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.

Ross concludes his list with the following entry:

4th. For various reasons, therefore, we and many others here are of opinion, that Lord Selkirk’s object was the good of the natives, and theirs alone. What else could it have been? It was not territorial acquisition: that the Company had already. It was not the exclusive right of trade: that they had already. It was not to relieve a redundant population, for that relief was but small; nor could it have been for the bubble reputation. No: he had purer motives. The only prominent objection we have to Red River Colony in a local point of view is its proximity to the boundary line on the south, and his lordship was too clear-sighted not to have foreseen, that eventually it might fall into the hands of the Americans, and should it not, the only outlet for its resources must be south, and not north. Beyond what the Company might require, its market, in the nature of things, must be south also. Hence it is quite evident that his lordship’s motives must have been what we have stated; namely, the civilizing and evangelizing of the natives: so that into whatever hands its government fell, he would have attained his end. For its value to Great Britain, if we except the interest of the Hudson’s Bay Company, was, and ever must be, small indeed; nor could the Americans expect to benefit much by it, either in a political or commercial point of view. The fears of the North-Westers were fully realized, the anticipations of the Hudson’s Bay Company fully borne out by the result, for the colony has become a nursery for its retired servants; but as to Lord Selkirk’s view of benefiting the Indians, forty years’ experience has proved it, as we shall hereafter be able to show, a complete failure.

~ Alexander Ross, The Red River Settlement, p. 18-19.

If only Ross had given the colony another 20 years! He would have seen how wrong in several respects his conclusion was.

J. M. Bumsted, in his recent biography of Thomas Douglas, the Fifth Earl of Selkirk, talks a lot more about the Earl’s ideas on American expansion and the importance of Red River in countering U.S. expansion into what was in his time HBC territory. And one only needs to look at what happened to Britain’s claim to what is now Washington State and Oregon to see how important his foresight was!

The amalgamation of the HBC and NWCo. probably would have happened anyway, if either were to survive the depletion of fur stocks in the west. In fact, it was likely a hostile take-over planned by Sir Alexander Mackenzie of the North West Company with the aid of Lord Selkirk that brought the Earl into the Hudson’s Bay Company in the first place (Bumsted, Lord Selkirk: A Life. pp. 171-2)!

As for the retirement community theory, well, who were the ‘Canadians’ but the Métis families of French Canadian fur traders and bois brulés? They were settling at least part-time in the area already! So the colony was only giving structure to a population already in place to some degree, and augmenting its population. Yes, it was meant to re-enforce the HBC charter claims to an area already overrun by the NWCo. The HBC was fighting for survival, just as was the NWCo. This was undoubtedly a means of strengthening the HBC claim and lowering their operating costs.

At the same time, this goal could be achieved by aiding a population in dire need of assistance – the evicted highland tenant farmers. This is where Selkirk really failed, I think. He had plans to bring over a great many more Scots than he actually managed to transport to Red River. The shortfall was in part due to the machinations of NWCo. partners and their propaganda; and the dithering of English politicians, who also were under the influence of NWCo. propaganda, on the subject of Selkirk’s emigration proposals. The colony also lost large numbers of its colonists to migration after NWCo. interference; mismanagement of the colony and its interests by Selkirk’s officials; and floods, droughts and grasshopper plagues; and Selkirk’s premature death among other things. I’m not even sure that the failure was Selkirk’s. The idea was a good one. The timing could have been better, perhaps. But how could anyone have known that!

Ross, to the best of my knowledge, never met Selkirk. He was not an eyewitness to any of the colony’s earliest history – he was one of those retired HBC servants with a First Nations family, who had been working in the Columbia District first for the NWCo., then the HBC, prior to joining the colony in 1825 (Frits Pannekoek, Ross, Alexander. Canadian Encyclopedia). He was one of the colonists who fought hard for a Presbyterian minister, and was very active in the Presbyterian Church at Kildonan as an elder, once it was established. A good portion of his book deals with civilizing the Natives of Rupert’s Land, a process Ross tends to equate with conversion to Christianity. It was a cause that he seemed very concerned with, himself….

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

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 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

can, with wonderful dexterity, avail herself of all the resources of the forest and the lake. Here she made a few snares, chased the rabbits into them, and in a very short space of time had a number of them boiling and roasting, and after hunting, cooking and eating her dinner, was ready to start as soon as any of us.

He describes geographical and geological features he sees along the route, including two ridges that he assumes to be old beaches of Lake Winnipeg, but which may have been far more ancient beaches of Lake Agassiz.

By evening, the party has reached Shoal Lake.

As we passed along the lake, I observed a stone pillar, or cairn, formed of small granite boulders thrown loosely together, and on inquiry of my companions from the lake “What mean ye by these stones?” I was informed, here in 1843, in passing from Red River to Manitowaba to establish a mission among the natives, the Rev. Abraham Cowley and party passed their first Sabbath in the wilderness, and these stones were set up to commemorate the sermon preached on the occasion.

On the third day of the expedition, a First Nations man informs them that the route they plan to take is boggy and completely unsuitable for their ox-carts. When they reach this reputedly quagmirish portion of the way, Gunn discovers that the man was misinforming them, “only showing the Indian jealousy of intruders on their hunting grounds.”

Portras Demarey & Hamlin accompanied the Canadians as servants to Brandon House – they are giving every encouragement to every Freeman, not to assist the Settlement in any way whatever, and they express themselves openly that the Settlement was merely established to ruin their business, but that they would soon be the ruin of the Colony – and try whose loads were hardest such is the Language they hold forth.

- Journal of Peter Fidler

Fidler, in this entry, touches upon one of the crucial pieces of NWCo. propaganda against the RRS. This seed was so well sown that some still hold this understanding as the reason for the establishment of the Red River Colony.

There is no doubt that Lord Selkirk saw the Colony as a benefit to HBC operations. But Selkirk established it in the expectation that crops raised and goods produced in the colony would actually enhance the Fur Trade by shortening supply lines and providing a home for retired traders and their Native families. As they grew to manhood, he hoped that young men from the colony would also work for the HBC.

The NWCo. were correct in that the HBC hoped that the colony would strengthen the Charter claim to the territory and enhance its trade, giving it an advantage over the NWCo. There was no intent though, to oust inhabitants of the plains or to limit Freemen (Métis) or First Nations people’s ability to earn a living. In fact, every effort was made to hire such people to help provision the colonists’ store, and the HBC also hired these men on a regular basis. So, to say that the sole reason for establishing the Settlement was to ruin their business was definitely twisting the truth in a manner that ultimately cost the lives of innocent people.

(reference: pages 18445 of the Selkirk Papers, M187, Manitoba Archives)