I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the settlement lately. I have been for several years, but before this year, most of it was primary material – first-hand accounts written by eyewitnesses to the events. Little of that discussed Selkirk’s motives in establishing the RRS as such.

I wrote about Donald Gunn and his egging expedition for the Smithsonian a couple of weeks ago. I mentioned in the first entry that someone had requested a copy of his book History of Manitoba from the Earliest Settlement to 1835. As I didn’t have the book in my own Red River collection, I decided I’d like to obtain a copy.

The expedition began to go downhill for Donald Gunn once they arrived at Lake Manitoba. He developed a skin infection that painfully affected his eyes. On the third day, the group turned south, heading home to the RRS. They were near the south shore of Shoal Lake when the heavens opened, and they were forced to set up camp beneath the carts. The rain was intense, and they feared a lightning strike to the carts, caught as they were on the open plains. Everything, including the specimens, was thoroughly soaked.

The expedition members rise the next morning and spend the day travelling toward Shoal Lake. On the way they meet the Indian man of the day before and a Métis woman who is returning to Oak Point with a load of pine planks that were likely made in the saw-pits of the Red River Settlement. Gunn remarks that she

At the Annual Reunion in September, someone who found out that I was a used book dealer asked me about locating a book by Donald Gunn for them, History of Manitoba. Published in 1880 and long out of print, this is a scarce book and difficult to find in the original edition. A 2009 reprint by Cornell University Library is also in short supply.