1 May 1813
by Elizabeth Campbell“Send a Canoe with 3 men for the Salt left about 25 miles up the river-” – Miles Macdonell Journal
There were at least two places that Miles Macdonell would send men in the late winter from Fort Daer for the purposes of obtaining salt. He gave them kettles to take with them, so I imagine that there were springs with a high salt content, and that when the water was evaporated through boiling, the salt was left for packaging. Does anyone know more about the process used, or where these salt sources were exactly?
(reference: page 16823 of the Selkirk Papers, M186, Manitoba Archives)
Tags: food supply, Fort Daer, Miles Macdonell, Miles Macdonell's Journal, salt
May 15th, 2009 at 9:52 am
From edithm (celebrating bicentennial topic)
Regarding your question of several days ago, about the source of salt: I thought first of a salt spring, because of a story regarding a sister and brother-in-law of my dad’s mother. They had a farm in northwestern Pennsylvania, just a little south of Lake Erie, and they had a salt spring on their farm. When the story was written in the late 1800s, it said there was still evidence of the Indians’ fires where they had made salt. White settlers had begun to come in there around 1800, so the fires were a long time before.
If the Red River settlers did not have a spring, there may have been something like a “salt lick.” Surely the native people, and probably the animals too, knew about any source of salt.
There is an article I just found in the Transactions of the Manitoba Historical Society about the geology of the area, and it mentions salt springs. I do not know the geography, so do not know how far away they were from the settlement.
To find it, go to Manitoba Historical Society, then find the Manitoba Historical Journal, and it will have links to Transactions and Pageant.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:07 am
http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/transactions/1/oldergeology.shtml for those of you interested in reading the MHS geology article mentioned in edithm’s comment.