Canada: the Empire of the North

A >> Agnes C. Laut >> Canada: the Empire of the North

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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.

[Illustration: 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 {382} 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 {383} 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.

As long ago Cartier's first colonists to the St. Lawrence had their
mettle tested by tempestuous weather and pioneer hardships, so now the
first colonists to the Great Northwest must meet the challenge that fate
throws down to all who leave the beaten path. Though the season was
late, the weather was extraordinarily stormy. Sixty-one days the passage
lasted, the tubby old fur ships lying water-logged, rolling to the angry
sea. MacDonell was furious that colonists had been risked on such
unseaworthy craft, but those old fur-ship captains, with fifty years ice
battling to their credit, probably knew their business better than
MacDonell. The fur ships had not been built for speed and comfort, but
for cargoes and safety, and when storms came they simply lowered sails,
turned tails to the wind, and rolled till the gale had passed, to the
prolonged woe of the Highland landsmen, who for the first time suffered
seasick pangs. Then, when Governor MacDonell attempted drills to pass
the time, he made the discovery that seditious talk had gone the rounds
of the deck. "The Hudson's Bay had no right to this {384} country."
"The Nor'westers owned that country." "The Hudson's Bay could n't compel
any man to drill and fight." Selkirk could not give clear deed to their
"lands," and much more to the same effect, all of which proved that some
Nor'wester agent in disguise had been busy on board.

September 24, amid falling snow and biting frost, the ships anchored at
Five Fathom Hole off York Factory, Port Nelson.

[Illustration: NELSON AND HAYES RIVERS (From Robson)]

The Selkirk settlers had been sixty-one days on board, and they were
still a year away from their Promised Land. Champlain's colonists of
Acadia and Quebec had come to anchorage on a land set like a jewel amid
silver waters and green hills, but the Selkirk settlers have as yet seen
only rocks barren of verdure as a billiard ball, vales amidst the domed
hills of Hudson Straits, dank with muskeg, and silent as the very realms
of death itself, but for the flacker of wild fowl, the roaring of the
floundering {385} walrus herds, or the lonely tinkling of mountain
streams running from the ice fields to the mossy valleys bordering the
northern sea. It needed a robust hope, or the blind faith of an almost
religious zeal, to penetrate the future and see beyond these sterile
shores the Promised Land, where homes were to be built, and plenty to
abound. If pioneer struggles leave a something in the blood of the race
that makes for national strength and permanency, the difference between
the home finding of the West and the home finding of the East is worth
noting.

There were, of course, no preparations for the colonists at York Fort,
for the factor could not know they were coming, or anything of Selkirk's
plans, till the annual ships arrived. On the chance of finding better
hunting farther from the fort, MacDonell withdrew his people from Hayes
River, north across the marsh to a sheltered bank of the River Nelson.
Winter had set in early. A whooping blizzard met the pilgrims as they
marched along an Indian trail through the brushwood. There is a legend
of Miles MacDonell, the governor, becoming benighted between York Fort
and Nelson River, and losing his way in the storm. According to the
story, he beat about the brushwood for twenty-four hours before he
regained his bearings. Rude huts of rough timber and thatch roof with
logs extemporized for berths and benches were knocked up for wintering
quarters on Nelson River, and the next nine months were passed hunting
deer for store of provisions, and building flatboats to ascend the
interior. All winter a mutinous spirit was at work among the young
clerks, which MacDonell, no doubt, ascribed to the machinations of
Nor'westers; but the chief factor quickly quelled mutiny by cutting off
supplies, and all hands were ready to proceed when the fur brigades set
out for the interior on the 21st of June, 1812.

Up Hayes River, up the whole length of Winnipeg Lake, then in August the
flatboats are ascending the muddy current of Red River, through what is
now Manitoba, and for the first time the people see their Promised Land.
High banks fringed with maple and oak line the river at what is now
Selkirk. Then the cliffs lower, and through the woods are broken gleams
{386} of the rolling prairie intersected by ravines, stretching far as
eye can see, where sky and earth meet. From the lateness of the season
one can guess that the river was low at the bowlder reach known as St.
Andrew's Rapids, and that while the boats were tracked upstream the
people would disembark and walk along the Indian trails of the west bank.
There was no Fort Garry near the rapids, as a few years later.
Buffalo-skin tepees alone broke the endless sweep of russet prairie and
sky, clear swimming blue as the purest lake. Then the people are back
aboard, laboring hard at the oar now, for they know they are nearing the
end of their long pilgrimage. The river banks rise higher. Then they
drop gradually to the flats now known as Point Douglas. Another bend in
the sinuous red current, looping and curving and circling fantastically
through the prairie, and the Selkirk settlers are in full view of the old
Cree graveyard,--bodies swathed in skins on scaffolding,--down at the
junction of the Assiniboine. Hard by they see the towered bastions of
the Northwest Company's post, Fort Gibraltar. Somewhere between what are
known to-day as Broadway Bridge and Point Douglas, the Selkirk settlers
land on the west side. Chief Peguis and his Cree warriors ride
wonderingly among the white-faced newcomers, marveling at men who have
crossed the Great Waters "to dig gardens and work land." The barracks
knocked up hastily is known after Selkirk's family name as Fort Douglas;
but the store of deer meat has been exhausted, and the colonists are on
the verge of a second winter. They at once join the Plain Rangers, or
Bois Brules (Burnt Wood Runners), half-breed descendants of French and
Nor'west fur traders, who have become retainers of the Montreal Company.
With them the Selkirk settlers proceed south to Pembina and the Boundary
to hunt buffalo. No instructions had yet come to Red River of the
Northwest Company's hostility to the colony, and the lonely Scotch clerks
of Fort Gibraltar were glad to welcome men who spoke their own Highland
tongue. Volumes might be written of this, the colonists' first year in
their Promised Land: how the rude Plain Rangers conveyed them to the
buffalo hunt in their {387} creaking Red River carts,--carts made
entirely of wood, hub, tire, axle, and all, or else on loaned ponies; how
when storm came the white settlers were welcomed to the huts and skin
tents of the French half-breeds, given food and buffalo blankets; how
many a young Highlander came to grief in the wild stampede of his first
buffalo hunt; how when the hunters returned to Fort Gibraltar (Winnipeg),
on Red River, with store enough of pemmican for all the fur posts of the
Nor'westers, many a wild happy winter night was passed dancing mad Indian
jigs to the piping of the Highland piper and the crazy scraping of some
Frenchman's fiddle; how when morning came, in a gray dawn of smoking
frost mist, a long line of the colonists could be seen winding along the
ice of Red River home to Fort Douglas, Piper Green or Hector McLean
leading the way, still prancing and blowing a proud national air; how
when spring opened, ten-acre plots were assigned to each settler, close
to the fort at what were known as the Colony Buildings, and one
hundred-acre farms farther down the river. All this and more are part of
the story of the coming of the first colonists to the Great Northwest.
The very autumn that the first settlers had reached Red River in 1812
more colonists had arrived on the boats at {388} Hudson Bay. These did
not reach Red River till October of 1812 and the spring of 1813. By
1813, and on till 1817, more colonists yearly came. The story of each
year, with its plot and counterplot, I have told elsewhere. Spite of
Nor'westers' threats, spite of the fact there would be no market for the
colonists when they had succeeded in transforming wilderness prairie into
farms, Selkirk's mad dream of empire seemed to be succeeding.

[Illustration: FORT GARRY, RED RIVER SETTLEMENT]

The cardinal mistake in the contest between Hudson's Bay Company and
Nor'westers, between feudalism and democracy, was now committed by the
governor of the colony, Miles MacDonell. The year 1813 had proved poor
for the buffalo hunters. Large numbers of colonists were coming, and
provisions were likely to be scarce. Also, note it well, while the War
of 1812 did not cut off supplies through Hudson Bay to the English
Company, it did threaten access to the West by the Great Lakes, and cut
off all supplies by way of Detroit and Lake Huron for the Nor'westers.
Was MacDonell scoring a point against the Nor'westers, when they were at
a disadvantage? Who can answer? Selkirk had ordered him to expel the
{389} Nor'westers from his lands, and if the violent contest had not
begun in this way, it was bound to come in another. What MacDonell did
was issue a proclamation in January of 1814, forbidding taking provisions
from Selkirk's territory of Assiniboia. It practically meant that the
Plain Rangers must not hunt buffalo in the limits of modern Manitoba, and
must not sell supplies to the Nor'westers. It also meant that all the
upper posts of the Nor'westers--the fur posts of Athabasca and British
Columbia, which depended on pemmican for food--would be without adequate
provisions. The Plain Rangers were enraged beyond words, and doubly
outraged when some Hudson's Bay men began seizing buffalo meat at Pembina
River, which was beyond the limits of Selkirk's territory. Writes Peter
Fidler, one of the Hudson's Bay factors, "_If MacDonell only perseveres,
he will starve the Nor westers out_."

[Illustration: FORT DOUGLAS]

One can guess the anger in the annual meeting of the Nor'westers at Fort
William in July of 1814. Like generals on field of war they laid out
their campaign. Duncan Cameron, a United Empire Loyalist officer of the
1812 War, is to don his red regimentals and proceed to Red River, where
his knowledge of the Gaelic tongue may be trusted to win over Selkirk
settlers. "_Nothing but the complete downfall of the colony will satisfy
some_," wrote one of the fiery Nor'westers to a brother officer. Such
was the mood of the Nor'westers when they came back from their annual
meeting on Lake Superior to Red River, and MacDonell fanned this mood to
dangerous fury by threatening to burn the Nor'westers' forts to the
ground unless they moved from Selkirk's territory. For the present
Duncan Cameron contents himself with striking up a warm friendship with
the Highlanders of the settlement and offering to transport two hundred
of them free of cost to Eastern Canada. MacDonell seizes still more
provisions from northwest forts. Cameron, the Nor'wester, comes back
from the annual meeting of 1815 still more bellicose. He carries the
warrant to arrest Governor Miles MacDonell for the seizure of those
provisions. MacDonell, safe behind the palisades of Fort Douglas, laughs
{390} the warrant to scorn; but it is another matter when the Plain
Rangers ride across the prairie from Fort Gibraltar armed, and pour such
hot shot into Fort Douglas that the colonists, frenzied with fear, huddle
to the fort for shelter. To insure the safety of his colonists,
MacDonell surrenders to the Nor'westers and is sent to Eastern Canada for
a trial which never takes place. No sooner has Governor MacDonell been
expelled than Cuthbert Grant, warden of the Plain Rangers, rides over to
the colony and warns the colonists to flee for their lives, from Indians
enraged at "these land workers spoiling the hunting fields." What the
Indians thought of this defense of their rights is not stated. They were
silent and unacting witnesses of the unedifying spectacle of white men
ready to fly at each other's throats. It was too late for the colonists
to reach Hudson Bay in time for the annual ships of 1815, so the
houseless people dispersed amid the forests of Lake Winnipeg, where they
could be certain of at least fish for food.

Word of the two hundred settlers having been moved from Red River by the
Nor'westers, of MacDonell's forcible expulsion, and of the dispersion of
the rest of the colony had, of course, been sent to Selkirk and his
agents in both Montreal and London. Swift retaliation is prepared.
Colin Robertson, who speaks French like a Canadian and knows all the
Nor'west voyageurs of the St. Lawrence, is sent to gather up two hundred
French boatmen under the very noses of the Nor'westers at Montreal. With
these Robertson is to invade the far-famed Athabasca, whence come the
best furs, the very heart of the Nor'westers' stamping ground. Robert
Semple is appointed governor of the colony on Red River, with
instructions to resist the aggressions of the Nor'westers even to the
point of "_a shock that may be felt from Montreal to Athabasca_."
Selkirk himself comes to Canada to interview the Governor General about
military forces to protect his colony.

Robertson, with his two hundred voyageurs for Athabasca, follows the old
Ottawa trail of the French explorers, from the St. Lawrence to the Great
Lakes, and from the Great Lakes to {391} Red River by way of Winnipeg
Lake. Whom does he find on the shores of the lake but Selkirk's
dispersed colonists! Ordering John Clarke, an old campaigner of Astor's
company on the Columbia, to lead the two hundred French voyageurs on up
to Athabasca, Colin Robertson rallies the colonists together and leads
them back to Red River for the winter of 1815-1816. Feeling sure that he
had destroyed Selkirk's scheme root and branch, Cameron has remained at
Fort Gibraltar with only a few men, when back to the field comes
Robertson, stormy, capable, robust, red-blooded, fearless, breathing
vengeance on Selkirk's foes.

[Illustration: SKETCH OF THE CITY OF WINNIPEG, SHOWING THE SITES OF THE
EARLY FORTS]

By the spring of 1816 the tables have been turned with a vengeance.
Cameron, the Nor'wester, has been seized and sent to Hudson Bay to be
expelled from the country. Fort Gibraltar has been pulled down and the
timbers used to strengthen Fort Douglas, whose pointed cannon command all
passage up and down Red River. It was hardly to be supposed that the
haughty Nor'westers would submit to expulsion without a blow. From
Athabasca, from New Caledonia, from Qu'Appelle . . . they rally their
doughtiest fighters under Cuthbert Grant, the {392} half-breed Plain
Ranger. From Montreal and Fort William come spurring the leading
partners, with one hundred and seventy French-Canadian bullies, and a
brass cannon concealed under oilcloth in a long boat. The object of the
Plain Rangers is to meet the up-coming partners with supplies for the
year; but is that any reason for the riders who are striking eastward
from Assiniboine to Red River, decking themselves out in war paint and
stripping like savages before battle? The object of the partners is to
meet the Plain Rangers on Red River; but is that any reason for bringing
a cannon concealed under oilcloth all the way from Lake Superior? Or do
men fighting a life-and-death struggle for the thing the world calls
success ever acknowledge plain motives within themselves at all? Is it
not rather the blind brute instinct of self-protection, forfend what may?

[Illustration: RED RIVER SETTLEMENT, 1816-1820]

"Listen, white men! Beware! Beware!" the Cree chief Peguis warns
Governor Semple. What means the spectacle of white brothers, who preach
peace, preparing for war over a few beaver pelts? Chief Peguis cannot
understand, except this is the way of white men.

{393} And now, unluckily for Governor Semple, he quarrels with his
adviser, Colin Robertson. Robertson, from his early training in
Northwest ranks, reads the signs, and is for striking a blow before the
enemy can strike him. Semple is still talking peace. Robertson leaves
Red River in disgust, and departs for Hudson Bay to take ship for
England. The Plain Rangers, it may be explained, have uttered the wild
threat that if they "can catch Robertson," they will avenge the
destruction of Fort Gibraltar "by skinning him alive and feeding him to
the dogs." Also it is well known, Nor'westers of Qu'Appelle have
muttered angry prophecies about "the ground being drenched with the blood
of the colonists."

Still Semple talks peace, which is a good thing in its place; but this is
n't the place.

"My Governor! My Governor!" pleads an old hunter of the Hudson's Bay
with Semple; "are you not afraid? The half-breeds are gathering to kill
you!"

Semple laughs. Pshaw! _He_ has law on _his_ side. Law! What is law?
The old hunter of the lawless wilds does n't know that word. That word
does n't come as far west as the _Pays d'en Haut_.

It is sunset of June 18, 1816. Old chief Peguis comes again to the
Hudson's Bay fort on Red River.

"Governor of the gard'ners!" he solemnly warns; "governor of the land
workers and gard'ners, listen! . . ." Not much does he add, after the
fashion of his race. Only this, "_Let me bring my warriors to protect
you_!"

Semple laughs at such fears.

It is sunset of June 19. A soft west wind has set the prairie grass
rippling like a green sea between the fort and the sun hanging low at the
western sky line. A boy on the lookout above one of the bastion towers
of Fort Douglas suddenly shouts, "The half-breeds are coming!"

Semple ascends the tower and looks through a field glass. There is a
line of sixty or seventy horsemen, all armed, not coming to the fort, but
moving diagonally across from the Assiniboine to the Red towards the
colony. And then, north {394} towards the colony, is wildest
clamor,--people in ox carts, people on horseback, people on foot,
stampeding for the shelter of the fort. And up to this moment absolutely
nothing has occurred to create this terror.

"Let twenty men follow me," orders Semple; and he marches out, followed
by twenty-seven armed men.

As they wade through the waist-high hay fields they meet the fleeing
colonists.

"Keep your back to the river!" shouts one colonist, convoying his family.
"They are painted, Governor! Don't let them surround you."

Semple sends back to the fort for a cannon to be trundled out.

Young Lieutenant Holte's gun goes off by mistake. Semple turns on him
with fury and bids him have a care: there is to be no firing.

The half-breeds have turned from their trail and are coming forward at a
gallop.

"There 's Grant, the Plain Ranger, Governor! Let me shoot him," pleads
one Hudson's Bay man.

"God have mercy on our souls!" mutters one of the colonists, counting the
foe; "but we are all dead men."

All the world knows the rest. At a knoll where grew some trees, a spot
now known in Winnipeg on North Main Street as Seven Oaks, Grant, the
Ranger, sent a half-breed, Boucher, forward to parley.

"What do you want?" demands Semple.

"We want our fort!"

"Go to your fort, then!"

"Rascal! You have destroyed our fort!"

"Dare you to speak so to me? Arrest him!"

Boucher slips from his saddle. The Plain Rangers think he has been shot.
Instantaneously from both sides crashes musketry fire. Semple falls with
a broken thigh. Before Grant can control his murderous crew or obtain
aid for the wounded governor, a scamp of a half-breed has slashed the
fallen man to death. Two or three Hudson's Bay men escape through the
long grass {395} and swim across Red River. Two or three more save
themselves by instant surrender. For the rest of the twenty-seven, they
lie where they have fallen. They are stripped, mutilated, cut to pieces.
Only one Nor'wester is killed, only one wounded.

Later, in order to save the lives of the settlers, Fort Douglas is
surrendered. For a second time the colonists are dispersed. Before
going down Red River in flatboats two of the Hudson's Bay people go out
with Chief Peguis by night and bury the dead; but they have no time to
dig deep graves, and a few days later the wolves have ripped up the
bodies.

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