The letters and newspapers passing between Winnipeg and Pembina during the month of August 1870 were counted, and it was found that within that period, there were 1018 letters and 196 newspapers sent from Winnipeg to Pembina, and 960 letters and 1375 newspapers passed into the settlement.
The opportunity afforded by the extension of the United States postal service into the northern parts of Minnesota was a great boon to the inhabitants of the isolated settlement. Until that time, the only communication between the Red River and the world outside was by means of the semi-annual packets, by which the Hudson's Bay Company maintained its communication with its posts, which were scattered over its vast territories.[314]
Once in each year a vessel sailed from the Thames for York Factory on the western shore of Hudson's Bay bringing the goods used for barter with the Indians, and carrying back to London the peltries which were the produce of the previous year's trade. To meet this vessel, a brigade of dog-sleighs set out from fort Garry about December 10, when, the ice having formed and the snow fallen, travelling was easy. The first stopping place was at Norway House, at the northern end of lake Winnipeg. The distance, about 350 miles, was travelled in eight days.
Here the contents of the packet were separated, one portion being detained for the posts in the west, and the other for York Factory. The couriers with the mails from the ship in Hudson's Bay connected at Norway House with those from Red River, and after mails had been exchanged, each returned to his point of departure. The mail from England reached fort Garry in February.
The other means of communication was by the packet which was despatched overland in the winter to Montreal. The courier returned to the settlement in the spring, travelling by canoes from Lachine up the Ottawa river and along the Mattawin to lake Nipissing, thence down the French river to Georgian Bay. Crossing the bay and lakes Huron and Superior, the travellers entered the Kaministiquia at fort William, and passing by alternate water stretches and portages into the Winnipeg river, they made their way by canoe to lake Winnipeg, and landed at the outlet of the Red River, eighteen miles north of fort Garry. This journey occupied about six weeks.
The extent of the isolation of the settlement during the early period is thus vividly described:—[315]
"Thus matters went on during the first forty years of our existence as a settlement. We were kept in blissful ignorance of all that transpired abroad until about eight months after actual occurrence. Our easy-going and self-satisfied gentry received their yearly fyles of newspapers about a twelvemonth after the date of the last publication, and read them with avidity, patiently wading through the whole in a manner which did no violence to chronology. Wars were undertaken and completed—protocolling was at an end and peace signed, long before we could hear that a musket had been shouldered or a cannon fired."
The Hudson's Bay packets were placed at the service of the settlers, but not quite without reserve. The company, which employed the packets primarily for the conduct of their business, did not intend that they should be used against their interests. They had a monopoly of the fur-trade, which they proposed to hold, as far as possible, intact. There were a number of traders in the settlement, who bought on their own account, and made use of such means of transport as they were able to discover, to get their furs out of the country.
To prevent the operations of these interlopers, the company had recourse to a measure which was vastly unpopular in the settlement. The governor of Assiniboia, in a proclamation, dated December 20, 1844, directed that all letters intended to be despatched by the winter express, must be left at his office on or before the 1st of January. Every letter must bear the writer's name, and if the writer was not one of those who had lodged a declaration against trafficking in furs, he was obliged to deposit the letter open, to be closed at the governor's office.[316] This obnoxious order remained in force until 1848.
This arbitrary measure on the part of the company excited intense feelings among the settlers, and disposed them to hail with satisfaction the approach of the lines of the American postal service towards the company's southern borders. In 1853, when the American government established a post office at fort Ripley, a number of the settlers in the Red River settlement formed a post office at fort Garry, and opened a monthly communication with the post office in Minnesota.[317] At the same time a post office was also opened in the settlement of St. Andrews, fourteen miles further down the Red River. In 1857, the United States postal service was extended to the company's border, at Pembina, and the infant system in the settlement was connected with this office.