The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier

by Charles E. Flandrau

The offspring of their intercourse with the Indian women were numerous, and called "Bois Brules." They were a fine race of hunters, horsemen and boatmen, and possessed all the accomplishments of the voyageur. They spoke the language of both father and mother.

In 1812 a small advance party of colonists arrived at the Red River of the North, in about latitude fifty degrees north. They were, however, frightened away by a party of men of the Northwest Fur Company, dressed as Indians, and induced to take refuge at Pembina, in what is now Minnesota, where they spent the winter, suffering the greatest hardships. Many died, but the survivors returned in the spring to the colony, and made an effort to raise a crop; but it was a failure, and they again passed the winter at Pembina. This was the winter of 1813-14. They again returned to the colony, in a very distressed and dilapidated condition, in the spring.

By September, 1815, the colony, which then numbered about two hundred, was getting along quite prosperously, and its future seemed auspicious. It was called "Kildonan," after a parish in Scotland in which the colonists were born.

The employes of the Northwest Fur Company were, however, very restive under anything that looked like improvement, and regarded it as a ruse of their rival, the Hudson Bay Company, to break up the lucrative business they were enjoying in the Indian trade. They resorted to all kinds of measures to get rid of the colonists, even to attempting to incite the Indians against them, and on one occasion, by a trick, disarmed them of their brass field pieces and other small artillery. Many of the disaffected Selkirkers deserted to the quarters of the Northwest Company. These annoyances were carried to the extent of an attack on the house of the governor, where four of the inmates were wounded, one of whom died. They finally agreed to leave, and were escorted to Lake Winnipeg, where they embarked in boats. Their improvements were all destroyed by the Northwest people.

They were again induced to return to their colony lands by the Hudson Bay people, and did so in 1816, when they were reinforced by new colonists. Part of them wintered at Pembina in 1816, but returned to the Kildonan settlement in the spring.

Lord Selkirk, hearing of the distressed condition of his colonists, sailed for New York, where he arrived in the fall of 1815, and learned they had been compelled to leave the settlement. He proceeded to Montreal, where he found some of the settlers in the greatest poverty; but learning that some of them still remained in the colony, he sent an express to announce his arrival, and say that he would be with them in the spring. The news was sent by a colonist named Laquimonier, but he was waylaid, near Fond du Lac, and brutally beaten and robbed of his dispatches. Subsequent investigation proved that this was the work of the Northwest Company.

Selkirk tried to obtain military aid from the British authorities, but failed. He then engaged four officers and over one hundred privates who had served in the late War with the United States to accompany him to the Red river. He was to pay them, give them lands, and send them home if they wished to return.

When he reached Sault Ste. Marie he heard that his colony had again been destroyed.

War was raging between the Hudson Bay people and the Northwest Company, in which Governor Semple, chief governor of the factories and territories of the Hudson Bay Company was killed. Selkirk proceeded to Fort William, on Lake Superior, and finally reached his settlement on the Red river.

The colonists were compelled to pass the winter of 1817 in hunting in Minnesota, and had a hard time of it, but in the spring they once more found their way home, and planted crops, but they were destroyed by grasshoppers, which remained during the next year and ate up every growing thing, rendering it necessary that the colonists should again resort to the buffalo for subsistence.