I was alerted to a new-to-me website this morning – one that mentions the Red River Colony. So, naturally, I went in to have a look!

Many of us are tempted to accept as truth what we see in print. Unfortunately, and this is something that is particularly evident in material one finds on the Internet, a lot of what is written for our edification is either poorly researched, mistaken, or just downright misleading! Such is the case with Scottish Government site I was refered to today, Learning and Teaching Scotland: Scots and Canada.

The site looks very professional, and has a slide show of historic maps, paintings and sketches that add to the sense of authority of the site. But for the historian well-versed in Red River history, several errors are evident in the text. I’ll point out a few right now:

1. Lord Selkirk agreed that he would provide settlers and militia for the region over the next decade. According to Bumstead’s biography of Lord Selkirk (Lord Selkirk: A Life, 2008), Selkirk was constantly stymied by the British and Canadian Governments in his efforts to provide military protection for the RRS. He overcame the obstacle by settling retired Swiss soldiers in the Colony. They came (officially) as settlers, not soldiers. I wonder who the author of this site is inferring the agreement was between?
2. In 1811, a hundred Scots emigrants set sail for Hudson’s Bay under the leadership of Miles MacDonnell [sic]. The first Scottish (and Irish) settlers set sail in 1812. The group of 1811 was a work party made up of mostly Irish, Scottish and Orcadian men, and certainly fewer than 100! According to the list in the Miles Macdonell Papers as reprinted in Martin (p.10), 18 men were included in the work party. The 1812 group of Scottish settlers engaged was 56, according to A list of Settlers and Servants engaged in Ross, Brolas, Greenburn in the Island of Mull, for the service of the Honorable H. B. Coy and the Right Honorable Earl of Selkirk. [Selkirk Papers M-734 Vol. 2 pp. 558-559].
3. They arrived in Canada too late to make the 60-day trek inland to Red River before winter and were forced to camp near York Factory. The Scots barely survived the harsh winter. By spring, only 22 men were healthy enough to make the 1300-mile trek to Red River. The work party of 1811 did winter near York Factory, and encountered the usual hardships of winter life in the far north. There was a lot of strife and unrest in the two camps (one mainly Irish, the other mainly Scottish), and several Irish men were sent home on the next available ship as a result. The work party was never intended to be much larger than the group that headed for the intended site of the RRS in 1812, although there was some argument in the spring of 1812 about who would be part of it and whether HBC employees would augment the numbers. According to the list mentioned in the point above, 18 men left York Factory in 1812 as a work party for the RRS.
4. Nor’Westers refused to trade with the Scots settlers… On the contrary, NWCo. officials at Red River did everything they could to coerce the settlers to accept relocation to Canada from the RRS, and providing them with food was one of the main methods of dividing the settlers and the RRS officials and creating a rebellious spirit among the settlers. Metis and First Nations hunters supplied food for the RRS and were paid or traded for their services and provisions.
5. MacDonnell [sic] called himself the Governor of the Red River Colony. Of course he did. He was appointed such by Lord Selkirk himself! This site is pretty hard on Miles Macdonell, who, although he was admittedly not the best man for the job and made several serious mistakes in his leadership, was working in circumstances that even he would have had difficulty forseeing. Answers to his reports, which could only be sent out once annually with the ships from York Factory, were only received a year after he requested instructions, when the next ships arrived with the mail! How much can occur under volatile situations over the period of a year!
6. Cameron tried to convince the settlers to relocate but most refused. Actually, the majority (about three quarters of the settlers, according to lists made at the time of the events) accepted Cameron’s offer to relocate to Canada in 1815. Several families were forced by officials/servants of the NWCo. Only a handful removed to Jack River at the north end of Lake Winnipeg to await aid, instructions and the 1815 group’s arrival to augment their numbers and to start all over again.
7. Cuthbert Grant and 60 of his men massacred a group of 25 Hudson’s Bay Company employees at a place called Seven Oaks. Settlers were also slain in this massacre. Cuthbert Grant and ‘his’ men were acting under orders of NWCo. officials.

Having said all that (and more could be said…), the same site provides a link to an interesting educational page on the Red River Settlement, one that would be of interest to teachers and young people. It is simply written and hazy on detail. But it would be a good starting point for introducing children to their Red River roots! Check it out: The Red River Colony: Lord Selkirk has a Plan.

I picked up a Biblio Life reprint of this 1910 publication the other day. It is an interesting little booklet for anyone studying the settlers of the pre-1915 desertions. Essentially, it consists of copies of documents in the Selkirk Papers that help to identify exactly which people arrived as settlers in the 1811, 1812, 1813 and 1814 groups.

You’d think that would be a pretty straightforward thing to figure out – just look at the ships’ lists! In actual fact, though, it isn’t very easy at all. Some of the ships’ lists have gone missing. Not all the people who were recruited and show on those lists embarked on the journey. Some of those changed ships during the voyage. Some decided to work for the HBCo. before joining the settlement, others went directly to the Colony. Some were sent home before the rest made the trek from York Factory inland. Several died on the voyage and at Churchill Creek.

Although this booklet presents the extant lists as they occur either as lists proper or as part of a longer document, all the information presented is available on the Internet for free, or through interlibrary loan of the Selkirk Papers microfilms. A good detective will want to look at other documents to further determine who was actually present at the RRS in the early days and not limit themselves to what Martin has collected here. There is little biographical material on any of the settlers here – just lists.

This is a handy reference for the RRS research library, perhaps, but the lists are printed in other books. You might want to save $15 and invest it elsewhere!

I’m just back from this year’s Annual Reunion. I think it was one of the best we’ve had in a long time! I think I’ll spend this week writing about it, because a number of interesting issues were raised.

One of them concerned education at the RRS. A discussion arose about the demolition of the Centennial School, which was established in 1912 and named to commemorate the Centenary of the establishment of the Red River Colony. The story is convoluted, but ultimately Centennial School was sort of ‘replaced’ by West Kildonan Collegiate (now at 1874 Main Street, Winnipeg), which was, according to the discussion, rebuilt opposite the site of the first school. At the time this discussion was going on, I assumed that ‘first school’ meant The First School of the settlement. Now it occurs to me that it could have meant Manitoba’s first school, or Centennial School.

In any case, I began thinking about the site of ‘the first school’, and wondering if anyone really did know where it was located… exactly. To my thinking, West Kildonan seems a bit off the mark. To make things clear, by ‘first school’ I mean The First School at Red River. The distinction is important – Manitoba wasn’t founded until 1870. And the concept of public schools as an institution in the region came into being some time after the RRS was founded in 1812.

The first teacher was Francis Swords, an Irishman who came to the colony as schoolmaster in 1812. I don’t know if he taught in a designated school building, though. I suspect not, that he rather taught in one of the HBC buildings, or perhaps his home. Certainly his successor, John Matheson, Junior (of Aultbreakachy) did.

The first actual mention of a dedicated school building I’ve found is in January of 1815, when Miles Macdonell notes, “Engaged John Matheson Jun’r for Schoolmaster the School to be for the present Kept at the Old Huts which are to be put immediately in repair.” Archibald McDonald also writes, on 14 January 1815 “John Matheson & his family have taken possession of the School House this Evening.”

So, it seems reasonable to assume that The First School was a simple building, which may also have acted as the schoolmaster’s home, and certainly did by Matheson’s time, probably close to or on the grounds of Fort Douglas.

Which begs the question, then, which ‘first school’ does West Kildonan Collegiate face? And doesn’t this illustrate well the importance of semantics!