he managed to pull over the St. James rapids, and reached
where Portage la Prairie now stands, and sixty miles from the site of
Winnipeg claimed the country for his Royal Master. Here he collected the
Indians, made them his friends, and proceeded to build a great fort, and
named it after Mary of Poland, the unfortunate Queen of France--"Fort de
la Reine," or Queen's Fort. But he could not forget "The Forks"--the
Winnipeg of to-day--and so gave instructions to one of his lieutenants
to stop with a number of his men at the Forks, cut down trees, and erect
a fort for safety in coming and going up the Assiniboine. The Frenchmen
worked hard, and on the south side of the junction of the Red River with
the Assiniboine, erected Fort Rouge--the Red Fort. This fort, built in
1738, was the first occupation of the site of the City of Winnipeg. The
French Captain Verandrye, his sons and his men, made further journeys to
the far West, even once coming in sight of the Rocky Mountains. But
French Canada was doomed. In twenty years more Wolfe was to wrench
Canada from France and make it British. The whole French force of
soldiers, free traders, and voyageurs were needed at Montreal and
Quebec. Not a Frenchman seems to have remained behind, and for a number
of years the way to the West was blocked up. The canoes went to decay,
the portages grew up with weeds and underwood, and the Western search
for furs from Montreal was suspended.


THE INDIANS OF THE RED RIVER.

No man knew the Indian better than Andrew McDermott. No one knew better
how to trade and dicker with the red man of the prairie. He could tell
of all the feuds of tribe with tribe, and of the wonderful skill of the
Fur Companies in keeping order among the Indian bands. The Red River had
not, after the departure of the French, been visited by travellers for
well nigh forty years. No doubt bands of Indians had threaded the
waterways, and carried their furs in one year to Pigeon River, on Lake
Superior, or to Fort Churchill, or York Factory on Hudson Bay. It was
only some ten or fifteen years before the coming of the Selkirk
Colonists that the fur traders, though they for forty years had been
ascending the Saskatchewan, had visited Red River at all. No missionary
had up to the coming of the Colonists ever appeared on the banks of the
Red River. Some ten years before the settler's advent, the fur traders
on the upper Red River had most bitter rivalries and for two or three
years the fire water--the Indian's curse--flowed like a flood. The
danger appealed to the traders, and from a policy of mere
self-protection they had decided to give out no strong drink, unless it
might be a slight allowance at Christmas and New Year's time. Red River
was now the central meeting place of four of the great Indian Nations.
The Red Pipestone Quarry down in the land of the Dakotas, and the Roches
Percйes, on the upper Souris River, in the land of the wild Assiniboines
were sacred shrines. At intervals all the Indian natives met at these
spots, buried for the time being their weapons, and lived in peace. But
Red River, and the country--eastward to the Lake of the Woods--was
really the "marches" where battles and conflicts continually prevailed.
Red River, the Miskouesipi, or Blood Red River of the Chippewas and
Crees, was said to have thus received its name. Andrew McDermott knew
all the Indians as they drew near with curiosity, to see the settlers
and to speculate upon the object of their coming. The Indian despises
the man who uses the hoe, and when the Colonists sought thus to gain a
sustenance from the fertile soil of the field, they were laughed at by
the Indians who caught the French word "Jardiniers," or gardeners, and
applied it to them.

The Colonists were certainly a puzzle to the Red man. To the banks of
the Red River and to the east of Lake Winnipeg had come many of the
Chippewas. They were known on the Red River as Sauteurs, or Saulteaux,
or Bungays, because they had come to the West from Sault Ste. Marie,
thinking nothing of the hundreds of miles of travel along the streams.
They were sometimes considered to be the gypsies of the Red men. It was
they coming from the lucid streams emptying into Lake Superior and
thence to Lake Winnipeg, who had called the latter by its name "Win,"
cloudy or muddy, and "nipiy" water. When the Colonists arrived, the
leading chief of the Chippewas, or Saulteaux, was Peguis. He became at
once the friend of the white man, for he was always a peaceful, kindly,
old Ogemah, or Chieftain.

All the Indians were, at first, kindness itself to the new comers, and
they showed great willingness to supply food to the hungry settlers, and
to assist them in transfer and in taking possession of their own homes.

The Saulteaux Indians while active and helpful were really intruders
among the Crees, a great Indian nation, who in language and blood were
their relations. As proof of this the Crees at this time used horses on
the plains. The horse was an importation brought up the valleys from the
Spaniards of Mexico. Seeing his value as a beast of burden, more fit
than the dog which had been formerly used, they coined the word
"Mis-ta-tim," or big dog as the name for the horse. Their Chiefs were,
with their names translated into pronounceable English, "the Premier,"
"the Black Robe," "the Black Man," while seemingly Mache Wheskab--"the
Noisy Man"--represented the Assiniboines. The Crees, so well represented
by their doughty Chiefs, are a sturdy race. They adapt themselves
readily enough to new conditions. While the northern Indian tribes met
the Colonists, yet in after days, as had frequently taken place in days
preceding, bands of Sioux or Dakotas, came on pilgrimages to the Red
River. Long ago when the French Captain Verandrye voyaged to Lake of the
Woods, his son and others of his men, were attacked by Sioux warriors,
and the whole party of whites was massacred in an Island on the Lake.
The writer in a later day, near Winnipeg, met on the highway, a band of
Sioux warriors, on horse-back, with their bodies naked to the waist, and
painted with high color, in token of the fact that they were on the
warpath. On occasion it was the habit of bands of Sioux to find their
way to the Red River Valley, and the people did not feel at all safe, at
their hostile attitude, as they bore the name of the "Tigers of the
Plains."

With Saulteaux, Crees, Assiniboines, and Sioux coming freely among them,
the settlers had at first a feeling of decided insecurity.

[Illustration: Osoup, Agent, Atalacoup, Kakawistaha, Mistawasis
FOUR CREE CHIEFS OF RUPERT'S LAND]


THE MONTREAL MERCHANTS AND MEN.

But the fur trade paid too well to be left alone by the Montrealers who
knew of Verandrye's exploits on the Ottawa and the Upper Lakes. When
Canada became British, many daring spirits hastened to it from New York
and New Jersey States. Montreal became the home of many young men of
Scottish families. Some of their fathers had fled to the Colonies after
the Stuart Prince was defeated at Culloden, and after the power of the
Jacobites was broken. Some of the young men of enterprising spirit were
the sons of officers and men who had fought in the Seven Years' War
against France and now came to claim their share of the conqueror's
spoils. Some men were of Yankee origin, who with their proverbial
ability to see a good chance, came to what has always been Canada's
greatest city, on the Island of Montreal. It was only half a dozen years
after Wolfe's great victory, that a great Montreal trader, Alexander
Henry, penetrated the western lakes to Mackinaw--the Island of the
Turtle, lying between Lakes Huron and Michigan. At Sault Ste. Marie, he
fell in with a most noted French Canadian, Trader Cadot, who had married
a Saulteur wife. He became a power among the Indians. With Scottish
shrewdness Henry acquired from the Commandant at Mackinaw the exclusive
right to trade on Lake Superior. He became a partner of Cadot, and they
made a voyage as Canadian Argonauts, to bring back very rich cargoes of
fur. They even went up to the Saskatchewan on Lake Winnipeg. After
Henry, came another Scotchman, Thomas Curry, and made so successful a
voyage that he reached the Saskatchewan River, and came back laden with
furs, so that he was now satisfied never to have to go again to the
Indian country. Shortly afterwards James Findlay, another son of the
heather, followed up the fur-traders' route, and reached Saskatchewan.
Thus the Northwest Fur Trade became the almost exclusive possession of
the Scottish Merchants of Montreal. With the master must go the man. And
no man on the rivers of North America ever equalled, in speed, in good
temper, and in skill, the French Canadian voyageur. Almost all the
Montreal merchants, the Forsythes, the Richardsons, the McTavishes, the
Mackenzies, and the McGillivrays, spoke the French as fluently as they
did their own language. Thus they became magnetic leaders of the French
canoemen of the rivers. The voyageurs clung to them with all the
tenacity of a pointer on the scent. There were Nolins, Falcons,
Delormes, Faribaults, Lalondes, Leroux, Trottiers, and hundreds of
others, that followed the route until they became almost a part of the
West and retired in old age, to take up a spot on some beautiful bay, or
promontory, and never to return to "Bas Canada." Those from Montreal to
the north of Lake Superior were the pork eaters, because they lived on
dried pork, those west of Lake Superior, "Couriers of the Woods," and
they fed on pemmican, the dried flesh of the buffalo. They were mighty
in strength, daring in spirit, tractable in disposition, eagles in
swiftness, but withal had the simplicity of little children. They made
short the weary miles on the rivers by their smoking "tabac"--the time
to smoke a pipe counting a mile--and by their merry songs, the "Fairy
Ducks" and "La Claire Fontaine," "Malbrouck has gone to the war," or
"This is the beautiful French Girl"--ballads that they still retained
from the French of Louis XIV. They were a jolly crew, full of
superstitions of the woods, and leaving behind them records of daring,
their names remain upon the rivers, towns and cities of the Canadian and
American Northwest.

Some thirty years before the arrival of the Colonists, the Montreal
traders found it useful to form a Company. This was called the
North-West Fur Company of Montreal. Having taken large amounts out of
the fur trade, they became the leaders among the merchants of Montreal.
The Company had an energy and ability that made them about the beginning
of the nineteenth century the most influential force in Canadian life.
At Fort William and Lachine their convivial meetings did something to
make them forget the perils of the rapids and whirlpools of the rivers,
and the bitterness of the piercing winds of the northwestern stretches.
Familiarly they were known as the "Nor'-Westers." Shortly before the
beginning of the century mentioned, a split took place among the
"Nor'-Westers," and as the bales of merchandise of the old Company had
upon them the initials "N.W.," the new Company, as it was called, marked
their packages "XY," these being the following letters of the alphabet.

Besides these mentioned there were a number of independent merchants, or
free traders. At one time there were at the junction of the Souris and
Assiniboine Rivers, five establishments, two of them being those of free
traders or independents. Among all these Companies the commander of a
Fort was called, "The Bourgeois" to suit the French tongue of the men.
He was naturally a man of no small importance.


"THE DUSKY RIDERS OF THE PLAINS."

But the conditions, in which both the traders and the voyageurs lived,
brought a disturbing shadow over the wide plains of the North-West. Now
under British rule, the Fur trade from Montreal became a settled
industry. From Curry's time (1766) they began to erect posts or depots
at important points to carry on their trade. Around these posts the
voyageurs built a few cabins and this new centre of trade afforded a
spot for the encampment near by of the Indian teepees made of tanned
skins. The meeting of the savage and the civilized is ever a contact of
peril. Among the traders or officers of the Fur trade a custom grew
up--not sanctioned by the decalogue--but somewhat like the German
Morganatic marriage. It was called "Marriage of the Country." By this in
many cases the trader married the Indian wife; she bore children to him,
and afterwards when he retired from the country, she was given in real
marriage to some other voyageur, or other employee, or pensioned off. It
is worthy of note that many of these Indian women became most true and
affectionate spouses. With the voyageurs and laborers the conditions
were different. They could not leave the country, they had become a part
of it, and their marriages with the Indian women were bona fide. Thus it
was that during the space from the time of Curry until the arrival of
the Selkirk