade.

Father Burke, who was to drum up more colonists at home, the chief factors Auld and Cook, and the Company men watched the launching of the boats the first week of July. Baggage stored, all hands aboard, all craft afloat—the head steersman gives the signal by dipping his pole. The priest waves a God-speed. The colonists signal back their farewell—farewell to the despair of the long winter, farewell to the lonely bay, farewell to the desolate little fort on the verge of this forsaken world! Come what may, they are forward bound, to the New Life in their Promised Land.

If we could all of us see the places along the trail to a Promised Land, few would set out on the quest. The trail that the colonists followed was the path inland that Kelsey had traversed with the Indians a century before, and Hendry gone up in 1754, and Cocking in 1772, up Hayes River to Lake Winnipeg. While the fur brigade made the portages easily with their light canoes, the colonists were hampered by their heavy boats, which had to be rolled along logs where they could not be tracked up rapids. Instead of three weeks to go from York to Lake Winnipeg, it took two months. The end of August, 1812, saw their boats heading up Red River for the Forks, now known as Winnipeg. Instead of rocks and endless cataracts and swamp woods, there opened to view the rolling prairie, russet and mellow in the August sunlight with the leather tepee of wandering Cree dotting the river banks, and where the Assiniboine flowed in from the west—the palisades of the Nor’Westers’ fort. MacDonell did not ascend as high as the rival fort. He landed his colonists at that bend in Red River, two miles north of the Assiniboine, where he built his cabins, afterward named Douglas in honor of Selkirk. Painted Indians rode across the prairie to gaze at the spectacle of these “land workers” come not to hunt but to till the soil. No hostility was evinced by the Nor’Westers, for word of the Northwest Company’s policy had not yet come from London to the annual meeting of winterers at Fort William. The Highlanders were delighted to find Scotchmen at Fort Gibraltar who spoke Gaelic like themselves, and the Nor’Westers willingly sold provisions to help the settlers.

In accordance with Selkirk’s instructions, MacDonell laid out farm plots of ten acres near the fort, and farm plots of one hundred acres farther down the river at what is now known in memory of the settlers’ Scottish home as Kildonan. The farm lots were small so that the colonists could be together in case of danger. The houses of this community were known as the Colony Buildings in distinction from the fort. It was too late to do any farming, so the people spent the winter of 1813 buffalo hunting westward of Pembina.

Meanwhile, Selkirk and Robertson had not been idle. The summer that Miles MacDonell had led his colonists to Red River, twenty more families had arrived on the bay. They had been brought by Selkirk’s Irish agent, Owen Keveny. The same plotting and counter-plotting of an enemy with unseen motives marked their passage out as had harassed MacDonell. Barely were the ships at sea when mutineers set the passengers all agog planning to murder officers, seize the ships and cruise the world as pirates; but the colonists betrayed the treachery to the captain. Armed men were placed at the hatches, and the swivel guns wheeled to sweep the decks from stem to stern. The conspirator that first thrust his head above decks received a swashing blow that cut his arm clean from his shoulder, and the plot dissolved in sheer fright. Keveny now ruled with iron hand. Offenders were compelled to run the gauntlet between men lined up on each side armed with stout sticks; and the trickery—if trickery it were by Nor’West spies—to demoralize the colonists ceased for that passage.

Father Burke, waiting to return by these ships, welcomed the colonists ashore at York, and before he sailed for Ireland performed the first formal marriage ceremony in the Northwest. The Catholic priest married two Scotch Presbyterians—an incident typical to all time of that strange New World power, which forever breaks down Old World barriers. The colonists were so few this year, that the majority could be housed in the fort. Some eight or ten risked winter travel and set out for Red River, which they reached in October; but the trip inland so late was perilous. Three men had camped to fish with the Company servants on Lake Winnipeg. Fishing failed. Winter closed the lake to travel. The men went forward on foot along the east shore southward for Red River. Daily as they tramped, their strength dwindled and the cold increased. A chance rabbit, a prairie chicken, moss boiled in water—kept them from starvation, but finally two could journey no farther and lay down on the wind-swept ice to die. The third hurried desperately forward, hoping against hope, doggedly resolved if he must perish to die hard. Suddenly, a tinkling of dog bells broke the winter stillness and the pack trains of Northwest hunters came galloping over the ice. In a twinkling, the overjoyed colonist had signaled them and told his story, and in less time than it takes to relate, the Nor’Westers were off to the rescue. The three starving men were carried to the Northwest fort at Winnipeg River where they were cared for till they regained strength. Then they were given food enough to supply them for the rest of the way to the settlement. Plainly—if the Nor’Westers’ opposition to Lord Selkirk’s colony had been confined to trickery at the ports of sailing, there would be no tragedy to relate; but the next year witnessed an aggressive change of policy on both sides, which had fatal consequences.

Notes to Chapter XXVI.—The data for this chapter are mainly drawn from H. B. C. papers, minute books and memorials. There are also some very important letters in the Canadian Archives, namely on 1897 Report—State Papers of Lower Canada—letters of Simon MacGillivray; also in 1886 Report, letters of Miles MacDonell to Lord Selkirk on the colony. I had made in the Public Records Office of London exact transcript of all confidential state papers bearing on this era. These also refer to the hostility of MacKenzie and MacGillivray. Donald Gunn who was one of the colonists of 1813, is, of course, the highest authority on the emigration of that year. Three volumes throw sidelights on the events of this and the succeeding chapter, though it must be observed all are partisan statements; namely, “Narrative of Occurrences on the Indian Country, London, 1817,” which is nothing more or less than a brief for the Nor’Westers; “Statement Respecting Earl of Selkirk’s Settlements,” London, 1817, which is the H. B. C. side of the story; and “Amos’ Report of Trials,” London, 1820; also extremely partisan. The scope of this work does not admit of ampler treatment, but in view of the coming centenary of colonization in the West, it should be interesting to know that the heirs of Lord Selkirk have some three thousand letters bearing on this famous colony and its disputes.

I should not need to explain here that the novel, “Lords of the North,” was not written as history, but as fiction, to portray the most picturesque period in Canadian life, and the story was told as from a Nor’Wester, not because the author sided with the Nor’Westers in their fight, but because the Nor’Westers sending their brigades from Montreal to the Pacific afforded the story-teller as a Nor’Wester a broader and more dramatic field than the narrator could have had telling it as a Hudson’s Bay partisan. Let me explain why. The only expedition sent from Montreal west by the H. B. C. at that time was a dismal fiasco in a region where the story of the stolen wife did not lead. On the other hand, the N. W. C. canoes that left Montreal in 1815 led directly to the region traversed by the unfortunate captive. Therefore, I told the story as a Nor’Wester and was surprised to receive furious letters of defense from H. B. C. descendants. Apart from this disguise and one or two intentional disguises in names and locale, I may add that every smallest detail is taken from facts on the life at that time. These disguises I used because I did not feel at liberty to flaunt as fiction names of people whose grandchildren are prominent among us to-day; certainly not to flaunt the full details of the captive woman’s sufferings when her son has been one of the most distinguished men in Canada.

Robertson’s letters—unpublished—contain the most graphic description of the West as a coming empire that I have ever read. There is no mistaking where Selkirk got his inspiration—why he decided to send settlers to Manitoba instead of Ontario. More of Robertson will follow in a subsequent chapter.