The Selkirk Settlement
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,. ' 1- ~' THE SELKIRK SETTLEMENT AND THE SETTLERS. A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE RED RIVER COUNTRY FRO :t.![ ITS DI$COVERY, Including /nfol·u~rttion K-ctractlld from Original Docwnents Lately .Discove;·ed and Notes obtained from SELKIRK SETTLEMENT COLONISTS. Ey CHARLES N. EELL, F.R.G.S., Honorary Correspond lag Member of the Royal ~cott1sh _Geogrf~:phic.al Society, Ha~ilton A~'3?Ciation, Chkag·o Academy of Science, Buffalo Htstoncal Soctety, Htstonan of Wolsdey s ExpeditiOnary Force Association, etc., etc. Authm· of "Our Northern Waters" "Na\'h,ation of Hudson's Bay and Strait," HSomt! I-Ii~torival Names and Places of Northwest Canada," "Red River Setticment History,"" Mound-lmilder:-s in Manitoba." "Prehistoric Remains in the Canadian ~orthwest," "With the Half-breed Buffalo Hunters," etc., etc. \VJ:-I:'>ll'E": l'Jtl~TED _-\'1' THE oi<'FICE UF "THE COM!\IERCJAL,'' ,J_\:\l£S S'l'. _L\S1'. 1887. I I By CH.!RLEs X. BELL, F.JI.u.:.;, HISTORY OF FUR TRADE. Red River settlement, and stood at the About 1736 La V erandyre, a French-Can north end of the Slough at what is now arlian, established on the Red river a known as East Selkirk village. Mr. Donald trading post, which was certainly the first l\1 ut-ray, one of the Selkirk colonists, in occasion that white men had a fixed abode forms me that he slept at the ruins of in the lower Red River V!~.lley. After 1710 such a place in the fall of 1815, when the English merchants and traders of arriving in thts country. He states Montreal sent fur traders, with assortments that it was an old post of the of goods, into the country west of Lake Hudson's Bay Company, and had been called Superior, but it was not until the year 1796 Ft. William. The chimneys still stood, in that they, with the Hudson's Bay Co., a ruined condition, in 1815. Both the rival established permanent posts on the Red and fur companies also had trading posts at Assinibo~ne rivers. It is not clear, from Netley Creek, below Selkirk, on the west the avatlable records, why the trade of side of the Red River. these districts was neglected, but it was A third fur company, called the presumably because the North Saskatch· X Y Company, numbering amongst ewan and Athabasca rivers afforded a suffi its partners Sir Alexander Mackenzie and ciently extensive field for the force of ad. Edward Ellice, competed in the fur trade venturers engaged in the fur trade. Cer on the Red and Assimboine rivers, between tainly from the year 1796, both the Hurl son's 1800 (perhaps a year or two before) and Bay Co. and the Northwest Co. had several 1804, when an amalgamation took place be. regularly supplied posts on the Red and tween it and the Northwest Co. AssiniboinP. rivers, though some of them In 1804 a large number of "freemen,'' or were abandoned from time to time, and re· discharged employees of the different fur built in the immediate neighborhood, as was companies, found their way to the vicinity the case at Pembina and-the mouth of the of the trading-posts on the Red and Assini Souris. For instance, at Pembina in 1796 boine rivers, "' small settlement also Peter Grant erected a fort on the east bank being made by them on the Pembina of the Red river directly opposite the river, at the place where it issues from the mouth of the Pembina river. In 1798 the Pembina mountains. then called the Hair post was on the south bank of the Pembina Hills. These freemen were nearly all of at its confluence with the Red and was French extraction, being either Canadians under the charge of Charles Chabollier. or the issue of French.Canadian fathers and Again in 1801 Alexander Henry built a fort Indian women. It has been claimed that on the north side of the Pembina, a few the first white woman who arrived in the hundred yards from the aeserted post on Red River country was a French.Canadian, the south side. These were all forts of the Madame Lajimoniere, who came to the Northwest Co. Northwest from Three Rivers, Quebec, in On Sept. 28th, 1803, Alexander Henry 1806. I have found in the unpublished left an assortment of trading goods with journal of Alexander Henry, an officer of another officer of the Northwest Company the Northwest Company, "' record of the at the Forks, which place was situated at fact that in 1807 an Orkney girl, disguised the point between the Red River and the as a boy, who had followed her lover out Assiniboinc, on the north side of the latter. from the Orkney Islands, gave birth to a The next spring a large return o~ ~ur was child at Pembina. But Henry speaks of shipped from this post to Fort ~Illtam, on the wives of some of the Northwest Com· Lake Superior. It was not until 1806 that pany's officers resirling at the posts on the a fort of any considerable size was erected Red river from 1800 to 1806 in such terms at the Forks when at that date the North that it implies that th"Y were not of Indian west Compat;y built Fort Gibra~tar, which blood, so that investigation may yet show was in after years the centre of very great that white women were here prior to the interest tg the Selkirk settlers. above-mentioned two. The Hudson's Bay Company claim ~ha~ After the establishment of Fort Gibraltar they had a trading post on .the Red Rtver in 1806, it would appear, from the slight as early as 1796, and there ts e"!ery .reason amount of data available, that quite a num· to conclude that such a fort was m extstence ber of French-Canadians and Metis settled at a very t!arly date in the history ot the on the Red river and erected dwellings, 2 1'HE SELKIRli: SETTLEMENT AND THE SETTLERS, where their families resided during the win became anxious that their faces should be ters and when the men were absent in the turned to some colony of the empire. On service of the Northwest Company. I can May 24th 1799, on the death of his father, find nothiP.g regarding the operations of he succeeded to the earldom of Selkirk, his the Hudson's Bay Company for some six brothers having died before that date, years after 1808, but it is likely that the last in 1797, wh~n he took the title of they continued to trade ou the two rivers as Lord Daer and Shortcleugh. they, like the Northwest company, had From the time Selkirk visited the High posts on both streams when thr. Selkirk lands to 1802 he was striving to carry out colonists arrived in 1812. some scheme which would bring relief to This leads us up to the date when matters the peasantry there. After much corres in England were shaping themselves tend pondence with th~ _British government re mg to the formation of a colony on the garding the ?olomzmg of a lar~e tract of banks of the far-distant Red river, which land in the 1sland of St. John, smce named afterwards resulted in a vast amount of Prince Edward Island, he succeeded in a to·ouble a.nrl considerable blooushed before practical manner in carrying out his pr? the colonists were allowed to settle down ject. In Anglfst, 1803, 800 selected emi· quietly to agricultural pursuits and in grants were landed at the colony, where, permanent abodes. though meeting with very many LORD ~!;;LKil<K. difficulties, they eventually suc Thomas Douglas, fifth Earl of Selkirk, ceeder! beyond their most sanguine Baron Daer and.Shortcleugh in the Scotch expectations, their descendants to-day num peerage (1771-1820), was the seventh and bering many thousands of the population of youngest so11 of Dunbar (Hamilton) Douglas, the tsland. the fourth earl. Born at the family seat in Lord Selkirk, after personally superin Kirkcudbrightshire, on the 20th June, 1771, tending the placing of the colony, (which he was educated at Edinburgh university, he revisited the following year) undertook associating there with Sir Walter Scott, an extended tour through the United States who in future years was a firm and stead fast friend. and Canada. Letters arP. on fyle in the Archives Department at Ottawa wbich show As early as 1792 Selkirk interested him that he was endeavoring to establish self in the state of the Highland peasantry, settlements in Upper Canada as far west · who were i•·eL!UPntly evicted from their as the Sault St. Marie. In 1803 he homes and forced to emigrate. He proposed to the Government of Upper found, during a lengthened journey amongst Canada to construct a wagon road these people, that the conn try was fast be comwg pastoral, and the conviction was from his colony of Baldoon, in Kent county, fo rced upon him, that em igration was the to Toronto, at a cost of over £4Q,OOO, if the government would give him a grant of cer only hop~ left to the Highlanders, ancl with the true mstiocts of a: British suLj ect, be tain crown lands at points alQng the road; but the government would not a~;ree wi~h THE SELKIRK SETTLEMENT AND THE SETTLERS. Iii~ as to valuation of the lands, and the written and published by John Halkett, a proJect fell through. Selkirk wrote a num. relative of Selkirk, is given a very differ her of works on "The necessity of a more ent version of this decision by these same effective system of national defence " "Par legal authorities, and much more favorable liamentary Reform," etc.