Hay-cutting began on the 20th (afterwards 25th) July, and the scene of operations was the wild prairie. The outer two miles of each river frontage belonged, for hay purposes, to the frontage owner up to a certain date, but for the most part cutting was done on prairie that was free as air to everybody. The best hay meadows were located in good time before the above date, and on the night before people were camped all around them. Each one knew pretty well just the spot he was going to strike next morning, and if more than one had their eyes on the same spot, it became the property of the one who reached there first and made a “circle” by cutting around the field he wished to claim. There was sometimes (in dry years when hay was scarce) great rivalry, and we have seen camps all ready to start on the stroke of midnight, and actually starting to mark out circles in a thunderstorm. We have seen a circle entered by another than the one who made it, but it was in the case of someone who had tried to circle the whole prairie for himself, and in such case the unwritten law of the camp said that it served him right. There was rarely any trouble to speak of, and we look back to the camp on the prairie with its many tents like a white village as a most delightful and health-giving experience.

- Rev. R. G. MacBeth, Red River Settlers in Real Life

An interesting article about Kildonan Church appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press this weekend. If you would like to read the online version of the article, please visit the Winnipeg Free Press website.

Thanks to Cathie for the heads up!

Peter Rindisbacher c. 1834. Self Portrait

Peter Rindisbacher set himself up in a studio in St. Louis Missouri during the latter years of his life. It was there that he earned a reputation as a miniature portrait artist. Although the image to the left is in black and white, there is a colour reproduction of both this and portraits of his parents and some of his siblings in the book The Artist was a Young Man. They are rare examples of portraits of original Selkirk Settlers.

I’ll leave you this week with another scene of life at the Red River Colony by Peter Rindisbacher:

Winter Fishing on the Ice of the Assynoibain and Red River, 1821 (National Archives of Canada)

A few more Rindisbachers related to the RRS:

Métis Family ca. 1826 (Bata Shoe Museum P80.982)

Chippewa mode of traveling in spring and summer by Peter Rindisbacher c. 1825 (Virtual Museum of Canada; West Point Museum Art Collection)

Settlers at Red River, early 1820s. (Canadian Heritage Gallery) This drawing depicts a Swiss immigrant wife, husband and two children, a German, a Scots Highlander, and a French Canadian

Subtitled The Life Story of Peter Rindisbacher, this book was written as a supplement to the 1970 art exhibition of the same name. As a consequence, it is not very long, but it is filled with information of an often overlooked group of original Selkirk Settlers, the Swiss of 1821.

Peter Rindisbacher was a teenager when he arrived at Red River with his family. He began studying art in Switzerland prior to the family’s emigration to the RRS, and showed a great deal of promise as an artist. It is, perhaps, unfortunate that there was no way of furthering his education in the North American West, but then again, Rindisbacher’s work might not have had the fresh, original style that it was praised for during his lifetime.

The Rindisbacher family left the RRS after the flood of 1826 to seek their fortune further south. Eventually, Peter would end up in St. Louis, where he died suddenly – no one seems to know how – at the age of 28.

His paintings were the first ever of the native peoples of the plains and of pioneer and fur trade life there. They have added significance on two points: he lived for years among the people and scenes that he painted, unlike travelling artists like Paul Kane, for example, so he really knew his subjects; and Rindisbacher was meticulous in accurately portraying the detail of those subjects.

Thanks to him, we have a visual record of life at Red River in the early days. In an earlier posting I used one of his images to illustrate a dog carriole. Some of his most famous scenes depict the buffalo hunt in both summer and winter. But there are others that illustrate life near and at the RRS, too.

Two of the Companies Officers Travelling in a Canoe Made of Birchbark Manned by Canadians (1818 - 1828) (National Gallery of Canada)

The Governor of Red River, Driving his Family on the River in a Horse Cariole (1824 ) (National Gallery of Canada)

For more on Peter Rindisbacher See Clifford Wilson’s article in Canadian Art #83, Jan./Feb. 1963.

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.

At daybreak they hitched up and moved out. By 8 o’clock they had reached the big beach ridge, and the sun had begun to peek through the clouds. But the cart-trail was in bad shape, covered in water in many places. Everyone was worn out from the journey and lack of sleep the previous night, and Gunn was very ill – almost blind and in great pain.

They spent another night on the trail; this time sleep came easily. The rain had missed the area covered in the last stage of their journey and the roads were much better. So was Gunn, after a good night’s sleep.

Gunn concludes his report with more information on the inhabitants of the villages located south of Lake Manitoba: Oak Point, the Bay, and a new village under construction at the time.

These peoples are like the fowls of heaven; they “neither sow nor reap,” nor do they even, as far as I have been able to see, plant potatoes. They possess a few cattle and horses; the latter roam through the woods summer and winter, living independent of their masters’ care. The finest of hay grows within a few yards of their houses, yet I have been informed that many of these people are so indolent as to allow their animals to die in the winter from starvation. There are two or three exceptions to the above rule. The question will naturally arise, how do people so bound down by indolence procure food and clothing? …I said above that the lake abounded with fish. As soon as the thaw commences the fish forsake the deep places to which they resorted as the winter advanced, and swarm towards the shore, and run into the many little creeks that pass out of the marshes into the lake. Here they are taken in nets and by angling from the beginning of April until the breaking up of the ice in the latter end of May, and for some time after continue plentiful until the water in the lake becomes warm, when the fish return again to the deep places. In April the ducks and geese return in great numbers, become plentiful, and feed in numerous flocks in all the marshes fringing the lakes for at least a month and a half….

While the fish and wildfowl can be had these people enjoy a continual feast; and when these fail, [musk]rats, which have been taken in great numbers for some years past are considered desirable articles of food; even when plenty reigns in the land the [musk]rat furnishes them not only with food but with the means of providing themselves with clothing. …When all the wild fowl have taken to their breeding places the people have a hard struggle for dear life against hunger, which compels them to search along all the lakes and marshes for eggs, and for every other eatable that falls in their way; and during the month of July and part of August they suffer much privation of food, unless possessed of means to enable them to draw on the settlement for flour; but when the young ducks begin to take to their wings and the fish begin to approach the shore, they are able again to set hunger at defiance for a time. …Another trait of these people of primative habits and manners is, that, although occupying these villages for a long time, they have neither president, council, nor magistrate, and I never heard of any crime of any kind being committed by any of them except once, and that was a case of manslaughter which arose out of undue provocation.

The agricultural life that was so familiar to inhabitants of the RRS was something very foreign to the First Nations/Métis cultures of the area, although some archaeological evidence exists that shows that some did practice a rudimentary form of agriculture, and others took it up with some success after the settlers arrived. Neither Donald Gunn nor Alexander Ross could get their minds around the cultural difference, and both explained it away as a form of laziness or living for the moment – an incapacity to prepare for the time when food was scarce. Agricultural methods need to be learned, and the time for learning them happened to coincide with the times of plenty – when food in the wild was easy to gather, and must be gathered!

One of the great 19th Century pastimes for naturalists was collecting natural history, be it in the form of fossil, plant, insect, animal, bird or anything related! I’ve seen two collections that were quite overwhelming – one in the Manitoba Museum exhibit of hidden treasures from vaults of museums in the province: butterflies of all sizes and colours pinned on panels to make a whole booth in the exhibit! The other was at the Sutherland seat in Golspie, Sutherland, Dunrobin Castle, where there is a strange little museum full of hunting trophies, dusty stuffed birds and Pictish stones….

Western or Long-necked Grebe

Donald Gunn, in his 1867 expedition, was out collecting for the Smithsonian. His main targets seem to have been grebes, more specifically, Podiceps occidentalis, or the Long-necked Grebe, which occurred in Rupert’s Land only on Shoal Lake in one bay and locally on Lake Manitoba at the time. But he also collected pelicans, ducks, gulls, herons and other species of grebes, and their eggs on this and other expeditions to the same area. He recorded his observations on the various specimens collected and their habits in the wild. Once shot, the birds were skinned, and collected eggs were emptied to make their preservation easier.

The expedition spent 10 days at Shoal Lake before moving on to collect more specimens at Pitoo-Winnipeg Manitowaba. In leaving Shoal Lake, he makes the observation that

[a]ll round the lake there is an abundance of wood, with many fine, open plains in every direction, offering great facilities and promising rich rewards to the industry of the husbandman. The only drawbacks in the way of making settlements at this lake is its bitter, disagreeable water.

Donald Gunn makes another acquaintance along the way, this time a Métis, and through his description of the man, we may learn some more about the Métis of the day and their way of life:

On the way we met a young half-breed from the bay going to Grebe bay. He had his “dug-out” on a cart drawn by an ox. He stated that his object in going there was to hunt muskrats and collect as many eggs of all kinds as he could, to take home to eat. As these people neither sow nor reap, they have to subsist on what the seasons afford.

The working dogs of Red River pulled another type of vehicle in the winter, too – the carriole. The carriole was a miniature version of the vehicle of the same name used with horses, and as such was more decorative in appearance than the usual toboggan-like dog sledge.

Gentleman Travelling in a Dog Carriole by Peter Rindisbacher 1825 - Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. R9266-1052.2 Peter Winkworth Collection of Canadiana

Oddly enough, the few mentions of the dog carriole in the journals indicate that they played a political role at the RRS. The principle settler, a gentleman named Alexander McLean, his wife and family, were being wooed by the NWCo. officials, who believed that if they could coerce the McLeans into abandoning the RRS, the rest of the settlers would surely follow. Mrs. McLean, Miles Macdonell observed, was sometimes taken out in Alexander Macdonell’s (of the NWCo.) dog carriole as part of this campaign.

In an effort “to detach them from the constant intercourse they have with the N. W. Fort,” Miles Macdonell began entertaining the McLeans in earnest, inviting them for meals, tea, entertainments and, yes, making sure that Mrs. McLean was taken out in a carriole by either himself or Archibald McDonald! His efforts were rewarded as the McLean family remained with the RRS until after the Massacre of Seven Oaks, in which Alexander McLean was killed. Mrs. McLean and five of her children returned to Scotland in 1817.

The dog carriole, like the dog sled, remained in use into Hargrave’s time. He mentions that:

Early in 1866 the Bishop of Rupert’s Land [the Right Rev. Dr. Robert Machray] set out on his first visitation. Travelling westwards his Lordship touched at Portage La Prairie, Westbourne, and Fairford, thence by the Pas he reached Cumberland and the Nepowewin, returning home by Touchwood Hills and Qu’Appelle Lake. The journey was performed in a dog carriole, and occupied seven weeks.

(reference: pages 16779, 16784, 16802, 16936, 18252, 18255 of the Selkirk Papers, M186, Manitoba Archives; Hudson’s Bay Company Archives C.1/785; Hargrave, p. 159)

“Spoke to a Canadian to make Soap for the use of the Settlers.”  – Peter Fidler’s Journal

Much of what the Settlers required to survive they either had to grow or make themselves or trade or purchase from others living in the area. They relied heavily upon the expertise and experience of First Nations people and Canadians or Freemen (Métis) until they acquired the skills and supplies necessary to provide for themselves.

(reference: pages 18446 of the Selkirk Papers, M187, Manitoba Archives)

“…everything being arranged, they all started forward demanding Cloth Trowsers for wear going up the Rivers – a greater allowance of provisions – an allowance of Rum & also a supply of Tobacco to Accnt/ = abt. such demands I could not comply with, but put the whole off untill Mr. Cook & self would consult of it this evening…”  – Archibald Macdonald Journal

Apparently, the leather trousers were not considered haute couture among the Settlers!

(reference: p. 18211 of the Selkirk Papers, M187, Manitoba Archives)