The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists / The Pioneers of Manitoba

by George Bryce

At the close of the ceremony the gentlemen were invited to the Governor's tent, and a keg of spirits was turned out for the people.

Having made such disposition as we shall see of the people, Governor Macdonell went with a boat's crew down the river to make a choice of a place of settlement for the Colonists. A bull and cow and winter wheat had been brought with the party, and these were taken to a spot selected after a three days' thorough investigation of both banks of the river for some miles below the Forks. The place found most eligible was "an extensive point of land through which fire had run and destroyed the wood, there being only burnt wood and weeds left." This was afterwards called Point Douglas.

He had, as we shall see, dispatched the settlers to their wintering place up the Red River on the 6th of September, and set some half-dozen men, who were to stay at the Forks, to work clearing the ground for sowing winter wheat. An officer was left with the men to trade with Indians for fish and meat for the support of the workers.

The winter, which is sharp, crisp and decided in all of Rupert's Land, was approaching, so that their situation began to be desperate.

Governor Macdonell's chief care was for the safety and comfort during the winter of his helpless Colonists.

Sixty miles up the Red River from the Forks was a settlement of native people—chiefly French half-breeds—and to this place called Pembina came in the buffaloes, or if not they were easily reached from this settlement. But the poor Scottish settlers had no means of transport, and the way seemed long and desolate to them to venture upon, unaccompanied and unhelped. Governor Macdonell did his best for them, and succeeded in inducing the Saulteaux Indians, who seemed friendly, to guide and protect them as they sought Pembina for winter quarters.

The Indians had a few ponies and mounted on these they undertook to conduct the settlers to their destination. The caravan was grotesquely comical as it departed southward. The Indians upon their "Shaganappi ponies," as they are called, like mounted guards protecting the men, women and children of the Colony who trudged wearily on foot. The Indians were kind to their charge, but the Redman loves a joke, and often indulges in "horse-play." The demure Highlander looked unmoved upon the Indian pranks. The Indians also hold everything they possess on a loose tenure. The Highlander who was forced to surrender the gun, which his father had carried at the battle of Culloden, failed to see the humour of the affair, and the Highland woman who was compelled to give up her gold marriage ring, because some prairie brave wanted it, was unable to see the ethics of the Saulteaux guide who robbed her. The women became very weary of their journey, but their mounted guardians only laughed, because they were in the habit on their long marches of treating their own squaws in the same manner.

To Pembina at length they came—worn out, dusty and despondent. Here they erected tents or built huts. The settlers reached Pembina on the 11th of September, and Macdonell and an escort of three men, all on horseback, arrived on the 12th. Arrived at Pembina Macdonell examined the ground carefully, and selected the point on the south side of the Pembina River at its juncture with the Red River as a site for a fort. His men immediately camped here. Great quantities of buffalo meat were brought in by the French Canadians and Indians. Some of this was sent down to the Forks to the party which had remained to built a hut at that point for stores. At Pembina a storehouse was built immediately, and having given directions to erect several other buildings, the Governor returned by boat to the Forks. On the 27th of October Owen Keveny, in charge of the second detachment of Colonists, arrived with his party, largely of Irishmen. These men were taken on to Pembina. After great activity the buildings were ready by the 21st of November to house the whole of the two parties now united in one band of Colonists. The Governor and officers' quarters were finished on December 27th. Macdonell reports to Lord Selkirk that "as soon as the place at Pembina took some form and a decent flagstaff was erected on it, it was called Fort Daer." It is said that in most years the buffaloes were very numerous and so tame that they came to the Trader's Fort and rubbed their backs upon its stockaded enclosure. There was this year plenty of buffalo meat and the Scotch women soon learned to cook it into "Rubaboo," or "Rowschow," after the manner of the French half-breeds. Toward spring food was scarcer.

In May the winterers of Pembina returned to their settlement at the Colony. They sought to begin the cultivation of their farms, but they were helpless. The tough prairie sod had to be broken up and worked over, but the only implement which the Colonist had to use was a simple hoe, the one harrow being incomplete. The crofters were poor farmers, for they were rather fishermen. But the fish in Red River were scarce in this year, so that even the fisher's art which they knew was of little avail to them. The summer of 1813 was thus what the old settlers would call an "Off-Year," for even the small fruits on the plains were far from abundant. These being scarce, the chief food of the settlers for all that summer through was the "Prairie turnip." This is a variety of the pea family, known as the Astragalus esculenta, which with its large taproot grows quite abundantly on the dry plains. An old-time trader, who was lost for forty days and only able to get the Prairie turnip, practically subsisted in this way. Along with this the settlers gathered quantities of a very succulent weed known as "fat-hen," and so were kept alive. The Colonists knowing now what the soil could produce obtained small quantities of grain and even with their defective means of cultivation, in the next year demonstrated the fertility of the soil of the country.